Hilaria Baldwin pretended to be Spanish wtf?!

[Ballstothis148]

This is the least important and most weird story of 2020.... this woman comes up on my Instagram a lot as a suggested page. Tbh I don’t find her interesting but know she’s Spanish and is into health, having babies with Alec Baldwin and that’s pretty much it. She speaks with a Spanish accent, on her IG page she calls her children “Baldwinitos” I do remember an article saying when she speaks Spanish to her kids people confuse her for a nanny so I thought an interesting take on a European mum in the States.

Except it’s all a lie. She’s not remotely Spanish. Her wealthy Boston parents (no Spanish ancestry) now have a holiday home there.

What is wrong with people?! I include me for being too interested :) why pretend to be Spanish? In one interview she even pretended she didn’t know the word for cucumber as her English isn’t that good

Oh and she’s not even called Hilaria, she’s called Hilary. This year I swear... what an odd story!! I did know a girl who went very French after a romance there one year... maybe it’s a thing!

@zanahoria - I thought you were going to say Antonio Banderas was faking being Spanish as well - that would have been a shock!!!

Looking at the hilarious Hilaria story online, she comes across as a grifter who has invented a character for her online presence & probably started to half believe her own nonsense. Her family have probably being saying 'you're not really Spanish, you know' for years and then just gave up as she was so self absorbed it made no difference.

It is a silly story about a silly, privileged, rich person who will carry on being silly, privileged and rich. No one is being destroyed, just the subject of some well deserved laughter at their expense. Hilary will carry on being wealthy and living in luxury, so need to call Amesty on her behalf

Naturally she isn’t an “all-American” blonde/blue eyed girl. She couldn’t make it in Hollywood as a white American teen as she didn’t fit the aesthetic. This probably started her enamour of “being Spanish” for acceptance.

Since 2007 Kim Kardashian catapulted the “Latina aesthetic” to be exotic, sexy and desirable. Hilary may have already started slightly imitating Spanish culture, then found that she got more kudos by pretending to be Spanish in America. She was suddenly considered cool & attractive enough to be accepted by Hollywood and created “Hilaria” to keep up the facade.

At the time she had the luxury of being an older adult, so her formative years are not archived on the internet, giving her the perfect tabula rasa to recreate her childhood in Spain as it would be difficult to disprove.

Her family/friends probably attributed her changing identity to her seeking celebrity status. Her story of being bilingual and flitting between the 2 accents and “media exaggerating her ethnicity” is explanation enough for them. There’s enough truth to blur the lines.

@Alondra I appreciate you are not going to reply to this thread any more, but the fact that Spanish is a "basic phonetic language" (I assume you mean that each sound (phoneme) is represented by a single letter or combination of letters), and the fact that it has only five basic vowel sounds, surely makes it easier for a non-native speaker to master, not harder. As you say, it's Spanish speakers who have difficulty pronouncing more phonetically complex languages like English.

My hunch is that she had Spanish nannies, as others have suggested (and Ireland Baldwin's post about "you don't know who she was raised by" kind of implies). She probably doesn't want to admit that, as she will then be hauled over the coals for being a privileged rich girl appropriating the heritage of the staff. She has been very vague about her upbringing and links to Spain, and I can only assume this is because there is no explanation that will make her look good and justify her claims.

Okay, fully admit I live under a rock and have no clue who this woman is.

My "American" friend when I worked was like this.

Croydon born and bred, but her family have a villa in Florida they spent six weeks a summer in.

She spoke with a strong New Jersey accent 😳😂

Naturally she isn’t an “all-American” blonde/blue eyed girl. She couldn’t make it in Hollywood as a white American teen as she didn’t fit the aesthetic. This probably started her enamour of “being Spanish” for acceptance.

But she was never 'trying to make it in Hollywood'. She's a yoga instructor who became a minor celebrity when she married a past his prime actor and started posting every yoga pose and breast pumping session on Instagram.

I was once sent a questionnaire from the NHS which asked me to tick my race. It had Asian (Indian), Asian (Pakistani), Asian (other), Chinese, Chinese (other).

I was extremely confused as I'm pretty sure China is in Asia and what on Earth is Chinese (other)?

I think by definition ethnicity is what we define ourselves as based on language, culture, etc.

If she only started NYU at age 19, she likely graduated high school at 17 or 18, maybe she did a gap year or two in Spain, where her Spanish accent was more finely developed.

@Alondra I'm also a Spaniard. And the fact that she speaks almost perfect Castilian is not that shocking, honestly.

As Spanish people, we tend to pretend that just because most of us can't speak English without a strong Spanish accent, no one else in the world would be able to learn a foreign language properly.
What you say is not true - many Spaniards without a PhD in English are able to not display their strong Spanish accent, including myself.

I was raised trilingual. Spanish, Catalan and my parents' mother tongue. I only learnt English at school (not a posh British school, just your normal town school) and moved to the UK when I was a teenager, I can assure you I do NOT have a Spanish accent. I didn't have the slightest idea until someone (a Brit) pointed it out to me and I heard a recording of myself speaking English. I was not saying es-chool, es-pain, or pronouncing soft Bs and the likes.

Why? Because I'd always had British teachers for English at school and they were adamant we pronounced properly, I lived with British people once I moved to England and made an effort to learn how to make those sounds we don't have in Spanish. Being raised trilingual probably helped with this, because each one of those 3 languages has unique sounds so learning new ones isn't a challenge for me.

Just because she speaks such good Castilian doesn't mean anything. She's probably learnt it as a young child, and has spent extensive periods of time surrounded by Spaniards/watching Spanish TV.

@IcedPurple you sound naive. Her minor celebrity status wasn’t accidental. When younger she seemed to take any opportunity judging by the random cooking show and latin magazine covers etc. She’s practically 40 now, she could easily avoid social media at her age and live off her familial wealth. Instead she’s trying to be an influencer. She’s in the spotlight because she always wanted to be.

I once knew a woman who was born to American parents on an American air base. She spoke with an American accent, was familiar with American food products and tv shows, was an American citizen but had never left the uk.

Did she actually say she was Spanish?

She is a spanish 'phile.'

She speaks it, has family links there, loves the culture, likes the spanish version of her name, named her kids spanish names, bringing them up bilingual etc etc.

All this may have given people the impression she is spanish, but did she actually lie and say she was?

That's probably why Alex isn't shocked, he knows Spain is something very important and influential to her but knew she wasn't spanish.

This does feel like a gleeful socila media take down to me. She is still a person having to ensure this.

Amy Shumer seems deeply unpleasant.
There are worse things than loving Spain too much.

She's a yoga instructor who became a minor celebrity when she married a past his prime actor and started posting every yoga pose and breast pumping session on Instagram.

It's what she identifies as that matters, isn't it though, and that is an A-list instamum and celebrity influencer (quoting Jim Royle, "my arse!")

[quote Vitaminsss]@IcedPurple you sound naive. Her minor celebrity status wasn’t accidental. When younger she seemed to take any opportunity judging by the random cooking show and latin magazine covers etc. She’s practically 40 now, she could easily avoid social media at her age and live off her familial wealth. Instead she’s trying to be an influencer. She’s in the spotlight because she always wanted to be.[/quote]
Well yes.

Did you miss the bit where I mentioned her sharing every intimate detail of her life on Instagram?

only one way to redeem herself now.

Sexto bebe

I hope she changes her Twitter profile.

Hilaria Baldwin 🇪🇸 🥘 🍷
Ella/La

I am American born from a city on the US/Mexico border.

My father was born in Mexico and emigrated at age 20; my mother was born in the US. All four of my grandparents were born and raised in Mexico.

I call myself "Mexican-American", "Chicano" or "Hispanic".

I have spoken Spanish all my life (it was my first language) but I have a typical American accent when I speak English.

I have a Spanish first name and I've never Anglicized it. My two sons have English names but my daughter has a Spanish name but with her father's northern English last name (it's a place name near Manchester).

In other words, even with my Mexican ethnicity, I don't consider myself exclusively Mexican. I grew up literally two miles from the border and went to Mexico every single week to visit family when I was young but I'm definitely more American. But, I'm too Mexican to be accepted as fully-American by Americans and too American to be accepted as fully-Mexican by Mexicans. Why anyone would want to put themselves, on purpose, through that is just weird. I'd love to live my life without discrimination due to my ethnicity in both countries but I suppose it's just me.

My oldest son is from my first husband who is a Mexican-American too and was born in the US but we moved to England, after I remarried to an Englishman, when he was three and we stayed until he was 13. He was raised like an English child and clearly still (he's 28) concerns himself with England but he's never called himself, "English". That would be weird.

Btw, a person from Spain is not considered "Hispanic" to me. I just refer to them as either "Spanish" or "European". "Hispanic" refers to people who were colonized by people of the Iberian peninsula, hence why Brazil is referred to as a Latin-American/ Hispanic country.

All this may have given people the impression she is spanish, but did she actually lie and say she was?

She affected a 'Spanish' accent and pretended not to know how to say 'cucumber' in English.

Also, her own bio on a website where you can book her for speaking engagements (presumbly in her native language, Spanish?) lists her as born in Mallorca.

www.caa.com/caaspeakers/hilaria-baldwin

There are worse things than loving Spain too much.

She loves Spain so much, yet seems to have never spent any extended time there?

@BlackCatShadow @TheVamoosh she did not grow up in Spain and the US! She grew up in the US and did her entire schooling there. She went to Spain on holidays same as half the U.K. and her parents retired to a holiday home there! She has no Spanish links at all.

It’s like me saying I’m Italian as I’ve been there on holiday 5 times!! She’s a total nutcase!!

@SnowyOwlWan

I don't think so. In my humble opinion she just got carried a way with a version of herself but because it's all so public, she's been rumbled spectacularly. Lots of people have embellished their family backgrounds to sound more interesting.

I think, as she was doing it, she thought ''it could be interpreted that way'' so that in the moment, she didn't feel that she was lying. I reckon she thought, I have family in spain, I speak spanish, I spent some of my childhood there, my parents are there now......

So it kind of felt like the truth to her.

Also a possibility.

@StealthPolarBear

I do love a call for "peer reviewed sources" on a gossip thread. Not just this one, it's everywhere on MN.

Its not though. Its a plea to stop quoting Wikipeadia verbatim as if its the gospel because its not accurate. Which ironically has completely passed you by.

*I don't think so. In my humble opinion she just got carried a way with a version of herself but because it's all so public, she's been rumbled spectacularly. Lots of people have embellished their family backgrounds to sound more interesting.

I think, as she was doing it, she thought ''it could be interpreted that way'' so that in the moment, she didn't feel that she was lying. I reckon she thought, I have family in spain, I speak spanish, I spent some of my childhood there, my parents are there now......

So it kind of felt like the truth to her.*

I agree with this.
She's guilty, it seems, of being a bit affected.

Embarassing, but not suprising given the celeb/insta culture, and not the crime of the century.

Poor women.

@RosesinGranGransgarden

So this begs the question: what is race/ ethnicity/ nationality. My df is from a non European country but I have had no contact with him or anyone from his country. When I was about 12 I went through a really cringey faze of putting up posters of the country, listening to the ‘indigenous’ music of the country, trying to cook the food, dressing in the football kit etc. Was that any less of an appropriation because of my genetics? It was still a British person doing a pastiche of what they believe that country’s culture is, with no insight into what it is to ‘be’ that nationality. IMO Hilary seems to be doing the same.

You weren't appropriating as you.are genetically partly of that race. Just like those in the US who had Irish ancestors come over during the potato famine and play up their Irishness. Or those people who are 1/4 or 1/8 or 1/16 native American/Roma/Jewish/ Black and define themselves that way even if they have none of the religious or cultural ties. It's ok to do because it isn't lying and doesn't take away from those people who are first or second generation of that culture and who have close ties with it

It would be appropriation if they had 0% DNA that was of a certain culture or race and claimed it was part of their ethnicity. If you have a drop of that ethnic group you aren't lying to claim it, though obviously there is a big difference between being raised in that culture and raised as it presenting that ethnicity as just having a bit of it in your DNA. I would still say the latter case isn't deceit or actively harmful though.

This
I agree let’s all be kind. So she exaggerates her Spanish connection. I have read that school friends and her step daughter all say she is a kind person. Leave her alone.

[quote EileenGC]@Alondra I'm also a Spaniard. And the fact that she speaks almost perfect Castilian is not that shocking, honestly.

As Spanish people, we tend to pretend that just because most of us can't speak English without a strong Spanish accent, no one else in the world would be able to learn a foreign language properly.
What you say is not true - many Spaniards without a PhD in English are able to not display their strong Spanish accent, including myself.

I was raised trilingual. Spanish, Catalan and my parents' mother tongue. I only learnt English at school (not a posh British school, just your normal town school) and moved to the UK when I was a teenager, I can assure you I do NOT have a Spanish accent. I didn't have the slightest idea until someone (a Brit) pointed it out to me and I heard a recording of myself speaking English. I was not saying es-chool, es-pain, or pronouncing soft Bs and the likes.

Why? Because I'd always had British teachers for English at school and they were adamant we pronounced properly, I lived with British people once I moved to England and made an effort to learn how to make those sounds we don't have in Spanish. Being raised trilingual probably helped with this, because each one of those 3 languages has unique sounds so learning new ones isn't a challenge for me.

Just because she speaks such good Castilian doesn't mean anything. She's probably learnt it as a young child, and has spent extensive periods of time surrounded by Spaniards/watching Spanish TV. [/quote]
My granny was Spanish... well Catalan, she was fairly particular about that, lol.

She didn’t have a phd in English, but didn’t have a Spanish accent...

She did have a very slight ‘not English’ accent, but if people noticed it they usually asked if she was German lol

She was bilingual in Catalan and Castilian as a child and learned other languages after that though before moving to the U.K. at 30, where she spoke English always, even to her children.

My cousin was born and raised in Spain to a Brazilian mother and English father... she speaks Portuguese, English, Catalan and Castilian all with the appropriate accents despite only having had holidays elsewhere.

I think people assume accents are hard if they can’t do them (I can’t, I can do some dismiss, but it has a Scottish accent, lol) but they’re not hard for everyone.