Zendaya has been quick to slam Hollywood's mainstream beauty standards, for both its lofty physical ideals and white-dominated representation.
After seeing a Photoshopped image of herself featured on Modeliste magazine, Zendaya took to Instagram to post a side-by-side comparison with the original photo and voice her concerns. "These are the things that make women self-conscious, that create the unrealistic ideals of beauty that we have. Anyone who knows who I am knows I stand for honest and pure self-love," Zendaya wrote in her Instagram caption.
Recognizing her own mixed heritage, she highlights the amount of progress still required to reach full inclusivity within the industry. "As a light-skinned Black woman, that's important I'm using my privilege and my platform to show you how much beauty there is within the African-American community," Zendaya said in her 2018 BeautyCon speech. "I am Hollywood's — I guess you could say — acceptable version of a Black girl . . . And that has to change. We're vastly too beautiful and too interesting for me to just be the only representation of that."
