What's In a Name? A Seemingly Endless Spiral About Labels and Identity.

It turns out Willy Shakes taught me a thing or two about myself.

Nobody knows who they are at 14. You don’t need me to tell you that since you likely lived it yourself, but I bring it up because at the time, there were only a few things I was 100% confident and sure of:

• I greatly loved the arts and would watch, read, and listen to anything that expanded my palette.

• I wanted to become a writer when I grew up.

• I kind of liked attention but hated being on stage.

Seven years before I realized that final bullet, I’d choreograph elaborate musical performances for my childhood birthday parties in the Miami heat. I’d come up with scripts, stories, and songs, and beg my sister and friends to start a band even though I couldn’t play a single instrument. I eventually joined my school choir and landed a solo as Gabriella for a performance of High School Musical 2’s “You Are the Music in Me” in third grade, even though I always thought I was more of a Sharpay.

Being raised by a single parent who juggled jobs, we didn’t have many resources growing up. But one thing about my mom? She’s always encouraged our interests and did everything she could to support us in what we wanted to pursue. So when I was 11, my sister and I started taking free acting classes at our local parks and recreation center and attended a separate camp that put on a showcase at the end of the summer. It’s important to note that this was before my self-awareness rolled into self-consciousness. I thought less about perception before I threw myself into auditions and landed on stage.

One of the first monologues I’ve ever performed will be vaguely etched into my mind forever — I gave an over-the-top comedic performance of a poorly written piece from the perspective of someone confronting an ex-friend. It was an emotion I hadn’t even felt for myself in real life, yet, the park’s acting coach was so thrilled that he gave me a standing O, pointed to an older girl in the class who had performed before me, and said, “This is the energy you should be bringing in here.” I felt validated then, but that girl had a couple of years on me, and her self-awareness turned into self-consciousness. She was 14.

I continued going the theater route until middle school, when I fully felt like I was in it for the long run. I had played one of Titania’s fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, competed and won in a performing arts competition for our local botanical garden, and wrote one-act plays for showcases. Hell, I even built sets and did makeup for shows. But I was also pushed to perform awkward interpretive dances, analyze Florence + the Machine lyrics, and perform spoken word poetry. At this point, I was closer to the age of my classmate from the park, so being perceived felt less inviting. I was 14.

Claire Danes as Juliet Capulet in Romeo + Juliet (1997).

Credit: Everett Collection

An assignment I vividly remember at that age was having to memorize and perform Juliet’s “What’s in a Name” monologue from Romeo + Juliet. As a 25-year-old ex-theater kid, I’ve read, watched, performed, and analyzed a fair share of Shakespeare’s works — but somehow, this one has stuck with me:

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

I find myself circling back to the monologue. Perhaps it’s because Tom Holland made his way to London’s West End as Romeo or the fact that it’s heading to Broadway with music by Jack Antonoff. There’s no escaping Romeo + Juliet centuries later, and as I’m faced with it again, it continuously takes on new meanings.

On the surface, “What’s in a Name” details Juliet’s frustration and sorrow when she discovers that she and Romeo’s families are in a long-standing feud. Despite this major detail and plot point, she mentions that she’s enamored with Romeo and would still feel the same way if he wasn’t a Montague.

At this point, I can’t help but tie it back to my identity. I feel a similar frustration to Juliet’s when it comes to how my queerness is currently perceived. In heteronormative spaces, I feel too gay, and in queer spaces, I don’t feel gay enough. It’s something everyone goes through, but that doesn’t make the internal battle suck any less.

It all seemed so obvious, and yet, I was a late bloomer when I started navigating my queerness.

Looking back on my life, the closet was made of glass. My sexuality was hiding in plain sight when I felt so passionately about equal rights issues and the legalization of gay marriage. When teachers constantly assigned projects with historically queer topics to me, when my mom and sisters would feed my Lady Gaga fandom with concert special DVDs and coffee table books. It all seemed so obvious, yet I was a late bloomer when I started navigating my queerness.

During an appearance on the Exes and Oh’s podcast with Shannon Beveridge, The Beaches’ Leandra Earl spoke on her experience, which is incredibly similar to my own. In her early teens, she realized she wanted to spend the rest of her life with a woman and inevitably suppressed the emotion. It wasn’t until her mid-20s that she explored WLW romance with her ex-girlfriend (aka the muse behind Blame My Ex’s standout, “Edge of the Earth”). Shannon added, “What so many straight people get to experience in high school and in college, so many queer people don’t get to have until they’re in their late 20s, and even later for some people.”

As a teenager, I told myself that I’d probably kiss a girl but could never see myself in a relationship with one. It was a thought rooted in internalized homophobia that suppressed my feelings for years (side note: if you’ve ever thought about kissing or hooking up with girls, then odds are, you’re probably not straight). It’s a tale as old as time, really — it wasn’t until college when I experimented and found myself kicking my feet and giggling over people who aren’t men. It was a whole new world for me, and even a few years in, it still feels like I have catching up to do.

When I moved to New York at the end of 2021, I started openly dating whoever I wanted. A few months later in February 2022, Chappell Roan dropped her infectious larger-than-life pop track, “Naked In Manhattan,” in which she depicts the exact phenomenon I was experiencing. At the time, I came across a TikTok where she teased the track and I immediately felt connected to the music. We’re so lucky to have art that resonates, whether in the form of diary-entry narratives-turned-pop bangers or pop divas who served as allies in the early aughts (Cher, Diana Ross, and Madonna specifically come to mind).

I had spent so many years questioning, conducting research, and educating myself that I learned all this terminology — and I still couldn’t really find where I fit in. When it comes to labeling myself, be it on The Apps™ or in social settings, I simply go with queer, although if I had to choose a close enough descriptor, I’d likely lean pansexual. To my mom and the rest of my family, I dumb it down and say bisexual to avoid an extensive 3-hour explanation. I educate when I can, but ultimately, it’s up to them to pick up a book, read queer publications, and conduct research the same way I did. To me, pan falls under the bi umbrella, so it still works — as long as they understand there’s a possibility I’ll marry someone who isn’t a man, that’s good enough for me.

But as I get older, I find my threshold for men and their bullshit to be nonexistent. This eventually led me to spiral and accept that I’m probably a lesbian. Because a deep dive into the infamous Lesbian Master Doc is a canon event (even for icons like Kehlani), I came across it at the tail end of 2020. Since then, I’ve adopted the mindset that I’m attracted to whoever I’m attracted to, and I’ll do whatever I want either way.

These are four separate labels I’ve identified with at one point or another. In a way, they overlap in a Venn diagram, and it’s something I haven’t stopped thinking about. The only labels I’ve ever liked are ones you’d find on the racks in Saks. Even then, they’re not as accessible or accepting of people like me. So, the question is still begged: what’s in a name?

Is it all performative? At times, it feels like it is. I say certain labels to make it easier on folks around me, but what will finally release the weight on my shoulders and make it easier for me? Perhaps scrapping a label altogether works just fine. There’s also nothing wrong with feeling seen and represented by them. But if you never really fit into one box, or strictly felt one way, the pressure of figuring out how to label yourself could become a seemingly endless battle. It’s the reason I had initially put off coming out to my family — not out of fear that they wouldn’t accept me as I am, but because I wanted to come correct. Now, I give myself grace because the beauty of queerness — and sexuality, in general — is that it’s fluid. Things can resonate heavily one day and completely switch with time. I wish I had known that exact feeling is completely normal.

In our current pop culture landscape where queer identities can be broadcasted to screens directly from our fingertips, I’m feeling more seen than ever before.

Take Billie Eilish, for example. Deep into her Oscar campaign trail of November 2023, she fell victim to twisted headlines when she said she was “attracted to” and “intimidated by” women for Variety’s Power of Women issue. As it goes for every starlet, her quotes were misconstrued; she was then asked to clarify if she came out on the red carpet for the Variety Hitmakers brunch weeks later. “I kinda thought, ‘Wasn’t it obvious?’ I didn’t realize people didn’t know… I just don’t really believe in [coming out],” she said before begging the ultimate question: “Why can’t we just exist?” She later blasted the publication on Instagram, writing, “Thanks variety for my award and for also outing me on a red carpet at 11 am instead of talking about anything else that matters i like boys and girls leave me alone about it please literally who cares.”

There’s no relatability to her record-breaking levels of stardom — but the pressure to label herself almost felt like a magnifying glass was being brought into my own life. A few months and an Oscar win later, Billie graced the cover of Rolling Stone to promote her album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. She teased the album’s second track, “Lunch,” by playing a snippet at Coachella and explained how it came to be. “That song was actually part of what helped me become who I am, to be real. I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after,” she mused. “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand — until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina. I was never planning on talking about my sexuality ever, in a million years. It’s really frustrating to me that it came up.” She added, “I know everybody's been thinking this about me for years and years, but I'm only figuring out myself now.” Now, “Lunch” is the sensual sapphic song of summer ‘24, and as I sit down to write this, it’s already made the top 5 of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.

Absorbing queer media and realizing that so many people feel the same way I do about labels and coming out is almost refreshing, and it’s proof that it’s a (somehow) universal experience. In a cover story essay penned by Sophia Bush for Glamour, she similarly opened up about her coming out experience at 41:

I sort of hate the notion of having to come out in 2024. But I’m deeply aware that we are having this conversation in a year when we’re seeing the most aggressive attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community in modern history. There were more than 500 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills proposed in state legislatures in 2023, so for that reason I want to give the act of coming out the respect and honor it deserves. I’ve experienced so much safety, respect, and love in the queer community, as an ally all of my life, that, as I came into myself, I already felt it was my home. I think I’ve always known that my sexuality exists on a spectrum. Right now I think the word that best defines it is queer. I can’t say it without smiling, actually. And that feels pretty great.

Admittedly, I felt called to write this essay after reading hers. This has been sitting in my drafts since April because I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what it is I want to say. I initially wanted to publish these musings during Pride, but life got away from me and I kept hating these words every time I came back to them. But something shifted when I talked about it with my friends, Kay and Thiago, when we were leaving Ethel Cain’s show on the C train. I expressed how I was finding it difficult to release these emotions in my writing, and they both encouraged me to tap into my voice and share it because there would be at least one person who could relate to it.

I hate to say it, but Shakespeare made some points when he wrote, “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I know who I am and what I want, and I’m just as queer and as valid with a label as I am without one. Maybe this is my way of becoming a reference to someone else the way Sophia, Billie, Chappell, and Exes and Oh’s were for me as I ferociously typed away for almost two months. Regardless, I’m still trying to figure myself out, and if you find yourself in a similar spot: I’m here for you.

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Thanks for reading this edition of Comfort + Chaos! Your support means everything to me, especially at times like these when I drop emotional confessions. There’s no “Heavy Rotation” segment this time around, but just know I’ll be back for more soon. Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting me and my musings. <3