Social media faux pas never go unnoticed. Especially when you’re Zayn Malik and your girlfriend is Gigi Hadid and you have a combined internet following of about 75 million.
Yesterday, Zayn tweeted to the defence of Gigi, who had managed to find herself in the centre of a social media shit storm a few days ago, and people now aren’t very happy with him either. Let us explain why…
Gigi was spotted in an Instagram Story, apparently mimicking a Buddha-shaped cookie. In the video, Gigi raises the cookie to her face to seemingly smile and squint her eyes to look like said cookie. It didn’t go down well. Lots of fans interpreted her actions as offensive towards Asians, disrespectful of Buddha and generally a bit distasteful.
It might seem like quite a big jump to drastic conclusions in response to a supermodel out at dinner, playing with a cookie, nor is it the biggest scandal to hit our news feeds this week. But it's a questionable move, which, to be honest, I last saw in action back on my secondary school playground, and is widely understood to hold derogatory racial connotations towards Asians. Whether it was intentional or not (and I really don’t think it was) the potential cause of offence is pretty unavoidable. Okay, she was at a private party at the time, and I’m pretty sure that had she been handed a Buddha shaped cookie at a public event, she probably wouldn’t have made squinty eyes to mock an Asian religious figure on camera. But yeah, she should’ve been more aware of what she was doing.
Unsurprisingly, Zayn’s name was thrown in the eye of the shit storm when Twitter caught on to Gigi’s actions. One user asked Zayn: ‘being of Asian descent, how do you feel about your girlfriend making fun of Asian people?’. To which Zayn replied ‘trust me.. she likes asians’ with a suggestive wink face and thumbs up.
You can interpret it a couple of ways. On the surface I’d like to think that Zayn was trying to a) defend his girlfriend and b) make light of a shit situation by being a bit cheeky. It’s not far from one of those ‘your mum’ type responses that your mate might throw into conversation to try and be a bit lol. But some people probably aren't going to take it as very lol. That's a given. And when you throw race into the equation, there really needs to be an understanding of the upset that can be caused by speaking for a whole community in this sort of way. Which seems to be one of the things that really pissed off his fans.
Zayn’s tweet was met with claims of ignorance and essentially condoning of the disrespect people feel was displayed in Gigi's video. But Zayn responded to calls for him to ‘educate himself’ with another tweet that read ‘People’s nerve to call me ignorant, when any chance they get I’m a terrorist!! To be a racist goes against my very existence..’
‘So please don’t try to educate me’ he added.
Gigi doesn't seem to have said anything about the whole thing, and not long after his tweet to not to be 'educated', Zayn posted a video of himself unravelling a tie-dye creation he made earlier (yes, tie-dye. Zayn Malik in tie-dye).
So, back to business as usual? Maybe. It's not the first time Gigi has been called out by those who think she's come dangerously close to racial offence and appropriation. And it's probably not the last time Zayn will come to her defence (and by default, his own) should anything similar happen again (let's hope it doesn't).
And to be fair, it's probably not the last time fans will find themselves conflicted in their support when beloved celebs do stupid things/make flippant comments on a social media platform. Whether you take it upon yourself to follow the drama or not though, it's always important to take the time to get to grips with why things like imitating a Buddha and telling the world that your girlfriend actually loves Asians because she's dating you, a singular person, can upset people. Because despite innocent intention, it does.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.