00:00I received a letter from a girl and I'd like to share just a small part of it
00:09with you. Dear Lupita, it reads, I think you you're really lucky to be this black
00:15but yet this successful in Hollywood overnight. I was just about to buy
00:19Densha's whitenicious cream to lighten my skin when you appeared on the world
00:25map and saved me. My heart bled a little when I read those words. I could never
00:32have guessed that my first job out of school would be so powerful in and of
00:37itself and that it would propel me to be such an image of hope in the same way
00:42that the women of the color purple were to me. I remember a time when I too felt
00:47unbeautiful. I put on the TV and only saw pale skin. I got teased and taunted about
00:53my night shaded skin and my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I
01:00would wake up lighter skinned. The morning would come and I would be so excited about
01:06seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front
01:11of a mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first. And every day I
01:16experienced the same disappointment of being just as dark as I had been the day
01:20before. I tried to negotiate with God. I told him I would stop stealing sugar cubes
01:27at night if he gave me what I wanted. I would listen to my mother's every word
01:32sitting right there and never lose my school sweater again if he just made me a
01:38little lighter. But I guess God was unimpressed with my bargaining chips because
01:43he never listened. And when I was a teenager, my self-hate grew worse. As you can
01:51imagine, happens with adolescence. My mother reminded me often that she thought I was
01:57beautiful. But that was no consolation. She's my mother. Of course she's supposed to
02:01think I'm beautiful. And then Alek Wek came on the international scene. A celebrated model.
02:15She was dark as night. She was on all the runways and in every magazine and
02:21everyone was talking about how beautiful she was. Even Oprah called her beautiful.
02:25And that made it a fact. I couldn't believe that people were embracing a woman who looked
02:35so much like me as beautiful. My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome. And
02:42all of a sudden, Oprah was telling me it wasn't. It was perplexing. And I wanted to reject it
02:49because I had begun to enjoy the seduction of inadequacy. But a flower couldn't help but bloom
02:58inside me. When I saw Alek, I inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I could not deny.
03:05Now, I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the faraway gatekeepers
03:11of beauty. But around me, the preference for light skin prevailed. To the beholders that I thought
03:18mattered, I was still unbeautiful. And my mother again would say to me, you can't eat beauty. It
03:24doesn't feed you. And these words played and bothered me. I didn't really understand them until
03:29finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume. It was something
03:36that I just had to be. And what my mother meant when she said, you can't eat beauty, was that
03:43you can't rely on how you look to sustain you. What actually sustains us, what is fundamentally
03:52beautiful, is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty,
04:00that kind of beauty inflames the heart and enchants the soul. It is what got Patsy in so much trouble
04:11with her master. But it is also what has kept her story alive to this day. We remember the beauty of
04:18her spirit, even after the beauty of her body has faded away. And so I hope that my presence on your
04:28screens and in magazines may lead you, young girl, on a similar journey. That you will feel the validation
04:36of your external beauty, but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. That there is
04:48no shade in that beauty. Thank you.
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