Kerry Washington’s Spence classmates always said ‘you are so lucky to be here’
We’ve gotten a good look at most of the September issue covers this year, and let me tell you… magazines are going full-throttle with bland white women. Like, Cara Delevingne got TWO major September issue covers and she’s just got a small part in Suicide Squad. I like that InStyle put Kerry Washington on their September cover for no other reason than I enjoy seeing diversity on the September issues. Interestingly enough, Kerry talks about how that kind of tokenism makes her feel within the interview. It’s a really good piece, no surprise, because she’s an intelligent and admirable young woman. Some highlights:
Competition between women: “I feel like there is a misconception of this catty, competitiveness between women. That has not been my experience, particularly in Shondaland. My mother is one of seven kids…so I have a lot of strong women in my family, and I have supportive, beautiful relationships with all of them.”
The only woman in the room: “Being the one woman in the room should not be seen as a victory. If there’s only one of us in the room, we’re still a token; we don’t actually have an empowered voice. If there’s two of us, we’re still a minority. If there’s three… then we’re allowed to have a multiplicity of opinions.”
Graduating from Spence (an elite NY school): “From the time I was 11 or 12, everyone [at school] was like, ‘You are so lucky to be here.’ And I was lucky, but so were they. They were lucky I was there because I gave them an expanded idea of what humanity looks like, feels like, and how it expresses itself.”
She doesn’t want a color-blind world: “I don’t want to not be African. The goal is to live in a world where my race doesn’t limit my access, where I can see myself represented in the highest level of society without any limitation.”
How she thinks about social change: “I choose to feel optimistic, because I don’t think I could get out of bed if I didn’t. The key will be when we stop allowing our otherness to separate us. Whether it’s immigrant’s rights, women’s rights, civil rights, or LGBT rights, we’re all under attack, because none of us belongs to that small group who have held power for a very long time.”
Pregnancy fashion: “There’s nothing high-end for professional women who are pregnant, so for the show, we wind up just buying the same clothes. We will cut out the front of Armani trousers and put in a pregnancy panel. That’s what we do for everything.” Off-screen, finding fashionable maternity clothes has been much easier, thanks to her famous friend Jessica Alba. “She told me she had this box of maternity clothes that she would ship from girlfriend to girlfriend. I was like, ‘Can I have it?’ And then I started doing it as well. I’m not getting clothes back that I wore the first time. Everybody adds cute stuff to the box. You’re less afraid to spend money because you feel that a lot of people are going to use it.”
“From the time I was 11 or 12, everyone was like, ‘You are so lucky to be here.’” Jesus, that sucks. And you know that’s Kerry trying to put a nice spin on years of racist microaggressions too, from being told that she should be grateful to be included in a wealthy, white world, to the surprise she still gets that she is, in fact, a college graduate. What shocks me is that she chooses to feel optimism in the face of so much bulls—t. I love this too: “If there’s only one of us in the room, we’re still a token; we don’t actually have an empowered voice.”
Photos courtesy of WENN, InStyle.
