Gabourey Sidibe – Inspiration to Big Beautiful Women
admin | Jan 29, 2010 | Comments 0
Gabby in a scene from 'Precious'
Following the capture of 3 Golden Globes awards for the film “Precious”, we profile its leading actress, the captivating Big Beautiful Woman, Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe.
Born in Brooklyn to R&B singer Alice Tan Ridley and Senegalese born taxi-driver Ibnou Sidibe, she moved to Harlem with her mother after her parents separated.
Her performance in the film “Precious” has been lauded by critics but Sidibe has garnered as much fame for her acting skills as well as her size. And yes, you cannot miss it. Sidibe weighs in at 350 pounds but revels in every ounce of her feminity. It is said that when she was 11, one of her aunts offered to pay for a cruise if she lost 50 pounds and says Sidibe, she continues to have friends and family members trying to make her conform to societys ideal of “thin is in”. She recounts a friend who when she was once eating a potato chip “eyeballed me like I was the most disgusting thing she’d ever seen. She says, ‘Every time you want to put something disgusting in your mouth, think of the designers who won’t make a dress for you because you’re fat.”
Fortunately, Sidibe is as intelligent as she is pretty as she goes on “But at some point, I learned to love myself, because I sleep with myself every night and I wake up with myself every morning, and if I don’t like myself, there’s no reason to even live the life. I love the way I look. I’m fine with it. And if my body changes, I’ll be fine with that too.”
Her self confidence is one of her admirable qualities and is one of the reasons she got the part. According to the films director, Lee Daniels “She is unequivocally comfortable in her body, in a very bizarre way. Either she’s in a state of denial or she’s so elevated that she’s on another level,” he says. “I had no doubt in my mind that she had four or five boyfriends, easily.”
Speaking on the pressure to loose weight now that she’s a star Gabby waxes philosophical “’You realise that the pressure, the bulk of it, is coming from you, from your own insecurities. So the pressure is probably around the same, maybe a little less just because I like myself more. But not because I’ve done a movie. I just like myself more each day.’”
In the film, which is based on the book ‘Push’ by Sapphire, Gabourey ‘Gabby’ Sidibe plays Claireece or ‘Precious’ as she calls herself Jones an overwight illiterate teen, mother of one child with Down’s Syndrome and pregnant with her second child (both by her Dad) and invited to enrol in a new school with the hope that she can turn her life around and set it in a new direction. She is physically and emotionally abused by her Mum but the moving and haunting realism brought to the film by Sibide has got critics buzzing about her for the Oscars. It is a story of the triumph of hope and female empowerment in the face of brutality and despair.
Sidibe’s own real life however you’ll be pleased to learn does not mirror that of her on screen character. Speaking to the New York Magazine, she says: “They try to paint the picture that I was this downtrodden, ugly girl who was unpopular in school and in life, and then I got this role and now I’m awesome. But the truth is that I’ve been awesome, and then I got this role.” In another interview Gabby goes on: “People always ask me, ‘You have so much confidence. Where did that come from?’ It came from me. One day I decided that I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl….It doesn’t have anything to do with how the world perceives you. What matters is what you see. Your body is your temple, it’s your home, and you must decorate it.”
With her unshakable self belief and the positivity she exudes, Gabbys star is on the up and we can only wish her the very best for the future. She is an inspiration to Big Beautiful Women everywhere.
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