Leigh-Anne Pinnock calls out newspaper mix up with Jade Thirlwall after Little Mix pregnancy announcements
It's been a joyful few days in the world of Little Mix, with news breaking that not one but two of the band's members are soon to become mums.
Leigh-Anne Pinnock and her fiancé Andre Gray announced on 4 May that they're expecting with a stunning photo shoot.
Along with a series of beautiful pictures Leigh-Anne wrote, "We've dreamed about this moment for so long and we can't believe the dream is finally coming true... we can't wait to meet you. ❤️😍."
Then, just a few days later, Leigh-Anne's bandmate Perrie Edwards revealed that she and partner Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are also parents-to-be.
"So happy to be on this wild journey with my soulmate," the singer wrote. "Me + Him = You 🌎♥️ We can’t wait to meet you baby Ox!"
It should be a time of pure celebration for the women of Little Mix, but instead, Leigh-Anne has taken to social media to call out a mix up in newspaper reporting that has left her clearly frustrated.
Leigh-Anne shared an image of today's Metro front page (11 May) on Little Mix's Twitter account, highlighting that the paper had captioned an image of her and Andre incorrectly as "Jade with Andre."
Why is it that the two women of colour are always mistaken for each other? 10 years in and still this is happening. This is the type of shit Jade and I have had to deal with for 10 years and this is another reason as to why I was fuelled to make my doc. #DOBETTER
Leigh x pic.twitter.com/dVu3TGEAyC— Little Mix (@LittleMix) May 11, 2021
"Why is it that the two women of colour are always mistaken for each other? 10 years in and still this is happening. This is the type of shit Jade and I have had to deal with for 10 years and this is another reason as to why I was fuelled to make my doc," Leigh-Anne wrote, adding the hashtag #DOBETTER.
The error confuses Leigh-Anne, who's of Caribbean heritage and identifies as Black, with bandmate Jade Thirlwall, who's of Egyptian and Yemeni heritage. It's not the first time the two women have been misidentified in media coverage - in 2020, a story shared on MSN about Jade's experience of racism at school was accompanied by a picture of Leigh-Anne.
At the time, Jade took to social media to say: “You might want to make sure you’re using an image of the correct mixed race member of the group.”
Metro said of today's error: "In today's paper, we wrongly captioned pictures of Little Mix’s Leigh-Anne Pinnock as Jade Thirlwall. We are sorry for the error and are happy to set the record straight."
In today's paper, we wrongly captioned pictures of Little Mix’s Leigh-Anne Pinnock as Jade Thirlwall. We are sorry for the error and are happy to set the record straight.
— Metro Newspaper UK (@MetroUKNews) May 11, 2021
Leigh-Anne's tweet refers to a BBC documentary she's worked on that airs this week called Leigh-Anne: Race, Pop & Power. In it, she confronts her experience as the only Black member of Little Mix, and as a Black woman in the music industry.
"Leigh-Anne takes a look at the complexities and impact of unconscious bias, racial stereotyping and colourism both in and away from the public eye," the BBC says of the documentary.
Away from the documentary, Leigh-Anne has been vocal about issues related to racial equality. She's previously spoken about how important it is - especially for the younger generation - to see more representation of Black love. "I definitely don’t think there’s enough," she explained.
"There is so much positivity that comes from Black love and actually seeing it on our screens and in the media - and there’s so much work to do with that. It’s definitely not celebrated enough. There’s just something so powerful about a Black couple."
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