When Joe White posted a selfie on social media after watching England beat Germany at Wembley, it was of course celebratory.
But it wasn’t to score victory on the pitch. It was a much more impressive triumph in the stands.
“People complimented me on my eyeshadow, my shiny flag of England that I did with silver eyeshadow and lipstick,” the Arsenal fan, who s ‘identifies as strange.
“Everything was really, really positive and absolutely no problem. “
Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
“There is always a bit of reluctance to go to England games,” said Joe, who uses the pronouns “they / them”.
“[At a Nations League match] in Portugal we had a lot of homophobia from the English fans. “
Joe said the response to makeup at Wembley was overwhelmingly positive
Joe came out as non-binary in January of last year and since then he has grown more and more comfortable expressing that identity.
But the decision to wear makeup for Tuesday’s game (a first for them) was not conscious.
“I didn’t really think about it until I met my friend at my house so that we could travel to Wembley together and I was like ‘ah, that might cause some trouble’.
“If you’re only LGB, you’re able to wash yourself almost straight up, and get ‘plugged’ so to speak. Whereas if you’re face to face with makeup, it gets a little harder to do if something does. past. “
So have they considered removing makeup? No chance.
“Visibility is a really important thing to make sure we end up having conversations like this,” they said.
“Football is a great game and it has to be good for everyone.”
Joe was so overwhelmed by the support shown by other fans that night that they decided to tweet about it (“it’s good to share a positive experience for a change”).
The post quickly went viral before being shared by England midfielder Jordan Henderson.
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Source: news.sky.com
This notice was published: 2021-07-02 00:41:00
