“I was never confused about who I was,” the former Disney star, 25, told Gay Times magazine in an interview published on Friday, May 28. “I felt like I wouldn’t be accepted and I had this strange narrative that people wouldn’t believe me.”

She added that she felt like she’d been dropping hints in her music for years, but had never felt comfortable saying it explicitly. The Liv and Maddie alum referenced her 2020 lyric video for “We Belong,” which featured line drawings of couples kissing. She specifically requested that the couples not all be heterosexual.

“When the song came out, everybody got the idea that the song was a big LGBTQ+ anthem song and I found myself in this position where everyone thought I was queerbaiting,” she recalled. “I went on Instagram Live and said, ‘Guys, I really needed to explain something to you. Maybe I haven’t said it, but I’m super queer. This is something I want to represent through my music because it’s who I am.'”

The “LazyBaby” songstress admitted that she had struggled for a while with the decision to reveal her sexuality, but hopes she can serve as an inspiration to fans who might be going through something similar.

“I hope it helps, that’s why I came out,” she explained. “It felt like something that I could never talk about. I feel like the industry has changed a lot in terms of having room for people with platforms to be human and not to be picked apart.”

Acting like everyone already knew, she continued, was only contributing to the problem. “I was really nervous to come out, and one day, I dropped it because I was behaving like somebody who was out and I realized I wasn’t,” she shared. “When you are who you are, you assume people see that and then you realize, ‘No, I have to come out, otherwise people aren’t gonna know.’”

In October, the Powerpuff Girls star revealed via Twitter that the twins she played on Liv and Maddie were part of the LGBTQ community. “Maddie was definitely gay,” she wrote, adding in a second tweet, “Liv was bi.” She continued by telling followers that Mal, the daughter of Maleficent that she played in the Descendants trilogy, was pansexual.

Cameron was previously in a relationship with her Descendants 2 costar Thomas Doherty. The pair called it quits in October 2020 after four years together.

This story originally appeared on: US Magazine - Author:Eliza Thompson