Topics: Celebrity, History, Social Media, Racism, Instagram, Sex and Relationships, Parenting
Warning: this article contains racist comments towards Black people, which some readers may find distressing.
A body positive model revealed the messages she received after sharing images of her family online.
Iskra Lawrence, 35, has been a British plus size model for some time, and has been vocal about body shaming throughout her career.
But when she took to her Instagram account last week, it wasn’t to talk about her body, but about her relationship with music industry entrepreneur, Philip Payne.
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The couple first began their slow-burn romance after meeting at the Grammys after-party in 2018.
Payne and Lawrence started out as friends, before they fell in love and had two children together, a boy and a girl.
But when she shared an image of her happy family, social media commenters began to send her abuse.
Because of their different racial backgrounds.
Instead of flipping out on them (which would be understandable), Lawrence re-uploaded the family image, and superimposed the comments - with usernames on display- which shared the horrible things that was said to her.
Her caption wrote: “This is what racism looks like in 2026. Unfiltered. Unashamed. Loud.”
The model added: “After sharing this post of my family, I received messages saying our love is wrong, our children should not exist, and that harm toward us is inevitable. That is racism. It does not need softer language. It does not need to be explained away. It needs to be named.
“Black History Month is not a moment for surface level reflection. It is a reminder that the work is ongoing. At home. In schools . In community. In the stories we tell our children and the silence we choose or refuse.”
She went on to say: “Our family is proud. We celebrate Black excellence. We honour our heritage, and feel so grateful for the generations who fought so our children could exist.”
Some of the comments she called out include things like, ‘what a way to ruin the race,’ and ‘wasn’t illegal, just white women had more respect for themselves back then'.
The latter comment was in response to Lawrence’s comment on her original family image that racism 59 years ago would have made their family ‘illegal’.
She explained how she had been thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the impact he had on African American civil rights.
She revealed that ‘without him I would not have my family’ as he ‘believed that dignity was not something to be earned, but something every human being is born deserving’, and risked prosecution to further social change.
Many people came out in support of Lawrence for her honesty about the bullying, and maybe she managed to educate a few on the art of love.
