Month: April 2017

Paula Abdul

Posted on by Betty Hoeffner

 

PAULA ABDUL

“I was like any other teenage girl who wanted to be someone I’m not, and that was defined by what boys liked and what images of beauty the media perpetrated. Plus, when I was 7 years old, my ballet teacher said that I didn’t have a dancer’s body. That rang in my head as “I’m not normal; my body is wrong.” It affected me in profound ways. I’m a strong girl, but I’ve always been a believer that when I can’t manage, I surrender. I get myself to a place where someone can help me. I’m prouder of overcoming bulimia than of anything else I’ve done – more than having a number one record or selling out a concert. Celebrate yourself, embrace your struggle, and don’t walk with shame, because nothing is as bad as you probably think it is. When I got through bulimia, I stopped living as a prisoner. Let your body fall into its natural state. Every minute you stay enthralled with a diet or get caught up in how you think you should look, you lose, because you’re not enjoying life.”

Queen Latifah

Posted on by Betty Hoeffner

QUEEN LATIFAH

“It was a very vulnerable time going from being insecure about my body and who I am to becoming comfortable with me. I had to tune out what the hell everybody else had to say about who I was. When I was able to do that, I felt free.”  Parade

“I wish every woman would love themselves and embrace what they were given naturally. I’ve been fortunate to have the career I want without changing what I look like. If [producers] ever demanded I lose so much weight that I’m not even a remnant of who I am, then hell no, I’m not going to do that. Besides, there’d be a lot of girls out there who wouldn’t be inspired had I not been that girl with a little more weight who carried herself with that self-confidence.”  In Style

Phylicia Rashad

Posted on by Betty Hoeffner

 

PHYLICIA RASHAD

“Don’t be preoccupied with looking for approval from other people. You’re never going to be anybody but who you are. And who you are is greater than you imagine. The way that you think creates our reality. It’s very powerful. I would say to a young girl who is feeling insecure about her looks to stop. Who you are is not the way you look; who you are is who you are on the inside. And there is not a mirror in the world that can show you that. It is beautiful, it is amazing, it is awesome.’  Oprah Show

Harvey Keitel

Posted on by Betty Hoeffner

 

HARVEY KEITEL

“I won’t let anyone tell my son not to cry. I don’t want anything to interfere with his expressing what he’s feeling. As a kid I was told to shush, and as a result it’s taken me a lifetime to be able to speak. I had to hide it – you hammer it down until you can’t think anymore, you can’t speak anymore, and your inner world is in retreat. You can’t function, and you stutter, which I did as a boy. You will stutter not only vocally, but inwardly. You will hesitate, you will fumble, you will futz, and you will deny the truth because the truth is too difficult to handle. It’s hard to select which situations to run away from once you become a runner, so you hide from everything.”

Madonna

Posted on by Betty Hoeffner

MADONNA has fears too:

“Oh sure, I’ve got lots of fears. My job is to conquer my fears. The irony of being a performer is that I have huge insecurities. People are shocked to hear that I think my legs are fat or I don’t like the way I look. We all have insecurities. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t. I’m so not the Material Girl now. There were many years when I thought fame, fortune, and public approval would bring me happiness. But one day you wake up and realize they don’t. Each of us is responsible for everything that happens in our lives. When good things happen — we win an award, meet the love of our lives, or get a promotion – we take ownership of that. But when bad things happen-we get fired or we divorce-we often don’t take responsibility. We call it something that just happened. I now understand that just as we can draw the positive, we can draw the negative.”

When asked what she knew for sure, Madonna said, “That there are no mistakes or accidents. That consciousness is everything and that all things begin with a thought. That we are responsible for our own fate, we reap what we sow, we get what we give, we pull in what we put out.” O Magazine

Uma Thurman

Posted on by Betty Hoeffner

 

UMA THURMAN

“One of the things that struck me at fashion shows is how great these incredibly thin women look in photographs but how in real life it’s too thin. They would be more attractive if they were a little heavier. And I actually don’t think this desire to be rail thin is as pandemic aesthetically as the fashion world presents it to be. I don’t think men prefer women to look like that.”

SALEISHA

Posted on by Betty Hoeffner

 

SALEISHA wants you to be who you are

“My freshman year I went through a phase when I would think some girl was much prettier than me. Like, she’s skinnier, she’s taller, she has prettier eyes.  I didn’t hate myself, but I didn’t feel that I was pretty. But at the end of the day, you can’t change who you are. You can’t go to sleep at night and wake up tomorrow perfectly beautiful. You just have to give what you got, and if [the world] doesn’t want it, then they can leave it. Seventeen

Hillary Swank

Posted on by Betty Hoeffner

HILLARY SWANK

“I’m just a girl from a trailor park who had a dream.” 2005 Academy Awards acceptance speech

“There are things about my childhood that I regret, that my mom regrets, that my dad regrets, and I think that my brother regrets, which is that my parents were so troubled in their relationship that we were kind of neglected at times. The other side of my childhood so overshadows that, though, that it’s not something I tend to bring up. Ultimately, my parents did the best they could. A lot of people hold on to something not being the way they think it should’ve been, and they’re messed up because of it. And what’s sad about that is that life will be over for your parents one day, and you can be left with what you could have made of the relationship, but didn’t. My dad wasn’t in my life very much when I was growing up, but I decided that I didn’t want his life to be over and for me to say, “Oh, if I’d only grown up I could’ve had an adult relationship with him.” I’m so glad I have my dad in my life right now. Interview

“One of the first producers I worked with told me I had a horrible forehead and my lips were too big.”  US Weekly