The Essence Black Women in Hollywood
Luncheon held yesterday February 28 at The
Beverly Hills Hotel in LA...and Oscar nominee
Lupita Nyong'o was one of those honored at the
event which had Oprah, Tyler Perry, Kerry
Washington, Michael Ealy and many other black
Hollywood heavyweights in attendance.
Accepting her award, Lupita gave one of the most
powerful speeches about self-acceptance and
loving yourself just the way you are. Her message
basically is; Black is beautiful and you really
don't need Dencia's Whitenicious. Yep, she
mentioned Dencia in her speech. Check on it after
the cut...
Lupita's acceptance speech at Essence Black
Women in Hollywood Luncheon
Thank you Alfre, for such an amazing,
amazing introduction and celebration of my
work. And thank you very much for inviting
me to be a part of such an extraordinary
community.
I am surrounded by people who have
inspired me, women in particular whose
presence on screen made me feel a little
more seen and heard and understood. That
it is Essence that holds this event
celebrating our professional gains of the
year is significant, a beauty magazine that
recognizes the beauty that we not just
possess but also produce.
I want to take this opportunity to talk about
beauty, black beauty, dark beauty. I received
a letter from a girl and I’d like to share just
a small part of it with you: “Dear Lupita,” it
reads, “I think you’re really lucky to be this
Black but yet this successful in Hollywood
overnight. I was just about to buy Dencia’s
Whitenicious cream to lighten my skin when
you appeared on the world map and saved
me.”
My heart bled a little when I read those
words, I could never have guessed that my
first job out of school would be so powerful
in and of itself and that it would propel me
to be such an image of hope in the same
way that the women of The Color Purple
were to me.
I remember a time when I too felt
unbeautiful. I put on the TV and only saw
pale skin, I got teased and taunted about my
night-shaded skin. And my one prayer to
God, the miracle worker, was that I would
wake up lighter-skinned. The morning
would come and I would be so excited
about seeing my new skin that I would
refuse to look down at myself until I was in
front of a mirror because I wanted to see my
fair face first. And every day I experienced
the same disappointment of being just as
dark as I was the day before. I tried to
negotiate with God, I told him I would stop
stealing sugar cubes at night if he gave me
what I wanted, I would listen to my
mother’s every word and never lose my
school sweater again if he just made me a
little lighter. But I guess God was
unimpressed with my bargaining chips
because He never listened.
And when I was a teenager my self-hate
grew worse, as you can imagine happens
with adolescence. My mother reminded me
often that she thought that I was beautiful
but that was no conservation, she’s my
mother, of course she’s supposed to think I
am beautiful. And then…Alek Wek. A
celebrated model, she was dark as night,
she was on all of the runways and in every
magazine and everyone was talking about
how beautiful she was. Even Oprah called
her beautiful and that made it a fact. I
couldn’t believe that people were embracing
a woman who looked so much like me, as
beautiful. My complexion had always been
an obstacle to overcome and all of a sudden
Oprah was telling me it wasn’t. It was
perplexing and I wanted to reject it because
I had begun to enjoy the seduction of
inadequacy. But a flower couldn’t help but
bloom inside of me, when I saw Alek I
inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I
could not deny.
Now, I had a spring in my step because I
felt more seen, more appreciated by the far
away gatekeepers of beauty. But around me
the preference for my skin prevailed, to the
courters that I thought mattered I was still
unbeautiful. And my mother again would say
to me you can’t eat beauty, it doesn’t feed
you and these words plagued and bothered
me; I didn’t really understand them until
finally I realized that beauty was not a thing
that I could acquire or consume, it was
something that I just had to be.
And what my mother meant when she said
you can’t eat beauty was that you can’t rely
on how you look to sustain you. What is
fundamentally beautiful is compassion for
yourself and for those around you. That kind
of beauty enflames the heart and enchants
the soul. It is what got Patsey in so much
trouble with her master, but it is also what
has kept her story alive to this day. We
remember the beauty of her spirit even after
the beauty of her body has faded away.
And so I hope that my presence on your
screens and in the magazines may lead you,
young girl, on a similar journey. That you
will feel the validation of your external
beauty but also get to the deeper business
of being beautiful inside.
There is no shame in Black beauty.
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