Nico Tortorella Beauty Interview

How Nico Tortorella Found His Own Queerdom

Finding Tortorella's special brand of queerness has been a lifelong journey, and there have been multiple different people who've been part of it. "Everyone in my life has been a queer figure to some degree — even the people who aren't queer," they said. "I think about my mom [pictured here] a lot. I think about my step-dad. I think about my brother and the people in my family who aren't queer at all. Nobody perfectly fits these archetypes and tropes that we put on pedestals in society; there's always something a little off kilter about people. So, I have taken a bit of everything from everyone to create my own queerdom."

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The Meaning Behind Nico Tortorella's Kings and Queens Tattoo

Tortorella has a smattering of tattoos, but there's one recent piece of ink that holds a special place in their heart: "This is kings and queens and space between," they said, pointing to the deck of cards design on their left wrist. "The queen is on the king and the king is on the queen; it's gender f*ckery, and it's really about deconstructing the binary and the division that exists between male and female and the infinite space that lives between. It's a pretty special piece. My new book is called Space Between, that's coming out September 17, and this is an ode to that."

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Why Gender Fluid Fashion is the Future

"The world is on fire and everyone's like, 'Let's dress up!' Tortorella said during the Power Your Pride panel at Play/Ground. "The fluidity in that is the ability to play. Where a suit. Wear a dress. Wear a jock strap. Wear whatever you want. The sooner we embrace the dynamic, multidimensional gaze that's inside every single one of us, the sooner we'll get to freedom."

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On the Power of Social Media

"When I started the podcast, The Love Bomb, I was really on my own personal journey of understanding the [LGBTQ+] community," they said during the P/G panel. "Young people were reaching out to me on Instagram, trusting me so much with their coming out stories."

This was when Tortorella decided to be real on social media. "These stories are the most traumatic, they dig deep — when kids are talking about violence and suicide, I feel a responsibility in that. So many people put what they want you to see on social media. That's not me. That will never be me."

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