Lupita Nyoung’o Made a Beautifully Gracious Statement

Posted on March 1, 2014 at 3:59 pm

lupita_nyong_oI hope Lupita Nyoung’o wins the Best Supporting Actress award tomorrow night.  She deserves it.  But there’s another reason: I want to hear her acceptance speech.  Her speech at the Essence Awards this week was beautifully heartfelt, gracious, and wise.  She talked very frankly about the difficulty of feeling beautiful with dark skin, and how she felt when she received a fan letter from a young girl who said she had been about to try a skin-lightening cream before she saw Nyoung’o and realized that it was possible to be dark-skinned and successful.  Nyoung’o said:

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.

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Actors Awards Gender and Diversity Race and Diversity

Thelma Adams on “Snow White and the Huntsman” — “It Isn’t Pretty!”

Posted on June 6, 2012 at 11:34 am

Thelma Adams writes thoughtfully on Yahoo! Movies about what “Snow White and the Huntsman” says about Hollywood — and audience — obsession with beauty:

Why is it so important to know who’s the fairest of them all, a question the magic mirror never answers. For Queen Ravenna, played with Joan Crawford relish by Oscar winner Charlize Theron, the answer is an exposé of Hollywood’s obsession with feminine beauty and aging, and chasing after the next unwrinkled new young thing (whether that’s Kristen Stewart or Elizabeth Olsen or Rooney Mara).

Statuesque blonde Theron, 36, tears into the beauty theme, a variation on past roles. She won her Oscar for playing a repulsive serial killer in “Monster”; last year, she courted another as the morally ugly husband stalker in “Young Adult.” In “Snow White and the Huntsman,” we see Queen Ravenna in her full glory on her wedding day as she glances back over her shoulder and a cascade of golden waves at the young girl who will grow up to be her archrival. The queen has closed the deal with the king, Snow White’s widowed father, in 24 hours on looks alone. Beauty is her power. It’s also her obsession — and her weakness. The parallel is clear: As an A-list star, Theron’s superlative beauty is her commodity, but she’s always looking over her shoulder at the next girl, and the next.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Good Hair

Posted on February 16, 2010 at 8:10 am

A-
Lowest Recommended Age: Middle School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some language including sex and drug references, and brief partial nudity
Profanity: Some strong and crude langauge
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drug reference
Violence/ Scariness: None
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: October 9, 2009
Date Released to DVD: February 16, 2010
Amazon.com ASIN: B002TOJOY8

Chris Rock’s daughter wanted to know why she didn’t have “good hair.” And so he made this documentary as an answer, exploring the relationship between black women and their hair and hair products and processes — and how that relationship gives billions of dollars to an industry that can be exploitative.

Wildly entertaining and profoundly insightful, this is an exploration of image, economics, history, and standards of beauty. Nearly half a century ago, the ground-breaking “black is beautiful” cultural movement changed the way black and white Americans thought about beauty. It is seldom remembered that the key piece of evidence in the “Brown v. Board of Education” decision that led to school de-segregation was a series of interviews with black children who all said that the white doll was prettier than the black doll, thus showing that segregation was inherently unfair. This movie shows how complex and layered the challenge is and how powerfully media images of beauty can make us feel dissatisfied to get us to spend money to look different.

The movie has interviews with movie stars like Nia Long, Lauren London, and Meagan Goode. Surprisingly, none of them say that they have to have “good hair” to get jobs. They insist that they just like it. Maya Angelou says she had her hair processed for the first time when she was in her 70’s. The Reverand Al Sharpton explains that James Brown talked him into getting his hair processed.

Rock visits the Dudley Hair Products company in North Carolina, one of the few black-owned providers of what some women in the movie call “creamy crack.” He goes to India to discover the shocking sources of the exported hair. He tries to sell black hair but gets no buyers. And he goes to a hair competition and performance event that is simply indescribable.

This is a movie of enormous importance and good will and should be seen by everyone, especially mothers and teen-age daughters, to remind us that all hair is good hair and that beauty is more about how we feel than how we look.

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Comedy Documentary DVD/Blu-Ray Pick of the Week

DC Fundraiser for Juvenile Diabetes

Posted on May 10, 2009 at 8:17 pm

If you’re in the DC area on May 19, come to the fabulous Rock Creek restaurant in Mazza Gallerie for a “Beauty and the Beach” fund-raiser for juvenile diabetes. For $35 ($40 at the door), you will get hors d’oeuvres, wine, and some great beauty tips and treats. There will also be a silent auction featuring goodies including the chance to attend a critics’ screening with me. It’s a great cause and it will be a lot of fun.

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