My immediate family was always very supportive. It was my own fear of the rest of the world not accepting me, the rest of our society not accepting my wish to be an actor.
Lupita Nyong'ORead
Before the advent of the white man, black people were doing all kinds of things with their hair. The rejection of kinks and curls did come with the white man.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the cultural significance of black hair and critiques the imposition of Western beauty standards that reject natural hair textures.
Lupita Nyong'o's quote emphasizes the rich history and variety of hairstyles among black people prior to colonial influence. It critiques how white Western beauty ideals have often led to the devaluation of natural hair textures, promoting a narrow definition of beauty that does not honor the diversity present in black culture's relationship with hair.
Themes
Black HairCultural SignificanceBeauty StandardsDiversityColonialism
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech celebrating cultural heritage and self-acceptance.
More from Lupita Nyong'O
All quotes β[My mother] always said I was beautiful and I finally believed her at some point.
Lupita Nyong'ORead
What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion: for yourself and for those around you.
Lupita Nyong'ORead
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 in that beauty.
Lupita Nyong'ORead
As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that's what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else's shoes, and to take someone else's circumstances personally.
Lupita Nyong'ORead
I've loved the opportunity to learn about the fashion world and appreciate it as an art form, and I look forward to my continued education, but I never want it to take over my acting.
Lupita Nyong'ORead
Similar quotes
I think hip-hop is no more misogynistic than America is as a society. I just think hip-hop is a lot more brash, a lot more bold, a lot more loquacious. There are a lot more words that go into a hip-hop song than go into a regular song.
Talib KweliRead
Culture is public, because meaning is
Clifford GeertzRead
There's a tradition - in New Orleans it still exists - where people play in the street. People play outside of the venues. Food, music, and that cultural exchange, it happens anywhere.
Jon BatisteRead
Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties
Susan SontagRead
Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.
Mira NairRead
The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.
HerodotusRead