Sam Smith (Photo by pitpony, photography via Wikimedia Commons)
Sam Smith opened up about identifying as non-binary and his struggles with body image in an interview with Jameela Jamil for the new Instagram series “I Weigh Interviews.”
“I’ve always had a bit of a war in my body and my mind. I do think like a woman in my head at times. I’ve sometimes sat there and questioned, do I want a sex change? It’s something I still think about, but I don’t think it is,” Smith told Jamil.
He added: “When I saw the words ‘non-binary’ and ‘gender-queer’ and I read into it and I heard these people speaking, I thought f*ck — that is me.”
Smith, who still uses male pronouns, continued on how he relates to the non-binary label.
“Non-binary/genderqueer is that you do not identify in a gender,” Smith says. “You are a mixture of all different things. You are your own special creation. That’s how I take it — I am not male or female. I think I float somewhere in between — it’s all on the spectrum.”
Smith also got candid about his long struggle with body image issues. He revealed that he opted for liposuction because he “carried extra estrogen” in his chest as a child.
“I had liposuction, I was 12 years old,” Smith says. “At the time I think I was very happy about it. It didn’t really change anything. I think I put the weight back on in two weeks because I hadn’t figured out my relationship with food, so it didn’t really change anything. But being 12 years old and having liposuction on your chest is quite a big deal.”
Recently, Smith touched on his body image issues in an Instagram post where he revealed he would often starve himself before photoshoots.
“It’s the basis of all my sadness,” Smith told Jamil. “Literally everything I’ve ever been sad about is my weight. I struggle with it every day.”
Smith promoted the interview on Twitter saying that “it completely changed my life.”
A few months ago, I sat down with @jameelajamil and spoke with her for her incredible @_iweigh movement. I know this sounds dramatic but this interview completely changed my life. Watch in full on my IGTV now (please be kind haha) xx pic.twitter.com/IMDLSUayso
— SAM SMITH (@samsmith) March 15, 2019
