Actress Tracee Ellis Ross is embracing a new outlook on life, one she didn’t get to overnight.
While Ross gets to enjoy what being a celebrity in the entertainment industry means, from having fame to money, she’s found that as a 48-year-old woman who’s never been married and hasn’t had children up against questions from fans, journalists and those close to her.
In a Thursday interview with Harper’s BAZAAR, Ross spoke about what it’s like having her personal life under public surveillance and viewed with an expectation that she should be a mother and wife by now. “I didn’t see enough examples of different versions of how a woman can find happiness and joy and power and sensuality, sexuality, all of that, without it being through the lens of how I’m seen by a man,” Ross said.
“People are like, ‘You’re the poster child for being single,’ ” she said, adding that her response to that is ‘Great.’ While Ross has confirmed that she would still love to get married and have children, she isn’t going to live by societal expectations. “What I would prefer is that I’m the poster child for living my life on my terms,” she said. “And that there’s a version of that for everyone.”
The “Girlfriends” star admitted that it took time for her to get to this point in her life. She said, “This is something that has really solidified itself into an unbreakable, unshakable foundation in the last four or five years. I don’t live my life for other people. I just totally live it for me.”
This is not the first time Ross has spoken about the pressures women face in society. In 2020, she spoke with Porter about wishing she had the option to picture her life from a different lens. “I wish I had known there were other choices, not just about how I could be living, but how I could feel about the way my life was. I was raised by society to dream of my wedding, but I wish I had been dreaming of my life.”
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