It gives me All Teh Feelz
I cannot stop telling people about Gabourey Sidibe’s Ms. Foundation Gala speech.
Some highlights:
1. Why on earth do we ask her how she’s so confident and not, say, maybe someone whose self-assurance IS puzzling?
The last time someone said to me what a “pretty face” I have, I told them all of me is pretty damn rockin’, from the inside out. Fuck people and their backhanded compliments.
Yes I want to have a perfect body. But that isn’t in the cards for me right now. It never was and may never be. So I’ve worked on my MIND. My HUMOR. My HEART and SOUL.
That’s why I don’t settle for the first boy who says hello. I don’t feel that I have to be grateful that “someone” looked twice at me. Plenty of people look two and four and five times. And not just in horror!
I can’t tell you how many times I got picked up at SunFest. Maybe it was the walking-down-the-street-eating-a-banana portion of the program.
Or maybe it was the dancing-because-the-spirit-moved-me bit. Or maybe it was the fact that I am having a good time wherever I go and not, say, sucking in my gut and shrinking from the world because someone may think I don’t deserve to be living in it because of some “rules” that someone else has made THEM live and think by.
2. So if you ARE the smartest person in the room, why are you always expected to be a shrinking violet and fit in with those who aren’t?
I don’t think I am better than anyone. But if you called me for a reference on most of the people I’ve met in my life, I wouldn’t want to be associated with them. So, I don’t want them as friends because, you know, guilt by association and all.
And it goes back to a theme about which I have pounded the table for the past 13 years that I’ve run this blog — why on EARTH do I have to be nervous about lesser people’s CONTROL over where I live, how I work and the way I spend my precious free time?
I’m sorry — if any of them had all the answers and were living the dream, I’d be taking notes. Otherwise, don’t try to erode my greatness in order to elevate yours.
Am I the smartest person on the planet? I think I rank higher than many. I just don’t have to open my mouth to constantly try to prove it. I love Gabourey for owning it that, yes, she really was awesome and therefore destined to BE SOMEBODY.
3. Dance at your desk anyway.
Her story about being excluded from the school party, but enjoying it from afar anyway, means a lot to me because I do dance at my desk.
So what if everyone else has an opinion of you that’s lesser than yours. If I have learned anything in my near-40 years, it’s that you can’t please anyone, any of the time. Might as well please yourself.
And in those 60-second bursts of booty-poppin’ (oh yeah, I go there), I have more self-confidence and glee and most of all FUN than I ever have in my whole entire life.
It’s just a shame that it generally takes NOBODY WATCHING for life’s best moments to happen.
I applaud Gabourey. Not for any other reason that she made me laugh and cry and feel free to love myself as much as I possibly can. And I’d give anything to meet more people like that — like myself — in this world.