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Zendaya Talks Firing Publicist Over Racially Insensitive Remark And Returning To Disney Channel

By Patricia Grannum
Published on: 08:30 PST, Jun 4, 2016

Zendaya is proving once again that she’s not an actress who’s afraid to stand up for herself. The 19-year-old starlet revealed in an interview with Cosmopolitan Magazine that she fired her publicist over a racially insensitive remark she made.

“I didn’t like my hair and makeup one time on a photo shoot, and my publicist told me, ‘You should just be happy with it — they haven’t had a black girl on the cover since forever,'” Zendaya said in her cover story for the magazine’s July issue. “She’s no longer my publicist.”

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Zendaya did not name the magazine, but she has appeared on the covers of a long list of magazines recently. Some of these magazines include: Wonderland, Marie Claire, W, Teen Vogue, Galore, Flare, and Modeliste.

As mentioned before, Zendaya has become known for speaking up for herself.

As The New York Daily News reports, Zendaya (full name: Zendaya Coleman) recently got into it on Twitter with comedian Julie Klausner.

Julie claimed that Zendaya was a bad role model for young girls because she is so thin.

“Zendaya’s ultimate retort to Giuliana Rancic is starving herself down to the size of one of her elbowz,” the 37-year old star of Difficult People tweeted. “You don’t have to have an eating disorder to attend the Kids’ Choice Awards….but it helps!”

Klausner also claimed that Zendaya was a “thinspo” model for young women who is irresponsibly influencing “impressionable tweens.”

But Zendaya did not take that comment sitting down.

“Do you find this funny?” the former Disney star said in response. “I will write another paragraph to educate you as well.”

She then reminded Klausner of the beef she had with Giuliana Rancic over Zendaya’s hairstyle at the 2015 Academy Awards.

The Fashion Police host made a comment that Zendaya’s faux locks smelled like the “patchouli oil… and maybe weed.”

Coleman called out Rancic and said, “to say that an 18 year old young woman with locs must smell of patchouli oil or ‘weed’ is not only a large stereotype but outrageously offensive.”

Giuliana ended up apologizing to Zendaya.

“#youreallywannabenext,” Coleman tweeted to Klausner.

Zendaya has actually spoken out against magazines altering her photos to make her look thinner, The Hollywood Reporter notes. In October, 2015, Modeliste came under fire for using too much Photoshop on her photos.

“Had a new shoot come out today and was shocked when I found my 19-year-old hips and torso quite manipulated. These are the things that make women self conscious, that create the unrealistic ideals of beauty that we have,” she wrote in a caption on a side-by-side shot of the original photo and the altered photo.

“Anyone who knows who I am knows I stand for honest and pure self love. So I took it upon myself to release the real pic (right side) and I love it.”

In the Cosmopolitan interview, Zendaya also talked about the fact that she’s going to be returning to The Disney Channel. But this time she’s going to have more power; she’s going to be a producer.

“The only way I was going to come back to the Disney Channel was if I was in a position of more power,” she said.

“One thing that is really important to me is diversity on the channel. It’s hard as a young person of a different ethnicity or background to look at the TV and not see anyone who looks like you. Representation is important,” she added.

[Photo by Jason Laveris/Getty Images]

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