With all the general feelings of frustration that come with the COVID-19 chatter, people are doing everything they can in order to keep their anxiety about the situation at bay. In Halle Berry’s household, she and her children are combatting fear with laughs—yet their attempt at entertainment brought out the worst in a few of her Instagram followers.
In a video posted last week, Maceo, Berry’s son with ex-husband Gabriel Martinez, was recorded walking around in a pair of pretty damn fierce white knee-high heeled boots. The 6-year-old was struggling to find his footing (as most children would) and click-clacked up the stairs in the much-too-large shoes. While many people generally wouldn’t see the harm in the video, many others love to find the bad in virtually anything, so of course, ugly comments were made.
A few commenters said they were “hoping” the child wearing the shoes was Berry’s pre-teen daughter Nahla, while another said that “this is how it starts.” (If they are referring to homosexuality as the “it” that is perceivably starting here, hate to break it to them, but this is not how it starts. We’ve got weeks left in the house, might we recommend some independent study regarding gender and sexuality?)
Classy is as classy does, and the Oscar-winning actress is entirely unbothered by the entire non-troversy. She wrote in response to the rude comments: “[This is] harmless fun. It’s tight on these kids right now. Let’s have a laugh and some compassion yawl!” She also reiterated that times are tough, and there are more important things to concern ourselves with today. “Tryna survive right now, You feel me?” she wrote.
Berry spoke about teaching her children about acceptance in a 2019 interview with Us Weekly, noting that she took her son to the L.A. Pride Festival so that he could be surrounded by different people and figure out things about himself as time passes.
“My job is to bring him down here, let him experience the love, the unity and discover on his own what this is all about,” she said. “I think that’s what my job is. It’s not to mind-lead, it’s to lead an experience.”
Her job, not yours. So please: focus on flattening the curve, washing your hands, and trying to stay TF indoors so we can all click-clack our way to weekend brunch sooner rather than later.