Eras of Her: Zen­daya’s Truth

Known as one of Dis­ney Chan­nel’s biggest stars, girl­friend of Tom Hol­land, fash­ion icon, and so much more, Zen­daya is one of to­day’s most fa­vored celebri­ties. Known mostly be­cause of her out­stand­ing per­for­mances that started long ago when she was just a teenager, she is cel­e­brated for her strik­ing ap­pear­ances in nu­mer­ous movies and shows in­clud­ing, but cer­tainly not lim­ited to, Eu­pho­ria, Spi­der­man, Shake It Up, The Great­est Show­man, and much, much more. 

But, this ac­tress is only part of the Zen­daya that peo­ple know. Who is she be­hind all of the cos­tumes, makeup, and stages? Is there any­thing es­pe­cially re­mark­able about her per­for­mances or her per­sona aside from her tal­ent of act­ing? 

Born and raised into Gen­er­a­tion Z, Zen­daya is an ad­vo­cate and icon for causes that not only seem im­por­tant to her, but that she knows are also ex­tremely im­por­tant to all of her fans, as well. When look­ing at her work with her shows, movies, mu­sic, and danc­ing, it seems that there is a greater pur­pose and story be­hind her per­for­mances that she specif­i­cally in­tended for. 

For ex­am­ple, did you know that in her show, K.C. Un­der­cover, she asked for her char­ac­ter to re­sem­ble spe­cific at­trib­utes? For her role as the lead char­ac­ter, K.C. Cooper, Zen­daya re­quested that she not have any ma­jor tal­ent, such as singing or danc­ing, and she just be an or­di­nary girl nav­i­gat­ing the hard­ships of her teen years, pu­berty, and pub­lic school. In an in­ter­view with Vogue in 2017, Zen­daya stated that she “wanted to make sure that [her char­ac­ter] was­n’t good at singing or act­ing or danc­ing. That she was­n’t ar­tis­ti­cally in­clined … There are other things that a girl can be…I want her to be mar­tial arts-trained. I want her to be able to do every­thing that a guy can do … But I also want her to be so­cially awk­ward, not a cool kid. I want her to be nor­mal with an ex­tra­or­di­nary life.” 

Photo cour­tesy of De­posit Pho­tos

Along with her act­ing, her ap­pear­ances at ma­jor events seem to also have a deeper mean­ing. Ar­riv­ing at the 2015 Os­cars with her hair in long, beau­ti­ful dread­locks, she ex­claimed later in an In­sta­gram post, af­ter re­ceiv­ing neg­a­tive feed­back from a re­porter, that she wanted to rep­re­sent her African Amer­i­can her­itage and what cer­tain hair styles can rep­re­sent. “…My wear­ing my hair in locs on an Os­car red car­pet was to show­case them in a pos­i­tive light, to re­mind peo­ple of color that our hair is good enough. To me, locs are a sym­bol of strength and beauty …” 

As a re­sult of her pow­er­ful move­ment, along with the back­lash she re­cieved from one re­porter that will re­main un­named, Mat­tel recre­ated her red car­pet look into a Bar­bie doll made just for Zen­daya. She adored the con­sid­er­a­tion and thought that went into the de­tail­ing of the minia­ture fig­ure and thanked Mat­tel, by ex­claim­ing how ex­cited she was that it looked just like her with the hair, out­fit, and even the jew­elry she wore on that spe­cial night. 

Photo cour­tesy of De­posit Pho­tos

More than just a pretty face and a strong ac­tress, Zen­daya is on a mis­sion to en­sure that all voices are heard and all gen­ders and peo­ple of color are seen. 

“Let’s prac­tice mo­ti­va­tion and love, not dis­crim­i­na­tion and hate.” — Zen­daya

Cred­its: 

https://​www.busi­nessin­sider.com/​zen­daya-ca­reer-evo­lu­tion-dis­ney-to-mar­vel-hol­ly­wood-2017-8#she-also-called-out-a-mag­a­zine-for-re­touch­ing-her-body-and-con­tribut­ing-to-un­re­al­is­tic-ideals-of-beauty-13

https://​www.brainyquote.com/​quotes/​zen­daya_754833