Thursday was an important day: Diana Ross turned 76, and Tracee Ellis Ross, her daughter, posted some exceptional Instagram content to celebrate. My favorite? A '90s Gap ad the mom and daughter starred in together. Absorb the beauty!
Ellis Ross also shared a collection of iconic moments from her mom's career, which I strongly encourage you to spend some time with. Celebrities lined up to celebrate Ms Ross in the comments, too. Janelle Monáe wrote, "We love you LADY D," while Reese Witherspoon commented, "Such a gorgeous example of talent & grace!" and Normani left a string of heart eyes emojis.
Ross herself, meanwhile, marked her birthday by sending love to her fans. "I wish and ask for SOURCE—the Highest Power—to send LOVE, compassion, health, well-being, happiness, clarity, abundance, joy, forgiveness, appreciation and all the blessings—for there are many—to my human family on this planet," she wrote on Instagram. "Sending my Love and Light to ALL."
A confession: I love Tracee Ellis Ross so dearly that a not inconsiderable segment of my brain genuinely believes we are best friends, and so I have absorbed all her anecdotes about her mom as if she told them to me, personally, over a sunny Los Angeles brunch. One of my favorites? The tale of the rug, which she actually told to W Magazine, not me, back in 2017.
"Leaving for college there was a rug, this beautiful Kilim rug, that I wanted that was under our breakfast table. I asked if I could take it for college and my mom was like, 'No, it’s under the breakfast table. You cannot take it,'" Ellis Ross recalled. "And the car was going down the driveway and my mom comes running out. I don’t know how she got it from under the table so fast, but she came running out barefoot with the rug. She was like, 'Take it! Take the rug! I love you! Go off to college with the rug!'"
"It’s a perfect example of my mother," she said. "That’s not the Diana Ross people know. That’s my mommy."
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Emily Dixon is a British journalist who’s contributed to CNN, Teen Vogue, Time, Glamour, The Guardian, Wonderland, The Big Roundtable, Bust, and more, on everything from mental health to fashion to political activism to feminist zine collectives. She’s also a committed Beyoncé, Kacey Musgraves, and Tracee Ellis Ross fan, an enthusiastic but terrible ballet dancer, and a proud Geordie lass.
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