She’s throwing down the gauntlet; challenging Hollywood to redefine what makes a woman beautiful.
You have to love Queen Latifah’s brazen style of bucking the traditional Tinsel town trend. The cover girl recently let loose during an interview that asked stars to reveal their meaning of true beauty.
“Beauty is not just a white girl. It’s so many different flavors and shades,” the 37-year-old rapper-actress told reporters.
According to Latifah, in Hollywood the meter for beauty “has been a slim white girl.” But, the actress says it appears the tide may be changing-—a little.
“(In Hollywood) we’ve definitely gotten better with body type,” she says. “It used to be just me! Now with Jennifer Hudson’s success and America Ferrera, I got some successors to take the reins on this whole bodylicious thing.”
Voluptuous, curvaceous, however you want to word it, Latifah says she is not and likely will never be a “skinny girl”—-and that’s fine by her.
“I think I’m normal compared to the statistics,” she says. “This is a big country nowadays.”
Which is not to say the star of “Chicago” has never tried to lose weight. In fact, in 2002 the actress lost 25 pounds and a year later had elective breast-reduction surgery because her breasts “didn’t go anywhere.” She says the surgery helped alleviate years of back and shoulder pain.
Before the surgery, Latifah says she was an E or an F cup.
“I was pretty big. Now I’m like a DD. I wanted to be a triple. They took one D too many! So that was hard to deal with.”
Latifah says the experience changed her both physically and emotionally and has since sworn off any additional elective surgeries.
“There are people who love (plastic surgery) and want to cut and chop anything. I’m like, ‘Y’all are crazy!'”
Instead, Latifah says she is embracing her current size and hopes that someday Hollywood, and the country as a whole, will be more accepting of “larger ladies.”