Hey, welcome back. I'm Jeffrey Masters, and this is LGBTQ&A from The Advocate.

Today I'm talking to Gigi Gorgeous. Gigi is one of the OG YouTubers, and she has a new book out called

He Said, She Said, Lessons, Stories, and Mistakes from My Transgender Journey.

We talk a lot about how much YouTube has changed since she started.

That was in 2008 before being a YouTuber was even a career we knew people could have.

And then I personally love what a great sense of humor Gigi has about all the times she's come out over the years.

First, it was gay.

This was before she came out as trans.

Then she came out as trans.

And then most recently she came out as a lesbian.

So we talk about what a surprise it was for her to start falling in love with a woman.

Now, if you enjoy this interview as much as I did and you want to hear from

Gigi in person, she's going on book tour. You can check out all those dates at GigiGorgeousbook.com.

All right, let's get to the interview. Without further ado, here's Gigi.

You know, reading your book, I was kind of struck that you started posting videos to YouTube before being a YouTuber was a thing.

That word didn't exist yet.

Yeah.

And so, like, what made you initially start to post videos and keep posting them? I mean, honestly, truthfully,

it was my best friend, Mark, who made me realize the platform. And he was like, okay, so this is

a thing that I feel you could succeed at. And he showed me a few people on the platform. And I was

kind of gagged. I was like, okay, they're doing makeup. They're recording themselves. They're editing themselves. Like, how does this work? And because filming and recording yourself was a lot harder back then. Right? I mean, essentially, it was a lot weirder is what it was. It wasn't definitely, it definitely wasn't, harder. I feel like it was just more like, not the norm. Like, everyone thought that it was maybe like a little bit weird. Everyone was like, oh, so you record and post yourself? Oh, where there's like a nonchalance to it now. Yeah. Everyone's like, okay, so are you a narcissist? Like, what's going on? I'm like, okay, well, it's just an interest. It's

just fun. But, yeah, long ago, long, long, long ago, like maybe 10, 11 years ago, it was not a thing.

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