Gigi hadid zayn malik muslim6/29/2023 ![]() ![]() Their celebrity realities were miles away from any of ours, but they had backgrounds that made them blank slates for our versions of sweet, unremarkable, all-American stories.Ĭoverage of Gigi and Zayn, together or separately, meant seeing things like Eid al-Adha - a major Muslim holiday - casually mentioned in publications like People and E! Online after they marked it by taking a selfie with their mothers. They had been so unusual as a fantasy canvas to project the real Muslim romances I’d grown up watching onto: Zayn and Gigi were the couple that sat too close at Muslim Student Association meetings they were the desi and Arab pair kept apart by cultural differences the teenagers ducking into cars together when they’ve told their parents they’ve gone to the mosque. But I wasn’t really heartbroken over the breakup of Gigi and Zayn, the actual people, as much as I was at the end of the idea of their relationship, and what it had represented to me. And then I was suddenly sad, and then I was mostly embarrassed about being a 31-year-old woman who was this sad about the end of a relationship I wasn’t even in. I had been so wrapped up in Tuesday morning news that I was genuinely stunned when another editor at work asked if we’d be covering the story, which I’d heard nothing about. Zayn described Gigi as an “incredible soul” in her own statement, Gigi said she was “forever grateful for the love, time, and life lessons.” There was some minor drama over Zayn unfollowing Gigi and her mother, Yolanda Hadid, on Instagram - and the matter of a months-old tattoo of Gigi’s eyes across Zayn’s chest - but as far as celebrity breakups go, this seemed, at least publicly, to be pretty unremarkable. ![]() This week, the couple announced their split after more than two years together, and the breakup was as relatively drama-free as their relationship appeared to be. And seeing this desi-Arab-Muslim power couple together, in the pages of the same magazines I had flipped through as a celebrity-obsessed, boy band–loving, Palestinian, Muslim, American teen - looking for Muslim and Arab faces, and finding none - felt like something I had been waiting a long time for. A romance between two beautiful, successful celebrities isn’t exactly earth-shaking news, and Zayn and Gigi didn’t do anything especially interesting together: They posed in fashion shoots, walked the red carpet together, wore a couples costume for Halloween, and, of course, documented all of it on Instagram.īut what did matter to me is what also fascinated me about them separately: They both have Muslim heritage and are outspoken about how their backgrounds have shaped them. Zayn was in the process of launching his solo career after a dramatic break with One Direction. That was the year Gigi’s modeling career exploded, as she showed up in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” music video. I was a little too excited when Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid first began dating, way, way back in 2015. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |