On Wednesday, July 26, Adore Delano took to Instagram to post a 10 minute video sharing that she has been in the process of transitioning and that she is transgender.
Adore began the video by saying that she’s noticed people online talking about her body and gender but over the last three months she started transitioning and she wanted to go through “the beginning stages of the puberty privately because there’s a lot that kind of changes.”
“I’ve found that it’s been very enlightening and has made me probably the happiest I’ve ever been in my adult life.”
Adore takes us on her journey of accepting her transgender truth which her sobriety played a big part of. She didn’t know what her body was that God gave her and she thought she’d make the best of it. “But it was just not enough for my mental stability and the feelings of just being an absolute other gender that I did not physically see in the mirror becomes more prominent when you’re sober.”
She used to drink away her feelings and as she says, “go back to purgatory.” Now she’s completely straight edge after cutting out weed from her life which has allowed her to deal with her feelings and take care of herself to the point where she feels beautiful.
“I feel like the chemical imbalance or whatever it was in my head is now leveled.”
Adore goes further back into her past when she talks about how at 12 years old she came out as bisexual and then gay. But when she was in high school with other kids, she says, “I felt like I was completely in a different body that was not my own,” and lived her life as a girl. She even came out as transgender to her mom at the time since she knew she was a girl and wanted to live as a girl. To no surprise, Adore’s mom was very understanding so she started wearing makeup and womens clothes.
Then “American Idol” came along and Adore suppressed everything and she says “reinvented myself into something that was so uncomfortable” when sacrificing her transgender identity for her career. After “American Idol” she continued to live her life in the middle of the binary but more femme leaning.
The same storyline followed her when she got onto “RuPaul’s Drag Race” season 6. She had started doing drag because she liked the transformation of the binary between her character and herself. But when she used to look back at old videos of herself she’d get sad and drink because of these emotions she did not want to deal with.
She comes back to “American Idol” saying that while she wanted to keep this private for a few months, she knows she sacrificed her privacy when she became a public figure in her teen years. Yet she is thankful for her experience on the show for helping her navigate the public and the private persona.
Adore shares she’s been in therapy for half a year which was a couple of months before transitioning. She’s on her third month of estrogen and she says:
“I’m not kidding when I tell you I am so chill. I love life again. I feel like almost like a kid going through puberty because I already have like a childlike brain.”
In November, she’ll be having surgery and discloses that she’ll look a little different as she’s moving into the euphoric parts of her life and her body, which she calls a book. And she’s not just a book, she’s a hardcover that’ll be a New York Times best seller. Even when Adore is having a heart to heart with her fans, she knows how to make us laugh.
In all seriousness, she beautifully says that she’s going to make the best out of this lifetime and become the most beautiful butterfly she can. She then references a speech she made at one of her shows in Pittsburg:
“I’m still your party girl. I’m just sober now. I’m still your party girl. But I’m living in my world now. And it’s so empowering and it feels so good.”
Adore is also aware that there are still people who know her from when she was a teenager and those who love the drag binary between her character and old self, “but this ends that chapter now.”
She’s grateful for her fans and wants them to come on this journey with her to reach her fullest butterfly potential since she feels like her life would not be what it is now without her supporters. Her fans gave her the luxury to be private about this new stage of her life.
She owes it to herself too saying “I’m giving my teenage self the permission to be my true self. And it feels so liberating. Feels so good to walk like this down the street and not give a goddamn.” Since this is still a process and feels like going through puberty, she used to hide on camera or get self conscious about her new self until she states: “I’m releasing that now.”
“I urge you guys to live your truth … It’s so fulfilling.”
Adore wraps up her liberating video by announcing that she’s taking some time off early next year since she’s having some major surgeries and has to recover.
She finishes by saying, “I am transgender. My pronouns are moving from me not wanting to like offend anybody and be like you know what you can call me whatever you want. No. I’m taking the goddamn chariot right now and I’m going by she/her. They still feels a little cute. But she/her just feels yummy on this cupcake, even though I don’t like frosting. I love you. Wow. I feel like this was a therapy session bitch.”