{"id":63509,"date":"2022-03-21T21:34:12","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T21:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63509"},"modified":"2022-03-21T21:34:13","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T21:34:13","slug":"adwoa-aboah-on-acting-recovery-and-her-racial-awakening-i-am-a-black-woman-i-have-a-lot-to-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63509","title":{"rendered":"Adwoa Aboah on acting, recovery and her racial awakening: \u2018I am a Black woman. I have a lot to say\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adwoa Aboah on acting, recovery and her racial awakening: \u2018I am a Black woman. I have a lot to say\u2019<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2022-03-19<\/p>\n

Hannah J. Davies<\/strong><\/a>, Deputy Editor, Newsletters, and a Culture Writer<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Adwoa Aboah<\/a>: \u2018Acting in Top Boy<\/em><\/a> was so out of my comfort zone.\u2019 Photograph: Andy Jackson\/The Guardian<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She is one of the world\u2019s most in-demand models, but it wasn\u2019t always this way. As she gets her big acting break in Top Boy<\/em><\/a>, she explains how she got through a tumultuous decade<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, Adwoa Aboah<\/a> experienced what she describes as \u201ca sombre moment\u201d. \u201cI was at my mum and dad\u2019s, clearing out my childhood room,\u201d she says, her voice a little shaky. \u201cI was going through all these old Vogues<\/em> I had kept, and I was like \u2026 \u2018Why did I do that? What was I looking at \u2026 who was I looking at?\u2019 Because no one in these magazines looks like me.\u201d Despite signing with the giant modelling agency Storm at 16, Aboah\u2019s self-esteem as a teenager and into her 20s was, she says, \u201cso low. I was on this trajectory of really wanting to be someone else. I couldn\u2019t count on my hands any models who looked like me who were killing it. Obviously there was Jourdan Dunn<\/a>, and Naomi Campbell<\/a>, but \u2026 \u201d she pauses, sighs. \u201cI didn\u2019t have the emotional intelligence, nor the language, to articulate why I wasn\u2019t doing well, why I wasn\u2019t in the places that I thought should have been an option for me. Why wasn\u2019t I being supported by British publications? I was like: \u2018Is it me? What\u2019s wrong with me?\u2019 Not in a kind of self-pitying way but \u2026 I just didn\u2019t understand.\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now 29, Aboah is one of Britain\u2019s most recognisable and successful models, as likely to be seen endorsing Dior or Burberry as H&M or Gap. She was named model of the year by the British Fashion Council<\/a> in 2017 and, in the same year, memorably featured on the cover of Edward Enninful\u2019s<\/a> first issue of British Vogue<\/em><\/a>, a vision of retro cool in a patterned headscarf and masses of blue eyeshadow. She\u2019s also an activist, having founded the organisation Gurls Talk<\/a> \u2013 which educates young women on topics including feminism, race, sex and body image \u2013 in 2015, and now she has her first regular acting role in the new series of Netflix\u2019s Top Boy<\/em><\/a>, one of the coolest shows on TV. It\u2019s hard to believe that Aboah ever felt like a misfit and, worse still, thought that it was somehow her fault…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She is one of the world\u2019s most in-demand models, but it wasn\u2019t always this way. As she gets her big acting break in “Top Boy,” she explains how she got through a tumultuous decade<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,13743,8,10],"tags":[33312,33313,24448,2103],"class_list":["post-63509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-adwoa-aboah","tag-adwoa-caitlin-maria-aboah","tag-hannah-j-davies","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63510,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63509\/revisions\/63510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}