Ways to celebrate Pride Month during lockdown amidst the Pandemic!
Unlike previous years where people used to happily spill their queer vibes throughout the world with various queer festivals, pride parades, and events, currently celebrating pride month like old times is impossible and impractical because the world has been going through a severe pandemic since 2020. But we need to observe pride month and must celebrate in any possible way to inspire, move and motivate queer people in these hard times. Amidst the pandemic, we can still celebrate even though there are various restrictions like lockdowns and curfews.
All you need is love and zeal to celebrate pride month to fight all the odds against the queer community. With a will, one must recognize ways to celebrate by observing all the pandemic norms and by following regulations. Hence, hanging out in groups without maintaining social distancing, without wearing masks, and improper sanitization measures is a very wrong approach in celebrating pride month. So, it is always recommended to stay indoors to stay safe.
But you can still meet people and celebrate pride month with your queer pals virtually. Of course, it doesn't give the same vibe, but you can still see each other, plan together, and appreciate pride month online on zoom video calls, Instagram-live-sessions, and google meets by including and involving as many people as you can. Use technology wisely to gather people and to make things possible without meeting in person.
If you are not a people person and if you don't get these virtual platforms, you can still celebrate with your partners at home, your queer pals in your neighborhood, your family or you can even celebrate alone with yourself. All you need to do is to involve yourself in one or another way to value your sexuality and to let people understand the importance of the queer community.
Get completely queer by involving unicorns and rainbows. There's a new pride flag with all the inclusions of various queer orientations and there are also flags available separately for every single queer orientation. Embrace them by including them in your pride month celebrations. Plan a solo photoshoot, click yourself and update them on your social media profiles. It's so basic, but it makes you feel that you are also involved in pride month celebrations like many other people from various nooks and corners of the world.
Learn the real history behind the Pride month celebrations. Know everything about various queer activists and artists who shed their blood, sweat, and tears in fighting for equal human rights and inclusion of people from the queer community in various streams and sectors. When you are stuck up at home, you surely end up having a lot of time to kill, employ it to recognize queer fighters from the past to understand the present and to plan the future!
Get yourself enrolled in various queer discussions online or else sign up for many queer programs to articulate your thoughts regarding any topic related to the queer community. If you don't like participating, just contribute some amount to NGOs and NPOs that are working towards the upliftment of queer people all around the world. Exercise your privilege in the right way because that's also one kind of celebrating your queer identity by understanding the queerness around you.
Pamper yourself. You are queer, and you have every single right to appreciate your queer personality. Invest in especially queer products because you end up encouraging small businesses that are focused on the queer community. Always remember, spend your money on the right brands which are exclusively for queer people and not on the ones that flash rainbows on their websites and storefronts only in Pride month.
Generally, pride parades are arranged in such a way to let the world listen to the voices of queer people. Even though you are not allowed to shout the slogans aloud on the streets, you can still make your voice resonate through your actions. Help someone coming out of the closet, encourage a fellow queer person's livelihood, support a queer couple by assuring them that you are there for them, elevate your queer standards by talking to queer teenagers, queer kids to make them feel safe, talk to your family and friends about your orientation and how queer community work. All these actions portray your supportive nature, and you can do all of these without stepping outside too.
Explore all the sides of queer entertainment. Watch queer movies, listen to all the queer artists' music, get yourself educated with various documentaries made on the queer community in various countries to get an idea about the queer culture in various countries. Increase your knowledge, so that one day it may come in handy especially if you plan for some solo trips and vacations with your partners.
Lockdowns are all about locking yourself at home just to get rid of the health consequences of this current pandemic. You don't have to lock your queer personalities. Use and entertain your both soul and body by decking yourself up as flashy as you can or else however you want to embrace your typical queer personality. Just dress up, however, you, want and go in front of your mirror, and just look at your mirror image. At that moment, you realize your queer personality, and don't you think that's the best part of celebrating pride month by celebrating your queer person in this world?
