She Culture: Local women spice up the scene

Considering the abundance of strong, interesting and beautiful women in our community, there are many reasons to celebrate such amazing diversity. As promised, this is the first of more individual segments to come, highlighting a member of our female LGBT community, their style and lifestyle, philosophy, day-to-day, and more intriguing, facets of their way of life.

This issue’s selection is a born-and-raised true Utahn, Chelsea Davis – 23 years old, from Willard, Utah. She’s been out for the last five years, since she was 18, and is an exemplary humble ambassador to our community in regard to how she interacts with, and gives to, the world around her.

I started out asking her to describe what her lifestyle is like.

Chelsea Davis: “Mainly, I bike a lot. I don’t own a car – I haven’t owned one for three years, so that’s a large part of my lifestyle. I live in a sweet, little, kind of commune-style pad with a big garden and a bunch of chickens and bees. So, it’s a little urban-home style.”

She goes on to describe how she enjoys working at The Bayou, the great working environment there, and the many characters she comes across while working there.

CD: My whole philosophy on life is just living a good quality, day-to-day life. The quality of life is what’s in it for me. I think a lot of people stress way too much about working and money [rather than] giving themselves personal time, R&R, and time to just enjoy life.

I asked her what she thinks about the LGBT scene in Salt Lake City.

CD:  I think it’s growing quite a bit. It’s becoming a lot more open; people are a lot less biased about it. I feel like a lot of younger kids are coming out too, and I think they feel a lot more comfortable about it. So, I think we live in a great community.

QSaltLake: Do you think you’ve been pretty much comfortable in the time since you’ve been out?

CD: Yeah, I feel really comfortable [being out] here in Utah, especially in Salt Lake City. My family is very accepting, my brother’s great, and my grandma and grandpa are also very accepting.

QSL: So, explain to me your style. When you’re putting together an outfit, what goes through your head?

CD: I wear a lot of black, a lot of jeans and button-ups. I kind of like to just rummage through whatever is on my floor. I definitely do the DI (Deseret Industries) a lot, a bit of online shopping too. I just like the classic, classy look of black on black.

Chelsea has been spoken for during the majority of the last year. She describes her girlfriend as having “kind of always been out,” and how she, the girlfriend, has dated both men and women in the past, and her views on sexuality are very “open.” I had her explain how accepting Chelsea’s family and friends have been of her girlfriend.

CD: They think she’s great, they all love her. I think she talks to my parents more often than I do.

QSL: What are some of your favorite things about our LGBT community in Salt Lake City?

CD: Everybody’s really neat, and really fun. Everybody has their own story – a lot of the people in our community are very good at knowing who they are.

QSL: I like that about Salt Lake also. I think among us living an alternative lifestyle there’s this general response to the enormous shadow of the LDS church that has kind of forced us to really develop our own personalities.

CD: I think it’s really helped to develop a lot of creativity in the way that people live. I’ve lived in Park City and Alaska, and there really wasn’t much of a creative LGBT scene in either place, as there is in Salt Lake.

Chelsea recently completed a 150-mile bike ride in an organized event to raise awareness and funding to benefit those suffering from multiple sclerosis. When she’s not working, cycling, or gardening she enjoys purchasing the mis-tinted paint from home improvement stores and painting abstractly on large pieces of wood.

In five years Chelsea, a vegetarian going on vegan, would love to be living a fully sustainable lifestyle by growing her own food through gardening.

In my own experience, coming out in Utah was intimidating, to say the least. Almost four years ago at 19 years old, there weren’t many resources at the time that were easily accessible, and readily available that I could personally relate to.

To put it in Chelsea’s words, everyone has their own story. It is my hope that this upcoming series of interviews of local LGBT individuals can provide those in similar circumstances a means to relate to our community and help nurture their growing courage to come out. And to those who are already out, I’m hopeful that this series can serve as further encouragement to continue in the lifelong process of coming out every day to everyone newly encountered in the workplace, school, among family and among friends, so as to strengthen and nurture our LGBT community as a minority amid a heavily religious backdrop that is our state of Utah.