I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me, with my kind of skin and my kind of hair, was never considered to be beautiful.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on societal standards of beauty and the lack of representation for women of color.
Zozibini Tunzi's quote highlights the challenges faced by women who do not fit conventional beauty standards, particularly women of color. It emphasizes the internal and external struggles of growing up in a society that often excludes individuals based on their appearance, and calls for broader acceptance and recognition of diverse beauty.
In practice
In a speech about self-acceptance during a school assembly.
I think the most important thing... is leadership. It's something that has been lacking in young women and girls for a very long time, not because we don't want to but because of what society has labeled women to be. I think we are the most powerful beings in the world and that we should be given every opportunity.
I think we are afraid to take up space. We are afraid to be amazing. As soon as that fear leaves us and we start building that confidence of being unapologetic about being great, then i think we can get into that space of having a lot of women leaders who are just fearless.
People speak about diversity and representation like the world is ready. But when it actually happens, people can't take change. They can't deal with it. Which is why we have things like cyberbullying, which is why people will send you nasty DMs, say nasty things in your comments. Because they're just not dealing with it, they're not ready.
We should be teaching young girls to take up space. Nothing is as important as taking up space in society and cementing yourself.
Women are constantly being taught how to defend themselves against attack from men. I would like to shift the perception. I want to say that that responsibility should no longer rest on the shoulders of women alone.
I didn't enter Miss S.A. because I thought I was the most beautiful woman in S.A., I entered because it's one of the few platforms that give women the ability to lead and I knew I had a powerful voice and message to send out.
I never quite understand the way society decides who is beautiful and who is not. But an open face and a capacity for kindness always feel like reliable signifiers to me.
I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she's four or five hundred pounds but she doesn't see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she's a beauty. And therefore, I think she's a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do.
Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence
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.
How I grew to believe Black hair has power, genius, and magic in it, defying gravity and limitation. I mean, look at how marvelous it is: Black hair grows up and out.
I feel that beauty and femininity are ageless
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