Put on Your Crown

by Queen Latifah

  Those moments started in my early adolescence, when I began developing faster than most girls my age. I wasn’t heavy so much as big-boned. I was athletic, and I had that ungainly walk that young girls have when they’re all limbs. We’re like certain big breeds of dogs when as puppies they start their first growth spurt and their minds haven’t caught up to their bodies yet. I tended to hunch over. I didn’t have that cutesy, girly walk that my other friends had naturally. Instead I felt awkward. I see a little of me in President Obama’s oldest daughter, Malia. Both of her parents are tall and athletic, and so is she. And she has that same slightly lumbering, gangly gait I had. No doubt Malia is going to grow into someone as graceful as her mother soon enough.

  Walk Tall

  To get me through my awkward phase my mom started teaching me how to walk with a book on my head, like the models. It was our time together, when we got to be girls. I was running around with my father and brother so much, playing football, going fishing, and doing all the fun stuff that boys usually do, that I think this was Mom’s way of balancing out their influence with some of her own. But these small moments we had together ended up having a huge impact on my self-esteem because they taught me how to walk tall. In her own subtle, gentle way, my mother was instilling in me the importance of holding myself upright and being a lady.

  It was a simple thing, but mastering that strut was a blessing, especially by the time I hit high school. It gave me a presence when I walked down those halls. It was a big boost to my sense of self-confidence, power, and pride. I wasn’t one of those introverted kids who walked with my head down, holding my books close. I walked around like I had an “S” on my chest. There is something about moving through the

  world with your head held high that says, “I am proud to be who I am.” People react to you differently. They see you. You project this idea that you think you are pretty damn special, and the rest of the world gets convinced by your body language. This was not a walk that said, “I’m hiding myself because I’m not worthy.” This was a prideful, elegant walk that screamed, “Hey, world, I’m ready for you! I’m ready to go out there and see what there is to see and do what there is to do. I’m on an adventure!”

  That walk has stayed with me my whole life. It was partly because of my strut that I became one of the cool girls in school and hung out with the popular crew. On some level, it helped me to become a performer. I was walking the walk of self-confidence and feeling it. When it came time to release my first album, I was able to resist the pressures to look a certain way, and I created my own style. I called myself “Queen” because that was exactly how I felt inside, and I pulled off the royal African look I created for myself—with the robes, wooden jewelry, and hats—because at seventeen I already had that swagger.

  Real Women Have Curves

  Of course, there were many times throughout my early career when my confidence was tested. The

  pressure to lose weight would come and go all through my career, and sometimes it was immense. It hurt when a studio executive told me to slim down, but for the most part I was comfortable in my own skin. I liked my size, and I thought it was ridiculous when our producers told us to lose weight when we were doing Living Single. We were supposed to reflect women in the real world, so what sense would it make to viewers if we were all skinny?

  The decision to lose weight came much later in life, in 2002, and more for health reasons than anything else. I was at my heaviest when I was playing Matron “Mama” Morton in Chicago, and that heft was right for my character. My inspiration was my grandmother Nana Owens, a larger-than-life glamour queen who wore sequins, went on cruises, and owned a gun. My aunts and I inherited her big ol’ gazungas, but they held up just fine on Nana, right up until she died at the ripe old age of ninety-four. I was in Toronto filming Chicago when that happened, and I was devastated, but her spirit was right there with me. When I did that number “When You’re Good to Mama,” the scene that earned me an Oscar nomination, the director kept telling me to think of Sophie Tucker, “the Last of the Red Hot Mamas.” No disrespect, but it was Nana I could relate to for that part. She gave that character its soul.

  That was one long, cold winter in Toronto. By the end of six months, I wasn’t feeling my best. I was sluggish. My back hurt. I really wanted to lose weight for my next role. I like to look a bit different for each part I play. But mostly I just wanted to feel better, be healthy, have more energy. I also wanted to go hard and slim down to see if I could reduce my breast size. I was sick of having my bra straps dig into my shoulders all the time. So when I moved back to Los Angeles, I immediately found myself a trainer, Jeannette, who works with me to this day.

  When we met, the first thing I did was grab my stomach and say, “There’s a lotta love here, and you’re gonna have a hard time separating me from all this love!” Jeannette laughed. She was used to training models and actresses—people who were already physically fit but still miserable and dissatisfied with their lives. I was the polar opposite. We did most of our workouts outside and had fun. Jeannette knew fifty exercises I could do with just a park bench, so I never got bored. Over the next six weeks, I trained so intensely—twice a day for at least two hours—I lost twenty-five pounds. My breasts didn’t budge, but I felt better, and I reconnected to the athlete in me.

  I’ve been pretty consistent about exercise in my life ever since. Maybe I’m not always as consistent as I should be, but when I go for a few days without it, I don’t feel so great about myself. When I was filming Just Wright in New York, I made a point of having a big pink bicycle on the set, and I rode it all over the streets of Manhattan. I kept it moving, soaking it all in—the pigeons swooping past, the people dodging taxicabs, some driver cursing out another driver. I draw energy from this. It helps me appreciate this great adventure called life.

  Every chance I get, I try to exercise. When I work out really hard and pound that treadmill for an hour, I feel beautiful. I take pride in my accomplishment. I like the way I look in my Nike cap, sneakers, and sweats, with my flushed skin and hair that’s damp at the roots from sweat. I almost feel more gorgeous in those moments, when I’ve done something good for myself, than when I’m all glammed up in a designer gown for some awards show.

  Exercise and health have become so closely tied to my self-esteem, I’ve made it a priority. When my body feels good I feel more energized and alive, and that’s sexy. I’m taking care of this body God gave me. I’m more careful about what I put in my mouth. My mother’s a Southern girl, and I grew up on smothered chicken, collard greens, and home fries. Everything has some kind of gravy in it and lots of salt. I eased up on the salt and adapted a few recipes. I love my greens, but now I’ll make them with turkey bacon instead of back fat or a ham hock. The Jenny Craig program helped a lot. I try to eat more organic foods, more vegetables, less fat. I’ll pass on the second helping of mac and cheese. Comfort food has its place, but no one needs that much comfort, least of all me!

  We may not have all been born looking like supermodels, but so what? We become beautiful when we do things to take care of ourselves, inside and out. It’s not just about how I look, it’s about my health and doing things that will let me live longer by keeping down my blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol.

  Health Is Beauty

  You’ve got to maintain. I know women who never miss their weekly appointment at the hair salon, but you’ll never catch them sweating it out in the gym. That’s like having a car decked out with rims, a nice new sound system, and an expensive paint job, but the engine’s dead because you never take it in for a tune-up. Your ride may look great, but it doesn’t run, so what’s the point?

  Nurture what God gave you. We make our worst decisions when we’re not feeling our best. We don’t see ourselves in the right light, and we hurt ourselves even more. We stay in relationships where we’re being abused, we don’t go for our real dreams and goals in life, we give pieces of ourselves away that we can never get back, because we don
’t appreciate who we are and what we have. We tear ourselves down for what we are or are not, instead of celebrating who we are.

  But we empower ourselves when we put our health and well-being first. Getting fit doesn’t just change your figure, it transforms your attitude. You put yourself up on a higher pedestal. When a woman loses weight, her confidence soars. She doesn’t take so much crap from her man. She finds her voice. She expresses herself.

  Exercise has become inextricably linked with my self-esteem. The other day I woke up not feeling my best. Ladies, you know what I’m talking about. It happens every twenty-eight days or so. I’d had a long, intense week of promoting my new album, and I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept the night before. I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I didn’t want to be in bed. I was in purgatory. I got up, looked at myself in the mirror, and didn’t like what I saw. I had a nine a.m. workout session with another trainer, Andrea, and I wanted to cancel. But then I heard Jeannette’s voice say, You can do it, Dana. Just try, and you’ll feel better. She was in New York, but she’d done such a good job of getting into my head, she could be heard from thousands of miles away!

  When I got to the gym, I warned Andrea that I wasn’t feeling so good. I was crampy and tired. She suggested we just go for a walk. I loved that idea. So we headed out to a nearby park, and after about fifteen minutes the blood started circulating in my body, my vision cleared, and my mood lifted. I feed off what I see around me—dogs running in the park, kids playing, old couples walking hand in hand. I saw one elderly gentleman who was stretching almost to the point of doing splits. He put me to shame! I thought, “Well, this man is twice my age, so if he can walk, I can walk.” When I got home later that day and looked at myself in the mirror, I felt a lot better about the person who was staring back at me. I’d worked hard to do something I didn’t want to do. I felt a sense of accomplishment. I got out of my own head, moved my body, and made myself feel alive and beautiful again.

  I love this body of mine more and more every day. In fact, my friends call me “Naked Girl” because I’m always strutting around the house in the buff, I am so proud of my curves. As I age, it feels like I’m growing into my beauty. I love my smile, my cheekbones, my eyes. But I don’t think my beauty lies just in my face. I also love my curves, my genetics, my muscles, my hips. Mine is a grown woman’s body, and I love the way it transforms into a more womanly shape. I even like my feet!

  Diet and exercise have helped me build this love. I used to wear looser clothes, but in the last few years I’ve enjoyed wearing those va-voom gowns and waist-cinching dresses and suits that show off my curves and accentuate my booty. I may be a big girl, but I am damn proud of my shape.

  There is beauty in every kind of woman, but when people focus on trying to capture one specific look, they miss out on all this variety. They also lose sight of the value of character. But first we have to see it and appreciate it in ourselves.

  Beauty Is You

  My mother had a great exercise she used to teach the kids in her class at Irvington High School to help them love themselves a little more. Mom would see a lot of very troubled teenagers. So many of these kids were from broken homes. A number of them were abused, sexually and physically. Often these kids would act out, and their grades would suffer. Even though she had forty kids in her class, she made a point of remembering each and every one of them by name in the first week. She also made a point of remembering a little detail about each of the kids so they’d know they were being seen and acknowledged. Often it was the first time they felt noticed in school.

  She made them write lists of all the things they liked about themselves, and it would usually stump them. Some kids turned over their papers and started to cry. Ms. O would have to get them started. “Come on, now,” she’d say. “You’ve got a pretty smile, write that down!” Or, “You take care of your brothers and sisters.” Or, “You have a great sense of style, you always wear fly clothes.”

  This one seventeen-year-old girl was so tired and angry because she had to get up every morning to feed her younger siblings breakfast and get them ready for school while her mom was still in bed, too strung out on crack to move. This poor girl couldn’t think of anything nice to say about herself, because she’d turned all that bitterness and anger from her unhappy home life in on herself. Eventually, after some coaxing from my mother, she wrote down the only good thing she could think of: “I believe that God loves me and He is going to make things better.”

  Ms. O would tell these kids to tape their lists to the bathroom mirror. They had to read their lists, those few words of self-love, while they brushed their teeth, to remind themselves how special they were, no matter how rough the day got. And as the school year progressed, those boys and girls walked taller, got better grades, and graduated. Several even went off to college. All because my mother loved them enough to teach them to love themselves.

  Speaking of Ms. O, I just remembered another life-stopping moment. It had a bigger impact on my self-esteem than any glamorous photo shoot ever could.

  It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and I decided to celebrate by inviting my closest friends to party on a yacht in Marina del Rey. This was around the time I was doing Living Single. Something started happening to my face. Up until then, I looked like my dad. Everyone who met him and me together would say, “Wow, you look just like your father,” and I didn’t mind. I was proud of my dad. He’s a handsome guy. But as I was getting dressed for the party, I stepped out onto the balcony to look at the sunset, turned to go back inside, and suddenly caught myself in the mirror. I saw my mother staring back at me.

  There was something about the elegant dress I wore that day and the way I was standing at that moment that made me really feel like a woman. I thought, “Wow, look at you!” My mother’s beauty was right there, in my reflection. I had her cheekbones, her eyes, her smile. This is the moment we can look forward to as young women growing up and wondering to ourselves, “Am I beautiful?” It’s the sudden recognition that, yes, we are.

  Unlike her students, I didn’t need Mom’s bathroom mirror checklist because I could see her face in mine, and that was enough to remind me of all the things I love about myself even beyond my mother’s gorgeous face. I saw all the kindness, compassion, and wisdom she had nurtured in me. I saw my soul.

  Seeing myself in that moment was the first time I truly felt comfortable in my own skin. I felt like a lady, and that was a good thing.

  CHAPTER 3

  Money

  People first, then money, then things.

  —SUZE ORMAN

  I could tell something was wrong the second I heard my bookkeeper’s voice on the phone. He was an accounting student I’d put in charge of paying all my bills, and somehow, over the last few months, he’d gotten overwhelmed. Using the signature card I gave him, he wrote check after check after check to pay off every bill that came into the office, not even questioning the amounts. Then, just as he was getting ready to pay off another pile of invoices coming due, he noticed something was off.

  “Uh, Dana, there’s something I have to tell you.” It sounded like his stomach was about to fall out of his mouth. “I, uh… Okay, I’m just gonna say it. There’s no money left in your account.”

  “Stop playing! That ain’t funny.”

  “No, really. It’s gone. Boss, I’m so sorry….”

  “Whaaaat?! Are you kidding me? How can that be? What do you mean it’s all gone?”

  I couldn’t believe it. It was the spring of 2000, and I’d been working my butt off down in Los Angeles, doing my talk show and a heap of other projects. I was making plenty of money. This just didn’t make sense. Then, seconds after I got off the phone with my bookkeeper, my accountant called.

  “Dana, this is bad. There’s nothing left in your account, and you owe the IRS one million dollars. Those taxes are due next week!”

  I thought I was going to die. I literally was going to lose it. It wasn’t the worst life-stopping moment of my li
fe, but it was up there in the top five. I felt nauseated. I couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t a nickel in my account to pay the IRS, and they don’t play. It was a scary situation to be in. I’d been working so hard, and for what? Just like that, I was broke. How was it possible? Who let this happen?

  I was mad at everybody. But mostly I was angry at myself. I should have known better. I should have paid more attention to my finances. I should have handled my business and not left everything on the shoulders of some poor kid who was totally out of his depth. It was my fault.

  Street Ain’t Smart Enough

  This is the first time I’ve talked publicly about going broke. I’m sharing this with you so you’ll understand how easy it can be to lose it all at any level of wealth when you’re not looking hard enough.

  We thought we made all the right moves. Shakim and I had decided a year before to set up our own record company. Both of us could have had a deal with a major label and taken high-level, lucrative jobs as music executives. It would have been easier in a lot of ways. You get expense accounts and travel accounts. You start buying things like flashy cars and houses, and before you know it, you’ve acquired so much stuff and gotten so used to having everything paid for that you become dependent on that label for everything. You become its slave.

  We never wanted to be like that. Shakim and I are the kind of people who want to be free to think out of the box and not have to go through some committee to do it. We’d been managing several successful artists for years through Flavor Unit Management, and we already had a small distribution deal with a record label, but we wanted to take it to the next level. We wanted to be like Jay-Z and Damon Dash at Roc-A-Fella or Baby and Slim at Cash Money Records. We wanted ownership. These guys proved that you could create a high level of success when you own the content of the things you create, whether it’s music, movies, or merchandising.