26 Things That Are More A Lifestyle Than My Sexuality

feature image via shutterstock

If Facebook is any indicator – oh, and I bet Mark Zuckerberg just loooves to think so – the assertion that LGBTQ people are adopting a lifestyle is as popular as ever. As if people would choose to be ostracized! Often times people who cling to this opinion that your sexuality is something you choose, offer it as a standalone thought independent of relevant conversation, like they absolutely must have you know at once about their conditional support of you.

I feel for these people because, well, it’s embarrassing to be so boldly wrong, so publicly. I want to help these people! Maybe it’s just that no one’s made the distinction for them yet. For example, someone had to recently explain to me — after seven years on Twitter — that the home button is a birdhouse and you start out with an egg avi. LIFE CAN BE A MYSTERY UNTIL IT IS NOT. So to aid in this journey to the light, here’s a list of things that are more a lifestyle than my sexuality.

1. The KonMari organizational method

2. Being in a perpetual state of growing out your bangs

3. Vegetarianism

4. Maneuvering around the ethics behind your vegetarianism on a daily basis to convince yourself it’s fine you’re not also vegan

5. Being a person that wears hats

6. A flying under the radar approach to life where you’re not so bad that people want to correct you but also not so good that people expect too much out of you

7. Refusing to watch The Wire

8. Toggling your trust in your sun or rising sign based on the better of the two horoscope readings that day/week

9. Being an adult napper

10. Composting

11. Knowing it’s not ideal for group shots but still not smiling in pictures

12. Using Dr. Bronner’s castile soap for its intended purpose (everything)

13. Knowing that people are separated into Beatles fans and Rolling Stones fans and being neither

14. Cutting your own hair

15. Never using a daily planner

16. Using the water refill stations in grocery stores and the dozens of empty gallon sized jugs dispersed throughout your kitchen that come along with it

17. Avoiding anything Taylor Swift related

18. Feeling exactly 16 hours behind on everything always

19. Value Village

20. Couponing

21. Self-care as a gateway to full on sabotage

22. Moving every few years

23. Clearing out your emails as you read them (which you do constantly)

24. Being up for any and all forms of rejection

25. Drinking coffee after 3pm

26. The mantra “choose peace, girl”

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Erin

Los Angeles based writer. Let's keep it clean out there!

Erin has written 208 articles for us.

60 Comments

  1. YES to the KonMari method in tandem with napping. I think that’s part of the method, too. Getting to know yourself through naps.

  2. Okayyyyyy!! I may or may not have rushed to Twitter to look at the home button and realized it was a freaking birdhouse (I just clicked it and never actually looked and paid attention-I just knew it was the “Home” button!).

    I also feel 9, 17, 23 and 26! <3

  4. Team “Clearing out your emails as you read them (which you do constantly)” right here

  6. Also- 8, 9 and 25. Erin- you know me so well.

    If people just put these numbers on their okcupid profiles it’d make dating so easy.

  8. Gonna get a bit serious here, but I would love to meet the person following lifestyle number 24. I think maybe I want to be that person?

  10. I have always felt that the term lifestyle was being used to either condemn or try to sell something.

    27. Repurposing :)

  11. twitter is my lifestyle and i still didn’t know that shit about the birdhouse. thank you for another piece of remarkable content erin. namaste.

  12. “As if people would choose to be ostracized!”

    Okay, but there are also a lot of awesome things about being LGBTQ.Like if I could choose to not be queer, I wouldn’t do it and I really hate this kind of line because I feel like it depicts all us queermos as sad victims of our biology.

    • Yes to all of the above. As a bisexual I choose to date women over men because women are about a million times better and more interesting, satisfying partners than men. Even with all the shit I have to put up with on account of homophobia and biphobia, dating women still feels like winning the effing lottery. So for me personally, it’s definitely a choice and a superior one at that.

    • I wouldnt undo it either! I just mean it doesnt make a ton of sense for someone who isn’t LGTBQ to identify with a marginalized group just bc it’s…cool? edgy? but i know a lot of people who think thats what’s happening in the LGTBQ community

  13. Erin, I finally dropped that perpetual growing out your bangs lifestyle and it’s been SO FREEING.
    Also, reading about self-care as a gateway to full-on sabotage was like having my innermost secret blasted through the speakers.

  14. If you’re still refusing to watch The Wire, then I take you 100% at your word that your sexuality is DEFINITELY not your lifestyle since The Wire has the greatest lesbian lead character in the history of television, dangit!

    (Just sayin’.)

      • Somebody has let you down! Kima Greggs is a flippin’ goddess and a force of nature. Full humanity, not defined by her sexuality nor denied it, a flawed and complex person with actual agency who often drives plot, played by an insanely stunning woman of color (but by no means Hollywood glam).

        I feel like people forget to mention it enough in the context of the show because the show is the anti-soap, people’s romantic lives are rarely a major point, although we certainly do eventually learn a lot more about her personal life as it goes on. AND some hot sex thrown in for good measure.

        It’s always odd to me that the LGBT representation the show seems to be most noted for is Omar and then later Snoop (who are both great!), but Kima is just so utterly un-flashy and necessary that maybe people take her for granted.

        But I mean come on! http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0812308/?ref_=tt_cl_t6

  15. OMG the home button is a birdhouse! I feel like some kind of internet secret was just revealed to me. Unfortunately, the truth is that I just never looked very close.

  16. Oh jeez, six is my day-to-day. I will tell you though I have been very successful at flying under the radar. Any tips?

  22. “21. Self-care as a gateway to full on sabotage”
    Never have I heard it put this way, but it’s me wholeheartedly!

    Also, in the interests of adding to this list indefinitely: “Refusing to pick my own song at karaoke, but unashamedly scream-singing along to everyone else’s, even when I’ve never heard the song before.”

    I am terrible.

  25. I know this is like….eons late…..and I probably deserve some sort of negative demerits as a girl for not knowing the answer…. BUT…….why are ” bangs” called *bangs*??

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