From April to September 2023, I conducted ethnographic research on the experience of performing queer sexuality in the metro-Atlanta area with self-identified queer adults (ages 21 – 31). This thesis focuses on the performative tensions between notions of selfhood and their associated aesthetics that are present in the lives of this study’s participants. In performing sexual identity, these Atlantans create notions of queer sexuality which rely on what I call American essentialism – an ethnopsychological paradigm that sees individuals as possessing innate essences – and “weirdo habitus,” an embodied disposition towards things considered strange. These framings allow for legible expression and legitimization of queer sexualities and can be understood as adaptations to the necropolitical realities of queer existence in the United States.