Folks online are delighted by Spice Girl Mel C’s response to a question on speculation around her sexuality in the nineties, when the Spice Girls were at the height of their fame.
The exchange took place on the Mitch Churi Chat Show podcast earlier this month. Churi, who is gay, asked Mel, whose full name is Melanie Chisholm, if she would “get accused of being gay” due to being the “sporty” member of the group.
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“Well, I never called it an ‘accusation,’” Mel replied. “An assumption,” she said, was a better way to think about it.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t say that,” he said, chuckling as he realized what his words implied.
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“Have you got a problem with lesbians?” Mel joked back to him.
“No! No! There’s one right there,” he said, pointing somewhere off camera. Mel laughed. It was a quick and lighthearted exchange that left many impressed by Mel for making it clear she never felt it was an insult to be assumed to be gay.
On TikTok, the comments section is filled with compliments.
“queen reaction,” one person wrote.
“this is how you respond as a true ally 💜,” said another, “her being confident in who she is! love that.”
A third person called it a “stunning response,” and a fourth called her a “good person with [a] big heart.”
But the conversation didn’t end there. Mel emphasized, “We love all of the community,” before Churi clarified that “the press were awful to you guys.”
“You’ve got all the different ones, and the one who’s in the activewear, it was assumed – or suggested – that I was gay,” she replied. “And I don’t personally have a problem with that. I mean, it’s none of their friggin’ business, I just thought to base it on somebody’s look, or the way that they dress, it was a bit sh*t of them.”
She added, “We did have an incredible following in the LGBTQ+ community. And we were like: ‘This is bigger than us.’”
@themitchchurichatshow Full interview is yours to watch and listen via our bio now! #MelC #SpiceGirls #fyp #LGBT #Gay ♬ original sound – The Mitch Churi Chat Show
Mel has addressed the speculation on her sexuality before. In 2001, she complained about British tabloids obsessed with her sexuality.
“There’s been lots of things written about me that aren’t true,” she told the Irish Examiner. “The fact is I’m not gay, and they try and brand me a liar when the fact of the matter is that they’re the ones who lie. It makes me angry that they try to stereotype how a lesbian should look.”
“When they first started was when I had short hair and I was quite muscular and I’ve got tattoos. They just said by my appearance that I’m a lesbian.”
Twenty years later, she told The Times she’s no longer upset about the assumption. “I actually love that now because it gives me this affinity with the gay community,” she said.
In 2021, she told Closer Magazine, “I work a lot with the LGBTQ+ community and I very much feel part of that community, even though I really don’t fit into any of those labels. But, I really don’t mind being called a lesbian.”
In fact, she admitted, “There have been times in my life where I’ve thought, ‘I wish I was a lesbian.’”
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