In a joint interview with Gabrielle Union, Zaya Wade reveals that instead of listening to what social media says about beauty, she chooses to focus on inner beauty and what beauty means to her.
- May 12, 2022
AceShowbiz - Zaya Wade has had enough of toxic remarks from strangers on social media. In a joint interview with her stepmother Gabrielle Union for Dove Self-Esteem Project, the daughter of Dwyane Wade slammed hate comments that she received about her "femininity" after coming out as transgender in 2020.
In the interview, the 14-year-old teen revealed her bumpy journey as a trans person. "As a trans person, once I came out, there was a lot of hateful comments about how I should grow my hair out long or fit into a certain version of femininity, even though that's not true at all," she explained to PEOPLE, "That kind of advice is just trying to break you, but don't let it."
Instead of listening to the bad comments, Zaya chose to listen to her stepmom's advice about focusing on "internal beauty." Talking about it, she revealed, "Her [advice] telling me that not everyone in the world and in the media is going to be truthful about what you look like."
"I don't have to believe everything they say. The only thing I have to believe is what I feel and what beauty means to me," the teenage girl went on adding. "I think focusing on inner beauty is the most important."
Having experienced the destructive advice from social media firsthand, Zaya and her stepmom Gabrielle collaborated with the Dove Self-Esteem Project for the launch of #DetoxYourFeed film and campaign. The campaign itself aims to show the harmful beauty advice for teenagers that has been spreading all across social media.
Zaya hopes that through the campaign, more girls and teens realize their worth without having to follow social media's advice. "I hope other girls and teens like me see this campaign and join me on Dove's #DetoxYourFeed movement," she told the outlet.
"We don't need to follow anyone into feeling unworthy or not beautiful," Zaya further declared. "We have the power over our own feeds to remove the content that doesn't make us feel good and instead flood our feeds with the positivity that we both want to see and put out into the world."
Gabrielle also relayed her own wish on the campaign, stressing the importance of having "more representative content" for teens. "There's no one size fits all approach to beauty," she divulged, "And it's important that teens are exposed to the wide variety of ways they can express that instead of encouraging them to try to fit within an unrealistic, unattainable or unhealthy standard."
