Oscar Winners 2019

Yaaaay Regina King!!

Yaaaay Mahershala Ali!!

Yaaaay Green Book!!

Ha! I am only really saying that because I love Mahershala Ali. And Octavia Spencer was an executive producer on the project, so her production company can get some credit for that. I supported them.

I would have been happy if Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Black Panther or The BlackKklansman would have won. Those were better pictures than Green Book. I enjoyed them all.

Green Book was a decent movie. It was a good feel good White washed version of what it could be. Ya'll know good and well that that is what we've been looking at all of your lives.

And ya'll know good and well Black Panther wasn't going to win the Oscar. Nope. Come on.

Like I said, whatever Mahersherla Ali is in, I am DOWN. He is awesome. That is all. And good for him. He picks good roles for himself, and he was AMAZING in Green Book. He really had to STRETCH to play that character!

But I did mental cartwheels when Regina King won. I remember when she was Brenda on 227. She was great in If Beale Street Could Talk.

A decent enough Oscar year, it was.

But I do not think people will be satisfied until black folk win EVERTHING...

and you know that is not going to happen!

Lupita Nyong'o's Speech at Essence Event.

I thought this was excellent. I wish I would've seen or heard me this when I was a little brown girl. Every dark skinned woman I know has felt this way.




(Here's the youtube link if it doesn't show up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPCkfARH2eE)

Here is the full text of the speech...


I received a letter from a girl, and I would like to share just a small part of it with you.

Dear Lupita, it reads.

I think you are 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 are 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 that it would propel me to be such an image of hope in the same way that the women of The Color Purple were to me. I remember a time when I too 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 light-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 the mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first. And everyday 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 that I would stop stealing sugar cubes at night if he gave me what I wanted. I would listen to my mother’s every word (sitting right there) 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 I was beautiful. But that was no consolation, of course she’s supposed to think I’m beautiful.
And then, Alec Wecht came on the international scene, a celebrated model. She was dark as night, she was in on the runways, and in every magazine and everyone was talking about how beautiful she was. Even Oprah called her beautiful. And that made it a fact.

I couldn’t believe that people were embracing a woman that looked so much like me as beautiful. My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome, and all of a sudden Oprah was telling me that it wasn’t. It was perplexing, and I wanted to reject it because I wanted to enjoy the seduction of inadequacy. But a flower couldn’t help but bloom inside me. When I saw Alec, 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 far away 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 and these words plagued and bothered me; I didn’t really understand them until finally I realized 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 can’t eat beauty was that you can’t rely on how you look to sustain you. What actually sustains us, 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 Patsy [from 12 Years a Slave] into so much trouble with her master. 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 screens and in the 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, that there is no shade in that beauty.


That is EXCELLENT. There is something there for every woman, as we all have had challenges in our self-esteem.

Something for Every woman. No matter what race or skin tone she may be.

Yes there is.

Happy Tuesday Morning....

Oh this was supposed to be a Monday morning post.  But it is not!

It's Tuesday morning.

I've been running too hard, so I haven't posted.

So first of all, congratulations to 12 Years a Slave on those Oscar wins!

It won for best picture.

It even won for best screenplay. Now that's a great accomplishment.

And Congrats Lupita!

Go girl!

Director Steve McQueen jumped for joy.

I am glad he didn't fall. That would've been awful.

I'd be jumping too if I was him, with all the hate he's been getting. His wife read a book, thought he should read it, and he liked it and decided to make it into a movie.

He's from England. He doesn't know how much us well-to-do enlightened black folks in the United States hate slave, maid and butler movie.

You better not EVER let me get hold to some money and start making movies...

Straight up Black Space Operas.

"The Aliens kidnapped Denzel? Oh my, crank up the rocket cuz we gotta go get him!"

Original Oldgirls Space Wars.  Chicken in Space. 

Parts 1 through 10.

LOL!!!

I'd have ya'll hollering "LadyLee, could you PLEASE make a slave, butler or maid movie!?"

NO!

I'm trying to go to the Zrkinskian Galaxy and take over a couple of planets.  Me and some specially trained Oldgirls. Really though.

Straight up Space Operas.

And I'd make a movie of EVERY Octavia Butler book. ALL of them. ALL.

And some black horror and supernatural. Every Tananaverie Due book would be made into a movie. All of them.

I think we all like what we like. I heard the other day that if we are going to criticize those who go after their dreams, we aren't spending enough time on our OWN dreams. Or we don't even have dreams of our own.

That is true.

And it's a reason I get so gung ho when whoever is around me has a vision.  I want to be involved. I want to encourage. Because nay-sayers are all in our midst.

I like what Lupita said in her speech. "Dreams are valid."

And they are.

So congrats to them all...

And congrats to all of us who follow our dreams.