Melanie Chisholm, better known as "Mel C" today and "Sporty Spice" way back when, isn't mad that many people presumed to know her sexuality. It's clear from her latest interview that she doesn't 'wannabe' seen as gay based on how she dressed or wore her hair.
"You’ve got all the different ones and the one who’s in the active wear," Chisholm told Mitch Churi on a recent episode of his video podcast, The Mitch Churi Chat Show.
"It was assumed or suggested that I was gay," she said. “I don’t personally have a problem with that. I mean, it’s none of their friggin’ business. But I just thought it was just, to base it on somebody’s look, or the way that they dress, yeah, it was a bit shit of them.”
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For those who don't know, Chisholm formed the Spice Girls alongside Victoria Beckham ("Posh Spice"), Emma Bunton ("Baby Spice"), Melanie “Mel B” Brown ("Scary Spice") and Geri Halliwell-Horner ("Ginger Spice") in 1994.
As Out has reported, Chisholm is a strong supporter of the LGBTQ+ community and performed at the 2020 Out100 event. That year, when she released her solo album, Northern Star, she acknowledged in an interview with Out the support she and her bandmates received.
"We had a huge audience in the gay community," she said. "Then that kind of grew, and we realized there was lots of different areas within the LGBTQ+ community [who were Spice Girl fans]."
In this new interview, she revisited that presumption and how it gained the Spice Girls a large queer fanbase.
"We did have an incredible following in the LGBTQ+ community," she said. "We're like, 'This is bigger.' Yeah. 'This is bigger than us.'"
In 2019, the singer waved a transgender pride flag on stage during a performance and declared, "Every part of the Pride community is very important, so tonight, I’m sharing this. We all need, we all deserve, and we all should have love."
Currently, Chisholm is in a long-term relationship with Australian model, actor and filmmaker Chris Dingwall. The two were photographed last summer on vacation in Ibiza, each of them looking ripped. Chisholm is 52, Dingwall is reported to be in his 40s.
As Page Six reported, Chishom is also the mother to her 17-year-old daughter, Scarlett Star. She shares the teenager with her former long-term partner, Thomas Starr, whom she dated for a decade until 2012. Chisholm also dated producer Joe Marshall from 2015 to 2022.
So, just to be clear: she's publicly dated a number of cishet men, she is a mom to a teenager, but she also had her hair styled to be short-cropped, and wore looser-fitting outfits than her bandmates, so that's what made people presume she's gay? Chisholm called that "very rude" in a previous interview.
“People said I looked like a lesbian because I had short hair,” she told the UK-based publication “Attitude” in 2022.
“But how can you look like a lesbian? I find it very rude and extremely offensive to gay people," Chisholm said. "It’s a stereotypical thing."
