This is Lupita Nyong’o.
You may know her as the Oscar winner from 12 Years a Slave.
But it was her speech on beauty that many of us found more Oscar-worthy—especially us moms already battling the pretty princess phenomenon with our little girls.
If you haven’t seen it already, it’s well worth a moment of your time.
And if you say to that, “What time!?” I’ve summed up the following video with two of my favorite quotes from her speech.
3:20
“My mother would say to me, ‘You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you.’ 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 actually sustains 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.”
4:38
“Get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside.”
My Castle Heart Publications 