Zoe Kravitz covers the March issue of Teen Vogue, and she looks so much like her mother in several of these photos, I did a double take because I thought Lisa Bonet was the cover subject. I like Zoe a lot and a root for her, but I’m not crazy about this interview. She spoke to her friend, designer Alexander Wang, and there’s something very self-aware and affected about her in this piece. Maybe it’s because she was talking to a friend, maybe it was something else, I don’t know. But she’s very “my friend says this and this about me” and “people always think this about me.” It’s not humble-bragging, it’s more like hyper-self-awareness that comes across as very insular. Or whatever, maybe it’s fine. Maybe this is the way the kidz talk nowadays.
She checks her privilege: “My parents didn’t become who they are because anything was handed to them, and they didn’t raise a child who expected something to be handed to her, either. My mom would have killed me if I’d assumed any kind of privilege. At first I was really adamant about making sure people knew that I was working hard. Things were definitely handed to me a little bit easier, but people were also judging me twice as hard.”
She doesn’t care about his fashion: “You can tell when someone is driven by labels. If something is couture they think it’s important and wear it and sometimes make a terrible fashion mistake. People are shocked that I know so little about designers. I know the big ones because my grandmother wore them or they’ve been around forever. I know you because you’re my best friend, but I don’t know much about the fashion world except for when I like something, I like it… Everyone is looking at everyone else to see what’s cool. So it’s just all about a level of confidence. When anyone sets out to be cool it becomes contrived.”
Women in Hollywood: “It’s great that it’s a subject that’s trendy right now, but we’re still waiting for this shift to happen from the men who run Hollywood. Why aren’t women starring in more films? It’s because the men are writing them and are the ones cutting the checks. We can’t blame them, I personally don’t think. We need to take that extra step.”
Typecast at the “black friend”: “Typically white people have the story, and any kind of minority is like adding that pop of red or fun purse or pair of shoes to jazz up an outfit. These people are accents that make things funny, weird, or dramatic. I spent so much of my career saying no to those films. I’ve seen that movie a million times, and I don’t feel right putting that into the world over and over and over again. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life playing some girl’s friend or some girl on crack in the projects.”What she looks for in another person: “Humor trumps everything and is probably number one. I think it trumps being politically correct. We live in such a PC world because of social media, which makes me sad. Loyalty is also very important to me. I’m an incredibly loyal person. And kindness. I think being kind is actually harder than people like to admit. It’s hard for me sometimes to be kind. I have to check myself all the time about how I treat myself and other people.”
I don’t have any major problem with what she says. I disagree that women are the ones needing to take the “extra step” to be successful in Hollywood and I disagree that we shouldn’t blame the old white guys running Hollywood for the lack of diversity or female-dominated films. I also don’t think PC culture is something to be sad about. But that’s just her opinion, and she’s entitled to it, so whatever. All my friends say that I’m too nitpicky. People always think that I’m too judgy.
Photos courtesy of Teen Vogue.
“Things were definitely handed to me a little bit easier” – finally! A celeb kid who at least admits having it even a bit easier? What a miracle.
Can I get an Amen!
Lots of celebs have said the same thing as her. GIven more opportunities but judged harder. Why act like she hasn’t? I read an interview with Dylan Penn and she said the same thing. And they are right. Famous parents bring good and bad things and i don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying it. It must be a pain in the ass to never be given any credit for working hard and being talented in your own right.
Nice to see Teen Vogue putting more women of colour on their covers with increasing frequency. When I was reading the magazine in the early 2000s, you’d get someone non-white on the cover maybe once every year and a half.
To paraphrase Chris Rock: People talk about the progress black people have made. Black people have always been here! It’s white people who have made progress in regards to black people.
I feel the same way about gender relations. We’re here working and living and paying taxes, it’s time the men made progress.
Great point!
Yeah, the “we need to take that extra step” comes from a place of total ignorance. She can say that because women have been “taking that extra step” and fighting for centuries to not be considered property, to have the right to their own money, to vote, to work at all, to work in “men’s” professions and now to have equal pay for the same work. It’s not like we’re lazy and just haven’t been trying.
She makes it sound like we are just sitting home knitting:-) I blame it on the arrogance of youth. It always surprises me that people on popular / consumer magazine covers are actually too often uninformed, and generally lacking education (generalizing now, not talking about Zoe.) Personally I have no clue what she does other than being the daughter of celebs but she sounds like the typical self absorbed rich, young, privileged person. Melodramatic too – her mother would have killed her for assuming privilege? Girl, please….
Nah, go ahead an be judgy. 🙂
I don’t have any huge problems with what she is saying, but I wish people understood a bit better that “privilege” doesn’t necessarily mean that you have had things “handed” to you or that you haven’t “worked hard”.
What it means is that you have this significant invisible (to you) blank check which others do not have, and which significantly neatly removes huge barriers that other people have work really hard to to overcome (and often can’t because the deck is firmly stacked against them) so that they too can “work hard” and not have things “handed” to them.
It is good manners to recognize that this actually exists.
Edit: I missed the part where she acknowledges that she had things a bit easier because she is a celebrity daughter. Good work….
Yeah, not my favorite interview either. Still like her a whole lot, though. She’s a good girl.
I like her and just cannot get over how absolutely gorgeous she always is.
She has such a magnetic face. Her expressions just draw you in.
I don’t have any opinions about Zoe one way or another, but I am SO sick of this celebrity “oh, I’m really just a nerd” thing going on. No, you are not just some average joe. Yes, you are a human being, but a human being who receives a lot of extras that others don’t get. Stop trying to be relatable, please.
I am paraphrasing but i read an interview of hers just yesterday where she says that she realises she has been given a lot of opportunities due to who her parents are. She seems to know her privilege and only the first answer was weirdly worded. I am so here for a WOC as an It girl. Absolutely loved her in Dope and Mad Max, hope she gets more roles like those.
Honestly, stuff like this sort of bugs me.
There are some really, really good think pieces going around right now about how privilege has become co-opted as a racial term when in reality it started as a class term. And how that’s really short-changing the conversation. There was a piece challenging the whole idea a while back that really, really stuck out to me. I’ll try to find it if I can.
Zoe Kravtiz was born wealthy. She was born after her mother hit it big with the Cosby show. From the moment she emerged on the planet, she has had all the privilege she’d likely ever need. I’m sympathetic to her arguments, but honey, you’re rich. You’re trying my patience. I have very little time for wealthy POC these days (and I say that as one myself). I have no time for Beyoncé’s symbolic gestures when she’s hoarding millions of dollars – something that could actually go towards bettering the actual POC she claims to care about. Crap like this is why I’m a distributionist and always will be – because at the end of the day, there is absolutely no privilege like class privilege. Full stop. Racial privilege exists, and it’s good that it gets acknowledges. But Jesus, rich people, you don’t get to talk. You’re up to your ears in it and can’t see it. She can talk all she wants about not getting anything “handed” to her. The fact of the matter is a rich girl gets stuff handed to her every day. Did she eve worry about going to a less than decent school? Did she ever have a day when she did not get a meal? Did she ever not have a bed? Did she ever wonder where she’d sleep that night? That’s stuff that all actually happened to my (white) mother in East Germany. But all that happened because of poverty, not race. She’s talking about stuff she really has no concept of, IMHO. But like I said, that’s just me.
There is some privilege associated with wealth, but with the exception of a well recognized celebrity it certainly does NOT outweigh racial privilege. Most people don’t wear their SES on their face like they do their race. So the reality is if a wealthy but unknown black man/women walks into a room/job interview/etc their is an assumption about who they are and a perception of “otherness”. While if an equally qualified white man from a poor background walks into the same situation he will not face the same discriminatory stereotyping, he will be perceived as “like me”.
Except that’s really not true. All the largest things that beset people of color are actually best controlled by hitting at poverty. Gun violence is far, far more linked to poverty than it is to race. Drug use is far more linked to poverty than it is to any racial issue. Environmental hazards are, again, far more linked to poverty than anything else. Wrongful convictions are far more linked to poverty than anything else. There are multiple studies out there than measured middle and upper class POC to whites livening below the poverty line, and by every measurable standard (health, living conditions, nutrition, educational markers, etc.) the results are clear: poverty is worse. A Caucasian living in poverty endures more negative life experience than a POC who is above it. And that’s the actual research.
I get why people confuse them. POC are far more likely to be in poverty than Caucasians (although it should be pointed out that if you’re going strictly by numbers, the majority of poor people in the US are white). But that makes it harder to see what is a genuine issue of racism and what is really an issue of poverty. But you haven’t answered by question. You just brought up something about job interviews and dropped it at that. And who says you can’t tell SES by looking at a person? There’s a “poor look” trust me – because I used to have it. You can tell poor pretty easy if you know how to spot it. The eyes are dull, the skin is sallow, the teeth are usually not great. That’s malnutrition, that’s how you spot them. The fingernails, etc. Once you’ve been in it, you can totally tell. I’m still working to get all that mess off of me. The clothes are cheap. There’s also generally a way people in poverty carry themselves that you learn to notice. But like I said, you gotta live it to know it, generally.
I think she has a right to say that she has extra pressure placed on her because nobody ever says she’s earned anything on her own. So she was born rich and went to good schools and certainly hot the jackpot with her DNA pool, but no matter what she achieves she will still have people – POC and white people – saying ‘oooh you rich, stfu gurl!’
How about we allow people to speak their reality without having to constantly step all over them shouting I HAVE IT WORSE!!
SAM- you are lumping a lot of things into your definition of racial privilege. While environmental exposure, gun violence, etc., etc. are linked to poverty, this is not what people are talking about when they talk about “white privilege”. They are talking about what I described- the perception you garner and assumptions made about you by people in positions of power/authority based on their conscious or unconscious biases, and the advantages white people garner as a result of these perceptions, all other things being equal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege
E – except the way you describe it, white privilege has very little actual consequences. There are actual real life consequences to racial differences. BUT you’re not answering my question. The biggest predictor of life outcomes – and actual, real consequences associated with them – are largely not racial – they are economic. You’re dancing around the issue that I’m raising. White privilege is largely a concept that arose in sociological circles that are based upon some research, some presumption (and sometimes it actually does play out, I’m not arguing it does not). Economic privilege has been repeatedly validated by empirical research and data. A white person in poverty is far, far more likely to experience negative life outcomes (and a shortened life expectancy at that) than a POC who lived outside of poverty. But under your argument, that white person is still somehow privileged. And my question is how. One of the biggest presumptions of the white privilege theory is that all white people benefit from it, and all POC suffer under it. However, the wealth privilege argument is that wealth, being the stronger measure of value, can cancel that out to a degree. There are white people who live utterly without any privileges due to their poverty and there are POC who lead outstandingly privileged lives. And for some reason, pointing that out is offensive? I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to make some kind of argument with actual evidence if you want to be taken seriously other than simply asserting that racial privilege is stronger than wealth privilege and giving a Wiki cite.
I have been saying the same thing for weeks. I will tell you something about me… Before this, i was driven to have two nervous breakdowns and 1 panic attack because i lost my 5th job, and all I want to do is to make ends meet is to go College. And I have to starve myself foe nights to save that very dollar. Now I guess you can call me lucky because I have some money but I am in a Community College and I worked extremely hard to get where I am now and I will keep going.
You think these privileged, spoiled brats would walk a mile in my shoes. I don’t think they would, that’s what makes me sick about them. They got some nerve to say they had it hard. Pssh
I enjoyed her interview. I’m a big fan of Lenny. I agree with not wanting to do films because they need the token minority for a token situation. But I do disagree with her PC statement. When I grew up, my Polish mother was the butt of many Polish jokes and it really made her feel bad. I just think being PC is common sense and kindness.
And, yes, yes, yes to her views on designer clothes and accessories. I only buy what makes me look good, whether it occasionally is Michael Kors, or Lauren Conrad at Kohls. I can get just as many compliments on both. Labels do not impress me at all.
She sounds ok, but there’s absoutely nothing special about her.
EXACTLY!!!!
Like she’d ever be in any movies or magazines if her parents weren’t who they are.
Nice kid, nothing special, stop trying to fill the vacuum of young talented WOC or young women period with this bottle of blah.