Actress and model Cara Delevingne flashed her typically charismatic and blunt style in a recent Vogue magazine interview, but the writer’s reference to homosexuality as a "phase" has caused an uproar in the LGBT community.
Rob Haskell penned a deep look into what makes Delevingne tick, but one sentence in his article made it a (bad) sensation in the LGBT world. "Her parents seem to think girls are just a phase for Cara, and they may be
correct," he wrote for Vogue.
Julie Rodriguez, who wrote that she’s bisexual,
started a Care2.org petition to tell Vogue that being gay isn’t a phase.
In the petition, Rodriguez wrote that Haskell "goes on to suggest that she is only dating women due to a troubled relationship to her mother and urges her during the interview to learn to ‘trust men.’ The idea that queer women only form relationships with other women as a result of childhood trauma is a harmful (and false) stereotype that lesbian and bisexual women have been combating for decades."
As of Friday morning, the petition had gathered more than 14,500 signatures to reach its 15,000 goal.
In the article, Delevingne, 22, opened up about her emotional struggles throughout her life, and also that the idea of being gay "frightened" her when she was young.
"It took me a long time to accept the idea, until I first fell in love with a girl at 20 and recognized that I had to accept it," she told Haskell.
Comments on the Vogue article took the magazine to task for Haskell’s inappropriate handling of Delevingne’s sexuality.
"I enjoyed the majority of this interview, but as I got to the last few paragraphs, in particular the paragraphs about her love life and sexuality, I found myself cringing at almost every line. Did the writer come into the interview with the template of 'the young party girl with mommy issues is only dating girls until the right man comes along' already in mind?" wrote one woman.