YouTube Beauty Guru Ingrid Nilsen Comes Out to Fans [Video]
YouTube beauty gurus are well known for connecting emotionally with their adoring fans on social media, but 26-year-old Ingrid Nilsen just confided in her 3.3 million loyal followers on another level. On Tuesday, she released a 20-minute heartfelt video called “Something I Want You To Know (Coming Out).”
“I’m gay!” she announced, throwing her hands up in the hair. “It feels so good to say that,” she said, bursting into tears.
“You have been a part of my life for the past six years, and this is a really part of my life, and I want to sit down and talk to you and have this conversation, just like I’ve had this conversation with friends and people who are close to me in my life.”
YouTube beauty guru Ingrid Nilsen. (Photo: Instagram)
She tells her fans that she always knew she was gay from her earliest memories, but it’s complicated to describe. “It’s just been there,” she said.
“All my crushes were girls,” she describes of preschool, noting that this was before external influences told her to be straight. “Essentially, I grew up in an environment where homosexuality was not universally accepted,” she recalled. “It was accepted by some, but not by the majority. And that was difficult. Very difficult.”
Nilsen explained why she didn’t come out for so many years and chose to date men instead: “I was basically seeking love and approval, and I decided that I would start living this life that I didn’t really want to live…there was a point in the 7th grade and a boy called me a lesbian, and to be perfectly honest, I was probably staring at girls, and imagining what it would be like to hold their hand.” Regarding her previous heterosexual relationships, she said, “I care about the people that I have been in relationships with and I respect our relationships. The fact that I am gay does not change that.“
The former Project Runway: Threads judge and CoverGirl spokesperson also revealed that friends and family were immensely supportive of her coming out. “This is the life I’ve always lived in my head and now it’s real, and I can’t believe it’s real,” she concluded the video. Nilsen may be famous for her expert lifestyle tutorials, but her newest video shows that she’s still learning and growing into herself, too.
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