lupita nyong’o

Home / lupita nyong’o

Lupita’s Video Helps Mainstream Media Redefine What is Beautiful

 

Vogue recently released ‘Braids’ – a new mini-documentary featuring Lupita Nyong’o.

In June, Lupita, gathered six of her closest friends for the day so that she could braid their hair. Yes, you read that correctly. Lupita did not enjoy the experience of having her hair braided while she lived in the states and returned home that summer to have her aunt teach her how to braid the right way. Lupita returned to school ready to engage in a “side hustle” but in the end used braiding hair as an opportunity to connect with good friends, swap stories, laugh and spend time together. The joy and beauty of braiding is what she shares in this great mini-documentary.

I just can’t get enough of Lupita. She is just an actress – right. Her words, speeches, mini-documentaries would be widely embraced and loved without her conscientious acknowledgement and tribute to the Black experience. And yet this actress continues to breathe the politics and empowerment of Black Beauty in countless ways. She went above and beyond in her acceptance speech. Her speech at the 7th Annual Essence Black Women in Hollywood.

I’m touched by the recent Vogue documentary because I too braid hair. Like Lupita I did not learn to braid as a small child. I didn’t grow up with siblings and my mother refused to let me play in her hair. But when I had my beautiful babies I was inspired to share this “special” time with them – braiding their hair. It’s not my side hustle. I have never charged to braid. I’ve even twisted hair for a couple girlfriends. It is a bonding experience that is consistently undervalued. It’s a moment to sit with your daughter/friend – sometimes for hours – and engage, listen and learn while creating something together.

Lupita mentions in her mini-doc that she only braids hair for women where there is trust. Braiding hair is like fine dining. Similarly, as you would not pay top dollar for an inferior meal your child will not elect to sit with you for hours if she does not trust that she will look adorable/stunning when she hops off your stool.

My girls love having their hair braided. And while it is hard to find the time I love it too. It’s fun when we are out and see another little girl and I ask my daughters “Do you like that style” and one of them pipes in “Yes mommy. Can you braid my hair like that next time.” But to my daughters this is our world, our limited experience.

At our Mandarin Immersion school site my two daughters belong to a cohort of three little girls (in a large campus of more than 500 students) that wear box braids, barrettes and the occasional knocker. So it is breathtaking to see the experience of braiding hair and connecting through sisterhood shared in the mainstream media and produced by Vogue.

Thank you Lupita for continuing to force the mainstream media to redefine what is beautiful – my daughters deserve it!!

 
Here are pictures of her friends after receiving braiding at what affectionately was referred to as Lu’s Do’s!!

Lupitasbraids

The women pictured are Jennifer Odera, a graduate student and childhood friend who, like Nyong’o, started having her hair braided when she was “itsy bitsy” in Kenya (where there were hairdressers “on every street corner”) in order to adhere to their primary school uniform dress code; Tashal Brown, an educator and Nyong’o’s roommate from Hampshire College; Yale classmates Miriam Hyman and Hallie Cooper-Novack, as well as Stacey Sargeant, an actress whom she met while at the university; and Nontsikelelo Mutiti, a professor and artist who is currently hosting an art show revolving around the culture of braiding at New York City’s…

Lupita Nyong’o Delivers Moving ‘Black Women in Hollywood’ Acceptance Speech

Newcomer Lupita Nyong’o was honored with the Best Breakthrough Performance Award at the 7th annual Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon for her work in critically acclaimed film, 12 Years a Slave, presented by fellow actress, Alfre Woodard. The following is her acceptance speech in full (and below that is the video of the majority of the 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. 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 had been 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 consolation: She’s my mother, of course she’s 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 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 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 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 does sustain us… 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 shade in that beauty.

Oscars 2014: Watch Lupita Nyong’o’s Emotional Acceptance Speech

Reposted from Times
A year ago, most of the world hadn’t heard of Lupita Nyong’o — but in her acceptance speech for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar she just took home for her work in 12 Years a Slave, she reminded viewers that there’s a long history behind how she got to that stage.

“It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is due to so much pain in someone else’s,” she said in reference to Patsey, the slave she portrayed in the acclaimed film, which was based on a real-life memoir.

In addition to thanking the usual Academy Awards suspects — castmates, her drama school, the Academy — she drew attention to the real people whose stories she helped bring to the big screen: Speaking to director Steve McQueen, she noted that the dead are watching, and that she believes “they are grateful” that he brought their history back to life.

But her speech didn’t just stick to the past. In a tear-jerking conclusion, she expressed her wish that her unknown-to-Oscars trajectory would inspire someone watching at home to go for it — because, as she explained: “No matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid.”

Watch her speech above.