Amandla Stenberg Quotes

I had to fight like hell to convince people I was beautiful in my own Polish half-breed way.

For so many years, I was trying to beat my hair into submission, trying to get it to look like someone else's hair, and I didn't know how. I remember going through a phase where I even put beer in my hair, because I was told that would make it smooth and curly.

As a young girl, I definitely struggled with knowing what to do with my hair. I was just in a neighborhood that had mostly white people, and the hair norm was long and sleek and straight. My hair naturally was curly, and I didn't have that many references.

I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair - yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.

I used to be very insecure about my curly hair, because I lived in a country where everybody had blonde straight hair.

I hated the reflection in the mirror. I wanted so much to be someone else... I thought that if I was thinner, the rest of my life would change.

Beauty was never really my trip. Maybe those roles are attracted to me?

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world.

Until I really accepted this about myself and got over any of my own transphobia that I had, I really felt like I wouldn't be accepted. I thought I would ruin my life.

We live in a culture where people are constantly telling us how to get what we want, and within that message is, 'You need to be something other than you are.'

I'm angry because I was so scared for so many years about just being myself.

It's definitely a little bit ironic being known for my hair because, as a little girl, I had no idea what I was doing with it. I was insecure about it. I didn't have as many references to curly girls, and I wanted to just fit in with all my other friends.

The first three years my hair was purple, I still was trying to convince myself that I hated the color purple.

Growing up, I naturally embraced who I was, but I was always battling with myself. So I spent half my time being proud of being a woman and the other half completely hating it.

I truly love my hair but my skin colour was something I couldn't get my head around.

It's a very specific body. Even great reviews will be like: chubby, portly, overweight. . . . Sometimes I'm like, 'Ugh, how did I make myself the guinea pig for this?' But on the other hand, hating my body has not been my cross to bear in this life. Which I feel very lucky about.

As a young woman, I was so eager to please that I served others' happiness and even their values before my own. It didn't earn me love, but it did deliver me to a place where I had to choose between what I thought of myself and what other people did. I chose myself.

I've always felt like an outsider across the board, since day one. The challenge has been to simply not pay attention to my outsider or insider status and just do the work and play the shows and connect with the people. And not even bother to play this game of keeping score, which is what destroys you.

I don't know who I am. But I do know who I'm not. I have occasionally tried playing people I'm definitely not, and that wasn't a very pleasant experience.

I was trying to prove to them and to myself that I was still who I had always been. I was beautiful, if fat. I was smart, if loud. I was good, if ruined.

How much time have I wasted on diets and what I look like? People are saying 'We love you and love what you do' and you're sitting there thinking 'I'm not skinny enough or pretty enough.' It's taken a lot of work to get over that.

I am who I am and I am what I am. And it's beautiful. And it's okay even if it doesn't look like the sexiest Victoria Secret model. It also boils down to my interactions with people.

If you are an enemy to your own mind, other people have to become enemies too, sooner or later. Until you understand, until you can love the thoughts that appear in your mind, then you can love the rest of us. You work with the projector -the mind - not the projected world. I can't really love you until I question the mind that thinks it sees you outside itself . . .

My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of color that our hair is good enough.

Sometimes it is painful to be oneself; at other times it seems impossible to escape oneself.