The former contestant of 'The X Factor' talks about her childhood and how she decided her name was Max and lived her 'most authentic life' growing up as a boy.
- July 20, 2023
AceShowbiz - Lucy Spraggan grew up as a boy. Born female, the 31-year-old singer decided early on that she wanted to live as a boy called Max and did so until she reached puberty and nature took over because there weren't the "options" available for gender reassignment that there are today.
"I was Max. I don't remember being a little Lucy really. And there's a few pictures here and there but for the majority of my childhood, I was a little boy. I was called Max," she said on the "How to Fail With Elizabeth Day" podcast. It wasn't that I wanted to be a little boy, I wasn't a tomboy, I was a boy, I was called Max."
"I went to the barbers with my brother, I climbed trees, not that is a boy thing, I wore boxers. It wasn't that I was ever pretending to be anything. I was living my most authentic life. I was a boy. You are who you say you are. You are actually who you are, I still believe that now. I was a little boy. I was a little boy until puberty."
"Back at the turn of the Millenium, there weren't the options that we have today and people really struggle to get their heads around the fact that if that had been an option, I'd have loved to have still been Max. I think a lot of the issues I had with myself and my body image were based in the fact that puberty stopped me being Max. "
The "Balance" singer - who discusses more of her experience living as a boy in her memoir "Process: Finding My Way Through" - went on to add that her mother had been "amazingly" supportive during her childhood and admitted that even though she lives as a woman now, it does not mean that she is "necessarily comfortable" with her gender today.
She added, "My mum was amazing. She said 'Okay, Max. I will call school and tell them that you're Max. You wear the boxers, go get a short back and sides. You're Max!' And that's all I needed. Had I decided to stay as Max, she'd have said 'Absolutely.' "
"The power in that is such a privilege. I know it's difficult for people to understand because you'd look at me and go 'Oh there's a woman, long hair.' I've got fake boobs, actually. Max would never have believed that! But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm still comfortable being a woman and I've had to really undo all of that my whole life."
