Lupita Nyong’o: ‘The most beautiful woman in the world’

After years of being taunted by others about her dark skin Lupita Nyong’o finally realised she was beautiful after seeing supermodel Alek Wek walk the world's fashion catwalks with pride and poise.

Today Lupita not only celebrates her oscar winning film success with ’12 years a slave’, but  just been announced by ‘People Magazine’ as the most beautiful woman in the world. The inner transformation couldn’t be more complete.

In a recent article, Lupita said that as a young girl she wanted nothing more than to have lighter skin:

My one prayer to God was that I would wake up lighter skinned. The morning would come and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of the mirror because I wanted to see my face first.”

Today the very beauty that a cruel society would look down on is finally recognised for its sheer presence and elegance.

We at OBV have written many times on these pages about the western hegemony of what is beautiful, which for  so long has almost universally discounted dark skin.

This award begins to change all that. Lupita is the most beautiful woman in the world, and  that’s official. And with that our society can begin to reconfigure itself from the narrow constrainst about what we deem beautiful. Without sterotypical cultural blinkers beauty can be found in Africa, Asia, America, Latin America, China and in Europe too.

Well done Lupita. Your continued success on and off the silver screen  will surely empower other Black girls to think fantastically positive about themselves.

Simon Woolley