Lili Reinhart has been living her best bi life since coming out as a “proud bisexual woman” in June
BY SOPHIE GRIFFITHS, IMAGE VIA INSTAGRAM
Lili Reinhart has been living her bisexual life to the fullest since being inspired to live her truth due to the Black Lives Matter movement. After being held back from coming out for fear of nobody taking her seriously, she won’t tolerate bi-erasure anymore and is determined to show the world a positive representation of bisexuality.
After coming out, she revealed that she knew that she was attracted to women from a young age but felt “it would be too easy for any outsider, especially the media, to vilify me and accuse me of faking it to get attention”.
Now that she is out and proud of her bisexuality, Lili has opened up about bi-erasure in TV and film and the damage it can cause.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Lili said “I think it’s important to make it more normal, as I feel in cinema and TV, the characters are usually gay or straight, there’s not a lot of bisexual characters – but that should be normalised.”
“There are a lot of bisexual people, including me. Before, I felt that people were going to invalidate what I was saying by telling me I was going through a phase.”
Lili plays Grace in the new Amazon film Chemical Hearts, a teenage girl with an androgynous style.
The Riverdale also wants to urge LGBTQI teenagers to understand the options of support that are available to them. She added: “Times are changing, and at school, there was one gay kid who was out and comfortable with it, but some people were hiding their sexuality because they were afraid to come out.”
“I hope people know they have outlets and communities who are now so willing to support young people facing decisions about this. There’s a lot of open arms out there.”
Lili told fans that she was bisexual in an Instagram story on 4 June, in which she told fans she was attending an LGBTQI Black Lives Matter protest in West Hollywood. Underneath a poster for the march, she wrote: “Although I’ve never announced it publicly before, I am a proud bisexual woman. And I will be joining this protest today. Come join.”
