Hilaria Baldwin Is Defending Herself & Her Spanish Accent After That Viral Twitter Thread

The internet has proven to have an unforgiving record of calling out celebs for questionable parts of their past. And thanks to a new thread on Twitter, Hilaria Baldwin has come under fire for apparently faking her Spanish accent, claiming she was born in Spain, and going by the name Hilaria instead of ‘Hillary’ — which is her real name. It started with a now-viral thread that read, “You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person” and went on to show video clips of her “fake Spanish accent” and articles stating that she was born in Spain, instead of Boston, Massachusetts. Now, the influencer and wife of Alex Baldwin is speaking out about the controversy after receiving questions from the press and admitting that there was “some stuff that needs to be clarified.”

Earlier today, Baldwin shared two Instagram video posts that she hopes will clear up the situation. “A bit about me. I’ve seen chatter online questioning my identity and culture. This is something I take very seriously, and for those who are asking — I’ll reiterate my story, as I’ve done many times before,” she wrote.

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In the post’s caption and video, Baldwin admits that she was born in the United States, despite the fact that her bio on her agency’s speakers site states that Hilaria was born in Majorca, Spain. She explained her name change by saying that her family calls her ‘Hilaria’ although her given name is ‘Hillary’. And she said that she was born in a bilingual household and that her “mixing up” her words from Spanish to English (see her not knowing how to say ‘cucumber’ in English) is actually a bit of an insecurity of hers.

Commenters online have since criticized her for cultural appropriation and have taken the position that her accent and name change are part of a years-long lie about her true ethnicity. “I’ve seen some things saying, ‘Oh, she’s a white girl’ and yes, I am a white girl. And let’s be very clear that Europe has a lot of white people in there, and my family is white. Ethnically, I’m a mix of many, many, many things, and culturally, I grew up with the two cultures. It really is simple as that,” Baldwin clapped back.

A few hours after her first video, Baldwin returned to Instagram to share more of her thoughts about the situation.

“Hello again, it’s me…. This seems to need further clarification. So I’m going through this point by point,” Baldwin captioned her video. In the clip, she says, “I don’t know why it’s turned into such a thing” while Alec, off camera, can be heard asking, “Why has it?”

“I don’t know why I’m caring right now,” she says, but then explains that she cares because “my thing is about being authentic and then if people say that I’m not being authentic that it hurts my feelings.” Things about her, she says, have been misconstrued. Baldwin goes on to say that she’s “proud” of having two cultures and speaking two languages, and that she’s raising her kids that way. “I don’t really think that that’s a negative thing,” she says.

“I kind of want to say just, leave me alone. Leave me alone. I’m not doing anything wrong by being me, and maybe that doesn’t look like somebody who you’ve met before, but I mean, isn’t that the beauty of diversity?” the mother of five said while getting emotional. “If you don’t understand my story, it’s not that there’s something wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

So…don’t hold your breath and expect an apology from Hilaria any time soon. She ended her video by saying she would not be apologizing for her identity and life experience.

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