I asked Mama, “How can I fix it?” And she said, “Fantasia, the thing that my mama always told me was to keep my head up.” I asked Mama what that meant, and she said, “It means to be proud of who you are and what you are. If you are a child of God, don’t act like you are a child of Satan. Keep your head up and be proud of who you are and what you came from, no matter if it is good or bad.” I listened to what Mama was saying and needed to think about it more. I did remember Grandma Addie saying that sometimes when I was leaving her house. She would kiss me on my forehead and say in my ear, “Keep your head up.”
Self-esteem is something that I have struggled with. Just being happy with the way I looked was impossible for me when all the pretty girls looked better than me. That is why I tried so hard to make myself look different with different clothes and wild nail colors and wild shoes. There were no similarities between those pretty girls and me, no matter how hard I tried to look like them. It’s taken a long time for my self-esteem to grow stronger. The way that I improved it happened shortly after that talk with Mama. I could feel myself finally growing tired of all the hate inside my heart that was slowly eating away at me. I was looking in the mirror one day, putting on my blue shimmery eye shadow and my red, red lipstick. My hand slipped, and the lipstick went off my lips and smeared above my lip. Instead of wiping it right away, I stood there and looked at my face for five solid minutes. I looked like a clown. My stomach was churning and tears were running down my face. I felt sick to my stomach because what was at the pit of my stomach was self-hate. I remember thinking to myself that I had to change my insides because putting all this stuff all over my face was not making me prettier. It was making me a clown. I wanted finally to lift my head.
I thought to myself, What if I loved myself instead of hating myself? I realized that I needed to have a real relationship with myself first and not worry so much about my relationships with my girlfriends and B. and the other boys. Instead of the kids at school making me feel ugly with their mean nicknames and constant teasing, I needed to come up with some names for myself that were better than their names. Instead of B. making me feel ugly with his disrespect and neglect, I learned that I had to drown out his voice and make my own voice the loudest. Instead of the girls calling me “Big Lips” and “Snaggle Tooth” I told myself that I was “Beautiful Lips” and “Pretty Smile.” I started talkin’ to myself. Instead of the teachers making me feel dumb, I had to tell myself that I was smart. I decided that the “I am so ugly” song had to go. It didn’t really matter to the outside world what song I sang tomyself, so I decided to change my song from “I am ugly” to “I am beautiful.” Instead of walking around with my head hung down low, I decided to stand up straight, lift my head, and have some pride in myself. Although it was hard at first, because I wasn’t really convinced, I started looking in the mirror more instead of avoiding it. I started going over my face one feature at a time and saying to myself, “My eyebrows look good.” “My nose is good.” Like Mama said, “My lips are good because they are better to sing with.” “My crooked teeth can be fixed.” I looked at my short hair and imagined it in red or blond. I imagined it in a ponytail or in braids. I said, “I can make it anything I want. I can control this.” Since that day, eight years ago, I am still always prancin’ around and my head is always up, and I finally look like I ownmyself. I look in the mirror and I say, “This is me, and I am the bomb!”
I know, you think ’Tasia’s trippin’ again, but I’m really not. It is just that this is the only way for me to see myself. And the only way for you to see yourself, too. I don’t want to go “Hollywood.” I don’t want to change myself. I don’t want to change God’s perfect plan. I don’t want to think that change comes with money. I wanted to change my look with a new attitude and that’s all I needed. If I didn’t change my own view of myself, no one else could.
Feeling better about yourself also means changing your actions. I finally got sick of hearin’ the negative things about my skinniness. The boys used to call me S&B, which was short for “Skin and Bones.” The first part of changing from a weakling to a strong woman wasto stop bein’ and actin’ weak. I had to stop letting people tell me who I was when I knew me best. I had to stop being sosensitive.
Just like everyone else, I want to keep my body in shape. Whenever I’m on the road, I go to the hotel’s gym and do the treadmill for as long as I can. It’s not easy, though, because I don’t have a set work schedule, so it’s hard to have a set exercise schedule. When
