Amber Riley Is Tired Of People Telling Her How To Feel, Especially About Her Body
Amber Riley is hell-bent on making sure that you remember her name and her story as she continues to find her voice. We were introduced to her as the character Mercedes Jones, and fell in love with her after six seasons on Fox comedy Glee. Little did we know the starlet was dazzling us on-screen with her beauty and talent all while battling obstacles with self-love, acceptance, depression, and anxiety. Now at 34, she is ready to show us how much she's grown into her Big Girl Energy. Recently, she sat with Hello Beautifulto give a candid account of her experiences:
"It got to the point where I didn't know who I was because I didn't accept myself wholly. I accepted myself as a talent, that's where I found my value, but I didn't accept myself and where I was in my body. Although I thought I was beautiful and I did get attention, that wasn't the issue; it was an inner issue. It didn't have anything to do with guys. It had more to do with me being able to look in the mirror and mean it when I say that I'm beautiful."
Now, why on Earth would this bombshell struggle with knowing without a doubt that she is beautiful you ask? Well...because she did not fit the standard of beauty in America at the time, and still does not, but she's deciding to say: "F*ck that, I'm beautiful." She's beautiful, and if ever she decides to lose weight she will still be beautiful. Her size doesn't define her ability to be beautiful in any capacity. That precisely is why she is steering clear of labels such as "body positive" and moving in the direction of body acceptance. Amber explains:
"My body is mine. I don't need a community telling me what to do with it. I always have to be 100 percent real with myself...Honestly, if your confidence is predicated on the way that I look, it's not confidence. I'm not anybody's idol. Don't worship me. Don't get used to me being any size. I can get bigger, I can get smaller. I'm going to love myself either way, but I'm not asking for permission."
TUH… It appears as though Amber does not give a damn if her body or how she decides to present it makes you uncomfortable. She wants to make sure that we understand she is pretty as a woman periodt, not just pretty for a big girl, and does not want to feel guilt or be described as abandoning a whole community if she so chooses to alter her appearance. This realization likely came after time in therapy processing the trauma she endured as a result of her body developing womanly curves while she was still very much a child. Amber shares:
"Part of my anxiety had to do with my size...I was overly sexualized when I was young so I'd always dress in big t-shirts and shapeless stuff my whole entire life. I didn't like that I had hips already. I didn't like that I had boobs. I hated it because I didn't like that kind of attention. Being young, I didn't know that people oversexualized Black girls in general."
Now that she is channeling both her prosperity and pain into her music, she is able to both heal and give us a glimpse into her soul and alter-ego Riley. This has proven to be beneficial for the artist as she encounters several losses in 2020 of Naya Rivera and Jas Waters, two powerhouses gone entirely too soon. Though navigating through the pain of losing loved ones is a life-long journey, she is committed to living her life authentically and unapologetically moving forward:
"Many people often think that grieving is a destination. Some days I think of her and I laugh and some days I think of her and I cry. I also lost an incredible friend to suicide this year who is an incredible writer and I was looking forward to working with her, Jas Waters. So that was really difficult. She committed suicide and she died a couple of weeks before Naya so it was like a double blow."
As far as the future, Amber is taking it day by day like the rest of us, making sure to give thanks for what she already has and empowering others to know what they want and go get it.
Be sure to check out Amber's New Single BGE.
Featured image by Ron Adar / Shutterstock.com
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- Amber Riley Fires Back at Her Body Shamers | PEOPLE.com ›
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New Jersey native creating a life that she loves while living in gratitude. She loves using beauty, and fashion to create a balanced lifestyle while prioritizing wellness. A devoted fur mom, and a full-time lover of laughter. She is out for revenge against the darkness by being light, taking her own advice, traveling the world, and letting you know that you are so lit! Connect with her via IG @iamzaniah and please visit Zaniahsworld.com
Smile, Sis! These Five Improvements Can Upgrade Your Oral Hygiene Instantly
This article is in partnership with Sensodyne.
Our teeth are connected to so many things - our nutrition, our confidence, and our overall mood. We often take for granted how important healthy teeth are, until issues like tooth sensitivity or gum recession come to remind us. Like most things related to our bodies, prevention is the best medicine. Here are five things you can do immediately to improve your oral hygiene, prevent tooth sensitivity, and avoid dental issues down the road.
1) Go Easy On the Rough Brushing: Brushing your teeth is and always will be priority number one in the oral hygiene department. No surprises there! However, there is such a thing as applying too much pressure when brushing…and that can lead to problems over time. Use a toothbrush with soft bristles and brush in smooth, circular motions. It may seem counterintuitive, but a gentle approach to brushing is the most effective way to clean those pearly whites without wearing away enamel and exposing sensitive areas of the teeth.
2) Use A Desensitizing Toothpaste: As everyone knows, mouth pain can be highly uncomfortable; but tooth sensitivity is a whole different beast. Hot weather favorites like ice cream and popsicles have the ability to trigger tooth sensitivity, which might make you want to stay away from icy foods altogether. But as always, prevention is the best medicine here. Switching to a toothpaste like Sensodyne’s Sensitivity & Gum toothpaste specifically designed for sensitive teeth will help build a protective layer over sensitive areas of the tooth. Over time, those sharp sensations that occur with extremely cold foods will subside, and you’ll be back to treating yourself to your icy faves like this one!
3) Floss, Rinse, Brush. (And In That Order!): Have you ever heard the saying, “It’s not what you do, but how you do it”? Well, the same thing applies to taking care of your teeth. Even if you are flossing and brushing religiously, you could be missing out on some of the benefits simply because you aren’t doing so in the right order. Flossing is best to do before brushing because it removes food particles and plaque from places your toothbrush can’t reach. After a proper flossing sesh, it is important to rinse out your mouth with water after. Finally, you can whip out your toothbrush and get to brushing. Though many of us commonly rinse with water after brushing to remove excess toothpaste, it may not be the best thing for our teeth. That’s because fluoride, the active ingredient in toothpaste that protects your enamel, works best when it gets to sit on the teeth and continue working its magic. Rinsing with water after brushing doesn’t let the toothpaste go to work like it really can. Changing up your order may take some getting used to, but over time, you’ll see the difference.
4) Stay Hydrated: Upping your water supply is a no-fail way to level up your health overall, and your teeth are no exception to this rule. Drinking water not only helps maintain a healthy pH balance in your mouth, but it also washes away residue and acids that can cause enamel erosion. It also helps you steer clear of dry mouth, which is a gateway to bad breath. And who needs that?
5) Show Your Gums Some Love: When it comes to improving your smile, you may be laser-focused on getting your teeth whiter, straighter, and overall healthier. Rightfully so, as these are all attributes of a megawatt smile; but you certainly don’t want to leave gum health out of the equation. If you neglect your gums, you’ll start to notice the effects of plaque buildup, which can irritate the gums and cause gingivitis, the earliest stage of gum disease. Seeing blood while brushing and flossing is a tell-tale sign that your gums are suffering. You may also experience gum recession — a condition where the gum tissue surrounding your teeth pulls back, exposing more of your tooth. Brushing at least twice a day with a gum-protecting toothpaste like Sensodyne Sensitivity and Gum, coupled with regular dentist visits, will keep your gums shining as bright as those pearly whites.
Why Do Millennials & Gen-Zers Still Feel Like Teenagers? The Pandemic Might Be The Reason.
There’s nothing quite as humbling as navigating adulthood with no instruction manual. Since the turn of the decade, it seems like everything in our society that could go wrong has, inevitably, gone wrong. From the global pandemic, our crippling student debt problem, the loneliness crisis, layoffs, global warming, recession, and not to mention figuring out what to eat for dinner every night. This constant state of uncertainty has many of us wondering, when are the grown-ups coming to fix all of this?
But the catch is, we are the new grown-ups.
As if it happened without our permission, we became the new adults. We are the members of society who are paying taxes, having children, getting married, and keeping our communities afloat, one iced latte at a time. Still, there’s something about doing all these grown-up duties that feel unnaturally grown-up. Enter the #teenagegirlinher20s.
If there’s one hashtag to give you the state of the next cohort of adults, it’s this one. Of the videos that have garnered over 3.9M views, you’ll find a collection of users who are overwhelmed by life’s pressing existential responsibilities, clung to nostalgia, and reminiscent of the days when their mom and dad took care of their insurance plans.
@charlies444ngel no like i cant explain to her why i had to buy multiple tank air dupes from aritzia #teenagegirlinher20s #fyp
The concept of being a 20-something or 30-something teenager is linked to the sentiment of not feeling “grown up enough” to do grown-up things while feeling underprepared and even nihilistic about whether that preparation even matters.
It’s our generation’s version of when we ask our grandmothers how old they are and they simply reply with, “I still feel 45,” all while being every bit of 76 years old. In this, we share a warped concept of time while clinging to a desire for infantilization.
Granted, the pandemic did a number on our concept of time. Many of us who started the pandemic in our early or mid-20s missed out on three fundamental years of socialization, career development, and personal milestones that traditionally help to mark our growth.
Our time to figure out and plan our next steps through fumbling yet active participation was put on pause indefinitely and then resumed provisionally. This in turn has left many of us hanging in the balance of uncertainty as we try to make sense of the disconnect between our minds and bodies in this missing gap of time.
Because we’re all still figuring out what the ramifications of being locked away and frozen in time by a global pandemic will have on us as a society, there really is no “right” way of making up for lost time. Feeling unprepared for any new chapter of life is a natural rite of passage, pandemic or not. However, it’s important to not stay stuck in the last age or period of life that made sense to us because self-growth is the truest evidence of personal progress.
So whether you’re leaning on your inner child, teenager, or 20-something for guidance as you fill the gap between your real age and pandemic age, know that it’s okay to grieve the person you thought you would be and the milestones you thought you’d hit before you ever knew what a pandemic was. If there’s anything that the pandemic taught us, it’s that we have the power to reimagine a better world and life for ourselves. And if we tap into our inner teenager as a compass, we can piece together our next chapter with a fresh outlook.
Sure, we’ve lost a couple of years, but there are still some really amazing ones ahead.
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