Amazing Amazin

Amazin LeThi speaks to Sam Harman about their defining life moments

Amazin LeThi’s myriad professional accomplishments are awe-inspiring. The LGBTQ+ advocate began her sports career as a weight lifter, which led to her becoming a natural competitive bodybuilder and published fitness author for Livestrong.

Not only is she listed in the 2019 Australian Pride Power list and the Out 100 list, she is also the first Asian LGBTQ+ sports champion ambassador at Stonewall.

The road to success and accepting who she was was a perilous one – as a transracial adoptee, growing up in an all-white homophobic Australian community, she was subjected to bullying and outcast by peers from an early age.

The first defining moment of her life took place at just seven years old. She recalls:

My teacher made me stand up in front of the entire class of 30 other kids, I was the only Asian child, and said, ‘This is what failure looks like, this girl will fail and if she becomes anything she’ll be a potato peeler'. Everyone laughed, including the teacher.

Having no friends, Amazin used sports to escape the cruelty of the playground where she felt unsafe, hoping she’d be celebrated there. But once again, she was confronted with another example of how badly Asian children were treated, “the stereotype that Asian people are slow and not really designed for sports and also being LGBTQ+, I could never see a possibility of coming out, I always had a life where I had to hide so much.”

She started body-building from the age of six, initially training alone at home – although she admits she had no idea what she was doing,

I didn’t have to interact with anyone and it helped me build the confidence and the self-worth that I needed, because I had very low self esteem, I hated being Asian, I hated being LGBTQ+ because I just had no positive references.

At age 10, she started going to an all-male gym to continue weight training. Being the only girl, she came up against misogyny and sexually inappropriate comments, however this wasn’t a deterrent. “I was breaking down the stereotype of Asian women, I wasn’t this Geisha, submissive, quiet child, I was this Asian kid that loved weight training, the sport gave me all this confidence and unique skills, it made me stand my ground in this unpleasant anti-LGBTQ+ space.”

The second defining moment of her life came when Amazin discovered someone she could aspire to. “He couldn’t be more far removed from who I am and the community, but he showed me how to celebrate your difference and that person was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“No one could pronounce his name, funny accent, came from a far away place, looked physically very different, but found a way to feel celebrated and loved. Arnold oozed so much confidence regardless of what people said to him.” She realised then body-building was her path, her way of escaping and a potential platform to make an impact on the world.

As a teenager Amazin still struggled with her identity and had yet to encounter another LGBTQ+ person. The weight from the sporting world that coming out wasn’t an option crushed her spirit, so she left Australia and headed to Europe.

This is when the trauma she experienced as a young person manifested itself as addiction – falling in with the wrong crowd, Amazin’s relentless partying led to her spiralling out of control into debt and eventually homelessness. She found herself living on the streets for many years on the margins of society where she was dismissed daily by the guilty flick of a stranger’s eye.

I suffered from severe depression and was constantly suicidal. I think you get to the point where you just kind of give up on life and you can’t understand the point of waking up anymore.

Exhausted and broken, she slept for two days straight in a hostel. Waking up on the third day, she curled up into a foetal position on the granite floor and sobbed uncontrollably for hours. It was then the third defining moment of her life occurred – she recalls wondering what had become of her. “I remembered the moment when my teacher told me to stand up and told everyone that this is what failure looked like and I thought this would be my greatest failure if I continued and it just gave me that kick that I needed.”

On December 9, Amazin is taking part in the #youngerme campaign for LGBTQ+ charity Just Like Us, which champions LGBTQ+ equality. It’s the first time the charity has used an East Asian person in a campaign.

I asked her what she’d say now to her childhood self, the little girl who tried so hard not to cry when standing up in class: “Very simply – you’re going to be OK, you are enough and you always have been enough and in a world that doesn’t see our difference, know that your difference is celebrated and loved.”

For more info: www.amazinlethi.com