Hilaria Baldwin is, how you say, a con artist. For years, she lied about her “Spanish” background and upbringing, faking a come-and-go Spanish/Mexican accent and repeatedly claiming that she grew up in Spain. In reality, Hilaria is a woman named Hillary, and she was born in America and she grew up in the Boston area. Her parents apparently moved to Spain when they retired, and somewhere along the way (in adulthood), Hillary changed her name to Hilaria and invented her fictional Spanish background. Hilaria was exposed in late 2020 and all of these years later, she still hasn’t come up with any kind of explanation for her lies. In fact, she still trots out her fake Spanish accent in times of stress/attention-seeking. Well, now Hilaria has a TLC reality show with her husband Alec Baldwin. Dios mio! She already tried to address her Spanish lies in one episode, claiming that people were being mean to her because she’s bilingual. Well, in Sunday’s episode of The Baldwins, Hilaria offered up another explanation. She is, how you say, code-switching.
Hilaria Baldwin is speaking out about the backlash she received over her accent. On the March 16 episode of The Baldwins, Hilaria, 41, reflected on how she learned to change her accent long before it sparked controversy in 2020 when people questioned the authenticity of her Spanish origins.
“Growing up in a way where you have multiple cultural influences on you means that you’re never going to be able to fit in. You can try,” she said. “You can chameleon. You know, people who code-switch we’re very good at chameleoning… and you don’t even think you’re not even thinking about it. It’s just normal. It’s just natural.”
During a conversation with the 15-year-old sister of her daughter Carmen Gabriela’s friend, the television personality liked the experience of “code-switching” — or adopting one’s accent or mannerisms to fit social norms — to speaking with an elderly person.
“They say that it’s like communication, if you ever talk to a really old person who cannot hear, and I’m gonna emphasize, I’m gonna speak slower,” she explained. “And you’re not even really thinking about it. You just start to do it. You know what it’s called? Code-switching… I had to learn about it because the whole world was mean to me, and so I had to learn it. It’s code-switching.”
In a confessional, the mother of seven reflected on how she learned to take the controversy in stride.
“Being in, the spotlight, as people like to call it. People say, ‘Oh, don’t you get used to it?’ No, you don’t get used to it,” she said. “You never get used to people being mean. But you take a deep breath, and I think you learn to distance yourself from it, and so, you know, you just try turning down the volume in my head a bit… and I’m not gonna take it personally.”
I can’t. No mas!! Donde esta tu verguenza??? What Hilaria is doing is NOT code-switching. Code-switching is when people speak differently depending on their audience, it’s when people use their “work voice” in professional settings and use AAVE or slang with their friends. Hilaria is not “code-switching” when she tries to maintain a completely fictional Spanish accent! Once again, it would have been fine for Hilaria to learn Spanish and prioritize bilingualism in her home, with her children. That’s not what this is!! “Learning Spanish” doesn’t make someone SPANISH. Faking an accent and trying to maintain a fictional backstory is not a “code.”
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