Tuesday, October 11th was the Coming Out National Day in the United States. This celebration has been held since 1988 when it was proposed by a psychologist named Robert Eichberg. The reason for this is to become aware of the human rights of the LGTBQ+ collective, being the best way to do it coming out of the closet with family and friends.
This year celebrities have used this date to create a new trend in TikTok. The first one was the singer Madonna, who the previous day to this celebration posted a video of her on that social network where we can see her throwing her panties to try to dunk in a garbage can. The video included at the bottom a text that said “If I miss, I’m gay”. The queen of pop failed the release, so most of her fans thought she was actually coming out.
Following her example, the next day, already in the Coming Out Day, the famous actress Shay Mitchell published a video doing a duet with a girl on the same social network. This time what we could see was her face close-up before she turned the camera to show her green couch. Accompanying the video she wrote “if you are bisexual, do you have a green velvet sofa?”. The model Emily Ratajkowski joined the same trend as Mitchell, making another duet with that video.
Until the moment it is not known that any of the 3 celebrities have been with a woman, so it remains in doubt whether they have really come out of the closet or it was just a way to get more followers. There is still no clarification from them.
Because of this Tiktok trend, networks began to fill with two types of messages. Some people were excited to see that their idols belonged to the LGBTQ+ community, while others have seen it as banalizing a complicated experience that they have not had to live because they are famous.
The case of Madonna is the most complicated one since she has always been an icon for the collective, even before the governments collected their rights. This is why many of her fans have not taken her video badly and are defending her.
Each day social media is used for more things as it is a quick way to make information public and catch up with the latest news. Celebrities increasingly choose these networks as a way to publish relevant things about them. For example, before, if a famous person wanted to come out of the closet it was necessary to give an interview but now with the emergence of new technologies it is less complicated to make it. Moreover, it has reached the point where it is even becoming a TikTok trend.
