Carson Kressley: being bullied wound up being a gift
FLAMBOYANT reality TV star Carson Kressley believes the bullying he endured as a gay teenager has made him a better adult.
FLAMBOYANT reality TV star Carson Kressley says being bullied as a kid made him a stronger adult.
“The bullying wound up being an actual gift,” Kressley told campmates in the South African jungle on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!
The former Queer Eye For The Straight Guy star confided in his jungle campmates about the bullying he endured growing up as a gay teenager in Pennsylvania in the US.
“I remember like every day of eighth grade going to school and the person that was assigned to sit next to me would punch me and call me names,” he said.
“I would literally go to the bathroom and dry heave. You just get used to it.
“Junior high is terrible for everyone but I think the thing that is especially difficult for gay kids … when you’re gay you go home and you are afraid to tell anybody because you think no one will love you.
“You even hear maybe family members talking badly about gay people; in society it is not really accepted so you think you have this terrible thing but you can’t share this terrible thing with anybody so that makes it really hard and you are alone.”
Kressley’s father is a car dealer and his mum a housewife.
He didn’t come out to his parents until days before his Queer Eye For The Straight Guy TV series was to premiere.
“It was not a big news flash at my house. One of the things that was so gratifying about that show is that it helped so many young people come out and it still gives me goose bumps.”
Kressley is one of 11 celebrities still competing on the Channel Ten reality show as contestants prepare to go in to the final week of the production.
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Meanwhile, Keira Maguire and Lisa Curry did their best at the Riding High Tucker Trial, securing six of 11 stars in what producers billed the most dangerous challenge of the series.
The challenge saw the duo fitted with harnesses before attempting to strike stars representing extra food for the camp on an 80 metre long high wire plank obstacle course elevated more than 40 metres above a dam.
To make it more difficult, they had to ride a motorbike with sidecar at the half way point.
“Riding High is just about as far as we dare to push our celebs,” trials and reality executive producer Alex Mavroidakis told News Corp.
“It is incredibly high and the motorbike is not harnessed, which makes it the most dangerous trial we have undertaken in the three years of the show.
The safety of our celebs comes before anything but I have to say, of all the trials, this is the one that has given me the most sleepless nights.”
* The journalist is in South Africa as a guest of Channel Ten.
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