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Lauren Chan’s journey to the 2023 SI Swimsuit Issue has certainly been an emotional one. Not only did she use the opportunity to publicly come out in a vulnerable essay, she continues to thoughtfully use her platform to be open and honest about her experience, candidly speaking about both the good and bad.
A rookie in this year’s magazine, the entrepreneur posed for photographer James Macari in the Dominican Republic. “It was a real-time embodiment of a page turn,” Chan says of her time on location. “It was like, whoa, that’s her. That’s the new me. That’s who I’m stepping into. That’s who I’m so proud to be.”
We recently caught up with the fashion industry professional to chat about embracing her identity, the tools that help her prioritize her mental health and the advice she has for others in order to live their truth.
“This is my first Pride Month as somebody who is identifying as gay and openly celebrating that, and so this particular Pride Month to me means release and celebration and welcoming,” Chan states.
Candid about not fully realizing her identity until she was in her 30s, Chan says she wouldn’t change anything along the way. If given the chance, she’d simply remind her younger self, “Whatever makes you different is what’s gonna make you great.”
“I spent so much time as a young person worried about being different and figuring out how to look, feel, behave like everybody else,” Chan admits. “In the end, it turns out that had I turned the volume up on all those differences sooner, I might have had career success sooner, I might have had my chosen family sooner, I might have been out sooner. Although I don’t regret the time it took me and the journey that I went on, I implore young people to really lean into what makes them different.”
After spending the last year or so slowly coming out to those closest to her, and then the general public through her SI Swimsuit feature, Chan says the process wasn’t always easy.
“In reality, it was a long, tumultuous, emotional, difficult process full of ups and downs, and the only reason that I was able to get through it in a healthy way is because of therapy and the practices that therapy encouraged me to take on, which include journaling and mindfulness, and a basic practice of being in touch with myself,” she shares.
While therapy, journaling and meditation are a few practices Chan relies on for her own mental health, she encourages others to explore what specifically works for them.
“You can focus on your mental health by being in touch with your bandwidth and knowing that you need to stop looking at your inbox half an hour early today, that you need to be the one to walk the dog that morning because time outside without your phone will help you feel better, that taking a night off from having some wine when your friends are all sharing a bottle at dinner will be better for you,” she explains. “When I have focused at a very top level on therapy, on journaling, on mindfulness and meditation, those smaller habits become more natural to me, and overall I feel better.”
And when it comes to being a strong ally to the LGBTQ+ community, Chan says it’s important to be open, curious and empathetic, but most importantly, she reminds us that allyship doesn’t happen just one month out of the year.
“Do a little bit of your own research and see what funds or organizations you can support either monetarily or with different kinds of donations or time or amplification on social media,” she suggests.
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