Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Annemarie Wiley took to Instagram on Saturday to slam a racist caricature of her. “Drawing a black woman as a gorilla is disgusting and completely unacceptable!” Wiley fumed. “This is an entirely different level of RACISM and HATRED!”
The drawing was featured on a popular digital art account with over 90,000 followers that often posts unflattering mock-ups of celebrities with comically enlarged features. It depicts Wiley with extremely exaggerated chest, arm, and shoulder muscles and a dark, heavy brow.
In her response, Wiley criticized the artist for repeating racist tropes about Black women and for seemingly mocking her profession as a nurse anesthetist by adding a propofol bottle as a necklace pendant.
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“Throughout history black women have been villainized as combative, aggressive, angry, dangerous, and ‘animalistic’ at every opportunity!” the reality TV star wrote. “I am a mother. I take care of people for a living. There is a kind hearted human with feelings, children, and a REAL life behind the snippets you see on a reality tv show.”
Wiley added that as a former college athlete who still wakes up before dawn every day to work out, she was proud of being a role model for young girls and women who “don’t fit the ‘model mold.’”
“You can be strong, athletic, and proud of yourself,” Wiley wrote. “Enough of the racism and enough of the cyber bullying.”
