Ilana Glazer has opened up about their pregnancy, saying that the experience helped them realise that they are non-binary.
In a wide-ranging profile in The Independent, the Broad City actor, who uses they/she pronouns, discussed her May film, Babes, which recently premiered in the UK. Co-written with Rabinowitz and directed by Pamela Adlon (AKA the voice of Bobby Hill in King of the Hill), the movie follows Eden (Ilana) as she navigates a pregnancy from a one-night stand alongside her best friend Dawn (Michelle Buteau).
Babes was inspired by Ilana’s own pregnancy, but the movie wasn’t the only major life development that resulted from that time. She told The Independent that “being pregnant on paper was the most female thing I could ever do, but it actually highlighted both the masculine and feminine inside of me.”
“For so long, my masculinity felt like something I had to hide or make a joke of, and my femininity was something that felt like drag,” the actor said. “There was always this element of comedy to it that was limiting my genuine personal experience.” It wasn’t until “the gift of being pregnant” that she was able to “be real with [herself],” Ilana said.
“Non-binary is not just one identity, but a category that encompasses many different ways of experiencing and expressing gender.”
When The Independent asked Glazer whether identifying as non-binary had changed much in their day-to-day life, they responded that the label is “more a point in the process of a long journey of self-actualisation.” “I’m moving through the world in a way that’s truer,” she concluded.
This isn’t the first time that Glazer has spoken about their non-binary identity; they also discussed it in a May interview with USA Today, in which they said that calling themself non-binary is “what feels true to how [they] feel in [their] body.”
Ilana added that pregnancy enabled her to experience femininity as “a powerful, open space” for the first time, and her masculinity was “something that [she] thought was cool and hot and a part of me.”
It’s unclear, though, when or if Ilana has ever “officially” come out as non-binary, or if they’ve just kinda been soft-launching it — and we support both approaches, to be clear. We love a subtle non-binary slay, especially when it comes from none other than Ilana Glazer.
This article was originally published on SELF.
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