Reality TV Star Adore Delano Comes Out as Transgender

metroweekly.com:

Adore Delano, the reality TV star contestant best known for her appearances on RuPaul’s Drag Race and American Idol, came out as transgender to her 2 million Instagram followers last Wednesday.In the video, which now has 1.5 million views and over 200,000 likes, the co-runner-up of Season 6 of Drag Race explained that she had been privately transitioning for about three months.“There’s no way to start this video or this announcement or whatever without being awkward as hell,” Delano said as she started the video, explaining that comments online regarding her gender identity were one cause for the video. “I wanted to let everybody know that I am transitioning, and I kept it really of hush-hush the first three months because I wanted to go through the beginning stages of the puberty privately,” she said. “I’ve found that it’s been very enlightening and has made me probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my adult life.”The singer and reality star explained she had not felt as if she belonged as a child, leading her to turn to drugs and alcohol to “just drink it [the feeling] away,” in order to cope.

She says that since becoming sober two years ago, she developed a greater sense of her gender identity.“This a feeling from dysphoria to euphoria,” Delano said. “I’m not completely there, but I’m on the stairway to heaven.”Delano explains that she first came out privately to her mother as bisexual at age 12, later identifying as gay, and eventually transgender as she began high school.

Her mother’s support throughout her self-discovery helped her grow.“She let me wear makeup, wear my corsets and my crop tops and my booty shorts and live the Freebird that I felt inside,” she shared in the video.