Some celebrity announcements age badly. This one aged into a marriage, two albums and a Disney comeback. When Demi Lovato said in the summer of 2022 that she had “been feeling more feminine” and was using she/her again, the internet treated it as a U-turn. Four years later it reads more like what she said it was: a fluid person describing where she stood that month. Here is the whole arc, with the receipts, and with the claims that never had any removed.
2021: “they/them,” and why
On May 19, 2021, Lovato, then 28, posted a video and a string of tweets saying she identified as non-binary and would be using they/them pronouns. The decision came, in her words, “after a lot of healing & self-reflective work,” and she was careful to add: “I’m still learning & coming into myself, & I don’t claim to be an expert or a spokesperson.” The announcement was tied to her podcast series 4D with Demi Lovato.
I’ll say what I thought then and still think: that last line was the most sensible thing any celebrity said that year. She did not ask to be a symbol. She asked for patience, which in Hollywood is rarer than a quiet wedding.
Lovato has also spoken openly about being queer. The earlier version of this article repeated tabloid claims about why her 2020 engagement to actor Max Ehrich ended and tied her identity to her health history. Neither had a source, and we have removed both. The engagement ended in September 2020; that is all the record shows.
2022: “I’ve been feeling more feminine”
The update came on the Spout Podcast with host Tamara Dhia, reported in early August 2022. Lovato had already added “she/her” to her social bios that April. On the podcast she put it plainly: “Recently, I’ve been feeling more feminine, and so I’ve adopted she/her again.”
She also explained what had pushed her toward they/them in the first place, and it was a very ordinary detail: bathrooms. “When I was faced with the choice of walking into a bathroom and it said ‘women’ and ‘men,’ I didn’t feel like there was a bathroom for me because I didn’t feel necessarily like a woman,” she said. Not like a man either: “I just felt like a human.” And the line that explains everything since: “I’m such a fluid person when it comes to my gender, my sexuality, my music, my creativity.”
My read: this was never a reversal. She uses both “she” and “they,” and her advice on getting it wrong was refreshingly low-drama: “It’s just all about respect. Nobody’s perfect.” The old headline on this page said she felt “like a woman again but keeps on a non-gender style.” The pronoun part was right. The idea that clothes have to pick a side was ours, not hers.
The buzzcut era, and the rock record that went with it
The look people argued about in 2022 was a shaved head, a spider tattoo on the side of her skull and new ear piercings, all documented on her own Instagram. It arrived with the music: the rock-leaning album Holy Fvck came out on August 19, 2022, the same day the first version of this article went up, and its lead single was “Skin of My Teeth.”
Watching that video now, the styling makes complete sense. It was a costume for a loud record, worn by someone who had just stopped apologizing for her body. She had spoken publicly for years about her recovery from an eating disorder; the only thing worth saying about her shape is that it is hers.
What came next: Jutes, a wedding and lighter pop
The “good guy” from the 2022 gossip turned out to be real and has a name: Jordan “Jutes” Lutes, a Canadian musician she met in January 2022 while working on Holy Fvck. He proposed in December 2023, and they married on May 25, 2025, at the Bellosguardo estate in Santa Barbara. Lovato wore Vivienne Westwood; Paris Hilton DJed the afterparty. (When your wedding DJ has her own perfume line, you have officially left the rock era.)
The music followed the mood. Her ninth album, It’s Not That Deep, arrived on October 24, 2025, a return to pop that she connected to a lighter stage of life. And in August 2026 Disney confirmed she was back as Mitchie Torres, with a cameo and an executive producer credit on Camp Rock 3, which premiered on Disney Channel on August 13 and on Disney+ a day later.
My take
We opened with a girl from Camp Rock in 2008, and here she is again in Camp Rock, eighteen years older, married, and using the pronouns that fit on a given day. The arc isn’t really “woman, then non-binary, then woman again.” It’s a person who kept telling us she was still figuring it out, and was right every time.
Sources
- Demi Lovato on Instagram: Brazil, 2026
- Demi Lovato on Instagram (@ddlovato)
- Demi Lovato, “Skin of My Teeth” (Official Video), DemiLovatoVEVO
- Disney+ Press: Demi Lovato surprise cameo in “Camp Rock 3”
- NBC News: Demi Lovato on returning to she/her pronouns (Spout Podcast)
- Mediaite: Demi Lovato comes out as non-binary (May 2021)
- People via AOL: Demi Lovato marries Jordan “Jutes” Lutes
- People via AOL: Inside Demi Lovato’s wedding at Bellosguardo
- NBC: Demi Lovato on how her husband shaped “It’s Not That Deep”
