![]() “If six-year-old Colton could have seen another person that resembled me,” he says. ![]() Now that Underwood has come forward with his story, including his attempt at suicide, he wants the LGBTQ youth to know that it is possible to live a full life as your truest self - even if you come from the sports world, a religious background or a conservative upbringing. “I feel like I was born to be a dad,” Underwood says. With a laugh, he quips, “So, I still have the opportunity to be a stay-at-home dad! And I already made it to the NFL - so, check on that!” “I said an NFL player, and the teacher said, ‘You need to pick something more realistic.’ So, my second answer was a stay-at-home dad,” Underwood recalls. Underwood smiles as he recalls a time from his childhood when his second grade teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up. “And then from football, I remember there were a weird few months of my life where I was like, ‘What’s next, now that football is gone? I can’t hide there, so where can I hide now?’ And then ‘The Bachelor’ fell in my lap, and then before you know it, I am ‘The Bachelor.’ There was always something for me to dive into.” It was easy for me to dive into football and hide behind that,” Underwood says. “My life was led by presenting to be somebody and living so inauthentic to who I truly was, and I was okay with that. He never dreamed of the day he would come out and reveal his true identity to himself, let alone the world - and so, he went from the NFL to “The Bachelor.” Underwood had convinced himself he would live his entire life as a straight man. ![]() Part of the reason Underwood decided to come out in such a public forum last month is to help other people who are struggling with hiding their identity, he says, specifically in the hyper-masculine world of sports. In 2015, Sam announced that he was walking away from football for mental health reasons. Underwood continues to share his conversation with Sam: “I was like, ‘I’m sorry because I could have tried to help you by coming out with you, and then seen if that caused another to come out.’ But I didn’t have the courage and I wasn’t at a point in my life where I was ready to come out - if anything, Michael Sam coming out and being so public about it put me in the closet even further because I didn’t want to be like Michael, in the sense that I didn’t want it to be negative or bad.” And I told him, ‘In the locker room that I was in, they didn’t say nice things about you.’” “I said, ‘I just want to let you know that you should have given me the confidence to stand up and say, ‘You’re not alone.’ But unfortunately, I went to a different locker room. I just sort of had a heart-to-heart with him,” Underwood says. “I’ve had a conversation with Michael about this, since I came out. In their conversations, he told him that after he came out as gay in 2014, he was the butt of the joke in the NFL locker rooms. Now, Underwood reveals that he recently spoken with Sam. “The football and athletic community is not ready for gay people,” Underwood says. The homophobia in the football world only drove Underwood deeper into the closet. Underwood recalls that when Sam became the first openly gay player drafted by the NFL in 2014, no one in the locker room supported the idea. Prior to finding reality TV fame on the ABC dating show, he was drafted in the NFL, signed as a free agent by the San Diego Chargers, then joining practice squads for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Oakland Raiders. He is the first openly gay man to come from “The Bachelor” franchise. It does not store any personal data.Underwood - who spoke to Variety in a wide-ranging interview for this week’s cover story - came out as gay last month during an interview on “Good Morning America” with Robin Roberts. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". ![]() These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |