Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris has opened up on her sexuality, recalling how her famous father would “tease” her about girls as a child.
Paris, 22, is in a relationship with musician Gabriel Glenn but identifies as gay, admitting she “never thought I’d end up with a dude.”
“Thought I’d end up marrying a chick,” she said in an episode of her Facebook Watch series. “I’ve dated more women than men.
“The public only knows about three long-term relationships that I’ve been in and they’ve been with men. The public doesn’t know about most of the relationships I’ve been in.”
Paris said she considers herself gay but does not focus on the sex of her partners, saying “I’ve dated more than just men and women. I’ve dated a man that had a vagina.
“It has nothing to do with what’s in your pants. It has nothing to do with your XY chromosome makeup. It’s literally just like what are you like as a person.”
Paris is the second child and only daughter of Michael and Debbie Rowe. She was 11 when the King Of Pop died at the age of 50 in 2009.
During the episode of Unfiltered: Paris Jackson & Gabriel Glenn, Paris recalled initially struggling to understand her sexuality.
She said: “I didn’t know that it was a thing and so, I was a little conflicted about it because all I’d ever seen were men and women on TV together and so these thoughts didn’t really make sense to me.”
However, Michael “caught on pretty quick,” she said. “I think he just felt the energy and he would like kind of tease me the same way that he would tease my brothers, like ‘Oh, you got yourself a girlfriend’.”
Paris added: “I’m very lucky to have that, especially so young – I think I was like eight or nine. Because not many children have that experience.”
But she said she withheld the truth about her sexuality after moving in with her grandmother Katherine Jackson, a Jehovah’s Witness, following Michael’s death.
“Homosexuality in general is very taboo in the black community,” Paris said. “That on top of the religious aspect, it was something that I did feel like I needed to withhold for a while.”
Paris is launching her own music career and the Facebook series showed glimpses of her at work in the studio with Glenn, who she has been with for a year.
The couple met at a concert in Los Angeles and “within a week” were living together in his van. Paris said she welcomes the stability after a nomadic upbringing.
She said: “It is also nice to finally have a home base, which is something that I’ve never really had before. The only home I’ve ever had before was my dad and now I have Gabe, so I’m very lucky.”
