Lauren Jauregui of Fifth Harmony has a message for anyone who doesn’t accept her sexuality: “Go f**k yourself.”
The 21-year-old pop star, who came out publicly as bisexual last year, told Out magazine: “People still talk s**t. But it’s like, why does it make you feel gross? You can watch a kid get bombed and not do anything about it, but you can’t watch me kiss my girlfriend?”
Jauregui admitted she was pressured by record label executives not to talk about her sexual orientation. “A lot of artists are held back by the notion that they’ll lose their fan base or alienate themselves,” she said. “Even friends and family would tell me to keep it to myself. But the more I thought about it, the more I was like, Why?”
The unapologetic singer teamed up with Halsey, who is also openly bisexual, for “Strangers,” a song about unrequited same-sex love.
“To me the song is culturally valuable because people are feeling so invalidated and distant from themselves, like they should be ashamed of who they are,” Jauregui told Out. “It’s good to be an anarchist and just love yourself. That’s the most rebellious thing you can do right now.”
Jauregui added: “There’s this notion that artists are supposed to be dumb and frivolous. I completely disagree with that. Madonna, Bob Marley, John Lennon—they didn’t talk about bulls**t.”