Introduction and background reading
1) What was the 2015 Oscar controversy involving Zendaya?
But she didn’t become really famous — mainstream famous, you’re-allowed-to-get-away-with-only-using-one-name-because-you’re-just-that-famous famous — until the 2015 Oscars.That was when Zendaya, age 19, happened to appear on the red carpet in a white silk gown, with her hair in dreadlocks — and on E’s Fashion Police, Giuliana Rancic commented, “That hair is swallowing her. I feel like she smells like patchouli oil.” An offscreen (and never-identified) voice added, “Or weed.”
2) How did Zendaya control the narrative of that controversy?
Outrage followed thick and fast, with commenters across the internet decrying the Fashion Police segment as racist. And in the ensuing controversy, Zendaya could easily have let those commenters position her as the passive victim of Rancic’s ignorance. Instead, she rapidly took control of the narrative herself.
“There is already harsh criticism of African American hair in society without the help of ignorant people who choose to judge others based on the curl of their hair,” she wrote in an Instagram post the next day. “My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of color that our hair is good enough. To me locs are a symbol of beauty and strength, almost like a lion’s mane.”
3) What examples are provided of Zendaya using her celebrity to raise issues of race and social justice?
What got people excited about Zendaya during the Oscars controversy was how careful and measured her response was: She explained exactly what made Rancic’s remark so offensive and how fraught the history of talking about black women’s hair is, and then ended on a note of uplift. And since that episode, Zendaya has consistently continued to use her celebrity to talk thoughtfully about race and social justice. “I am inspired right now by people who use their platforms,” she told Glamour in 2017. “If people know your name, they should know it for a reason.”
4) Zendaya insisted on a black family in Disney’s KC Undercover show. How can we link this to the ideas of Paul Gilroy?
She often talks about how she feels she has a responsibility to help represent the black community onscreen. So when Disney offered Zendaya the starring role in a new show when she was 16 (K.C. Undercover), she says, she insisted that her character have a black family. “I was like, ‘If I’m going to do this, this is how it has to be.’ There needs to be a black family on the Disney Channel,” she said in the Glamour interview. “A lot of people who aren’t people of color can’t quite understand what it’s like to grow up and not see yourself in mainstream media.” she talks about her struggles to finagle her way into the audition room for parts that default to white actresses. “I always tell my theatrical manager, ‘Anytime it says they’re looking for white girls, send me out. Let me get in the room. Maybe they’ll change their minds,’” she told Marie Claire in 2018.
5) Who is Zendaya’s stylist and how did Zendaya use fashion and appearance to develop her celebrity persona?
Zendaya knows how to dress for a moment. She uses her outfits to tell her audience a story about how she wants to be seen on a given day — and she proved with her response to Rancic that she is willing to back those choices up when questioned on them. None of this means that she’s making her style choices all by herself. She’s been dressed by stylist Law Roach since she was 14 years old — including on that fateful Oscars night — and his playful, performative aesthetic and commitment to storytelling is definitely at work in Zendaya’s outfits. (When Roach wants her to wear a particularly challenging look, Zendaya told Vogue in 2017, he tells her, “It’ll be a mo-ment.”) But not just anyone can pull off the looks that Roach is putting together. It takes someone like Zendaya, who understands the way that clothing creates image and finds the attitude necessary to make them work. “You’ve got to be a strong girl to do that on the red carpet,” Roach told the Guardian in 2018, referring to the time he dressed Zendaya as Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie for the Grammys. “You have to have conviction to say, ‘I like this, and I think I look cool, and fuck you to everybody who doesn’t.’”
6) How has Zendaya influenced the representation of characters she has played?
Zendaya inarguably does have the power. As her star has risen, her projects have leaned increasingly heavily on her image for their promotion. Spider-Man: Far From Home, her most recent film, is roping in a giant segment of its audience by dangling the question of whether Zendaya and Tom Holland are secretly in love. In the lead-up to Euphoria’s release, it was vanishingly rare to see a headline about the show that didn’t name-check Zendaya, and showrunner Sam Levinson says he put Zendaya on his vision board when he created the show. “There is a warmth that radiates from her and also a sensitivity and a vulnerability that she tries her damnedest to hold back sometimes,” Levinson told the Hollywood Reporter.
7) How did LL Cool J describe Zendaya?
LL Cool J told Vogue about Zendaya following a triumphant guest-starring spot on Lip Sync Battle in 2017, “She’s cool. You can manufacture fame. You can manufacture publicity. You can manufacture songs. You can’t manufacture cool.”
8) Do you agree with his assessment? Is Zendaya authentically cool or just another manufactured celebrity?
I agree with this statement as that insistence on owning her cool and owning her power, on unapologetically taking control of it and then doing smart and interesting and beautiful things with it, is what makes Zendaya such an exciting celebrity to watch. What’s even more exciting is realizing that, at just age 22, she’s really just getting started
Zendaya textual analysis
Social media analysis
1) Visit Zendaya's Twitter feed. Analyse her use of tweets - are they promoting her film/TV work, linked to fashion or sponsorship work or more socially or politically oriented? Through her twitter feed there is a lot of self promotion of her acting roles which are coming out etc, there is also a couple of posts where she shows a realism side to her in order to connect with the audience and make them feel as she can relate and understand them building a connection with them.
2) Look at Zendaya's Instagram account. She has said this is the one account that is always 100% created by her - can you find any evidence of that in the way posts or images are constructed? she posted a childhood picture which gives a sense that the audience would believe that her page is created by her and the tribute post to Angus who sadly passed away where she wrote a paragraph dedicated to him however her page is mainly self promotion where she posts video clips from roles she's played and pictures from events with may seem like her team post instead of her.
She talks about her roles in the past and present and links it to the progress she's made throughout the years while playing these roles.
Representations
1) What the concerns around social media discussed at the start of the article?
it’s not a new criticism of social media that it wreaks havoc on our brains, especially those of young people. We all grew up being told to put our phones down for various reasons, one of them being that screen time has the potential to give you square eyes. However, nowadays people seem to be taking these criticisms more seriously and concerns that social media can negatively affect one’s mental health and cause anxiety are more widespread and being taken more seriously. Younger and more impressionable users can’t help but compare themselves to one another whether consciously or unconsciously.
2) What example is provided of Zendaya’s authenticity – or possible lack of authenticity?
Zendaya is a great example of a celebrity who is now, seemingly, in control of their relationship
with social media, but that wasn’t always the case. In 2017 a video was posted to her YouTube
channel titled ‘Watch Me React To My First YouTube Vids’ in which she and a friend watched
back the YouTube videos she first posted onto her channel as a child star. She derides the videos
and comments on how fake they were, claiming that when she was younger she felt like she had
to create or perform a persona that matched Rocky – her character in the Disney show, Shake
It Up. She remarks that at the time she thought ‘the kids are gonna love it, it will be cool’ which perfectly encapsulates the idea of marketing oneself online and the pressure on young people to perform a certain way to get likes.
3) What is the one social media app that Zendaya manages entirely herself?
Intstagram
4) What are the issues highlighted by Billie Eilish regarding self-representation and feminism?
Other young women, such as Billie Eilish, have spoken out about their issues growing up in the online world too. In a 2021 NME article Eilish claimed that she no longer reads the comments on her socia media platforms ‘because otherwise I will spiral out, and shit’s mean as fuck’. A lot of the online commentary around Billie Eilish focuses on her body and always has done despite her only being 20. Eilish said, Every girl wants to feel desirable...But then there’s a whole world of men who argue that women say, ‘Oh, I don’t want men to sexualise me’ but then wear shirts that show their boobs and sing songs about having sex.’ I’m like, do you not get the idea that we want to wear what we feel good in but we don’t want you to jump in? It’s very dumb. Eilish here is highlighting the lack of nuance in understanding self-representation and feminism which accompanies the mainstream online. These are over-simplified ideas and restrict one from accurately and earnestly portraying oneself online
and contribute to the mental health epidemic caused partly by social media platforms. As Eilish
expresses in her song ‘Not My Responsibility’, the way people respond to her chosen forms of self-
representation is not on her.
5) How authentic do YOU feel Zendaya’s media representation is? Is it the real Zendaya or a media construction designed to look authentic?
For Zendaya, as a celebrity, this is an essential part of her work, as ultimately the product she is selling is herself. However, these values of ‘selling an image’ or ‘performing a persona’ are at the very heart of how social media platforms make money with functions and algorithms that constantly ask the user to create content, comment and like, all of which are profitiable for the platforms themselves. Interestingly enough, this seemingly authenti Zendaya video from 2017, where she criticise her previous inauthenticity, might not have been as genuine as it seems.
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