I owe Shawn Mendes an apology. And, frankly, so do thousands of other people.
After years of speculation about the metrosexual heartthrob’s bedroom preferences, the pop star spoke out during a Colorado concert this week, explaining that, even aged 26, he’s ‘still figuring out’ which way he swings.
‘Since I was really young, there’s been this thing about my sexuality, and people have been talking about it for so long,’ Mendes said on stage. ‘It always felt like such an intrusion on something very personal to me, something that I was figuring out in myself, something that I had yet to discover, and still have yet to discover.’
‘The real truth’, he concluded, is that ‘I’m just figuring it out like everyone.’
Well, now I feel kind of terrible!
After years of speculation about the admittedly metrosexual heartthrob’s bedroom preferences, Mendes spoke out during a Colorado concert this week, explaining that he’s ‘still figuring out’ which way he swings.
For, I confess that, like so many other gay men and so-called ‘allies’, I have participated in those years of heavy internet speculation – really, an obsession – over Mendes’s sexuality.
Whether they’ve been peddling the stereotype that better-groomed, more feminine men must be gay – or thirstily theorizing about his latest eyebrow-raising look (he does seem to love a tight crop top!) – the internet mob has given poor Shawn a hard time of it. And, regrettably, I’ve been a part of that – though in a smaller, less vulgar way.
Certainly, I’ve joked for years with gay pals that, even though he’s had A-list girlfriends, Mendes must be one of us. And God knows I’ve probably tweeted or posted something cheeky online as well.
The problem is that it all seems to have taken a terrible toll – resulting in Mendes effectively being bullied to come out of the closet, or at least say that he might be somewhere along the sexual spectrum.
That he spoke out is hardly surprising given how intense and persistent this online campaign has been.
You need only look to a viral video this month – a clip from a recent interview, during which a pumped-up Mendes wore another impossibly taut crop top.
The comments posted below the video – many unpublishable here – were as cruel as they were endless.
‘I know what you are Shawn,’ one user taunted.
‘Did he officially come out yet?’ asked another.
For, I confess that, like so many other gay men and so-called ‘allies’, I have participated in those years of heavy internet speculation – really, an obsession – over Mendes’s sexuality.
The most tragic part of what Mendes had to say in Colorado this week is that he believes his continued confusion over his sexuality to be a universal experience: ‘I’m just figuring it out like everyone.’
The truth is – in this woke world of 2024 – it is no longer common to still be ‘figuring it out’ aged 26.
Thankfully, gone are the years in which gay men routinely stayed closeted well into adulthood, burying their true feelings, or entering into unhappy, sham marriages.
As it happens, Mendes and I are the same age, born just months apart. I began to understand that I was gay as young as 13.
I was in denial for years after. But by 19, I had come to grips with it all. I did then accidentally get ‘outted’ during Thanksgiving dinner by my teenage sister (that was an awkward holiday!) but I had planned on telling my family soon anyway.
The early 2000s, when Mendes and I grew up – before gay marriage and other equal rights came into law – were wholly different from today’s America.
Now, the idea of making it to 26 and still living in a state of confusion strikes me as deeply sad.
For all the embracing of gay storylines and stars, Hollywood and the music industry still retain an obvious bias for heterosexual icons. They are, after all, easier to sell to the mass, largely straight market.
Certainly, I’ve joked for years with gay pals that, even though he’s had A-list girlfriends (such as Camila Cabello, pictured), Mendes must be one of us.
Perhaps that is part of the problem. But it’s also undoubtedly true that years of cyber harassment have contributed to Mendes’s late-stage confusion, too.
Modern society, especially the progressive left, is just too damn obsessed with identity.
Terminally online liberals preach acceptance and love, but then demonize those like Mendes who refuse to conform to their woke wish list and publicize their private desires.
Whether it’s the delusion over an ever-growing list of imaginary pronouns, or the constant invention of new ‘sexualities’, young progressives have glamorized sexual difference as a must-have accessory, valorizing victimhood and turning identity politics into social currency.
This invasive – and, frankly, prurient – obsession was always going to create a toxic culture. And famous faces like Mendes have paid the price.