Sam Smith Came Out As Gender Non-Binary & His Quotes About It Are So Important

It takes a lot of guts to be true to yourself, whether that means accepting and loving your body just the way it is, or coming to terms with your sexuality. It can be daunting, but it's also so important. So, when notable celebrities open up and are true to themselves in front of millions of people, it's truly a gift. Sam Smith came out as gender non-binary in a recent interview, and his quotes about his experience are so brave and noteworthy.

A few months ago, Smith, a multiple-Grammy award winner, sat down with actress Jameela Jamil on her new Instagram talkshow, I Weigh Interviews. In the first episode of the show, which was just released on Friday, March 15, Smith opened up about his struggle with his gender, and explained that he doesn't identify with being neither male nor female.

Vanity Fair reported that Smith also indicated he still prefers to be addressed with male pronouns, but that he doesn't necessarily feel like he is neither male nor female — he's just himself. Elite Daily has reached out to Smith's team for comment regarding his preferred gender pronouns, but did not hear back by the time of publication.

"Non-binary/genderqueer is that you do not identify in a gender," he explained. "You are a mixture of all different things. You are your own special creation."

Additionally, Smith explained that he still sometimes considers the possibility of gender reassignment surgery. "I’ve sometimes sat and questioned, do I want a sex change?" he said. "It’s something I still think about: Do I want to? I don’t think it is." Smith added, "When I saw the non-binary, genderqueer, and I read into it, and I heard these people speaking, I was like, 'F*ck, that is me.'"

"I've always been very free in terms of thinking about sexuality, so I’ve just tried to change that into my thoughts on gender as well," Smith said, talking about how he came out when he was 10 years old, and started wearing dresses and makeup when he was 16 years old, but began identifying as gender non-binary later on in life.

Smith also told Jamil he's "always had a war between my body and my mind," something that started when he was young. At the beginning of the interview, Smith revealed that he had liposuction when he was only 12 years old, because his body produced so much estrogen that he developed a "heavy chest."

He further opened up about his feelings toward his body now, the struggles he's faced with his weight, and how his gender identity played a role in his self-acceptance. "I really want to speak out about weight and body image issues with men," he said. He explained how recognizing that his body puts on weight in many of the same ways that a female body does helped him learn to love his shape, and that coming out as gender non-binary allowed him to accept that.

"I'm feminine in many, many ways," Smith said. "I've always resented that." He said he would get mad at himself for feeling so feminine and tell himself, "'You've got to work out, you've got to lose weight' because that's what men do." But now, Smith just wants to be himself, gender aside. "That’s how I take it: I am not male or female," he told Jamil. "I think I float somewhere in between. It’s all on the spectrum."

It took Smith a lot of courage to come out and be himself. "Maybe I'm not a man, maybe I'm not a woman, maybe I'm just me," he said, and that truth in and of itself is beautiful.