00:00Why is she on TV? So you get a lot of haters like, why you and not me? And you have to let them know
00:05because I'm amazing. That's why. Hey guys, this is Nina Parker, television host of E's Nightly Pop
00:12and E's Dating No Filter. And I feel seen. To me, being seen isn't visual. So it's not like what
00:19filter you use and post on Instagram and what gets the most liked. To me, when I say you see me,
00:23you see me means you see who I am inside. I think we interact with so many people who don't really
00:28know us on a daily basis. So when I have a friend and I say, you see me, it's because I feel like
00:34that means you get me. And to be seen is something important because I think, especially as a woman
00:39of color, we move in this world so often feeling ignored and invisible to people who don't hold
00:45the door for us or have conversations past us or greet everyone else around us. And they don't
00:49see us or they don't think we're supposed to be in first class or they don't, you know, they don't
00:52know how we got this reservation at this nice restaurant. So when you see me, that means that
00:56you see who I am inside, you see my inner beauty, you see my inner power. What really
01:00is the challenge is if you're not seen, what do you do next? So I definitely struggled with
01:05loving myself as being like an unapologetic black girl because I was teased for everything
01:10people pay for now. So my lips and, you know, my, like my hips and everything. It made me start
01:16to just kind of really think about how I wanted to be seen from the world.
01:202007. I had just started my job at TMZ like six months before. It was just a website. It
01:27had turned into a television show and I was one of the reporters on, you know, in the newsroom.
01:35Did you find John Mayer's comments offensive or did you get what he was saying? Nina, did Nina leave?
01:42I mean, I probably saw myself then for the first time on a national scale and it was crazy,
01:48but I have to tell you, I still feel the same butterflies now that I did then. Sometimes
01:53it's hard for me, um, to hear about my impact on others because I still feel like I have so much
02:00more to do and such a long journey to go. But what I really want us to do, especially in the black
02:05community, because there's so many, um, young black people who want to get involved in entertainment.
02:11They need to know that there are women all around them that are working. And yes, we may not,
02:15there may not be as many as our white counterparts, but they are working. I don't think we give enough
02:22shine to the black women behind the scenes. And because we don't do that, because we only kind
02:26of give people their praise when they're at the very top, we don't realize how many people are,
02:30are downwards helping them get there. And I think that there's, there's really needs to be more
02:34visibility on those people because that's who's helped me out. Also don't want it to be like,
02:39I have to look a certain way to be seen. I have to look a certain way to be on television because
02:45that hasn't been my experience. And there aren't a ton of plus size women in entertainment. And
02:50there's not a lot of plus size women on the red carpet. So when they're not there, you do kind
02:54of feel like you need to represent and change the standard of beauty that we've been seeing on TV.
03:00And this picture really embodies like where I'm at in my career right now. So this was the second
03:07photo I had posted from Golden Globes of 2019. The first one I didn't love, like I had raced to post
03:15the first one. So I was like, oh, I didn't even like it. It was kind of crooked. And so this was
03:19the moment I had to actually like sit down and, and really like take a moment in and like look at it
03:26and like really embrace the moment. And this is a photo full of confidence. I love my hair.
03:33I love my dress. Like, you know, those days where it just all comes together. Like this was one of
03:37those days, everything about it was just BD energy. And I was loving it. And I was in it. And I was
03:43full in it. I just was like excited because sometimes we're not cocky enough. And I think you
03:48can be cocky without being arrogant and annoying. But I was like, I'm doing this. And it was just like,
03:53hey, all of these people are here. There's Jenzel Washington walking around. There's, you know,
03:57Lupita. You see all this, these people full of black excellence. And to just be under the same
04:02roof as them coming from where I came from, being the woman I am. It just was like a full circle
04:08moment. I just am so sick of perfection online. I'm so sick of like women pretending they don't
04:13have stretch marks. We don't have a little gut or that men don't like that because they do.
04:17I went through that phase where everything had to be perfect. And I just had a lot of things
04:21crumble because of that. And it's so much expectation when your life is perfect that
04:25people have and they place on you. So I just decided to drop it. And it just, it fuels me
04:29those days where like we all have, whether you're living in your purpose or not, you're
04:33human, you get tired. And those days when I'm tired, it fuels me because I know it's not just
04:39me out here. It's making a way for other women.
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