I am the excuse to explore your identity. To be exactly who you are and to feel unafraid. To not judge yourself, to not hate yourself.

I'd be doing myself an injustice if I didn't wear makeup because some people think it's wrong. Even to talk about being gay used to be obnoxious and unheard of. But gone are those days.

In a recent survey of Millennials around the world asking what most defines our identity, the most popular wasn't nationality, ethnicity or religion. It was "citizen of the world." That's a big deal. Every generation expands the circle of people we consider one of us. And in our generation, that now includes the whole world. This is the struggle of our time. The forces of freedom, openness, and global community against the forces of authoritarianism, isolationism, and nationalism - forces for the flow of knowledge, trade, and immigration, against those who would slow them down.

I feel that the name Queen actually fitted that time. It lent itself to a lot of things, like the theatre, and it was grand. It was very pompous, with all kinds of connotations. It meant so much. It wasn't just one precise label. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it.

Being gay is like glitter, it never goes away.

I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.