Jennifer, the first daughter of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder has made him a grandfather just as her sister, Phoebe is being trolled on the Internet over her African American boyfriend.
Jennifer, 26, announced the birth of her daughter with her husband, Nayel Nassar last weekend, on her Instagram page. Jennifer and Nassar were married in October 2021. Jennifer is Bill and Melinda’s eldest child, the first of their three children to wed.
The new mother posted a photo of her baby’s bare feet with the caption “sending love from our healthy little family 💓🙏🥰,”
Jennifer Gates’ baby daughter (courtesy jenniferkgates/ Instagram)
The med school student had earlier announced her pregnancy to her Instagram followers in November 2022 with photographs, captioned Thankful. The photos showed her baby bum alongside her businessman husband. Both Jennifer and her 31-year-old husband shared a love for horse jumping and Nassar compete for the Team Egypt Equestrian team.
Jennifer Gates and Nayel Nassar (courtesy jenniferkgates/ Instagram)
Meanwhile, Bill and Melinda’s other daughter, Phoebe, has responded to the backlash she is receiving after revealing she is dating a black man.
The 20-year-old social influencer in an interview with The Information, addressed the backlash while addressing the ups and downs of social media. She said she was ‘done’ with people making fun of her relationship.
“It’s 2023. I’m done being memed for being in an interracial relationship.”, stated the influencer with more than 64,000 followers on TikTok and 195,000 on Instagram.
Phoebe Gates and Robert Gates (courtesy Instagram)
Phoebe’s TikTok feed features many ‘day in the life’ video clips of her working out, fashion and beauty tips and trends and reviews of different products. It also features videos of her discussing topical political and social topics with her mum, Melinda Gates.
In the interview, Phoebe Gates talked about the ups and downs of being an internet celebrity. She said the lowest part for her was ‘the misconceptions and conspiracy theories about my family and my relationship with my boyfriend.”
Phoebe has had to cope with racist trolling and the ‘misconceptions and conspiracy theories that spread about her family on social media ever since she released some love-up photos of her and her boyfriend, Robert Ross, a fellow student at Stanford University last October on Instagram. The negative comments on the pictures included some slamming of Phoebe for being in a relationship with a person of colour and others accusing Ross of using her for her money. Phoebe first confirmed that she was in a relationship with a fellow Stanford student, named Robert Ross, back in July but the trolling started after the release of the pictures.
Phoebe Gates and Robert Ross (courtesy Instagram)
Phoebe in the interview with The Information said that she knows most people only start following her because they want an inside look into her family but added she is keeping them hooked with her qualitative content.
“I am pretty realistic that people start following me because of my family name.
‘But once they follow me, they stick around, and I think some of that is because of the issues that I post about, like women’s health.
“And people probably find it funny to see my dad being a goof and playing [Box Ball],” she said.
‘I like to bring audiences along to the events I go to, my life at college, what’s front of mind for me, that kind of stuff.’
But she is also grateful to social media for correcting some misconceptions about her and her family.
“People have a lot of preconceptions about me, so TikTok has been a chance for me to tell my own story and also use the attention my family name might bring to spotlight issues that are important to me, like women’s health and sustainable fashion,’ she added.
Her most watched video on Tik Tok was a seven-second video, showing her father, the Microsoft founder, trying out something he had gotten for Christmas called the Box Ball – a small, red ball that’s attached via a bungee chord to a headband. In the hilarious, seven-second video, which has now been viewed more than eight million times, Gates made many attempts trying to punch the ball.
However, despite her increasing followership, Phoebe stated that she has no plans to make content creation her full-time career and that it’s simply for ‘ she said she wants to be a designer and she planned to launch her startup, called Phia, with her roommate, Sophia Kianni, later this year.
“We are building out an idea to help make fashion more sustainable. We have so much planned for this year and social media is going to be a big part of that,” she said.
