Feature image photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Tribeca Festiva
One of my favorite things about my career has been witnessing all the ways coming out has changed over the years for celebrities. The days of months-long behind-the-scenes PR campaigns to ready the world for a People magazine cover are long gone. These days, gay actors just show up on red carpets with girlfriends or post their proposal pics on Instagram. This weekend, Jena Malone — best known for being in literally every movie you’ve ever seen — did it in a brand new way: with interpretive dance! In between promo for her new film, Adopting Audrey, Malone did some stretching, spins, whirs, and jiggles (and other official dance verbs) to honor her evolving understanding of her sexuality.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ChdJU0ZgGf5/?hl=en
I guess It felt like I was a heterosexual man in a woman’s body. I visualized his desires and placed them on to me. But this was never the whole of the story that was meant for me. So I’ve been learning a new way to tell it. Using words to guide me not define me. That my sexual identity has more to teach and to tell me. Finding words that feel more right to explore in my telling. Pansexuality. Sapiosexuality. Polyamory. A fuller spectrum of understanding that my story is demanding of me. And I’m honoring it today with this soft and sleepy little stretch of a dance. I love humans. So there’s that. I was going to post this on Panexual Awareness Day but I’m a mom and I’m always a few months late for everything.
I don’t know, man, I just think that’s so cool. It’s not super common for celebs to just come out when they don’t have relationship news to share, but Malone did it on a casual weekend day because she felt like it. And instead of pressure, it’s all freedom.
Malone’s been a fave for me since she played the outlandish Lydia Bennet in 2005’s Pride and Prejudice, one of my all-time favorite movies, but she didn’t really break through the queer noise until she played fan favorite Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in 2013. Her chemistry with Jennifer Lawrence was off the charts and way more people were into Katniss and Johanna than Katniss and Bread and/or Gale. And, well, even if you weren’t shipping that, Malone still stole every scene she was in. Since then, she’s ping-ponged between blockbusters and indie films, but she told The Hollywood Reporter that Adopting Audrey is her best work yet.
She also told them that coming out “felt so nice. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. The sexual journey is so beautiful. I mean, all of the identity journeys are so cool. I feel like I’m a little bit late to the game in being able to have less shame. I’ve been loving the process of learning more about myself and others through different terms that open windows, those windows then turns into doors and then I arrive at a place to find all this cool stuff out there. It’s a part of humanity now to have all these ceremonies of exclamation around coming out and renouncing [an identity] and celebrating that space for yourself. It’s a really sweet, human experience. I love getting to learn more about myself no matter the age or my experience.”
It IS a really sweet, human experience. Welcome to the team, Jenna. Your Rockford Peaches baseball cap is in the mail.
