Recently, you may have found yourself asking, “Who is Fifth Harmony and why am I so obsessed with them?” Girl, we get it. ‘90s-style girl power and take-no-prisoners confidence are a recipe for idolatry. You voted all five women into the AfterEllen Hot 100, with 20-year old Lauren Jauregui landing at #1. No doubt, readers were moonstruck by the Miami native’s black velvet hair, oceanic green eyes and smoky singing voice. But it’s Lauren’s sharp wit and feminist Instagrams that had us shouting “literally me” at our phones.

(Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images)

Above all, Jauregui uses her platform for good, and that’s what really made us fall in love with her. She’s an LGBT ally, an activist and an artist. In the words of 5H themselves, she’s “pretty fucking dope.” Lauren took a moment away from her world tour to talk queer fandom, positive female influences and obviously, Beyoncé.

AfterEllen.com: Where are you right now?

Lauren Jauregui: I am currently in St. Louis, Missouri. Quite the place to be.

AE: What does it mean to you to be named the hottest woman of the year by women?

LJ: It’s such an honor. It makes me feel really nice about myself. Thanks, guys! I don’t even know, like, how to accept this. This is dope.

AE: Yeah, I mean you beat out Angelina Jolie, Superwoman, Jennifer Lawrence…

LJ: It’s kind of ridiculous. I don’t really know how I ended up in that category, thank you to all of the women who think that that’s true.

(Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images)

AE: Do you hear from a lot of queer female fans?

LJ: Oh, absolutely. I feel like our fan base is kind of, you know—we’re all about acceptance and love…We feel like a lot of our fans find acceptance in us and our message. We have so many people daily, like honestly, I can never get over it—people at our meet and greets that come up to us and just let us know that we’re the reason that they got out of depression; the reason that they found themselves and love themselves.

Lately, people have been coming out to us and, like, that being their first time that they tell anybody about it… It’s just—it’s really special for us. We love to be a sort of safe haven for people in our music, in our personalities or whatever ways that we can connect to them. So like, [the fact that] they can come through and they can feel that safe and open and feel like they can be themselves because of our inspiration is, like, so fucking dope.