Hilaria Baldwin addresses cultural appropriation claims again
Lifestyle influencer Hilaria Baldwin insisted Wednesday to The New York Times that she's never been unclear about her true heritage.
"The things I have shared about myself are very clear," she said. "I was born in Boston. I spent time in Boston and in Spain ... I moved to New York when I was 19 years old and I have lived here ever since. For me, I feel like I have spent 10 years sharing that story over and over again. And now it seems like it's not enough."
The bilingual fitness model and yoga instructor, who is married to actor Alec Baldwin, called it "very disappointing" that a now-scrubbed bio on her acting agency page previously noted she was "born in Mallorca, Spain, and raised in Boston, Massachusetts."
She told The New York Times that "she can only assume the agency used unverified information from the Internet to write a sloppy bio."
The interview with the Times comes after a Twitter user accused Baldwin of a "decades long grift in which she impersonates a Spanish person," sharing clips appearing to speak at times with an accent. That accuser, who subsequently made her viral tweets private, talked to the Times under the condition of anonymity.
The Twitter user told the Times that Baldwin's claims were an "open secret," adding that the "grift" tweet string came from the fact that, "We're all bored and it's just seemed so strange to me that no one had ever come out and said it, especially for someone who gets so much media attention."
The flap sent Baldwin to Instagram over the weekend to "clarify" some details. The mother of three insisted that she's a "white girl" born "Hillary," not Hilaria, which she said is what her Spanish relatives called her and she eventually adopted professionally.
Baldwin also chalked up to nervousness appearances in which she seemed to drift into a Spanish accent. The Twitter user that started the controversy cited a television show cooking segment during which Baldwin claimed on camera not to know the English for "cucumber." Baldwin insisted on Instagram, "Sometimes I mess it up. It's not something I'm playing at."
Denying accusations of cultural appropriation, Baldwin also told The New York Times that her parents' frequent vacations to Spain, where they now live in retirement, shaped her life.
"Who is to say what you're allowed to absorb and not absorb growing up?" she told the publication. "This has been a part of my whole life and I can't make it go away just because some people don't understand it."
