Amandla Stenberg is well known for her role as Rue in the box office success Hunger Games when she was just 12 years old. The actress who turned 17 in October regularly uses social media as a platform to express her opinions and inform individuals of important matters such as racial equality. Well yesterday, during an interview with Teen Vogue, in which she will appear as the cover star for the February 2016 issue, the teen took over and made use of the magazine’s Snapchat to discuss representation and suppression. During which, she revealed that she identifies as “a black, bisexual woman.”
Amandla then went on to upload the clips to her personal account on Tumblr. Captioning the video post simply with “so I took over the teen vogue snapchat today” and using the tags “hello” “I’m very bisexual”, Amandla took a very casual and confident approach to announcing her sexuality. Nevertheless, throughout the video, the well-spoken young woman also expressed how “It’s a really really hard thing to be silenced and it’s deeply bruising to fight against your identity and to mold yourself into shapes that you just shouldn’t be in” and notes that “We cannot be suppressed. We are meant to express our joy and our love and our tears and be big and bold and definitely not easy to swallow.”
Combined, this will most likely be something which will be extremely inspiring to many individuals out there struggling to be as comfortable in themselves and with their identity. She herself in the video discusses how she previously felt “hurt” “awkward” and “uncomfortable” due to how she identified, but was encouraged to feel confident with herself thanks to fellow black women such as Solange Knowles, Ava DuVernay and Willow Smith. What the inspiring actress is essentially saying is that, like her, you should just be true to yourself.
Closer to the end of the one minute and 42 second long video, the intellect and activist further talks about how there is still a lot to do with regards to the voices of bisexual, transgender, gay, coloured and mentally ill women being heard and represented in the media. She also goes on to admit how she is “sick of all the misogyny, homophobia and transphobia” she sees and commenting how she knows and hopes others are too.
Check out the star’s video below.
Are you proud of the 17-year-old who has previously featured in our Eight Inspirational Teenage Girls post? Let us know by leaving a comment or tweeting @CelebMix