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and of the example it was going to set for girls who are not the typical ideal of beauty. They were
     going to look at this ad in some magazine. I could just hear them saying, “Wow, she’s a cover girl; I can be a cover girl!
     She can sing and actand be a beautiful woman in a magazine, and I can be all those things!”
    It wasn’t so much that this moment was pivotal to my self-esteem. I always felt beautiful in my own way. My CoverGirl moment
     had an impact in the sense that it boosted my confidence by a few degrees. But I believed it would completely change the lives
     of millions of girls, and that gave me a thrill. I knew CoverGirl was going to spend a shitload of money on this campaign.
     This ad was going to be everywhere. It was going to expand the idea of beauty in a way that was long overdue. Young black,
     Latina, Indian, and Asian girls would see it. The image would be in their faces on a daily basis. Some kid would look at it,
     have her own life-stopping moment, and say, “Okay, beauty
is
me.”
More Shapes, Colors, and Sizes, Please
    When I was coming up, there were no women who looked like me in the media. As a kid, I’d flip through magazines like
Essence
,
Ebony
, and
Jet
, staples in any African-American household, and for the most part the models were light-skinned and skinny. My mom would
     sometimes bring home
Vogue
and
Harper’s Bazaar
, where black models were practically nonexistent. I’dflip through these big, thick books, fascinated by all the wonderful
     products and gorgeous, cutting-edge fashion and accessories. But they were practically devoid of people who looked like me,
     or my mother, or my aunts—beautiful women in their own right. Maybe there were one or two models who looked like my friends’
     Spanish cousins, but that was about it. It kinda hurt that what was supposed to be the epitome of all that was desirable and
     edgy and fashionable had no relevance to me. Nothing was tailored to black women, especially not me and my curvy, darker-skinned
     sisters. It was as if Madison Avenue was telling us, “This isn’t for you.”
    There are a few more black models today. There are even one or two curvier girls on the magazine covers. But diversity in
     the fashion industry is all too rare. You still hear stories about photo editors digitizing images beyond recognition. A little
     airbrushing in the industry is normal and acceptable to some extent. Sometimes you might have a pimple or the lighting has
     cast a shadow or a piece of clothing has fallen the wrong way. But when they start lightening up the skin of gorgeous black
     women like Beyoncé or Jordin Sparks, and when they start chopping off the curves and body parts of perfectly normal women
     to make them look gaunt and sickly, like they did in that Ralph Lauren ad, it’s time to draw the line.
    Every day, girls are being exposed to standards of beauty that aren’t even real. They’re just images manipulated by a photographer.
     I know, because I see these women—actresses, models, and singers—in the flesh, and they are much more beautiful in their flawed
     individuality than their cookie-cutter images in a magazine spread. Nor do they look like those distorted paparazzi shots
     the tabloids like to print. You can make anyone look bad when you shoot them at an unflattering angle. But to say beautiful,
     healthy women like Tyra Banks or Jennifer Love Hewitt are fat is just sick.
    Hollywood is this unrealistic bubble that doesn’t represent the rest of the country, but its influence has spread far and
     wide. You see all these actresses starving themselves to look amazing on the red carpet, and the young girls across America
     who try to emulate that starved physique end up slowly killing themselves. A lot of people in the entertainment business have
     eating disorders. They get pressured by their agents, producers, and studio executives to lose weight. At all these award
     dinners and luncheons I get to go to, you