‘Age-appropriate” is a red flag for me. When certain people say it, you know it’s being deployed in service of curtailing fun. Leopard print? Wear it until you’re 99, I say. Short shorts? Your business! This magnanimity is partly down to the full-on crush I have on an age-inappropriate celebrity: 19‑year‑old actor and singer Zendaya. She seems like a really cool bean.
First stop on the introduction to Zendaya tour? Your tween relatives. They might have seen her in Shake It Up on the Disney Channel (she played Rocky, a background dancer on a local TV show. So meta!). Or perhaps in KC Undercover (she plays KC, a maths genius and teen spy-in-training).
But I first heard of her last year, when TV presenter Giuliana Rancic disparaged her dreadlocks at the Oscars, saying she probably smelled of patchouli or weed. Zendaya’s thoughtful, gracious Instagram takedown was a thing of quiet fury and beauty: “My wearing my hair in locs [sic] on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of colour that our hair is good enough.”
When an internet-stranger called her parents ugly, her reply began: “First, I’m gonna pray for you.” I love her assuredness (when she’s putting idiots in their place) and her goofball tendencies (her red carpet gurning makes me chuckle). And can we talk about her style? My God. Clothes like this are what your teen years are for.
But big things are ahead, too: Zendaya’s got a “key role” in the Spider-Man reboot out next year. And last month she popped up in Beyoncé’s visual album, Lemonade. A co-sign from Queen Bey? Amazing.
