For Cyrus Veyssi, Making TikToks With Their Dad Is a "Healing Journey"

Cyrus Veyssi appears before me on a Zoom call from their New York City apartment. It is before 9 a.m., yet they exude an effortless glamor. A few weeks prior, the 30-year-old content creator had seen their Caudalie Vinoperfect campaign — as the company's first-ever nonbinary ambassador — displayed across dozens of the city's MTA buses. It was a true "Sex and the City" moment, as one of Veyssi's 550,000 TikTok followers commented. Although Veyssi boldly embraces makeup and gold earrings in the campaign, they tell me their femininity was an attribute they actually withheld from their parents and the public for much of their life.

"When I was younger, I was drawn to femininity, but I didn't know how to articulate it or even show it to anyone," the Iranian American creator and soon-to-be television host says. "Wearing makeup now is really a mechanism for forgiveness. It is healing that relationship with my younger self . . . I withheld it from my parents growing up. My dad would never see me in makeup. Flash forward to now, it's almost like he's experiencing me grow up again, but this time, through the lens of this very gender-expansive person."

Veyssi's dad, or as they refer to him, Baba, is a popular subject of Veyssi's social media content. In the throes of the pandemic, Veyssi started creating beauty content that celebrated their nonbinary identity, but quickly started to receive anti-LGBTQ+ hate comments, including the likes of, "Your dad must be so disappointed in you" or "Clearly no dads in the picture." Veyssi, proud of the loving relationship they have with their father, decided to start featuring their dad in their videos. And their relationship took the internet by storm.

In 2021, Veyssi filmed a quick TikTok of them sipping a cocktail while their dad was barbecuing to demonstrate the "campy but loving" relationship the two have. In just a week, the video reached almost eight million views across Instagram and TikTok. While the virality skyrocketed Veyssi's beauty content to new heights, it also opened them up to more anti-LGBTQ+ hate, especially from within their own Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) community.

"I would say 90 percent of the hate I get online comes from Persian, Iranian, and SWANA men. They think that I'm an omen of my ancestors and they always say, oh if I go back to Iran, I would be killed, and I of course don't believe any of that's true, but it also shows me how important my platform is," Veyssi says. "SWANA people are not inherently homophobic and my ancestors were boldly queer. I mean, have you read Persian poetry?"

For Veyssi, their Persian background and nonbinary identity were an almost natural harmony. In Farsi, the most common language spoken by Persians, there aren't any gendered pronouns. So when Veyssi came out to their family as nonbinary, they were able to use a shared cultural context to frame their identity. However, Veyssi says that didn't mean everything was "dandy and perfect" with their family upon coming out.

Veyssi remembers coming out to their family twice in their lifetime. First, at 10 years old, they came out to their dad as gay and then, in their college years, to their parents as nonbinary. They said introducing their parents to their nonbinary identity was a gradual process of mutual understanding. The loving family dynamic showcased on their social media now is something that flourished over time and was accomplished mainly through trust and a foundation of familial love, something they feel incredibly lucky to experience daily.

As their platform continued to grow, Veyssi increasingly recognized what it actually meant to show a loving relationship between a SWANA father and queer child on social media. Veyssi started to regularly bring their dad into their content because of the burgeoning impact they were witnessing.

"My DMs became flooded with messages from all over the world [with] people thanking me and celebrating me. I knew then we were really doing something here," Veyssi says. "When I get a message from someone who says that they came out to their parents, that their parents weren't supportive, and that they can come to my page and find solace in my content with my dad, that makes the biggest difference to me. My baba is everyone's baba."

They continue: "It's changed his life for the better. I don't think he ever expected his impact and I don't think he's still quite realized it. The thousands of DMs I get are mostly just thank yous for bringing Baba on the internet."

Earlier in May, it was announced that Veyssi and four other content creators were set to host a new talk show from Hello Sunshine and Amazon MGM Studios, "Influenced." In the series, launching on Aug. 1, Veyssi says they are excited to continue the conversations they are passionate about, like queer beauty and lifestyle, as well as the power in elevating the loving relationship they have with their baba.

"If I had zero viewers and zero followers, I would still want to post these videos around beauty and skin care and my dad, because it's part of our healing journey," Veyssi says.

Shahamat Uddin is a freelance writer largely covering queer and South Asian issues, but also related lifestyle topics and entertainment. His family hails from Sylhet, Bangladesh, but after growing up in Roswell, GA, he now lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Butter. Outside of PS, he also has bylines in Teen Vogue, Vogue, Vogue India, New York Magazine, Them, The Nation, and more.