I used to pray to God to make me white

Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o on her personal journey towards an understanding of beauty

IWANT to take this opportunity to talk about beauty. Black beauty. Dark beauty. I received a letter from a girl and I would like to share a small part of it with you: “I think you’re really lucky to be this black but yet this successful in Hollywood overnight. I was just about to buy Dencia’s Whitenicious cream to lighten my skin when you appeared on the world map and saved me.”

My heart bled a little when I read those words. I could never have guessed that my first job out of school would be so powerful in and of itself and that it would propel me to be such an image of hope in the same way as the women of The Color Purple were to me.

I remember a time when I, too,

When I saw Wek, I inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I could not deny. Now I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the faraway gatekeepers of beauty

felt unbeautiful. I put on the TV and only saw pale skin. I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin. And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned. The morning would come and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of a mirror, because I wanted to see my fair face first.

And every day I experienced the same disappointment of being just as dark as I had been the day before. I tried to negotiate with God: I told Him I would stop stealing sugar cubes at night if He gave me what I wanted; I would listen to my mother’s every word and never lose my school sweater again if He just made me a little lighter. But I guess God was unimpressed with my bargaining chips because He never listened.

And when I was a teenager, my self-hate grew worse, as you can imagine happens with adolescence. My mother reminded me often that she thought that I was beautiful, but that was no consolation. She is my mother; she is supposed to think I am beautiful. Then Alek Wek came on the international scene.

A celebrated model, she was dark as night. She was on all the runways and in every magazine, and everyone was talking about how beautiful she was. Even Oprah Winfrey called her beautiful. I could not believe that people were embracing a woman who looked so much like me as beautiful. My complexion had always been an obstacle, and all of a sudden Oprah was telling me it was not. It was perplexing and I wanted to reject it because I had begun to enjoy the seduction of inadequacy. But a flower could not help but bloom inside me.

When I saw Wek, I inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I could not deny. Now I had a spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the faraway gatekeepers of beauty, but around me the preference for light skin prevailed. To the beholders that I thought mattered I was still unbeautiful. And my mother again would say to me: “You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you.” Those words plagued and bothered me. I did not really understand them until I realised 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 cannot eat beauty was that you cannot rely on how you look to sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty inflames the heart and enchants the soul. It is what got Patsey in so much trouble with her master in 12 Years a Slave, but it is also what has kept her story alive to this day. We remember the beauty of her spirit even after the beauty of her body has faded away.

And so I hope that my presence on your screen and in magazines may lead you, young girl, on a similar journey. That you will feel the validation of your external beauty, but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade to that beauty.

This is an edited version of a speech Nyong’o gave at the Black Women in Hollywood awards