On Wednesday, Texas native and singer-songwriter August Ponthier, in an interview with Them reporter James Factora, came out as nonbinary and discussed how they discovered their new name. Highlights from that conversation are below courtesy APEX Public Relations for Them. On Thursday, Ponthier posted to IG stories that they waiting on Meta to change their name on socials and by last night, their handles had been updated.
On the elation they feel over being seen in this new authentic way:
“Being myself and knowing that other people can see me and have the ability to see me how I want to be seen is like, I never thought that would be possible. It feels just as good as playing a giant show or putting out a record.”
“I’m really, really glad that we’re doing this now,” Ponthier continues, “because I want everything that I make in the future to have a name I’m so proud of on it.”
On finding clues about their identity in old songs:
Befitting their love of classic genre films, Ponthier says that poring over their old discography reveals “a murder mystery amount of clues” about their identity. “It’s kind of funny because it’s one of those things where you get to the end of the movie and the plot twist is revealed and you look back and you’re like, ‘All of the hints were there the whole time,’” they joke.
On the “gender envy” that unknowingly inspired their newest song, “Handsome”:
“I was regularly getting upset, getting frustrated, feeling like it was the biggest puzzle in the entire world, that it was only constructed for me and no one else had ever been through it,” they say. “I truly felt like I invented something horrible and was made wrong in a factory somewhere.”
On how manipulating their gender on set and through drag helped them realize their true identity:
“Maybe I didn’t have the words ‘I am nonbinary,’ but I always knew that I had sore feelings around other people’s perception of my gender,” Ponthier says. “And originally I just thought it was me coming up with something completely new that no one had ever invented before, but really, it’s a tale old as time.”
On feeling like they needed to refrain from exploring their identity:
“I was just so scared of something happening to my career that I pushed down my gender feelings,” Ponthier says, adding that for a while, they lost themself and “felt very disconnected from who I was. And unfortunately, being disconnected from who I was was something I was really good at for obvious reasons.”
On the profound impact that fan interactions have had:
“It really goes to show that seeing yourself in someone else goes so far,” they say of their encounters with this fan. “I don’t think they realize how much of a gift they gave me, and I’m so grateful that a lot of my fans are people who are like me” — people who are “socially nervous, or they devalue themselves, or they’re struggling with things behind closed doors. I’m all of those things,” they continue, their eyes growing misty, “and so for someone to really connect and then be brave enough to talk to me about it, and then in turn to really change my life, it was a really big deal.”
On their music career making them feel less along:
“I grew up feeling like I was completely on an island somewhere,” they tell me. “That’s why alien iconography is in my songs a lot because I really just felt like from another planet.” But at their concerts, they look out at the crowd, and “see so many people that I can relate to. I have so many fans who are trans, so many fans that are nonbinary, so many fans that go through the same things that I go through,” they say. “And so that also helped tremendously.”
On finding their new name, August:
Even though Ponthier was deeply “in denial” about being nonbinary for years, they were “constantly” on the lookout for new names. They found “August” in the comments of a TikTok in which another nonbinary person was asking for name suggestions. (They readily admit that this origin story “is not sexy, not emotional.”) When they saw someone suggest the name, something clicked. “It’s like nothing else I’ve ever experienced,” they tell me. “I am really indecisive, and for some reason I just saw this name and I was like, ‘That’s me!’” “August” became the name they used on ridesharing services four years ago. When asked, they told people that it was a security measure. “But really, I just wanted someone to call me that,” they say.
And being proud of it:
“I think having pride in something that I came up with myself is so good for my self-esteem as well,” they say. “I love it. It makes me so happy. Every time a person on my team changes my name in an email, it feels great, and I’ve never felt that with my name ever.”
On self-acceptance in every facet of their life:
“It’s not just about gender. It’s about me realizing that I deserve to be happy,” they say. “I deserve to exist. I deserve to have all the same things as everyone else.”
On their reaction to the current political climate:
“All of the things that are happening right now to frighten, to diminish, and to make trans people feel like they need to stop existing, it’s only made me want to be myself more because if not now, I don’t know when.”
They continue, “I’m the type of person that sees everything going on, and I want to stand alongside the people who have given me the courage to recognize who I am.”
On the beauty of coming out:
They want people to “stop talking about being trans like it’s something that happens to someone and it needs to be like, ‘It’s sad and we feel bad that their life is going to change and people are going to be hard on them.’ It is a beautiful thing that happens, and I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt in my life,” Ponthier tells me. “So anyone who looks at me like it’s random just doesn’t know me well, and I’m so grateful for my friends who saw me for who I am, because it’s lifesaving stuff.”
To read the entire article, click here.
On Thursday, Ponthier posted this lovely IG story regarding the aftermath and reaction of the article.
–Rich Lopez