I even love my lips now. Once I began to love my lips, everyone else did too. I have heard about women who pay thousands of dollars for those injections to make their lips look more like mine. I was blessed with lips like this and I don’t have to pay a dime for them! All those years, I was afraid of what guys would think about my lips. Now, I have guys come up to me and say, “You have beautiful lips. Can I kiss them?” The answer is always, “No!” of course, but what a difference those comments have made for my self-esteem. I have to beat the boys off of me because of my lips. This is how God made me. That was his plan for me to finally see that His gifts are not always punishments.
Having positive self-esteem does take time. Like I say, it’s a lifelong process. I think most women go through it. First, we’re dissatisfied with ourselves, then we start complainin’ about body parts and start tryin’ to hide them. Then we make our peace with them and start learning how to use them. Now, when I sign autographs, I draw the image of my lips under my signature. My lips are my autograph. Instead of trying to think of a positive message to tell other young women, my lips say it all. They are my trademark. That is why I had the image of my lips tattooed on my hip, so I never forget what made me who I am today. These are my big lips that God gave me to sing with.
AfterIdol, I started seeing myself in pictures regularly, and I noticed my skin looked a half a shade lighter than before and much brighter. My skin really wasn’t lighter, of course, but happiness and confidence had put a glow on my face. Even though my face did look different from old family photographs because I had a professional makeup artist sometimes, I know it was also because I was glowinginside, and not only did I look different, I felt different. I even used to hate my smile because it was so wide. In all of my earlier photos, I didn’t smile very much. But now, I smile so wide that I can brighten up a whole room. That’s what people say, and I finally believe them.
It may seem hard to believe, but I also used to hate my name. Fantasia was such an unusual name and nobody else had it except for that stupid movie. Since I was already feeling like an outsider because of my looks, the name was just another thing for people to tease me about. The movie,Fantasia, had come out, and the kids were teasing me at school sayin’, “I saw your movie and I didn’t like it!” I hadn’t seen the movie and didn’t know anything about it. Just thinking about it, I fantasized that the movie would be about a girl named Fantasia and she would be just like me,and she was happy. My mother bought a bootleg copy of the movie for me to see and she says that all she could hear from the other room after I put it on was me cryin’ and sayin,’ “This movie ain’t nothin’. This ain’t nothin’!” Turns out the movie was about magic and magic potions. I was mostly disappointed because the happiness in the movie wasn’t the happiness that I needed to believe in. It was a cartoon. There wasn’t even a girl named Fantasia in the movie.And Fantasia wasn’t real. Now when I think about the name Fantasia, it sounds unusual, like a singer’s name. Grandma Addie was right when she picked this name for me. It sounds like “Aretha” or “Stevie Wonder” or “Elton John.” It’s different and that’s what makes it memorable.
In case you’re wondering, I don’t need a man to make me feel beautiful, either—my family takes care of that. My grandma never misses one of my TV appearances. After each one, she calls and cries on the phone saying how beautiful I looked on stage. My mother also catches every TV appearance and she always calls or leaves me messages commenting on how I was “rockin” those shoes or “wearin’ the heck out of that dress.” Zion’s opinion matters the most, because I want to be a mother who she can look up to. I want to be a mother who she might hope to become someday. Mama always puts Zion on the phone and she always says without fail, “Mommy, you are so pretty.” Why would I need a man to make me feel any better than that?
Like I said, there is no greater relationship than the relationship that we have with our children. Our children are gifts from God, and although it’s a struggle to face the consequences of having kids young, we all have to keep our heads up and be proud of our children and not ashamed of them. People have a way of making us baby mamas ashamed of our kids and our circumstances, but the thing about our kids is that they are totally pure and innocent and they can be anything we want them to be or anything
