Lesley Billingsley, a former special needs teacher, model/actor and first generation Canadian of Guyanese parentage, is unapologetically a full-time mother by choice and an advocate for mothers to be themselves and not who others want them to be, as well as for minority communities to rise above their circumstances.
“A lot of people, including family members with no ill intention, ask me if I’m ever going back to work or if I’m going to get a ‘real’ job. Generally, society doesn’t consider parenting as a real job. Parenting is something they think should be passed on to a daycare provider or babysitter and mothers with some professional skills and training should go get a real job,” she told Stabroek Weekend in an interview from her home in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
“Some people who don’t know what my daily schedule consists of, ask what I do at home all day. If they see all the things I do as a parent, they would honestly reconsider whether I should get a ‘real’ job or not. A lot of my friends work at nine-to-five jobs and I’m a lot busier than they are with the kids and other things I have going on.”
Billingsley is a graduate of Sheridan College (2014) where she specialised in special education, and the University of Alberta (2022) where her focus was on key issues facing Indigenous Peoples today from a historical and critical perspective. She was employed with the Halton, Peel and Hamilton Wentworth district school boards where she worked in schools with children with special needs such as autism, and learning or physical disabilities.
Currently, she is a volunteer with Halton Black History Awareness Society and Empowerment Squared, both non-profit organisations. She is also the founder and administrator of Elle Savage Fitness, an online fitness and wellness community that aims to make a difference in the lives of women by supporting their health goals while promoting body positivity.
As an activist, Billingsley supports marginalised communities whose voices are not heard even through the popular media. “I think that comes naturally. My husband is the same. In the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter movements he was very much in the frontline. I surround myself with people who are activists and we encourage each other. I think it is important to encourage people to live their best lives. I don’t want to have any regrets. I don’t want to look back and say I wished I had spent more time with my kids or I wish I had put myself more out there. That is why I love all that I do, whether it is modelling campaigns or sending a message through acting to uplift people,” she said.
A proponent of the slogan, ‘Shine a Light on Black Excellence’, she said, “Historically a lot of people have not seen the positives when it comes to Black people, especially where I live. That is important because I’m raising Black children. I think it is important they see their self-worth.”
Billingsley is mixed race, but she identifies as Black. “When people look at me, that is what they see. When they look at my husband and kids they see a Black family,” she said.
Guyanese connection
The Billingsleys, as first generation Canadian Guyanese and Jamaican, try to ensure their children know of their Guyanese and Jamaican cultural heritage.
“We practise many things Caribbean including cooking Guyanese and Jamaican foods. My husband, Michael, makes very good jerk chicken and festivals. I make roti and curry and chow mein with my daughter so she has that Caribbean culinary experience. My grandma, Joan Aaron, makes a great pepperpot at Christmas with homemade bread. Michael is obsessed with pepperpot and he claims that as his own even though he is Jamaican,” Billingsley said.
Her father, Gerald ‘Jerry’ Aaron, was born and raised in Georgetown, migrated to Canada as a teenager. “I have very strong ties to my Guyanese family. I love listening to my grandma’s stories about the time she lived in Guyana. I would love to visit Guyana with my husband and my children so we can experience some things ourselves. We still have family in Guyana. I would love to visit where my dad grew up and have him show me some of his favourite places,” she said.
Her husband’s father is from Kingston, Jamaica and still lives there. “We have visited him a few times in Kingston,” she said.
Motherhood
As a full-time parent, she opined, “A lot of people talk about balancing parenting and professions. There is no way you’ll have a 50/50 balance.”
At present, she dedicates 80 percent of her time to motherhood; cooking, taking care of the children’s needs at home or extracurricular activities, and the remainder of the time to build her modelling and acting career which she has since ventured into.
On the day of the interview she took her son Luther, a preschooler, to a science class. Then it was swimming for her daughter Savannah and hip-hop classes.
“Every day of the week it is one activity or another. So 80% of the time, it’s me in full-time mom mode. Then I like to do my stuff on the side. Luckily, I have a good community of support – my dad, my sister [Hope Milford], my husband and aunties – to help with my children so that I can go out to pursue my dream of acting and modelling. I don’t have to worry about them not being well cared for.”
As a model and actor, she has done many commercials and modelling campaigns including for the Walmart chain of stores and Kelloggs cereals that attracted millions of viewers on YouTube.
Though not trained in the acting profession, Billingsley is passionate about consistently improving her craft by taking on a variety of acting and modelling jobs. “I love getting in front of the camera, feeling beautiful and I get paid for it. I can help to provide for my family. It is just an added bonus,” she said.
Billingsley has brought the family on board too. Her children do some acting and modelling and her husband has joined her on set. As such she also manages their careers in the entertainment industry. “Bringing in the whole family is the best part of it and all this happened because of the Covid-19 pandemic,” she revealed.
In 2020 most of the work in the entertainment industry shifted to online. “There was no meeting in person. No commuting. We just had to go on Zoom, like we’re doing now and then we auditioned from home. My son was born in February 2020 and a month later the entertainment industry was shut down,” she recalled.
While on maternity leave, Billingsley stayed up late at night to feed her son and scrolled on her cellphone to stay awake. “I saw these casting calls for models, new moms. I fit the criteria for many things I saw. I just started to submit as much as possible with no expectation of booking anything,” she recalled.
Slowly but surely she started getting calls saying she was needed for various activities. “It is a small community. Once you make one good impression, it snowballs. You start getting more known in the industry and people want to work with you because they learn of your good reputation,” she added.
As a child, Billingsley had been in school plays but she never thought of acting as a career. She never thought she was on the same level as the people she saw on television or in movies.
“Whenever you saw a commercial with a family it was usually a fake family with the cast pretending to be family members. …until Covid -19 came and really shook things up. Because of social distancing they wanted to keep people in their circles so they started hiring real families. That was how I got my first acting job. They were looking for a mother and child. I submitted Luther and myself and I was booked for a baby food commercial. Then, once I got a taste of that, I said this is not such a far-fetched dream I once thought it was. Since then, I’ve been applying for any castings I’ve seen. I’ve been pretty successful,” she said.
“I absolutely love modelling. It is important that people see someone who looks like me, a plus-size woman, who is six feet tall and almost 40 years old. Most models are in their early twenties and zero size. I’m outside of the box of the typical models that you will see and that resonates with many people. A lot of people who never thought they could be a model, when they look at me, say if I have the confidence, they too can have more confidence in themselves. I hear that from a lot of people and that gives me a great sense of satisfaction.”
Recently Billingsley was featured on billboards in downtown Toronto as a part of a public awareness campaign called ‘Mom Puberty’ that talks about “real raw motherhood” instead of glamourising unrealistic expectations of mothers. Some of the expectations are for mothers to get back to being their old selves immediately, and to look happy when they are tired. “So the whole campaign is all about letting moms just be moms and not to force them to fit in some type of mould or to put pressure on themselves. Real motherhood looks different for everybody,” she noted.
Seeing her image on a billboard she said was, “like a pinch-me moment.”
The billboards were strategically placed near hospitals in Toronto so new mothers see them when they drive by. The company, Listen B*tch, that launched the campaign is so named to draw attention to its messaging. It provides affirmation cards for new mothers and women in general. Affirmation cards are first-person statements designed to encourage positive thinking and self-confidence.
Savannah
When her first child, Savannah, was born Billingsley signed up for an 18-month maternity leave. When the 18 months were up, she took into consideration the cost of daycare. Also, she did not want to leave the baby in someone else’s care. She discussed the issue with her husband.
“We looked at our finances and my husband said, ‘Stay home. You’re doing a good job. Just continue what you’re doing.’ Then I was in full mom mode. So for the first four years of Savannah’s life, it was her and me, 24/7. When she started school, I went back to work with the local school board. I worked for one month before Luther was born and then Covid-19 came,” she said. “That was when I got into acting and modelling.”
Savannah, at eight years old, is an entertainer who acts, models, sings and dances.
“She’s very good at anything she puts her mind to. Apart from her entertainment gigs, she’s into ice-skating, basketball, soccer, gymnastics and swimming. She is the only one in the family who has an agent who is working on her behalf. She can memorise lines almost instantly. She is assigned to an agency so she gets a lot more job opportunities than even myself. From the time she signed with the agent she has done about six commercials, a film where she was the lead role and more recently she has been on several television shows. She has done modelling on a local TV show,” she said.
How is Savanna kept grounded? “When you are in the entertainment industry, for every one ‘Yes’, there are ten ‘Nos’. That in itself helps to keep her grounded. My mantra is ‘submit it and forget it’ and I have taught Savannah that,” Billingsley said.
To make her not think too much about acting, Savannah is also involved in several other extracurricular activities. “Acting is just one of the things on the roster that she does. When she books something she is pleasantly surprised just like me,” she added.
Her friends are mostly school friends, or the children of her mother’s friends. “None of them are part of the entertainment world so that also helps to keep her grounded,” Billingsley said.
Savannah is a high achiever in school and Billingsley says her academics are always a priority. “Homework comes first. Her report card matters. If at any time her grades should start to slip, we will have to pull back on her extracurricular activities whether it is acting or a sport. Before she goes to soccer practice, if her homework is not done, she has to miss soccer practice. I’m grateful she loves her teachers and school,” Billingsley said. She attends a French immersion school where she is learning French as a second language.
When Luther starts kindergarten in September, Billingsley’s priority will be to ensure he is adjusting well because he did not do social outings or extracurricular activities owing to Covid-19.
“If his transition to school is not as expected I want to make myself available if he needs my support. If everything goes smoothly, then I’m going to put myself more out there and, hopefully, I’m going to do more auditions and more modelling. I don’t have an agent because my availability is split between the kids and their activities. Come September, I’ll be more available so I could find an agent and hopefully get more opportunities via that route,” she said.
