Full post and watch the Video after cut..........
Lupita was one
of the celebrities that included Oprah, Kerry Washington, Brandy and other
top black actresses at Essence Magazine’s seventh annual Women in
Hollywood luncheon. There, she gave a touching speech on black
beauty with reference to a letter she got from a young black girl about to
buy Dencia’s Whitenicious cream to lighten her skin but changed her mind after
she saw and read about her (Lupita). Here is a copy of her soul touching
speech...
“I wrote down this speech that I
had no time to practice so this will be the practicing session. 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, and 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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