If you needed another reason to be a fan of Gabourey Sidibe, the words she spoke at a recent Women’s Inspiration and Enterprise conference in NYC last week just might give you what you’re looking for. The actress, who receives a lot of rude remarks and inquiries about her weight, touched on people’s obsession with her size, and the struggle she dealt with to feel confident about who she was as a young woman. And she also touched on how even with the confidence she gained, she still gets her feelings hurt by how cruel Hollywood and the media can be. According to fanshare.com, Sidibe had this to say about how finally loving herself actually helped her take on the role of Precious:

“I didn’t really get to grow up hearing that I was beautiful a lot, or that I was worth anything nor did I grow up seeing myself on TV. Then at some point when I was 21 or 22 I just decided that life wasn’t worth living if I wasn’t happy with myself so I just took all the steps that I could to figure out how to love myself and become confident. Truthfully speaking if I hadn’t found this person before that movie [Precious] I wouldn’t have even be in that movie.”

But it doesn’t help when magazines and sites try to make a mockery of her and her size:

“People see me as a confident person but I get shaken a lot, especially being in this business. A few weeks ago I was on vacation and I went into a CVS [a pharmacy chain of shops in the US] and as I’m paying I see a picture of myself on the cover of a magazine and they’re guesstimating what my weight is? The headline was ‘Gabourey Sidibe 250 pounds.”

But even with scenarios like that occurring constantly, Gabby tries to keep her head up in the midst of the media’s bull***, saying, “I have to keep going and living my life, so when things like that upset me I have to find things that build my confidence back up.”

I respect Gabby’s honesty, and I know it has to be a constant struggle for her with more time spent focused on her body type than on her talents these days. And while you might not agree with her size or her confidence, it would be nice if folks let her live and lead her life the way she sees fit. Clearly she’s aware of her size, and she’s decided to embrace it.

What are your thoughts on Gabby’s comments?

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When I was in elementary school in East St. Louis, I got in trouble trying to impress the “popular girls.”  For Christmas I received a portable CD player and the expressed warning not to bring it to school.  But wanting to be popular, I did anyway.  I allowed this girl in the class to listen to it and because this dumb-dumb had the CD player on her desk, not covered by anything, the teacher saw it and confiscated it.  After a series of unfortunate events, and another incident where I got in trouble for breaking school rules, the lies that I told to cover my butt came crumbling down on me.

From that moment on I vowed to give up lying all together.  It was too much to carry on just one lie and instead I opted to tell the truth no matter what.  It’s been years and I’ve still stuck to that commitment, and even though being completely truthful hasn’t been easy, I go to sleep every single night with a clean conscious that I’m not deceiving people and I don’t have the added stress of trying to remember what story I told who and what to keep straight.

Not only does keeping lies straight expel a lot of unnecessary energy, so does trying to correct people’s absolute perceptions of you.

My reputation is extremely important to me, so much so that I have this little inside joke with people of “My name good in these streets!”  But no matter how truthful and upfront I’ve been with people there have been times that I met others who were illiterate personality-wise, because they were reading me all wrong.

Now there will be times when people see you in an unflattering light, or misconstrue your actions. The correct thing to do would be try to redeem yourself, or make the foggy situation into a clear one.  But I’m talking about the times when even after you explain yourself, do a few back flips and a triple-double axel, the person is still going to hold onto their initial unflattering view of you.  I like to call these views “their absolute truths.”  In philosophy an absolute truth is a “fact” that is inflexible, fixed, and unwavering.

For me, the most frustrating false absolute truths about me come from my family.  As I’ve noted before, growing up I had a stuttering problem.  Now, stuttering is a speech impediment.  I don’t know if it has affected other people mentally, I’m not about to research my own disorder, all right?  But my brain was just fine.   I caught on to things quickly and I retain a lot of information.  However, certain cousins, aunts and uncles who knew me as a stuttering child will still treat me as if I have some type of learning disability.

“Okay Kendra.  I’m going to put the milk on the shelf right here.  You see it?  This milk is for you. Don’t forget, okay?”  “Why are you talking at me and not to me?”  Sometimes I had to stop myself from saying:  “Stop trying to explain rudimentary things to me.  If you can understand it with your intelligence deficiency, know that I probably caught on to the concept twenty steps before you did!”

I would find myself in elementary school, middle school, high school and college filling my brain with whatever I could, from copying the dictionary, taking courses in Latin, French, Spanish and Italian (which really means nothing now because I can’t fluently speak any of these languages), taking speed reading courses, watching hours of documentaries, and reading any and all newspapers.  I knew I was smart, but it wasn’t enough for me to know it, I had to prove to my family, the ones that when I’m trying to cross the street at 14 years old yelled at me to make sure that I looked both ways.

I would beat myself up internally if I even struggled with a concept, because to me it might prove that maybe they were right.  Maybe I am slower than everyone else.

Those thoughts would be compounded if I was watching a game show with them and knew answers that they didn’t and then I was questioned on how I knew the answer.  ”No, you’re lying.  You had to have seen an earlier version of the show.  We know that sometimes you lie.  Remember when you were in elementary school and with the CD player?”  With my family, you can’t live anything down.

It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college and in a late night gab session with my best friend and roommate Tammi, she asked me:  “Sometimes you seem like you have to prove you’re smart.  We all know it.  Why do you do that?”

I realized that I was projecting the stupidity of my family and my own insecurity on my friendships.  Outside of my family I was seen as highly intelligent from teachers, professors, associates and friends.  Why was I letting the viewpoints of people who remember the little girl who took 30 seconds to ask a single question phase me as an adult?

I learned that no matter what other people think of me, I had to be comfortable in who I am.  Knowing my own strengths and owning them. I’m saying all of that to say this, there are times in your life that no matter how you portray yourself to be, there’s going to be someone who’s going to come up with a viewpoint of you that’s not accurate and they’re not going to change it.  When that time comes, you have two choices.  You can try to do whatever you can to change their opinion, or you can become comfortable in who you are and be satisfied in knowing the truth for yourself.

From personal experience, choose the latter, you’ll be glad that you did.  Even though I like to keep my name good in these streets, it’s even better that it’s good in my own mind.

Kendra Koger’s name is good in these streets, and on twitter @kkoger.  No lie! 

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In life, there are just certain people you don’t like. They just rub you the wrong way. There are a lot of those folks in Hollywood. Every little thing that they do seems to annoy John Q. Public to no end. These 7 stars seem to have a permanent residence on someone’s ish list. Why is that?

anythinghiphop.com

Chris Brown

Ever since Chris Brown assaulted Rihanna, he’s become public enemy number one for a slew of people. The media and fellow celebrities have gone in on him for winning Grammy’s, lip synching, Twitter feuds and not really having a single eff to give about not being Mr. Congeniality. Although Rihanna has clearly forgiven and forgotten, for some reason, the public thinks they have reason to hold on to their grudge. Chris will never again be the cute boy next door. Too many people want him out of the neighborhood.

(USAToday.com) — Big problems. Big achievements. Big costs. Historians say President Obama’s legislative record during a crisis-ridden presidency already puts him in a league with such consequential presidents as Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt. But polls show voters aren’t totally on board with his achievements, at least not yet, and the White House acknowledges that his victories have carried huge financial and political costs. “There are always costs in doing big things,” Obama told USA TODAY.

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