"I had a big quiff at the time, and we put loads of blond in my hair ... and I get to soundcheck and halfway through my song, it's just like, 'Cut.' Immediately, he sensed a complete 'shift' in the entire studio's energy, that 'something bad's happened.' The production team quickly rushed Terry back to hair, where 'no [one] said sh*t' to him aside from demanding he gets back into the chair."
"We have to change his hair back now because he looks too gay. This command from producers to the show's stylist Jamie encapsulates the explicit homophobic directive that forced Terry to alter his appearance during the competition."
"No one [had] ever sat me down and said to me, 'Look, we know you're gay, but we're not going to tell anyone because it might affect your audience. It might mean that ... young girls don't fancy you.' Terry's reflection on the implicit pressure he faced regarding his sexuality and its potential commercial impact."
Matt Terry, who won X Factor UK Season 13 in 2016 while closeted, disclosed that producers halted his rehearsal mid-performance after he styled his hair with a blonde quiff created with the hair and makeup team. When Terry arrived at soundcheck, production staff abruptly stopped him, sensing something was wrong. The show's stylist Jamie later revealed that producers demanded the hair be changed because Terry looked 'too gay.' Terry expressed that this experience felt like a 'double whammy,' as no one had explicitly told him his sexuality might negatively affect his audience or appeal to young female fans. This incident reflects broader patterns of homophobia within reality competition shows.
#homophobia-in-entertainment #reality-television #x-factor #lgbtq-discrimination #closeted-celebrities
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