00:00Hi, everybody. How's everybody doing? Good? Well, I am super touched, and I want to speak to
00:13one person in this room, and I'm going to try not to cry.
00:20I want to speak to my mother, and she's here. Mama, can you raise your hand and wave?
00:30I want to speak to my mama because one thing that you said is resilience, and that's not
00:38just me saying, oh, yeah, girl, you got knocked down. Keep getting up. That was somebody pulling
00:44me up, pulling me up. I remember, and for y'all that were born after 1995, there was a time
00:57when there were no cell phones. There was no Uber. There was none of that, and I can remember
01:04living in Paris, France as a young model and going through hell, and I walked three blocks
01:12to a pay phone, and I called my mama, and I said, I can't continue. I have to. I'm just
01:20coming home, and she says, I didn't raise a quitter. That is not what we do, and I kept
01:32going on because of you, mama. I was paid 90% less than somebody that was less known
01:40than me, and I cried, and I said, mama, I'm not going to sign this. I can't sign this,
01:46and she says, you will sign that because perception is reality, so you're going to sign that, and
01:53you're going to be everywhere, and then that perception is going to make that next check
02:00worth what you are truly worth, and I signed it, shaken, and she was right, so thank you, mama.
02:14Thank you. I want to thank Essence Magazine because I remember being a young model in Paris
02:26and getting a phone call that Essence Magazine wanted 19-year-old me on the cover of their magazine,
02:33and this, it brought me to tears because that was my vogue. That was the magazine that was on
02:40our coffee table every single month, and then cut to October 2024 when I decided to step on that damn
02:55catwalk again for Victoria's Secret, Miss Tiana Taylor, and I was like, am I just going to do this
03:05and just step away? But then Essence called again and said, we want you on the cover of our magazine.
03:15So I came out of modeling retirement on a runway with Victoria's Secret and came out of modeling
03:21retirement at 51 years old on the cover of Essence Magazine this month.
03:26I have dedicated my life to expanding the definition of beauty.
03:41Over 20 years ago, I created a television show called America's Next Top Model,
03:45and I fought, and you guys have no idea how hard we fought to bring the diversity
03:56to that television show at a time where it didn't exist, to show different beauties at a time when
04:04the world was like, what? You casting that and what? And what is that? A time when people in the fashion
04:11industry were telling me, oh, you putting the girls in the hood on your show? I was like, why can the girl
04:16from the trailer park become a supermodel? But the girl that's chilling in the park in the hood can't.
04:22And we fought and we struggled, but we made it happen. Did we get it right? Hell no, I said something dumb.
04:34But I refuse to have my legacy be about some stuff linked together on the internet when there were 24
04:45four cycles of changing the world.
04:51We all evolved.
04:56We all get better together.
05:00And I am so excited
05:02that I and so many of us
05:05has opened that door for others to follow.
05:07And now my 51-year-old dimple, cellulite, bigger tummy, 10 million times bigger titties
05:17is walking through that door that I opened
05:19with all of us behind us
05:22on that runway saying, baby, it's just beginning.
05:25Thank you so much, Mama.
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