Actress, producer and entrepreneur Tracee Ellis Ross has been dubbed the poster child of many things. But she’d prefer to be the face of living life on your own terms – even though it’s not an easy ride.  

I like to wear the clothes rather than have the clothes wear me, and I know when something feels good.” That’s Tracee’s philosophy in fashion and, seemingly, in life too. She’s wearing life, and she’s very intentional about it – who she hangs out with, how she represents herself online, her acting roles and the kind of business she does.  

But she’s the first to admit that she did not “wake up like this” – in fact, that Beyoncé song was “challenging” for her. It took her years to build this life and to live it with confidence – and now that she’s in her 50s, Tracee feels she’s only just got to the best bit yet, she shared during an interview with The Guardian. “I have struggled with perfectionism,” she admits, “and now I shun it. I want to be in a relationship with myself as I am.”  

The ross residence

If the cascading curls and grace didn’t give it away, then you might be surprised to hear that Tracee is the daughter of the Diana Ross. But she was taught from a young age that having a superstar for a mother was not a free ticket. “I’ve always been taught that you work for the things you want,” she told The Guardian. “My mom always joked: ‘I’m not leaving you guys any of this money. I made this money for me! I’ll make sure there’s a roof over your head. You can have health insurance and food. But other than that…’  I mean, I had a job in high school. I worked as a salesperson at Ralph Lauren. My mom was like, ‘If you want to keep buying those clothes, you’re going to have to figure out how to pay for them.’ There was a commitment on her part to a normalcy that I have taken into my adult life.”  

Tracee attended prestigious schools in Switzerland and France, and grew up around her family’s famous friends such as Andy Warhol, Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye. Despite Diana’s incredible success, she showed up for her kids as best she could:
She would record at night, after she put the kids to bed, then wake them up in the morning when she got back from the studio. Then they’d have breakfast together. The kids never went longer than a week without seeing their mom and when she was away, she would call at bedtime and in the morning to chat to them, Tracee recalls.  

She believes the foundation of her self-assurance was her sense that she was a “wanted child” who her mom made space for and was present as much as possible. “I come from an abundance of love in a way that I feel beyond grateful for, because it gave me a foundation and a sense of how to show up in my life for other people and for myself,” she explained to NPR. Nevertheless, this didn’t shield teenage Tracee from life. She remembers loving clothes since she was a little girl, donning her mom’s heels and playing in her closet. However, clothing became an armour to “protect” herself during high school. “If my outfit was good, I felt that I could conquer the entire world,” she told Elle magazine.  

Meanwhile, Tracee was also noticing how her hair affected her place in the world. “As a child, I just had wild and free Tracee hair, which I was fine with. But then when you hit high school, you start interacting with the patriarchy,” she explained. “And then there was also the media’s idea of what ‘beautiful’ is … all these commercials of ‘bouncing and behaving’ hair, ‘easy, breezy beautiful’ hair… I was seeing all these versions of what is considered beautiful everywhere and thought, ‘How do I get my hair to do that?”  

She remembers spending a lot of money on hair products trying to find the ‘right’ ones, until Tracee’s mother declared that she would have to fund her own hair experiments. Little did teenage Tracee know that one day, she’d found her own haircare company, transforming the industry she was struggling against.  

Setting the stage

“I wanted to be a woman on a stage in a sparkly dress. And it wasn’t the sparkly dress or the stage that was it. I wanted what that represented for me,” she mentions. “I saw my mom be a woman full of agency, who was not saying, ‘Look at me’, but ‘This is me.’ I saw a woman who was full of power and wielding it with grace and love as the anchor, and I wanted that.”   

Instead of easing things, being Diana Ross’ daughter only heaped on the pressure. “When I was starting in my career, being the child of somebody famous was not what it is today,” Tracee told The Guardian. “It might unlock the door, but the people sitting on the other side have their arms crossed and are asking: ‘OK, is she as good as her mom?’”  

Although she earned a degree in theatre arts from Brown University, Tracee didn’t pursue acting after graduation. She spent several years working as a stylist and later as an editor for fashion magazines such as Mirabella and New York. She dabbled in modelling before getting parts in numerous movies and talk shows in the late 1990s. Tracee became a household name once she landed the role of Joan Clayton in the TV series Girlfriends, which ran for eight seasons over eight years.   

When the show wrapped in 2008, there was a “grieving process” she had to work through, she told Harper’s Bazaar. “It was such a huge portion of who I was and had become. Especially because Joan wore a lot of Tracee’s clothes. Joan and Tracee’s hairstyles were the same. All my favourite lipsticks were Joan’s favourite lipsticks. My shoes were Joan’s favourite shoes. And although we weren’t the same person in any way, shape, or form, my physical self was really being utilised. It took me time to kind of figure out who I was again.”  

@harpersbazaar @Tracee Ellis Ross did what she had to do. #Girlfriends #TraceeEllisRoss #TheGoodBuy ♬ original sound – Harper’s BAZAAR

However, it was also the end of a time when she spoke up – and was ignored. “There were a lot of instances on Girlfriends when I used my voice powerfully and it wasn’t well received,” she explains. “People don’t want to be told that what they’re doing might not be the right thing or might not make everybody happy. But I am somebody who — I don’t just go along to get along.”  

And that was the last time. On the set of Black-ish, the Emmy- award winning show that also ran for almost a decade, she used her voice and made sure it was heard. Tracee was hesitant at first to accept the role of Dr Rainbow “Bow” Johnson, an anaesthesiologist, wife and mother of five children. Her fear? Being typecast as a mother. “Hollywood is limited in its thinking and particularly in its ability to see the elasticity and beauty of Black women and all that we can do,” she explained to NPR. “Sometimes the part might not be exactly right, but you turn it into what you want it to be.” And that’s exactly what she did.   

She advocated for Bow, pushing back when it seemed that she was only there to set up a joke for her husband with no life or point of view off-camera. “I was known for [being] the actor who would always say, ‘Yes, but why?’… I always look at: OK, does this ring true for the character? Does it ring true for the scene? And then how does it look in the larger context of television in general and what we’re sharing.”  

Unlike with Girlfriends, Tracee was ready for Black-ish to end although it would be hard. “I found my voice. It came before, but I really started using it during Black-ish.”  

Learning to be Tracee

Tracee isn’t afraid to share barefaced selfies, pajama party pictures and silly snaps with her 11.3 million followers on social media. Why? Because when she turned 49, she felt she needed to remind the world what self-care, self-love and joy looks like at that age – especially in a world obsessed with youth, she says. “I love posting about this because it gives you the full picture of who I am,” she explained to Elle. “I’m not always the perfect Tracee on the red carpet. That’s not how I wake up. Various other things are needed for that.”   

I FOUND MY VOICE. IT CAME BEFORE, BUT I REALLY STARTED USING IT DURING BLACK-ISH 

She continues to be questioned about her decision not to have children or a partner, to which she responds that she doesn’t mind being asked since it’s an opportunity to change the narrative. “I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure out how to love myself in a world that says that without a partner or without children, I’m not worthy of love,” she shares. “And it’s a daily reprieve on bumping up against that in a world that doesn’t always support that, or celebrate it the way I do.” She’s been dubbed the “poster child for being single”, to which she has responded that she’d prefer to be the poster child for living life on her terms, and that there’s a version of that for everyone.  

Despite challenges, she declares that she’s the sexiest she’s ever been. “And when I say that, I mean I feel the most myself. And the information is just not out there. And it’s as if you get to this age and… It’s like, they’re going to cart me off in a canoe into no man’s land. Fuck that. Shut up. I’m going to be sexy all over the place,” she smiles. “Living my life with my juice.” And part of doing that is continuing to work on things that she believes in. One of which is her haircare company, PATTERN, which took ten years to bring to life and launched when she was 46 years old. ‘‘I created the company because the more I looked around, I realised I was not the only one. There was a vast community of people who were being underserved,” she told The Guardian.  

I’VE SPENT A LIFETIME TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO LOVE MYSELF IN A WORLD THAT SAYS THAT WITHOUT A PARTNER OR WITHOUT CHILDREN, I’M NOT WORTHY OF LOVE 

She makes it look easy, but this road to “learning to be me” has been a really long journey. “I tried being small and feeling things in little ways. It took me a long time to get to know myself, to accept myself, and even on some days to really like and love myself,” she shared with Harper’s Bazaar. “And then it took me a whole other load of years to have the courage to actually live in the world as that person. And it’s been trial and error, chewing on ground glass. It’s been a hard-earned journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance… The biggest epiphany and opening for me was that, no, the best I could do was actually be me.”  

Follow Tracee on Instagram: @traceeellisross

Words by Christi Nortier  

Photographs: Getty Images