Wear It Purple Day 2025: Darcy’s proud reflection
Friday 29 August is Wear It Purple Day, a day to celebrate LGBTQIA+ pride and allyship. Originating in 2010, this year’s Wear It Purple Day celebrates 15 years of the event with the theme: ‘Bold Voice, Bright Futures.’
Darcy Stockdale is one of CMY Gippsland’s Youth Advisory Group members and is a proud queer person. Darcy reflected on Wear It Purple Day and its importance to his journey of queer pride.
2019 was the year I “came out” but I never really liked that term. My “coming out” was less of an announcement and more of a clarification. Throughout primary school, even at age 12 you could kind of tell who wasn’t straight, of course, me being one of them. But even after I came out, it wasn’t until my year 7 Wear It Purple Day that I found out how queerness being celebrated felt.
Like many others during their high school years, the topic of the bullying I endured was my queerness, a part of myself that I couldn’t hide and frankly, didn’t want to. When it came to those who ridiculed me because of my experimentation with gender expression, or mocked me with fake advances, the last Friday of every August was a reminder that I wasn’t alone, and it was a day that made me feel safe.
I remember walking into school with a pair of purple press-on nails that my mum made me for ‘Wear It Purple Day’ specifically, a set that she still has framed on her wall. Enthralled with the attention of teenage girls jealous of my nails, and proud of me for showing up as myself that day, it was a strange feeling being celebrated for something I only ever saw in a positive light on TV.
Now looking back, it’s clear that on that day I was very new to my identity (a gaybie perhaps) and although I’ve changed since then (I no longer wear makeup and my vocabulary is more than just quips from RuPauls Drag Race), it was the first time I truly got to feel like myself and take pride in that feeling.
This is why Wear It Purple Day is so important. Even though my 13-year-old self is vastly different to my now 19-year-old self, without the opportunity to explore my identity and experiment without fear, I wouldn’t be who I am today.
Now that I’m older, even if it is only a little bit, I’ve started to see myself in the young people who take comfort in Wear It Purple Day, the bad haircuts, the crooked eyeliner, and the feeling of just not fitting in. But now that I’m no longer in school, and feel comfortable in my identity all year round, what was once somewhat of a safety blanket over my schooling is theirs now, and I encourage all of them to take advantage of Wear It Purple Day and the support they might not know they have.
In your early teens, when you are only just coming to terms with your identity, or have the first feelings of pride about your identity, it’s hard to realise that things change, and that after the storm that bullying may be, there is always a rainbow.