Tracee Ellis Ross told Trevor Noah on What Now? With Trevor Noah that she will not let marriage or children define her value. The 53-year-old actor said she wants a partner, but she will not turn being single into a verdict on her life.
Ross on woman’s value
“Society tells women that that's our worth, that having children and finding a partner,” Ross said during the appearance. She pushed back directly, adding, “But I won't subscribe to it; I don't. My life is wonderful.”
Her framing is blunt: the measure is not whether someone wants you. Ross said the pressure lands on women as a social rule, but she is refusing to let that rule define her dating life or her sense of self.
After Girlfriends
Ross connected that view to what came after Girlfriends ended. For eight years and 173 episodes, she played a successful woman who could not find a partner and was waiting to be chosen, and she said she later realized she had spent years waiting to be chosen herself.
“On girlfriends I talk about all this all the time but on girlfriends for eight years 173 episodes I was a successful woman who couldn't find a partner and was waiting to be chosen and I didn't realize it but when I left the show I have spent years and I talk publicly about it now because I didn't realize how much I had spent years waiting to be chosen and I started to realize I'm like what the I'm the chooser I can choose my partner,” she said. That shift turns the relationship search into selection rather than approval-seeking, which is the part that changes the story for viewers who have heard the usual romance script for years.
Trevor Noah and the match
Ross said she experiences loneliness and wants a partner, but she also said she may not find one and will not make that mean something negative about her. She added that she thinks there may be few people like her, so meeting a compatible match may take time.
“I experience loneliness and all of it, and I want a partner, and I might not find one, I don't know, you know, and I'm not going to make that mean something about me,” Ross said. She also described herself as a caretaker who will cook, but not because a partner expects it, and said she is “a full planet” and “a solar system,” a line that makes the point cleanly: she is not shrinking herself to fit a relationship script.
For anyone listening for the practical takeaway, Ross is not rejecting partnership. She is rejecting the idea that being unpartnered is a deficit. That is the part worth carrying forward from the conversation on What Now? With Trevor Noah, because it leaves the bigger question on her terms: what kind of match, if any, fits a life she already says is complete.
