Lupita Nyong’o sizzles on the December cover of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year Issue. In the accompanying interview, the 31-year-old actress talked about life after winning an Oscar and how she was raised to believe she wasn't beautiful.
"European standards of beauty are something that plague the entire world,” she told the mag. “The idea that darker skin is not beautiful, that light skin is the key to success and love. Africa is no exception. When I was in second grade, one of my teachers said, 'Where are you going to find a husband? How are you going to find someone darker than you?' I was mortified. I remember seeing a commercial where a woman goes for an interview and doesn't get the job. Then she puts a cream on her face to lighten her skin, and she gets the job! This is the message: that dark skin is unacceptable."
Asked how she felt when her name was called at the Oscars, she said:
“I don’t think I will ever be able to really articulate how bizarre it was to hear my name at the Academy Awards. I’d watched in my pajamas the year before! I felt numb, dazed and confused. I remember feeling light, weightless. More like limbo than cloud nine.”
How’s life after winning an Oscar? She replied:
“This is actually a conversation I look forward to having in 10 years, when all of this is behind me and I have some real perspective on what happened because right now I’m still adjusting. I guess I feel catapulted into a different place; I have a little whiplash…. I did have a dream to be an actress, but I didn’t think about being famous. And I haven’t yet figured out how to be a celebrity; that’s something I’m learning, and I wish there were a course on how to handle it. I have to be aware that my kinesphere may be larger than I want it to be.”
The actress also talked about ‘The Lupita Effect’.
“I’ve heard people talk about images in popular culture changing, and that makes me feel great, because it means that the little girl I was, once upon a time, has an image to instill in her that she is beautiful, that she is worthy, that she can… Until I saw people who looked like me, doing the things I wanted to, I wasn’t so sure it was a possibility. Seeing Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah in The Color Purple, it dawned on me: ‘Oh, I could be an actress!’ We plant the seed of possibility,” she said.
Glamour’s 24th annual Women of the Year Awards will take place in New York City on November 10 and the mag hits newsstands the day after.
No comments :
Post a Comment