Welcome to the 27th installment of our 2021 Pride Month Series! Each day in the month of June, we will be highlighting a different member of the LGBTQIA+ community who we think is a great example of representation and dynamic characterization. We will focus on fictional characters, celebrities, and activists alike — the positive voices within the LGBTQIA+ community and in mainstream media.
Wrecking balls kaleidoscopic and mischievous Gods Bi-iconing; athletes tackling history and lingerie rebrand posting; these are just a few of my absolutely favorite 2021 pride things! Okay, to half-turn on a bunch of moments that already has us fan-girlishly flailing, today’s spotlight will photogenically dip right back into the modeling industry glow-up. As not only does cute British slang such as “bollocks” and “trollied” come out of her mouth in a Hammersmith, London accent (apparently, according to Reddit, it rivals a “softcore cockney”), but through peeping into her Louis Vuitton handbag, she’s been trademarking motley vibrant angel wings as a seasonal must-have for years!
Cara Delevingne (/dElEvEEn/): dogmatic Leo, triple threat enchantress. When filling out some proof of authenticity form, she will most definitely whip out a red pen matching her still pristine after 24-hours lipstick to tick the genderfluid box. Even more so, she proudly declared to Josh Smith, @joshsmithhosts on Instagram and celebrity interviewer on Make It Reign: The Podcast:
“The way I define myself still changes all the time, whether it’s pansexual, bisexual – I don’t really know. It’s like a pendulum swinging.”
It hasn’t always been in this way. In fact, her youth spent under the lavish roof of parents Charles and Pandora, a property developer and socialite respectively, was much akin to hitting the Spotify loop button on July 4 go-er Taylor Swift’s folkloric tune “seven” when curating the ultimate autobiographical playlist. She presumably thought she had found the Saturn to her moon when aged 11. It wasn’t quite the brisk setting of a fairytale vineyard overlooking a tea party for orphaned beasties, rather a harp affair as she sat as a self-acclaimed muse to her pigtailed artist. While the gentle sweep of music overcame her, there would soon be one less of a follower. In true sinless style, the gossipy notification fled around the playground that the girl in question would be sharing her rollup with a newly acquired friend.
However, a license to legally swipe the cork-topper 18th birthday bubbly treat gels well with a forlorn tale as the milestone year was spent coasting into the coming and going tides of mature romance. After Delevingne’s first taking down of the iPhone-officially-dating-announcer-wallpaper, she stormed her house’s stairs to admit she was heartbroken; it wasn’t simple. No, it was foreshadowed by the anxiously ridden pride love bite all LGBTQ+ teenagers feel when either firstly coming out or, in her case, opening up about the relationship at all. Yet, she admitted to Variety:
“And I remember one day, I was so upset because I was heartbroken. And my dad was like, ‘You never talk to me.’ And I screamed at him, ‘I’m f—ing heartbroken.’ I ran downstairs. I remember he gave me a hug, and I started crying so much. I said, ‘She broke my heart.’ I thought at the moment, he might kick me out. I was that scared; I was honestly terrified. And he was like, ‘She isn’t worth the energy. You deserve to be loved.’ He was so sweet, I could cry about it right now.”
These days, her smitten with the lens flair is either smizing into a 4K studio camera wheeled by a volunteer for The Trevor Project’s annual gala as she received the 2019 Hero Award or as ambassador to sports brand Puma. Together, she helped assist a $1 million partnership between both organizations. Spun into brazen block letters categorically placed under fashion, Paper magazine spelled out “Cara Delevingne Is Finally Free”:
“So to be proud is to really be able to feel free to shout from the rooftop, ‘This is who I am, take it or leave it. I love myself.’ And there is nothing anyone can do about it. I think that’s truly inspirational and truly something I wish I had as a teenager, but how inspired I am by people and teenagers and young people who can do that.”
Stay tuned for the rest of our daily Pride Month spotlights throughout the rest of this month.