Love Lives - Playing it straight in the fashion industry and beyond, with Jack Guinness

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

Support Millennial Love with a donation today: https://supporter.acast.com/millennialloveThis week, Olivia is joined by model, writer and broadcaster Jack Guinness.Jack is the founder of The Queer Bible, a LGBT+ website he launched in 2017 that has now become a book of the same name.Packed with essays written by a range of LGBT+ icons, including Sir Elton John, The Queer Bible is a celebration of the works and lives of the global queer community.In this episode, Jack and Olivia discuss the book and Jack’s brilliant essay on how RuPaul has inspired him to embrace who he is. In addition, they talk about self-worth, the value of labelling your sexuality, and conforming to gender stereotypes in the fashion industry, with Jack recalling how he was told by brands and agents to conceal his sexuality. Follow the show on Instagram at @millennial_loveSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like, and now that's what my grandma's on. Thank God phone a friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sexuality, identity and more. This week I am very excited to be joined by model, writer and broadcaster

Jack Guinness. Jack is the founder of the Queer Bible, an online LGBT plus magazine he launched in 2017 that has now become a book of the same name. Packed with essays written by a range of LGBT plus icons including Sir Elton John, the Queer Bible is a celebration of the works and lives of the global queer community. In this episode, Jack and I discuss the book and in particular his essay on how RuPaul has inspired him to embrace who he is. We also talk about self-worth,

the value of labelling your sexuality and conforming to gender stereotypes in the fashion industry, with Jack recalling how he was told by brands and agents to actually conceal his sexuality. Enjoy the show. Talk to me about the Queer Bible. I'm so excited for this to come out. It's such a brilliant book and so many amazing people that you've got involved with it. So talk to me about what it is and how you went about choosing who you were going to include in it thank you very much first of all and I'm very excited to share the book with the world

it's really weird uh it's like maybe hiding a baby in your house and then finally revealing it to everyone because it's been going in my head for for years now so to finally eventually share it with everyone is really exciting so the queer bible really really simply summed up is I ask my heroes to write about their queer heroes. And then each essay is accompanied by an illustration by either an ally or an LGBTQ plus artist from around the world. So it's a really beautiful visual project. It feels almost like a graphic novel. You've got these really beautiful, diverse illustrations in different styles. And then each essay is by a singular voice, someone that I find really inspiring and exciting. And then they're talking about someone that changed their life. So you get two narratives, you get the writer, and then you get the subject.

And the writer kind of gives you a way in to that person's story so for example graham norton who i can't believe is part of the book he's one of the kindest funniest people in the world he writes about armistead morpin who wrote tales of the city um and so graham takes you on a journey of leaving rural ireland going off to america traveling across america America arriving in San Francisco and then basically entering into the real world tales of the city the LGBTQ plus community in San Francisco and then he discovers Armistead and you get this beautiful dual narrative about two fantastic queer heroes one of whom we are familiar with and one of whom some of the readers might not be familiar

with so the whole philosophy is basically like a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. You've got someone's incredible narrative that are sometimes very funny, very moving, very personal about a story of becoming, about realizing who you are and the fullness of who you are and your gender and your sexuality. And then they invite you into their world and explore someone that changed their life. So that's the medicine. That's a very Mary Poppins way of describing it. No, but that's lovely.

There's nothing wrong with Mary Poppins. But I think it's a queer icon. Exactly. Exactly. But like all the essays are such, they're so personal. And I think they're so relatable to anyone you know they deal with so many other subjects like you know insecurities and shame and you know body insecurities and all of that stuff it's really there's so much in there um I want to talk

specifically about your essay on RuPaul which I absolutely loved and you know as I said there is so much integrated in it about your personal life and I guess the the first thing I want to talk to you about is your childhood which you describe in the essay as very beige so why was it so beige well it literally was beige that's not like a clever literary metaphor from my childhood it's not like some weird I don't know colour pathetic fallacy it was literally beige so we grew up in South London in the intersection between like Brixton Stockwell and Vauxhall my dad was a vicar in an inner city church and we lived in I didn't realize this until

recently I went back and looked up but where I grew up and we grew up in a really small flat it felt big because it had big personalities in it. It was always busy. It was full of energy. But it was, so I was growing up in the 80s and I was the youngest. So everything I wore, everything we had was like inherited or begged, stolen or borrowed. So it was kind of like a shadow of the 70s.

So everything was like that weird beige-y brown colour. All the food was like brown flakes of brown pasta and the walls, the wallpaper that was peeling was like this kind of beige-y brown colour. We had a beige Volvo. You know, it literally was beige. Okay, the reason why I asked you and why I thought it could, because I think it is probably more

metaphorical it is a metaphor as well I was teasing I know but the reason why I wanted to bring it up is because of the contrast with then what you go on to say about glamour and I think you know you write that glamour offers a tempting and dangerous allure for many queer people and so the contrast between those two things you know it's sort of beige versus colour. So can you talk to me a bit more about what you mean by that, about the glamour? And I loved also what you said about how universal this book is.

You know, this book is about LGBTQ plus stories, but it's about people working out who they are. It's about people that feel rejected or damaged by the world and fighting to understand and love who they are. And that's universal. That's the teenage experience, isn't it? No matter who you are, where you're from. So another universal teenage experience is feeling frustrated with what you find around you and not feeling that

it matches up who you are. It's not the life that you wanted. You know, very few of us are born into the life that we want. I'm born and raised in London, as I said, but so many of my friends grew up in small towns where they felt stifled. They loved a certain type of music or fashion that wasn't around them. And they had to seek that out. They went to the big metropolises.

And I definitely felt kind of trapped by my... There was a lot of love and a lot of laughter and a lot of color and bright and brightness in my childhood but but I definitely felt the need to go to the bright lights of the city I wanted to be with people that I felt that were like me and that's definitely a a universal experience for young people that feel I don don't know, like thwarted, you know, they want more. And I think that leads lots of us to the extreme, to that unhealthy extreme, which for me, you know, was a life that is really exciting and really interesting, but for a lot of time felt like it didn't have meaning. And would you agree that's something that like lots of people go through? We

go off and we go maybe off the deep end we go too far in the other direction yeah I know what you mean I think I think there's a when you're growing up I think there's a general feeling when things are going terribly which they often do when you're a teenager you kind of find comfort in this idea of like there is something more out there and I think if you feel like you don't quite fit in your friendship group or you don't quite fit in your environment you're like I will find my people and I will find my place and I think sometimes like you said that can drive you to these very extreme places where you wind up going out till you know god knows when every night every weekend

yeah just just one or two in the morning exactly um and I think often unfortunately when you're in that kind of place you don't realize you're getting into a toxic cycle no and the journey until you're out of it yeah the journey to find your tribe means by definition you need to try different tribes you need to try different people and you know if you're like a 15 year old kid going out in London sneaking into bars and clubs while you're on the hunt for your lovely tribe of people bad people are going to find you and try and take advantage of you and it's it's it's tough and it's dangerous and I I in the process of making the book and in the process of making the queer bible spoken to so many people and you know lots of the people I remember having a conversation with Jodie Harsh the DJ and she was saying you

know how much for her go running away and going to those clubs was a really positive experience you know she loved it she loved going out and like being wild and meeting all these interesting people and and that's brilliant I think for me the journey to find self-acceptance and find people that I love and that love me um and that are healthy positive friends has has been a long journey and there's definitely damage was done along the way you know I did damage to myself and other people did damage to me I remember watching I May Destroy You like a lot of people during lockdown and it was really amazing because we were still and we could really take in the fullness of that show and then really sit with it and then not just kind of go out and go oh I saw a great show. You know I remember getting polaxed by it and I was sat by the couch

like I'd been punched almost and I thought back over so many situations in my life and I was sat by the couch like I'd been punched almost. And I thought back over so many situations in my life and I thought so much about consent and I thought about so many experiences that aren't like clear black and white abuse, but situations that I was uncomfortable with or I look back and I think, you know, was I in a position to give my consent or it's not even about necessarily just sex it's about different situations and environments and and dynamics that

you find yourself in so I think it's a it's a process really of making peace with with what you've got what you've done and what you've been through and also kind of processing that I'm really interested by what you said about consent because that's something I think about a lot um and I've written about this in my book which is based on this podcast this is about my book now though today sorry this is about Jack's book I'm kidding slap on the wrist I really want to hear this um yeah so anyway in the book there's a chapter on me too and the whole chapter is basically about how like so many me and so many of my friends, when Me Too happened, we were kind of like, oh, this is awful. This is terrible.

But, you know, we're so lucky this didn't happen to any of us. Like, we've never been raped or anything like that. And then slowly over time, because, you know, in the news, it was these really extreme stories and, you know extreme and inverted commas of like the Harvey Weinsteins and stuff and then over time as we talked about it and we reflected on things and we watched I Made Your Story we sort of looked back on all of these sexual encounters we had and realized so many of them actually weren't completely consensual and I think what you said about black and white is really interesting as well because people come at consent and assault particularly you know from the legal system in a very black and white point of view you know it's rape or it's not rape and it's it's it's not really

like that a lot of the time we're all our generation is having the millennial generation is even having to understand what consent is because we think of consent as like, yes, you can, yes, and then anything goes, basically. And I think what we're all realising is that it's far more nuanced than that as a concept. And that abuse is a lot greyer than that. I remember talking to one friend after I Made a Story, and she realized that

she'd always had sexual experiences after she was drunk and she's I don't know if I've ever legally been able to give consent or receive it from the other person which she was really shocked by she was like oh my god like have I been checking with other people and for a woman as well because the narrative is always the other way around she was really challenged by that and yeah I think also the thing that was so brave and dangerous and brilliant about the ending of I May Destroy You was how Cole dealt with the attacker and that in our minds it's like you're you're either Harvey Weinstein or you're an angel you know you're either this like violent terrifying person or you're like a perfect person that's never done anything wrong and I think all of us looking at our own culpability

our own experiences the people that we've been involved with that are potentially really good lovely people I'm not saying the guy in I May Destroy You was he's not at all but but that we we look at the complexity of those interactions as well um and really kind of look back at our own behavior as well as just looking at other people's it's really challenging and I think it's something that as a generation I think and as friendship groups we all need to be really honest about and already talk about the fact we're having this conversation now is is completely brilliant I had so many brilliant talks after I May Destroy You and I hope we continue to to do that and check in with each other and check in with ourselves about what we're okay with what we're comfortable

with as we process previous experiences you know what are we the trauma that needs to be dealt with do we need to forgive ourselves apologize to other people like let's let's work through all this stuff yeah I completely agree it's so it's so brilliant how many important conversations that show struck up. I'm still so pissed off that it wasn't nominated for a Golden Globe. That was insane. I know. And Emily in Paris was, anyway, different conversation. Do not get me started on Emily in bloody Paris.

So I know you used to work as a male model. You still work as a male model. Yeah, I do. I did a shoot yesterday, which is why I look like Krusty the Clown they colored in my eyebrows and I look like a really surprised like lady I like it I'm into it um so I know that previously you had been told by agents or fashion stylists to to butch it up when you're on shoots um and you write about this in your essay so can you talk to me a bit about that and this kind of idea of adopting a straight jacket as you absolutely so so Matthew Todd who's one of the contributors um to the book he is he wrote basically

a really interesting book that's like a kind of a psychological self-help book part memoir called straight jacket and that refers to the straight jacket that a lot of a psychological self-help book part memoir called Straight Jacket. And that refers to the straight jacket that a lot of LGBTQ plus people voluntarily wear, which is that self-imposed shame and internalized homophobia that we take in from the outside, from society and apply to ourselves. to ourselves so we voluntarily submit ourselves to prolonged pain prolonged trauma locking ourselves in a straitjacket of society and our own making and that's something I did you know I spent years coming to terms with who I am like loving who I am kind of a little bit enough to get through the day and then sharing that with my friends and then with my family and then in my career and then bounding into the agency being like know, I'm so proud of who I am. I'm gay. And then being like, well, you cannot tell clients that.

And when you're on shoots, you have to really man it up. You can't do anything that would make the client suspect that you might be gay. And that was for numerous reasons. One, I had kind of long hair and a beard. I was, after Jesus Jesus the second guy to have that look so I feel like I really popularized it um in the mainstream you did no question actually said that I invented the man bun that's actually true and they and they called christened it the man the man bun and wow look I haven't done many things in my life

so I know I'm not saving the world I didn't discover a cure for cancer but I invented the man bun which then obviously became a monster and a global phenomenon that is that is all thanks to you Jack that is pretty cool my life is pathetic anyway so so my agents I was selling kind of several row tailoring or I was selling like outward bound stuff so quite like you know heteronormative stereotypical straight whatever that means um a look and so the kind of assumption was that that one clients wouldn't want a gay guy to represent that brand, or maybe it wouldn't make them nervous about whether I could do the job and fulfill that role,

because modeling is playing a role. And then the other worry I think was that consumers, if I was too vocal, if I did interviews and talked about being gay, the consumers then wouldn't want to buy product from an openly gay person, because I think the feeling is that models need to be aspirational. because I think the feeling is that models need to be aspirational

and I think the fear was you know is a straight guy shopping or whatever store going to want to aspire to that to be that guy um so this is like you know 15 years ago and a decade ago um so I then had to kind of go back into the closet at work and all my friends find this hilarious because they're like Jack everyone, everyone knew you were gay. Like you did your rubbish at manning up. Like you literally prance around. So in my head, I thought I was doing a great job. Maybe I was just doing a terrible job.

But I then, you know, kind of almost voluntarily, we put that straitjacket on. I re-traumatized myself. I kind of went back into the closet at work, which was a really damaging thing to do because you're doing it to yourself. You know, you're voluntarily hiding who you are and that causes such internalized shame and it's not good for you. And it made me really unhappy and it made me really sick and I got really skinny. I didn't have like an active eating disorder but I

was so unhappy that I I kind of just I didn't just stopped eating as much as I should and I got really really skinny and I remember I booked a big campaign and I turned up the day before and they said we can't have you on the shoot you're too you can't fit the clothes like they're falling off you um and and that was a moment where I was like I'm really unhappy I really need to sort this out and I went back into therapy um which I've done many times in my life um and I highly recommend it and I and I really forgave myself um and then I really engaged with becoming like fully myself and becoming a fully integrated person. And part of that, part of my healing was launching the Queer Bible website, which then led me to create this book now that we're releasing. So for me, the Queer Bible saved my life. And also I love, my

friends tease me, they're like, you're such a drama queen. You like, you couldn't just come out, you had to like launch a gay brand. And like, you had to do a book with Elton John like can you not just say you're gay and just be like a normal person I'm like no no I need to call Elton he needs to hear about this I'm gonna I'm gonna release a book of essays illustrated essays about the queer experience so yeah I'm a little bit extra and very annoying so apologies for that everyone no never apologize for that I am extra annoying too and also I definitely prance around as well great um I think everyone should I want to talk to you a bit more about the gender stereotypes in the fashion industry because I think today it's very easy

to look at the industry from the inside and think you know gender fluidity is being celebrated more and more like look at designers like Harris Reid kind of leading the way with that gender neutrality so I wonder do you think it is still a problem then that you have fashion brands like those Savile Row tailoring brands for example where they are kind of marketing themselves exclusively to straight people and therefore the models they cast kind of have to reflect that like do you think that still happens I think weirdly fashion used to be really brilliant at being more inclusive and representative like if you look at the 70s there was so many more black designers there was so much more gender fluidity it felt like we almost went backwards for a period that was maybe because of Thatcherism and that aesthetic and that masculine like money and greed and it was

those were all quite narrow ideas aren't they that women had to be like men like put on your shoulder pads it was all quite of a narrow idea of strength and success and masculinity and now you know things are happening so quickly I so excited. Harris Reid is a friend of mine. They're an incredible designer. They're dressing Harry Styles. They're getting clothes on the front cover of American Vogue. Harry in a dress or a skirt. It's really exciting.

There's so many really successful, accepted trans and non-binary models. So many openly gay and lesbian models. It's a really exciting time and things have changed very quickly. And I think part of that is because of social media. I feel that the public told these companies, this is what we want.

We want to be seen. And we are not just this type of woman. We are not just this shape of woman. We're not just this skin color. We're not just this gender or sexuality. And I think consumers cool kids are dictating to the brands and saying if you want to sell to us you need to represent us um like makeup campaigns are changing and not just having girls with like alabaster white skin

because these big brands are seeing that there's money to be made so So on the one hand, I'm really happy that there are shifts happening and I don't really care how they're happening. But on the other hand, I think we can't deny that these are brands that just want to make lots of money. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with capitalism and then wanting to be a better organization, but we need to make sure that these changes, these corporate changes are real and they're not performative. And we need to make sure that trans, non-binary, slightly gender non-conforming male presenting models aren't seen as a trend that are taken in, used and discarded. And part of how that happens is through real representation throughout organizations.

So it means that the camera, the photographer is a queer person or person of color, that the people that are making the decisions in the head office are as diverse maybe as the campaigns look on the outside now. So I really want change throughout the industry and a change that is lasting and not performative and doesn't feel that LGBTQ plus people are being used like objects as a kind of trendy, shiny object for now. But then you look at someone like Edward Ennenful, who Paris Lees, the brilliant journalist and writer

has written about for the Queer Bible book. Edward Ennenil is doing that at vogue there is systematic internal change in the in the employees if you look at a photograph it's such a you know like a shallow take on on systematic change but if you just look a bit at a picture of the staff it doesn't look like how it used to five years ago like that's really exciting to me and and Edward is bringing about serious change and that changes culture there's that bit in the devil wears prada when Meryl Streep's doing that stupid speech about like you think you're just wearing a belt but that belt was decided um I know I'm losing gay points for not knowing the whole speech off by heart but

but I I it's it's a cerulean blue that's it you're so good I know the scene very well that is that that's just a fun metaphor for like how culture art fashion then bleeds out into the mainstream and does have real world positive change. So, you know, as frivolous as it might seem to have more diverse casting and just a modelling fashion campaign, that can then make some kid feel seen and then that can make that kid feel empowered to be who they are and then they can go off and lead a really amazing life. So I believe in the power of culture to bring about real world change. And hopefully I was a tiny little part of that with my popularisation of the man bun. life so I believe in the power of culture to bring about real world change and and yeah and

hopefully I was a tiny little part of that with my popularization of the man bun no I think I think you really I mean that honestly it's a significant contribution to popular culture it will be written about in years to come thank you this episode is brought to you by google pixel I'm Jessie Crookshank I host the number one comedy podcast called Phone a Friend. I also have three kids. I need help making every day easier. So I switched to Google Pixel. It's a phone powered by Gemini, your personal AI assistant.

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Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. But I think it's so important to talk about fashion in this way, from an outside view people will look at fashion like I said and be like oh fashion is the one place where queer people can feel more comfortable than ever and I think that's something that people will have thought for years and actually you know the experience that you had and that I'm sure people still have in the industry because of capitalism because being told oh well we will sell this product better if we have a straight person marketing it or someone who is you know wearing a straight jacket pretending to be straight so I think it is still really important to highlight it and you know I know and I'm sure you do too this also

affects other industries like music and Hollywood, where people in the public eye are told to conceal their sexuality. I mean, that's a great example. So people were like to me like, Jack, you're insane. That didn't happen to fashions like such accepting industry. That's such a great example. Look at Hollywood. Hollywood is a very gay friendly gay place with lots of powerful often white cis gay men in control and yet it's one of the most homophobic industries ever you put it's probably easier to come out as like the head of a bank than it is to come out as a hollywood actor or at least it feels to be um you know look at someone um like rupert everett who was such a leading man and then got kind of sidelined because he came out as a gay person I trained as an actor years ago and I'm very happy that I'm not an actor now

but I remember having meetings with agents and they were like big agents who have represent very successful people and they said and I'm not saying that to make myself sound important I'm saying that to be like these are the just like the culture makers within the industry and they said to me no do you want to be like the gay best friend that has two scenes or do you want to be the leading man because if you want to be the leading man you need to act and perform a certain way and that's in the interviews so like I look at some of these actors and I know one or two that are that are gay and in the closet or maybe just don't talk about it in interviews and I just my heart goes out to them I just think you've got the dream of what you want but at what cost I don't want that

I am not prepared to make that cost for myself personally and I know also it feels silly though we're sitting here being like oh my gosh that poor multi-millionaire actor can't talk about being gay in interviews with GQ like oh big whoop but it must fuck him up it must be difficult yeah and just the the the inter the internal shame and trauma straight jacket if you will yeah exactly like that that is you know not feeling that you can be open about who you are I think the long-term psychological damages of that can be well I can yeah I can testify to that it yeah it wrecks your mind soul and body it's just not good for you I interviewed Sir Ian McKellen and he's such a generous lovely funny man like he's everything you want Sir Ian McKellen to be like he's naughty and like bitchy

and clever and recites Shakespeare at the drop of a hat and he was saying that you know it's not always safe to come out you need to come out when it is safe for you to do so don't do it because you feel you should you need to be physically and emotionally safe and you need to have somewhere to sleep and have a roof over your head but he says once you do come out and you are safe to you will never regret it and you will only be happier you will only be a better version of yourself he said he became a better uncle better brother a better son and he said he became a better actor which I found really interesting that's interesting he was aligned all of him was aligned so he could be the fullest

version of himself and I feel the same way you know I still have my issues I still I'm just as fucked up as everyone else but I'm less fucked up than I was when I was in the closet I spoke about this with Monree Bergdorf when she came on the podcast because we were she's great and we were just talking about how how unfortunate it is that people even have to come out because we live in this heteronormative world where people literally assume that you're straight unless you tell them otherwise and it's so true and it's like god that is so fucked up yeah that you even have to tell people that because the assumption is otherwise oh well just everyone is straight then do you think it's changing because i meet some of my friends younger siblings are like they'll say there's a party and they make out with someone of the same sex when i was a kid the next day everyone would be like oh my god Jenny made out with like Sandra

didn't have any friends called that but Jenny and Sandra made out last night oh my god they're lesbians whereas my friend was being like oh yeah no we all just there's no labeling we just you just do whatever you want to do and and probably that's you know we're in a real bubble and like that's probably not the norm everywhere but I feel like things are moving forward in our culture I do think they are I think when I was at school I was the same you know if if you know I have friends that were in the closet at school and have only come out you know since we've left adults um but I think now when I have conversations with my friends you know if if someone in my friendship group if a girl hooks up with a girl there there's no like, oh, so does this mean you're gay now?

It's just like, it's not a conversation. You are just who you are. Exactly. And so I do think in that sense, there are changes. And, you know, I know that when we meet new people, we don't naturally assume someone's sexuality. No, you don't. As an adult now, you don't. Mae Martin writes a really brilliant essay in the collection about Tim Curry, the actor who wasn't like overt about labelling himself. And a lot of the essays in the book,

The Queer Bible, are about the importance of identity, of labelling, of naming, of being proud of who you are. And it's important that we do that for our own emotional and you are. And it's important that we do that for our own emotional and psychological development. It's really important that we do that so we can have protected groups. So we can say like, okay, these are gay people. They deserve protection under the law for this reason, or trans people deserve it for this reason. So labeling is helpful legally.

But Mae Martin's essay is really interesting. It really blew me away. The essay is actually about how, yes, it's great that we've got labels so we could be accepted. But what's beyond that? Let's move beyond that. And it's what you're talking about with Monroe Bergdorf. It's the idea that maybe one day you won't say I'm gay, straight, even maybe trans. Maybe gender will be beyond gender, will be beyond the binary. we'll be beyond gender we'll be beyond the binary and that to me is really exciting if and amazing amazing essays all about this about the idea that maybe one day may will just be may and when may's doing interviews people won't be asking may like oh how do you define yourself

what's your sexuality how do you think about your gender and i think that's quite a like mind-blowing futuristic concept is to me anyway I'm quite like quite stupid but I love the idea of not having to come out and just being Jack yeah I think we I think we will get there just Jack the idiot with the man bun Jack the man who created the man bun I don't do the man bun anymore I need to stress to your loyal listeners why not is that is that intentional why not I feel like you created this monster and I did what I did I was really clever I pretended that I didn't want to cut my hair but I was desperate to and I got a L'Oreal campaign pretending that I was desperate to not cut my hair so they paid

me to cut it off and I had to pretend I was really sad on the day and I was like oh my beautiful man bun and I was like going in the toilet being like yes I never have to look like a toy um so yeah so I I got paid to cut it off and I um and I've never looked back I've now just got like a normal human being tell me about the origins of the queer bible because you launched it as you mentioned the online magazine in 2017 um and I know that when you started that that was partly inspired by something Sam Smith said is that right? Yeah so I was watching the Oscars and Sam Smith got in trouble for accidentally saying that they were the first queer person to win that Oscar and it turned out they were it was really mean and horrible and like it was classic Twitter pile on of people instead of just

celebrating this young amazing queer artist that has come from England and conquered America like we were just everyone's just being so mean and just piling on and just being like you don't know your history and lots of people came out and said I love that I did that voice you don't know your history and then people were coming out and saying young queer people don't know their history and I was like okay well I don, I'd like to think of myself as a relatively educated person. I was like, I don't think I know all my queer history. Like I've seen loads of cool movies about stuff and I've read a few books. So I went online and there are great resources.

I'm not slagging them off, but now I am going to slag them off. They're all terrible. And they were all look like they'd been made in clip art, like in Microsoft Word with like, they were just shit and i was thinking well like lgbtq plus people are supposed to be like the most fabulous brilliant like visual clever just amazing people obviously not not with the best vocabulary i just ran out of steam there describing gay people how shit am i but i was like okay well there needs to be a website an easy website like a gay queer wikipedia queeropedia where people can go and they can find out about LGBTQ plus

history so I did it myself so I tracked down different people to write essays about their hero and because I didn't want to get sued and use images that were copyrighted, I got illustrators to do illustrations. So it all kind of happened by happy accident. So one of the first people I tracked down was Robert Mapplethorpe's boyfriend. One of his boyfriends, David Crowland, who's an incredible photographer. He went on to photograph some amazing people throughout the 80s and 90s. And David writes an essay about going to the Chelsea Hotel, meeting a young guy called Robert, his girlfriend called Patti Smith.

And then he promptly steals Robert Mapplethorpe off Patti Smith, not the other way around. That would be not queer at all. And so, yeah. And then the essay is all about that. So if you don't know who Robert Mapplethorpe is, you get this like brilliant, juicy story that intrigues you.

So you want to go off and learn more and learn who Patti Smith is and learn who Robert is and if you do know who they are you get this untold story this this extra narrative that maybe makes you think about what Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith in a slightly different light so that's the whole story it's about teaching history through narratives through the things that we all have in common. And through that, we can celebrate our connectedness and we can also celebrate our uniqueness. You know, there are stories on there. I don't know what it's like to be a young black trans rapper

growing up in Brooklyn. And the Queer Bible website gave me a platform for people to tell those stories in their own voices. And without me as a white cis man like editing them or or reinterpreting them through my lens it's a space for other people to tell their stories and for me as someone that spent years selling myself things being about me trying to get further in my fashion career to sit back and it just not be about me not be about selling not be about social media but be about um elevating other people um that to me has just been like the

most humbling brilliant experience and i've i come like a reader i come humbly and i come to learn and and uh it's been a really really healing mind-blowing illuminating experience and I'm really happy now that we can share it in book form with with everyone it's wonderful it's so good I mean congratulations I know there is one thing that you're still holding out for and you still haven't met a certain someone yes you want to tell us about that and we'll start launch a campaign to try if we could start that today that would be really good if we could um mobilize the listeners I want t-shirts printed I want a hashtag absolutely maybe hats as well so I wrote my essay in the book on RuPaul um basically the whole reason why I really started the queer bible is to just desperately try and meet RuPaul I was I'm like flying a queer flag

across the sea trying to the ocean trying to get, trying to get her to look at me. So yeah, I've never met RuPaul. My whole essay is about how RuPaul started off as a performer and then discovered drag and is now kind of famous for being both a drag queen, but also appearing as RuPaul in suits as kind of out of drag, maybe in a different type of drag. And the metaphor that I drew, the parallel that I drew was that I had to put on a sort of drag to become successful,

or my unlimited version of success, which was straight drag. So I had to kind of put on suits, I had to walk a certain way, and I sold a certain type of masculinity, just as RuPaul sells a certain type of femininity. And then now through my journey I'm able to kind of take off that straight jacket that that fake drag and I'm able to now just really be myself which is a you know messy more complex um form of Jack with with uh with a slightly more complicated sense of gender and sexuality. So yeah, so I use RuPaul as my metaphor for my own trajectory and my own career. But more than anything, I just have a complete obsession and love for RuPaul and a love for what RuPaul

has brought to the world through Drag Race. And I'm desperate one day to meet her. This is all, you right now are a part of a long con, me just trying to desperately get her attention. And I know one day I'll meet her this is all you right now are a part of a long con me just trying to desperately get her attention and i know one day i'll meet her and probably say something terrible and like fall down the stairs in front of her or she'll hate me so maybe it's best i never meet her um but yeah we'll see what happens we're gonna make we're gonna make the fun this is this is the official launch of the jack guinness meets rupaul campaign you can sign up to our GoFundMe page I'm just going to use that

to uh that's going to be my beer money to be honest that's not that's not going to be useful um okay it's time for our lessons in love segment so this is the part of the show where I ask every guest to share something that they've learned from their previous relationships and offer a little bit of advice so Jack what is your lesson in love today thank you i've got so many girlfriends that i listen to all their um problems love lives um so i've got a lot to say on this my main bit of love advice is that people show you who they are listen to them people tell you who they are really early on in relationships and because we don't want to hear we lie to ourselves about who they are what they can offer and we waste a lot of time finding out what was obvious in the very beginning and this can be so obvious I've had friends that

have gone on dates with guys that are like I do not want a girlfriend I just want to have fun and six months later they're like I don't think he wants a girlfriend even he's been messing me around and I'm like oh my god he literally said he doesn't want a girlfriend and she was like yeah but I don't think he meant it and I'm like no he definitely and he said I mean this this is a hundred percent non-negotiable and I'm like yeah but I thought I could convince him to love me and if i did i'd mean more because he didn't want a girlfriend that must mean he must really love me and i'm like oh my god you're wasting everyone's time you're wasting my time now and i and i do it too you know they're red flags earlier in relationships

we're like is this person using me or is this person just a complete asshole? And you ignore it because you're like, oh, I like their shoes or they made me laugh or they showed me a tiny bit of human kindness. So I'll go out with them for three years. So true. It's so true. You're so, like, I think we're all romantics to a certain degree. Deluded fools. Yeah, well, essentially that's what I mean. Like we want to believe the best in people.

So we end up deluding ourselves and convincing ourselves that, no, they'll change. Oh no. Like, yes, they, they did do that one really bad thing.

And yeah, like they did, they did sleep with someone else, but they're, they're not like that. You know, they would never do that again. They would not.

And you know, it's just, you convince yourself all of these things and you get trapped. But I think you're always phrasing it though. Like you're victim you're like oh but I'm just a romantic I'm like no we it benefits us because then we get this narrative of like we're the victim how could they do this to us and it's like no no no no no no they're like clearly a nightmare and we looted ourselves because we we were getting something back as well from this like we're getting to perpetuate some weird pattern something there's something fucked up that

we're getting out of it as well and I think we just need to really be brave and see who people are and probably just see who who we really are as well like we're responsible for the patterns that we create I agree and it's really hard to see that I think the victim thing you do paint yourself as a victim in your own head in relationships most of the time I think that's kind of what we're wired to do so it is actually really hard to pull yourself out of it and and be like no no this person is just a bad person they're not the right person for me or that how about that though not just not they're a bad person because we always want them to be a good guy and a bad guy and what I'm learning now with breakups is it's much easier for

me to go they did this or like I'm I'm the victim or and it's like no sometimes we don't need to make it toxic to get out we don't need it to get really bad to get out we can just turn to that person and go look I really love you I respect you or I don't love you and I don't need it to get really bad to get out. We can just turn to that person and go, look, I really love you. I respect you. I don't love you. And I don't really respect you. We're not right for each other. And I don't need to turn you into an evil person in my head or to my friends to explain why this didn't work out.

We can't go out with everyone. Like, we don't want to go out. Life would be a nightmare if everyone was right for us. Like, the majority of people you meet in your life are not going to be right for you. That's okay. You don't need to turn them into the devil and you don't need to be the victim. You can just say thanks, but no thanks.

That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you're a new listener to this show, you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or anywhere else. You can comment and leave us a rating too so that more people can find us. Keep up with everything to do with the show on Instagram.

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