Precious director Lee Daniels and star Gabourey Sibide took part in an onstage interview this past weekend as part of the New York Times Arts & Leisure fest, and Jezebel‘s got a wonderful summary of the event:
[Gabourey Sibide] was wearing a floral top, black pants and turquoise sneakers. She giggled a lot, and sometimes snorted when she laughed….[moderator Patricia Cohen] asked Gabby where her confidence comes from—parents? Family? Gabby replied: “I don’t think my brand of confidence can come from an outside source. I have to find it in myself. I have two little sisters who are 13 and they’re just at that age where they’re about to hate themselves. I do it for them. They think I’m pretty, and I want them to think they’re pretty.” She also admitted that there was a time that she felt sad because the world didn’t find her beautiful, but then she realized: “I am the world.”
The movie Precious has been dissected and discussed at length, and much has been made of how the character Precious is decidedly not Gabby Sidibe. It was made even more apparent when Gabby said, bemused and confident: “People trip over themselves to tell me I’m beautiful. It’s cute. It’s cute, but I’m not buying it. I’m beautiful now because you can buy a ticket to see me on a screen? I was beautiful before.”
Read the whole thing here.
From the interviews I’ve read she seems like a great person, but she’s not beautiful. She needs to eat less or she’s going to get the diabeetus and go blind and die young.
I like that she might grow famous for being more well-adjusted than the famously challenged character that made her famous.
Poor Marty Feldman, for example, couldn’t make that same transcendent celebrity leap, and for the rest of his life had to suffer fans pestering him about the hump.
I hate it when people use “bemused” incorrectly.
“to cause to have feelings of wry or tolerant amusement”? Sounds correct to me.
I can see this woman being beautiful. Doesn’t necessarily mean that she is ultra-healthy, but if healthiness equated to beauty we’d all be up on jack lalanne’s jock.
All right, look @1, I’m not fat. But I don’t have to be to imagine how incredibly annoying and tiresome comments like yours can be. Sibide deserves recognition: she played a difficult part with finesse, and she has become an inspiration and a role model for people who rarely get to see themselves reflected thoughtfully in their culture’s media. She’s talented, strong, and self-confident. But all you can see is her fat.
And while you may have just thrown that comment out there without thinking too much, the prevalence of these kinds of comments has got to wear a person down, don’t you think? So let’s just get it out of the way, right now. Gabourey Sibide, guess what? You’re wrong about yourself! You’re not beautiful, you’re fat and ugly! Hear that? FAT and UGLY. And until you lose some weight, so you are no longer FAT and UGLY, we are going to keep reminding you, despite your delusional self-confidence, that while you seem like a great person, you are FAT and UGLY and you are going to GO BLIND and DIE.
There. Now can we say something else about her, please?
@1, she IS beautiful. I’m just sorry you can’t see it.
@4, you said what I wanted to say. Thanks!
Er, sorry. Meant @5.
she is so great…i hope she gets to have a big ass career…no pun intended.
I want to ask those who say she is beautiful what they mean by this term. Seriously. I think we need to specify. Do we use the term in a moral, artistic or intellectual sense? She may be beautiful in those ways.
But physically? No. She is not physically beautiful, and that is because of shape and size.
I think she is physically beautiful.
@9 Not to you, but different people are attracted to women of different shapes and sizes. While I’m not personally attracted to Ms. Sibide, I know that I don’t find every conventionally attractive woman to be beautiful, and I’ve found many non-conventionally attractive women to be beautiful. Everyone’s allowed to have their own opinions and standards of beauty.
OK, haunted leg. Thank you for answering. I wanted to know if people who declare her beautiful had some moral motives mixed in with their appraisal.
As in “She’s nice and smart and talented, and I’m rooting for her, so I’ll say she’s beautiful.”
Glad to know you did mean physically beautiful. I am still confounded as to how that’s possible, but I do believe you’re sincere.
Skeptika, there are probably people in this world that you find deeply, deeply beautiful, but whom I would find mediocre or repulsive. Beauty is incredibly subjective. It’s fine if you don’t find this woman attractive, but that doesn’t actually mean she’s unattractive.
@12,
Jesus Christ, grow up. Listen up, because this is something you should have learned around the age of three: Not everyone is YOU.
I do think it’s really weird, though, that you’re questioning people’s motives. Why does it matter to you if people think Gabourey Sibide is beautiful?
@14, got it. However. While I fully acknowledge the presence of a large spectrum of criteria that would render a person beautiful to our different sensibilities, this particular woman struck me as so far to one extreme (because of her size and shape) that it was surprising that others declared her beautiful. My ignorance.
Even though the range, width, depth, whatever, of the concept “beautiful” is huge and varies culturally, historically, from viewer to viewer, I insist that there are (perhaps very few) things that most people would agree are not beautiful.
For instance: a 5’10 woman that is 70 lbs. Or a 5’6 woman that is 600 lbs. I’m purposefully going to extremes here, to show that even though my limits are not everyone else’s, there are some limits.
@15, it matters little, but insofar as it matters, it is because I believe this attitude encourages unhealthy behavior.
But it matters very little.
Skeptika @17: You said, “I wanted to know if people who declare her beautiful had some moral motives mixed in with their appraisal.”
Because then they wouldn’t really be judging her beauty, would they? They’d be judging her goodness, and just projecting her “beauty” from that.
But then you say it matters that people consider her beautiful “because I believe this attitude encourages unhealthy behavior”.
So you are the one with moral motives here. You disapprove of Gabourey Sibide’s confidence in her own beauty, and of other people (her little sisters, maybe?) thinking she’s pretty. You would have her feeling ashamed of herself, and believing that she’s a bad person, because not only is she (in your opinion) fat and ugly, but she’s encouraging others to be fat and ugly, too. And fat people should know that they’re ugly, and be ashamed.
Of course you can’t see her beauty when you judge her this way. All you can see is the fat. You don’t see her at all.
Finding Gabourey Sibide to be beautiful encourages bad behavior? How, exactly?
No, really, I’m not trying to be disingenuous. You’re dancing around it a bit, but I’m going to infer that what you are trying to say is that you believe finding the beauty in a larger-than-average person will encourage other people to get fat. If I’m assuming incorrectly, please forgive me (and please clarify your point, in that case). But that’s pretty much the only way you can take that statement, and it’s a pretty ridiculous statement.
FAT PEOPLE. FATTY, FAT, MCFAT FAT.
FAT.
She’s a beautiful fat lady…kind of like being a tall midget.
@ 3: Word. Drives me crazy.