When answering Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire, Zendaya sidesteps a heteronormative question and provides a more gender-inclusive response.
In addition to recently pranking Marvel Cinematic Universe fans with fake Spider-Man 3 titles alongside her co-stars Tom Holland and Jacob Batalon, Zendaya has also just made the cover for Vanity Fair’s 27th Annual 27th Hollywood Issue along with formidable Hollywood stars LaKeith Stanfield, Sacha Baron Cohen, Michael B. Jordan, Maya Rudolph, and Awkwafina, among others.
Vanity Fair also released an interview with the Euphoria and Malcolm & Marie star, which featured the magazine administering a Proust Questionnaire to Zendaya. The 35-question survey was meant to give viewers a better understanding of what Zendaya is really like through a bevy of personality revealing questions, but the Vanity Fair interview has recently gone viral for the wrong reason.
The questionnaire began smoothly, which prompts such as “What is your idea of perfect happiness?” and “Which talent would you most like to have?” Yet, when Zendaya was hit with a strikingly heteronormative question, she took a moment to correct it before moving forward.
At around the 3:10 mark in the video, Zendaya is asked, “What is the quality you most like in a man?” In response to the question, the Spider-Man actress is visibly not impressed with how the question is worded, and she subsequently rephrases it in a more gender-inclusive way before answering it.
“Um—I most like in a person, how about that?” she answers. “Oh, it’s such a big question. What is the quality I like most in someone? I would say kindness is kinda not the best way to describe it, but some people are just good people and you can just feel it. And I don’t know how to explain that, but there’s like this little spark they have or this little special thing that they have that just—you feel safe and happy around them. I don’t know what that is, but some people have it, and it’s special.”
Once Twitter caught wind of Zendaya’s interview, many users were quick to praise and applaud the actress for defying Hollywood’s heternomortavity.
To hear all of Zendaya’s responses to Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire, check out the video below.
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