How much is the outfit an extension of you, and how much is it a “Jekyll and Hyde” situation? Like another brain that’s working against the version of you that wants to blend in?
My look is a really big part of me. That’s why no matter where I go, people are always saying something to me. That’s why when I miss, I’m like, “Oh, I need to change,” or, “I need to go,” because I don’t feel represented. It is a really big extension, the outfit. I mean, I could still give the show naked. A lot of my look, Izzy Spears, is naked anyway. It’s not like a must, but it is an important part of my look to have the accessory, or the little peek-a-boo piece, the little take-off reveal, you know what I’m saying? It’s all part of it. I like to show layers of myself. Sometimes I’d go out in a full trade fit, big baggy, and other times I’m going to wear a skirt and a little fucking spaghetti-strap tank top. It’s all the same message in the music regardless — it’s masculine, it’s feminine, it’s whatever.
That version [of me] is always present in my head, but I never show it. There was an interview where Rihanna was asked, “What do you do if you’re just not feeling it?” And she was like, “Fake it, bitch. Act like you’re feeling it, the fuck?” That’s pretty much the concept there. I won’t always feel like, “Yah-yah, but I look like it.” It’s not something super intentional every day, because it’s just me, the way I dress, whatever the fuck comes out. It’s just who I am. I’m always going to look the way I look. Unless I burn my whole wardrobe and start over.
Something you mentioned earlier was about having checked out of school in seventh grade, and actually having left in the tenth grade. What was that time between seventh and tenth like? What led up to you–
[Laughs] Weed. And just being a fucking hooligan. Skipping school, selling weed, doing bad stuff, not being gay. Not like, being straight, but just pretending that I wasn’t gay. Doing every retarded thing I could think of that would draw the attention away from me being gay. I was really figuring out that I was gay, but trying to fight against it in every way possible. Selling drugs… hitting licks… partying every day… doing a bunch of drugs.
When did you stop trying to fight being gay?
Seventeen. I was high on Xanax. Me and my friends, six boys, six girls, we were all at the house just talking. And they were like, “Oh, she likes you, you aren’t fucking with her? On Xanax, you just don’t give a fuck about anything. So I just said it: “I’m not fucking her, I’m gay!” And then I got too excited, and I got on Facebook, I wrote a long-ass paragraph, I sent it to my sisters, and then the next morning I woke up, not remembering anything, got on Facebook, had thirteen messages. I was like, “What the fuck?” My whole family was going crazy. So I didn’t really consciously choose. It was fully a surprise.
KENDRE SWINTON – [Laughs] Going crazy. What does that mean?
They were just tripping. They were like, “Oh, I can’t believe this.” Now, everybody’s super happy for me. But yeah, like seventeen. I could have been like, “Oh no, my friends did that, they’re assholes,” but I was just like, “Shit, it’s literally now or never. You’re gay. Get over it.” It was just too much drama going on. Too many rumors. I was like, I haven’t been [in the house] for three years, I don’t have to be here, so I’m not going to be here.