Ok, so I have this thing. Since I was a little girl I’ve always adored two coexisting things: beauty and intelligence. I remember watching The Cosby Show thinking, I want to be just like Clair Huxtable! She was so pretty, so fine, and super-duper smart. I was enthralled by her! Shoot, I still reference her as #goals.
My obsession didn’t stop at Clair though. Here are 4 woman who I have adored since I first saw them on the big screen and some very beautiful notes I have taken from them!
Phylicia Rashad
Obvious right? Clair a.k.a Phylicia Rashad. She played Clair on TV but she is very clearly all the fierceness and poise of Clair in real life.
Question, “What do you think it was about Clair Huxtable that made her so beloved for so many years?” Her answer, “I think it’s the fact that her husband celebrated her intelligence and her enthusiasm for life…”
Oprah interviewed Phylicia Rashad in September 1987 (I was 4 years old). She asked her, “When was the first time you felt beautiful?”
Her reply, “When I was 11 years old, I had been selected to narrate a musical program for all of the elementary schools in Houston, Texas. Well, I had always thought that God made everybody in my family very beautiful but when I came along he was on a lunch break. …I really did feel that. But this was a very unique experience, because I had learned my script so well, I didn’t have to look at it. And when I stood up in front of the microphone in the auditorium and there were thousands of people there, all of the parents and the children and the grandparents and relatives and everything. For the first time in my life I stood in a spotlight, and you know you can’t see. All you can see is the light. Well all I could see was the light, and I knew my lines, and I didn’t have to look, so I just talked to the light. And it was so comfortable, it was so great, and it felt wonderful. What I couldn’t articulate at that time was what I was experiencing was the beauty of communication from within one’s own self and that’s where the beauty is.” Here is the full interview.
Ms. Rashad, you were the first image of a black woman I saw on TV as a young girl that represented everything I wanted to be. Television has never been the same since you rang that jazzy doorbell for the last time and danced off with Mr. Cosby into the sunset. I have total love and respect for you! Thank you for showing me how beautiful poise and intelligent communication (from within) can be.
Michelle Obama
Do I even need to explain? Michelle Obama is not an actress, she hasn’t played in any movies (that I know of anyway), but her life, her for real life, was seen on one the biggest screens there is. Brian asked me one time who’d I be “star struck” by if I ever met them in person. The first name I said was, “Michelle Obama….” She is so smart, and she has this graceful slayage thing down pat. I’ve already pre-ordered my copy of “Becoming” and I can’t wait to read it.
Her advice to young girls at Glamour’s 2016 International Day of the Girl celebration, “You will not be successful hanging around people that drag you down… You have to fill your bucket with positive energy…and if you have people hanging around you that are bringing you down and not lifting you up, whether that’s your boo or your best friend, you’ve got to learn how to push these people to the side. And you’re going to be doing that for the rest of your lives so get practice now. You have to clean your house of negative energy.”
And then her at the 2018 United State of Women Summit “…Your life isn’t sunk because your mom didn’t do what she was supposed to or your dad… there are plenty of kids who are beating the odds every single day and it’s because they believe the voices that they know… at some point you’re born with some innate sense of what is possible. That just sort of sometimes gets either beaten out of you or it gets reinforced. But I knew at a very young age that I was smart and that I made sense. I knew that. …that’s what you want to tell kids, to trust that part of themselves because you do get that instinct at a very young age. So, when you know you are smart, you find the person that sees that in you… You have to surround yourself with the people that you want to be. …Life is practice. I tell my girls every day, you are practicing who you are going to be. So, if you are getting up late and you are trifling, and you are not getting your homework done, that’s what you’re practicing. If you’re a whiner, you’re practicing being a whiner, if you are spoiled, you’re practicing that. That doesn’t just go away and so you have to start practicing who you want to be. Do you want to be dependable? Then you have to be dependable. If you want people to trust you then you have to be trustworthy and you have to start those habits very early. It’s just like speaking correct English. Don’t practice the other stuff. Practice who you want to be every single day. Find that role model somewhere out there. Find that inspiration.” You can see her entire interview here.
Mrs. Obama thank you for being the absolute fiercest and finest First Lady these United States has ever seen! You amaze me! Thank you for being an example of how intelligence, grace, and power coexist.
Charlize Theron
I can’t remember the exact moment I fell in love with Charlize Theron, but she has been one of my favorite actresses for a very long time. It’s no debating that she is beautiful. But it is her equally beautiful heart for philanthropy that made me pay attention to her. In 2007 she founded the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project to help fight HIV in her home country of South Africa.
In her 2014 Q&A with WWD, “I’m incredibly lucky, people are very generous and sending me stuff. I never take that for granted, but I’m always very aware that I’m one person and I can’t wear everything. The idea of stuff just hanging in my closet and not being used — there’s a little bit of the African in me that gets bothered by that (somewhat). My whole concept in life is if you’re not using it, you should give it to somebody else, so they can use it… …I really love having an awareness. I don’t want to live in a world with blinders on. I don’t want to live in a world where I just kind of play on my naïveté — well if I don’t know it, then it doesn’t exist. I was raised in a country with a lot of political turmoil. I was part of a culture and a generation that suppressed people and lived under apartheid regimes. I don’t know how you can come out of that and not have an awareness for the world. I think that if my life had turned out any other way and I was working in a bank, I would still feel this way about it, because there’s a connection to humanity that to me is really important. …I know that I’m only as good as I am because of the things that I allow into myself and into my soul, because that’s the stuff that I project back out. So, I can’t live in a bubble and expect to come and work with Dior or go work on a movie and not have some kind of an evolution within myself and my own thought process and a passion about things or what’s happening in the world. All of those things are the elements that make you who you are, and those are the things that sincerely come across in a photo or a commercial or in an interview. That’s a constant thing for me. I make a real effort to try and live in the real world and not just the dream world.”
Her advice to young girls at Glamour’s 2016 International Day of the Girl celebration, “there is nothing sexier than a smart woman.” Agreed.
Ms. Theron thank you for showing me how beautiful practicality and staying grounded is.
Lupita Nyong’o
I remember sitting in the movie theater with Brian watching “12 Years a Slave.” I had never seen or heard of Lupita Nyong’o before then, but during the movie I kept leaning over to Brian saying, “she is so pretty…oh my goodness…she is gorg…. oh my goodness Brian I just love her; her acting is amazing…” Some weeks or months after the movie had been out I began to see her a lot more, and more people commenting on how beautiful she was. I remember watching her on an interview during that time and multiple people were commenting on her beauty. I looked at Brian and said, “Well I said she was gorg first!” But not only was she physically beautiful to me she was captivatingly eloquent and that’s what made me adore her! Her at the Oscars, “It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s….” Tears. (Plus I will never forget that sky blue dress *multiple heart eyed emojis*.)
Her speech while accepting the best breakthrough performance award at Essence magazine’s 2014 Annual Black Women in Hollywood luncheon, “…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 had been 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… My mother reminded me often that she thought I was beautiful, but that was no consolation, she’s my mother. Of course, she is supposed to think I am beautiful. And then Alek Wek came on the international scene. A celebrated model, she was dark as night, she was on all 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 people were embracing a woman who looked so much like me as beautiful. My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome… 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 gate keepers of beauty. But around me the preference for light skin prevailed. To the beholders 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 played 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 actually sustains us, what is fundamentally beautiful is compassion, for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty inflames the heart and enchants the soul….” Here is her entire speech.
Ms. Nyong’o thank you for making me so proud to be myself. When I see you I inadvertently see a reflection of myself that I cannot deny. You rock, and your style is EVERYTHING! Can we be BFFs?!
I have heard many times before that beauty and brains are a lethal combination. These women prove it true. They are forever my sheros and everything I aspire to be! Xo
Tell me, who are the women who inspire you?
