Her pictures are everywhere and her name is on everyone’s lips. Kenyan-Mexican Lupita Nyong’o was the star of the award season and subsequently won her very own Academy Award for best supporting actress. She was in the megahit movie Black Panther and is racking up movie roles left and right now including the new “Us” by “Get Out” creator Jordan Peele. She also landed a contract with Lancome Paris and was named People Magazine’s Most Beautiful just a few years ago, but Lupita “never dreamed” she would be touted as “Most Beautiful” for all the world to see.
“It was exciting and just a major, major compliment,” the 35-year-old cover model says. And especially, “I was happy for all the girls who would see me on [it] and feel a little more seen.”
Born in Mexico and raised in Kenya, Nyong’o first equated beauty with what she saw on television: “Light skin and long, flowing, straight hair,” she says. “Subconsciously you start to appreciate those things more than what you possess.” Her mother, Dorothy, who is the managing director and head of PR for the Africa Cancer Foundation, “always said I was beautiful,” Nyong’o adds. “And I finally believed her at some point.”
As a teen, Nyong’o dyed her hair every color – except blonde – and even went as far as shaving her head bald. “It was very strange and very cold!” she says, laughing. “It was scary but I like to dare myself.”
“I remember a time when I too felt ‘unbeautiful,'” confessed Nyong’o. “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 was the day before. I tried to negotiate with God…But I guess God was unimpressed with my bargaining chips because He never listened.”
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When her self-esteem was at its lowest, Nyong’o says that Sudanese model Alek Wek was the woman who finally inspired her to be proud of who she was — on the inside and the outside. “I couldn’t believe that people were embracing a woman who looked so much like me, as beautiful,” she said. “My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome and all of a sudden Oprah was telling me it wasn’t.”
Now she says the best compliments are “when I have been called beautiful with not one drop of makeup on,” she adds. “And also before I comb my hair or put on a pretty dress. Happiness is the most important thing.”
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