For the Point out of Black Splendor, ELLE.com chatted with six Black icons to hear how they outline Black beauty and how they see by themselves in the house—in their very own words.

Black attractiveness, what it means to me is Maya Angelou’s poem, “Phenomenal Woman.” It is loving your hips, your nose, your hair. It is embracing all of the cultural attributes that are in your religion, in your voice, in your mannerisms, in your earlier, and what helps make you different from all people else. It can be also generating peace with the pieces of you that are strong, self-assured, but also vulnerable and the pieces of you that sometimes want enable. It truly is all of it. It is really embracing totally, absolutely, who you are.

I would like I realized that who and what I am was enough—that who I am is just excellent. If an individual would have explained to me again then, I would’ve maybe imagined that was conceited. I would not have seen that as assurance. I used so much time making an attempt to erase and re-consider myself as another person else—Diana Ross, Oprah Winfrey, any man or woman at any given time. I wish I experienced acknowledged that the palette that God gave me was enough. I wasted yrs. A large amount of that had to do with quieting the outdoors noise, particularly with social media. You can not measure daily life by materials matters. I come to feel at the end of the working day, my really worth arrives from my authenticity.

The point about our elegance market is, it was an extension of our lifestyle in which historically, Black magnificence and Black femininity have been at the bottom of the totem pole. We ended up chattel. I feel like the splendor sector was an extension of that and what built it worse was rising up with the inside hatred that occurs inside of our Black communities.

Adult men and women not liking the darkest females. The paper bag examination. I undoubtedly was on the other facet of that as perfectly. I acquired it two-fold. Then I saw another person who was a actual physical manifestation of positivity, of the benefit of value. Observing Ms. Tyson, that beautiful, dark-skinned girl with thick lips and the Afro and the sweat glistening off of her was transformative.

What inspires me, in particular now at age 54, is the ability of legacy. I fully grasp the power of photos and that is why it definitely played a big aspect in me even signing up for L’Oréal Paris. I love the Age Great Moisturizer. I signify it virtually appears like my skin. I like it. But I understood how essential it was to Black gals, to see me as the experience of a attractiveness manufacturer, and talking all those phrases: I’m value it. On the lookout at me simply because, believe that it or not, there are folks who under no circumstances see that actual physical manifestation of really worth.

Truly worth is when I arrived out of my mother’s womb, August 11, 1965, in St. Matthews, South Carolina, finish of tale, period. Exclamation level. There is very little that I experienced to do. Nothing at all. I didn’t have to do anything to barter for it, to deal for it. I am deserving and figuring out that, slowly, I have really occur into who I am. I am far better than I’ve ever been.

It is really been a extensive journey, is what it really is been. It was receiving married and accepting enjoy from a superior guy. It was becoming a mother and frequently having to affirm to my daughter that she is wonderful, her brains and her heart are stunning, and have to believe that it myself. It is receiving more mature and recognizing that I do not have a ton of time to squander emotion like I was born in the wrong system. I really don’t have the time.

In the scene in How to Get Away With Murder the place Annalise takes off her wig, that second was significant for me because I wanted to show Annalise as a woman, as a human becoming. I come to feel a good deal of this Black beauty narrative is about image and concept, extra so than real truth. It can be about putting an picture and a message out there of perfection, of great splendor and best hair, in purchase for us to send a concept that, certainly we are gorgeous. What we have to do now is clearly show what it signifies to be human. If you are not doing that, then you’re not acting, that’s not artwork. That’s what that second intended to me, to show you that I am this complicated human: As you are.

I really feel that who I am in private, even without the need of my makeup, my mess, my failures, my pleasure, my imperfection, my complexity—all of that is splendor. It is in the terms of Toni Morrison: “I want to truly feel what I experience, even if it really is not pleasure.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and duration.

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