An Open Letter To Lauren Jauregui

An open letter to Lauren Jauregui

Dear Lauren,

I am an eighteen-year-old queer woman from a ‘third world’ country, that is nowhere near to Latinx culture or America. We have a hard time finding ourselves and finding people like us around here, in India, although it is changing pretty fast. In such a scenario, people like you give us a lot of hope and courage and help us believe that yes, we are valid.

Now I could’ve written this before, or a few months later, or never at all, considering you might never read it. But this is coming after your recent podcast interview with Becky G where you said a lot of stuff, that hurt me, and it pains me you had to go through stuff like that as a teenager. Traumas internalized during teenage years can change you totally as a person, but mostly, it remains in some form of the other, haunting us for the rest of our lives.

It was heartbreaking to hear how you were bullied by your friends in your predominantly Christian school. It was heartbreaking to hear how your family wasn’t necessarily very queer loving at first. But you know what was the most heartbreaking? To hear you never acknowledge your other bandmates, who spent more time with you than your family. Never acknowledge a certain Camila Cabello, who was raised in the same culture as you were and is vocal about her allyship, even if we disregard for a second that she might be queer too.

I hate how you could never open up about your internalized homophobia to people who loved you. Being ‘fans’ that you so much hate with a passion, we, unfortunately, monitored every step of yours. Well not me personally, I’m only 18 now, and I didn’t even know about you 2 years ago.  I speak for everybody like me. It is unfortunate how closely we monitored you, but we saw Dinah Jane not opening her mouth for once, trash-talking Camila when she left the group. We regrettably thought those friendships were real.  We saw how a fifteen-year-old Camila looked up to you and respected you and stuck to you like a leech. It is kind of heartbreaking how you acknowledged her for only the rumors, but never as a friend who might have helped you accept yourself.

It is none of our businesses to be invasive about who you sleep with. I will apologize on behalf of every goddamn Camren shipper to exist. But I will also tell you that WE WERE THE ONLY ONES WHO NEVER JUDGED YOU FOR YOUR SEXUALITY, WHO WERE SUPPORTIVE ABOUT EVERY GODDAMN THING YOU DID, EVEN AFTER YOUR MULTIPLE DISPLAYS OF PURE HATRED FOR US.

If your traumas of accepting yourself as a femme presenting bisexual woman stemmed from the numerous fanfictions, it is very sad. But somehow Camren shippers knew about you before you knew about it yourself. Yes, it can be very daunting for someone as strong-headed and sure of themselves as sixteen year old you wanted herself to be, but if you could, for once be, vulnerable to us and talked about how these were affecting you, instead of reprimanding us brutally and denying your sexuality multiple times till you were outed, I think it would kill the Camren rumors much more effectively.

Remember that your fans will always love you with a passion no matter what you do because you have given us enough art and love as ember for our hearts,  for us to sustain ourselves for a century. That passion might come off as a little obsessive at some times, you can hate us for that, but we’re sorry we love you too much to ever judge you very harshly.

 Now for the rumors that you brought down for the umpteenth time. I have a few questions, Camila style:

1)      Why does Camila continually write about a green-eyed person even though all her boyfriends have brown or hazel eyes and Michael Clifford is engaged?

2)      Why did you tweet that synchronicity message?

3)      Why are you not friends with her anymore even platonically? She was one of your best friends in the group like Normani or Dinah.

Lastly, I want to tell you why we ship you guys with a passion. Sorry for putting together disturbing clips. But maybe they disturbed you because we didn’t conjure them out of thin air. After all, you people very much did all of that. Let’s say it was all fake and you guys were just friends being overly affectionate. But you two presented us with a hope that we needed to identify with. A hope that it was okay for two perfectly feminine cis women to be head over heels in love with each other since their teenage years. It gave us material that we only dreamed of for our own lives.  Can you blame people for idolizing a perfect yet tragic love? Every time we hear songs like consequences or questions, we bawl our eyes out. It’s not because we fetishize you in bed together. It is because we intensely crave you to be happy and we want something as meaningful in our lives that can birth songs like that.

I think you should be a little glad that when all your friends and family could ostracize you for being gay, we were the only community who were ready to embrace you for YOU, no strings attached.

And please apologize to Camila for outing her as straight. She will be heartbroken.

With a lot of respect,

Basudha (bet you can’t pronounce my name, I’m Indian)

Shoutout to @stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland @emisonme @sun-to-my-luna and @into-control for being extremely sensitive and perceptive. Shoutout to @artfromjoh for being so creative . Shoutout to Blake0Tyler on Wattpad for writing a masterpiece that took Lauren’s internalised homophobia into consideration. I have to say this. Lauren hates us here, but Camren shippers are actually creative as fuck and talented as fuck and deep as fuck. It’s a shame she couldn’t pick one of these amazing people and anonymously pour her heart out.