Amandla Stenberg took over Teen Vogue's official Snapchat on Thursday and officially came out as bisexual.
The 17-year-old "Hunger Games" actress was on the magazine's social media account to reveal her cover with the publication when she made the personal revelation. "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," she said in the video, which was later uploaded to her personal Tumblr. "As someone who identifies as a black, bisexual woman I've been through it, and it hurts, and it's awkward and it's uncomfortable...but then I realized because of Solange [Knowles] and Ava DuVernay and Willow [Smith] and all the black girls watching this right now, that there's absolutely nothing to change."
"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," she continued. "I definitely believe in the concept of rebellion through selfhood, and rebellion by embracing your true identity no matter what you're being told. Here I am, being myself, and it's hard and vulnerable and it's definitely a process, but I'm learning and growing."
She then tweeted the link to her Tumblr writing, "Shared something on the teenvogue snapchat last night. Bi black girls unite."
"I think that when you're a black girl and you grow up you internalize all these messages. Everywhere you look tells you that you shouldn't accept your hair, or your natural features, or that you shouldn't have a voice, or that you aren't smart," she captioned her Teen Vogue cover photo on Instagram. "In terms of my evolution I think those internalized messages built up in my mind until I was given the tools to recognize the situation. And understand that no, there's nothing wrong with me, these are just that these are just messages that we're fed. I feel like the best way to deal with that has been just to be myself and connect with all these other black girls who are awakening and realizing that they've been trying to conform; and the only way to fight that is to be themselves on the most genuine level."
"My undying gratitude to @teenvogue for giving me the opportunity to be myself," she added. "All of my love to all of you for giving me the confidence to be genuine. Our soul baring is our power."
