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Taylor Russell Getty 1.jpg

Leave Taylor Russell Alone, You Racist Creeps

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | October 3, 2023 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | October 3, 2023 |

Taylor Russell Getty 1.jpg

This past weekend, actress Taylor Russell, star of Waves and Bones and All, appeared at Paris Fashion Week. Wearing a stunning metal coat sculpture by Loewe, for whom she is an ambassador, she sat front row by Josh O’Connor and Anna Wintour, giving her one of the most sought-after placements of the season.

Russell is a daring fashion figure as well as a celebrated actress currently receiving rave reviews for her West End theatre debut in Lucy Prebble’s The Effect. There’s a lot to be excited about with Russell, from her fascinating sartorial choices to her work with the likes of Luca Guadagnino to her impeccable charm in interviews. Oh, and she’s also possibly dating Harry Styles.

As you can imagine, that last part has become probably the defining part of her current public image. Styles is wildly famous and his love life has been obsessed over since he was a teenager. Every woman who has ever been even remotely connected to him has been subjected to a barrage of misogyny and hate from a vocal subset of his fandom. Olivia Wilde, who he dated after working with her on Don’t Worry Darling, was labelled a groomer hag for being in a relationship with a man who was pushing 30. Tess Ward, a food blogger who was merely rumoured to have dated Styles, saw her cookbook review bombed on Amazon and faced intense hate on social media, as did model Camille Rowe, who Styles apparently had a year-long relationship with.

So, alas, it’s not surprising in the least that Russell, a beautiful Black award-winning actress with a famous boyfriend, has become the subject of such attacks. It doesn’t take long to find the hatred online, whether it’s sad creeps on Twitter claiming she’s an ugly social climber, TikTok conspiracists insisting she’s the latest PR beard keeping Styles away from his true love Louis Tomlinson, or Reddit pages spinning dramatic tales of her sultry wiles that will devastate poor millionaire Harry.

The cycle of being the girlfriend, confirmed or otherwise, of an internet boyfriend begins anew. Same as it ever was.

With Russell, there is also the horrendous typhoon of racism on top of the misogyny. She’s a Black actress dating a white man who is more famous than she is, and therefore she is somehow the enemy to the white women who cannot let go of their inflated fantasies of Styles. All the screeds about her ugliness (which are so astonishingly and objectively false that it boggles the mind) are thinly veiled insults regarding her race. Her career achievements are invalid in the eyes of those who view any woman connected to Styles as a fame-hungry vulture using his spotless image to inflate their own egos. They love to claim that nobody knew who Taylor Russell, an award-winning actress and muse of a luxury fashion house, was until she met Styles. Then again, they said the same thing about Olivia Wilde, too. Facts don’t matter. These insults don’t even need to seem true. They’re just the same old insults used over and over again, to be recycled with every woman who dares to approach their beloved.

I doubt many of these so-called fans actually care about the person they spend so much time devouring. At the very least, they’re so wholly consumed by their conspiracies that they’ve grown more attached to a delusion of utmost misery than a true desire for happiness for their favourites.

Way too many people seem to prefer imagining these celebrities as victims of abuse and exploitation than well-adjusted and independent people with spouses who make them happy. These ardent Larries are too beholden to the blatant falsehood of Styles being a victim of over a decade of homophobic hate, and keeping the theory going requires that he always be desperately unhappy in their eyes. What’s the point of even calling yourself a fan at that point?

This mindset also reveals something I’ve written about too many times before: no woman will ever be ‘good enough’ for their favourites. They’re either going to be too old, too young, too famous, not famous enough, too Black, too smiley, not smiley enough, super fake, trying too hard, attention seeking, not willing to play the game, and so on. You don’t know what’s best for these people because the warped version you’ve created in your mind bears no resemblance to reality. Hell, even if all those Larry shippers were right and one day they got together, they still wouldn’t be happy. They’d keep coming up with more conspiracies because it’s all about the hunt, not the endgame. Just look at all the Free Britney people who are still dissecting her life for ‘proof’ that she needs their help, despite Spears’ own pushback.

And it sucks that so many brilliant, funny, talented, beautiful women are still just seen as plus-ones by the world, including other women. The people who matter aren’t going to decry an actress for dating someone who is also in the entertainment field. Maybe it’ll elevate her profile a little but she didn’t get to sit front row at Paris Fashion Week because of Harry Styles. She got that all on her own. Too many tinhatters appropriate historical industry stories, such as gay actors being forced into straight marriages, for their own nasty means and view the women involved as the villains of the system.

Taylor Russell is an immense talent with a bright future ahead of her. It’s always a thrill to see her turn up in an indie project or on a red carpet wearing the most astonishing couture. She doesn’t need a romance to up her profile, but she certainly deserves to be happy with whoever she chooses to date. I hope she’s unaware of the racism and misogyny these losers are bellowing at her online. The best revenge is living well, after all.