Justin Bieber Is My Lesbian Icon

It’s not about getting away with things. It’s about becoming more comfortable with myself.

Justin Bieber looks like a lesbian. I first discovered this fact, what would soon become one of the pillars of my life, on the Tumblr blog Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber. I found the blog shortly after coming out in 2010 at the age of fifteen, when I spent most of my time on Tumblr (as all gay teens do, as is decreed by the law).

I was skeptical at first—how much could a teen pop star really look like me? Not even look like me, but look like an entire group of people who didn’t by definition share any ethnic background or similar characteristics? It was funny enough as a joke—an early meme, if you will—but did it hold up as true?

It didn’t take long to realize that, Ellen Almighty, it was true—he did look like a lesbian. Like me, he had the same sweet and naive bowl-cut side bangs, wasn’t too tall, and dressed in skinny jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie. That’s actually the end of the list of similarities. At this point it might be painfully obvious, but it doesn’t take much to “look” like a lesbian, or more so, for a lesbian to look like a prepubescent boy. Justin Bieber doesn’t even look like most lesbians. He just looks like a very specific set of white, suburban lesbians who have convinced their moms to let them shop in the boys’ section of Wet Seal.

So we looked similar, but not enough to make any sort of drastic impact on my life. It’s possible that Justin Bieber stood out to me so much in 2010 because other lesbian pop culture at the time was not entirely enticing, or even existent, for young, teenage lesbians like myself: The L Word, while life-changing, was about women who were much older and more successful than me; Glee, The Gay Show of the Time, had a gay male character but no queer women (that were out yet—sorry, SPOILERS); Lady Gaga dressed as meat too often; and I wasn’t politically engaged enough as a tenth grader to understand what the hell Rachel Maddow was talking about. Sure, there were Ellen and Portia, the lesbian mothers of us all, but they seemed like lesbians of a different generation, or like they didn’t belong to me.

Even if The L Word, Ellen DeGeneres, or Rachel Maddow did resonate with me profoundly at that age, that’s only like three things. You don’t build an identity for yourself based on three things. Something about Justin Bieber was more accessible than the other lesbian pop culture I had in my life. Because who cares if Katy Perry kissed a girl if this kid, who was, like, Usher’s nephew or something, had the same hairstyle and clothes as me? Justin Bieber seemed way cooler. And cool is very important when you’re fifteen.

I followed his music as a casual listener for a while, never thinking much of it except that maybe Justin Bieber and I were distantly related lesbian cousins, united by our side bangs. And everything was fine until about three years ago, when he rebranded as a “bad boy” and my tepid interest in our similarities (side bangs) became an overwhelming and bizarre obsession with who he was becoming. Somewhat overnight, the teen pop star that sang about his first love on YouTube became the stoner that posted about having conjunctivitis five (5) times on Instagram in one night.

It seemed as if Justin just instantly became an asshole. Like one night he thought, “Time to change,” and then had a meeting with Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp, and Leonardo DiCaprio in order to plan how to be a douchebag. Nowadays, Justin doesn’t care, or doesn’t seem to care, about anything. He lives as someone of only his gender, race, and class can, which is to live recklessly and with zero real-world consequences. And on top of that he’s Justin Bieber, so multiply that lack of consequence by a million. He’s mastered the art of bouncing back after public mishaps: The second he does something wrong, his friends, family, and fans come to his immediate rescue, writing it all off as “boyish foolishness.” And if something really bad happens, like when that dick pic leaked or the video surfaced of him including the n-word in one of his songs, Usher takes a break from whatever it is that Usher does (I assume it’s crooning unreleased R&B songs to swans by a misty lake), to come and say, “Hey, everyone chill, he’s growing and learning.”

I don’t necessarily think he changed overnight—I’m sure he has always been too much for some people—but I definitely noticed overnight, because I was beginning to notice things about myself as well. At that point Justin Bieber stopped being someone who I related to (however fragile that link already was [side bangs]), and started being someone who was drastically the opposite of me—but who I couldn’t look away from. Sure, we still looked the same, but we couldn’t have acted any more differently.

What made me realize that we had grown apart was a clearer grasp on my own sexual identity. Much of my disposition and mannerisms stem from when I came out. I was always a shy kid, but when I realized I might be queer at fourteen I withdrew even more within myself, trying to hide something I hadn’t even figured out yet. I wanted it not to be true, and I told myself that even if it was true, even if I was gay, I would never act on it. This was mostly because of my internalized homophobia and pressure I had put on myself over time, but also my immediate surroundings. My family was very Catholic (we went to church every Sunday and I went to Catholic school) and my dad was also a Republican (he isn’t anymore). My parents and I have since come a long way together, and I love them for that, but before I came out it was very scary to think about what was on the other side of admitting I was queer.

And to make matters worse, Proposition 8, the California ballot measure to overturn same-sex marriage, was being debated at the same time I was trying to figure out if I was queer. If you’re trying to figure something out about yourself and every day on your ride home from school you see signs that argue against the existence of gay people, you’re not going to want to admit to yourself that you’re a gay person. I sincerely tried to convince myself I was not queer for the better part of two years.

But let’s get back to Justin. Here’s how I imagine a typical day in the life of Justin Bieber: He wakes up, gets an Uber XL for whoever is in his bed, goes to his bathroom made up completely of mirrors, and then stares at himself for thirty minutes to an hour. The only thing he does to get ready is spray himself with a combination of Axe body spray and a cologne so expensive none of us have ever heard of it. After that he drinks three Red Bulls for breakfast, and probably goes through his Instagram DMs for an hour. At some point his mentor, Ellen DeGeneres, comes over and they drink Smart Water together while re-watching old clips of Justin on her show. She tries to give him advice, but he never takes it, and Ellen leaves dejected and worried again. Then he walks around naked until it’s midnight and time to go clubbing.

I will always be obsessed with Justin Bieber in a detached, “can’t look away from a car crash” kind of way. When I was younger, that obsession had tints of genuine interest and idolization, but now it mostly takes the form of jealousy. I am jealous of his lack of consequence, when the potential consequences for myself have always loomed over me, seemingly self-inflicted. Whereas Justin can get away with just about anything, I have always felt that my queerness was already “too much.” The space I take up as a queer person already feels weighted, and so I try to bring as little attention to myself on top of that as possible. For me that means limiting or being cautious of specifically “queer” actions like PDA, but also more generally trying to blend into the background: wearing simple clothes and never talking too loud or making eye contact on the subway. I have always been careful of myself, and there will always be a part of me that is cautious and calculated, even at my most outwardly casual. I truly do love being queer, but I also know that a huge part of the identity that I love so much is accepting that it has negative repercussions on my day-to-day life, and how I carry myself.

Coming out when I was fifteen was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, second only to admitting to myself that I was gay. Being queer has been the defining characteristic of the latter half of my life (the defining characteristic of the first half of my life was Legos). If you know what I look like, you know that I am very obviously “gay looking.” I am constantly wearing my identity, whereas Justin Bieber is just wearing clothes. He will never have to answer to the same self-doubt that I do. And so it ends up being the thing that bonded us—looking like lesbians—that made us ultimately drift apart: I am actually a lesbian and he just looks like one.

And so I try my best to channel him, to try to learn from his actions. I don’t mean that I throw eggs at houses or buy pet monkeys in order to “feel something,” because it’s not about getting away with things or acting out. It’s just about becoming more comfortable with myself, and how I interact with others. Sometimes I’ll be scrolling through his five thousand Instagram posts and think, okay, maybe I’ll try to make water cooler (or Keurig machine) conversation with someone tomorrow or hold my girlfriend’s hand in public. Justin Bieber doesn’t inspire me to put myself out there more, but his existence begs the question: Sure, why the fuck not? Stop overthinking everything you do. If he can go on Instagram Live and just stare at the camera for an hour blinking (I watched the whole thing), you can reach out to an old friend and ask to get dinner sometime soon. Or maybe the Instagram thing too, why not.