Tag: Amandla

Health

Amandla Stenberg Casually Kept Her Armpits Unshaven on the Red Carpet

Post author By news22
Post date October 21, 2018
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Amandla Stenberg has always been upfront about where she stands on beauty standards: In September, she wrote an essay about her relationship with her hair and how it tied into different iterations of her identity, including her blackness, her sexuality, and her gender. When it finally came down to shaving it off for a role, however, she found it liberating: “Shaving my head was wild. I felt a sense of complete neutrality. It was so freeing. This summer I came out as gay, and I must say, having no hair made me feel even more comfortable with my gender and sexuality,” Stenberg wrote. On Saturday night, she played around with another beauty standard—the one that dictates that women shave their body hair—by pairing underarm hair with Valentino.

On Saturday, Stenberg walked the red carpet at the European premiere of The Hate U Give, debuting as part of the 62nd BFI London Film Festival. She walked the red carpet in a gorgeous deep-plunge Valentino gown that revealed her underarm hair—later posting a pic to Instagram captioned “#drama #armpit”.

PHOTO: John Phillip John Phillips/Getty Images for BFIs

She’s never been known to go for the pastel-colored gowns other stars wear to events—instead, as Marley Dias wrote for Glamour recently, she seems to prefer clothing that makes a statement, like “burnt-orange suits and sleek dresses.” On Saturday, however, she let the black, classically beautiful dress take a backseat, using it to casually highlight her underarm hear instead—and letting that be the low-key statement for the night. It’s like she told Glamour in a recent interview: “I want to express myself as authentically as I can.”

A few other Gen Z celebs have stepped out sans shave recently, too: Paris Jackson hit the 2017 VMAs red carpet in similar form…

2017 MTV Video Music Awards - Press Room — PHOTO: Jason LaVeris

….and Bella Thorne is another celeb who’s chosen to nix the razor for public appearances.

Collider Special Screening Of Lionsgate's "I Still See You" - Arrivals — PHOTO: Alberto E. Rodriguez

To shave or not to shave, that is the question as we dash through a shower every morning—but luckily, it’s one where there’s no “correct” answer.

This Woman Had the Best Response to People Trolling Her for Having Armpit Hair

Is Anyone Actually Shaving This Summer? An Investigation

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Tags Amandla, Armpits, Carpet, Casually, Red, Stenberg, Unshaven

Health

Amandla Stenberg Opens Up About Her Own Sexual Assault in the Wake of the Kavanaugh Hearings

Post author By news22
Post date October 6, 2018
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Last week, the world watched as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford stood in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to publicly allege that Brett Kavanaugh, the conservative D.C. judge whom President Donald Trump had nominated to the Supreme Court, had drunkenly groped her at a party, attempted to forcibly remove her clothes, and covered her mouth when she attempted to scream. Dr. Ford’s affecting, emotional account of the alleged assault immediately ignited a rippling #MeToo effect across the country, as women from Busy Phillips to Ellen Degeneres began sharing their own traumatic sexual assault experiences—feeling emboldened to do so after hearing Dr. Ford’s powerful testimony.

Actor and activist Amandla Stenberg chose to open up about her sexual assault in an op-ed for Teen Vogue published Saturday. In the powerfully penned piece, the Hate U Give star wrote about her own experiences with sexual assault and explains she felt compelled to go public with her own story after watching the Kavanaugh hearings and listening to Dr. Ford’s testimony.

“As I live-streamed Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in a hotel room and a humid drizzle painted the windows an opaque gray, I found myself relying heavily on the tool of my breath… My breath was the tool I relied on when I ended up in a foreign country on a three-hour train ride to find an emergency contraceptive,” she wrote. “The night before, what started as a consensual experience had turned forceful. Painful things had been done to my body that made me feel broken and disposable. I was unable to consent to them, and was silenced verbally and physically when I protested.”

The actress goes on to describe the emotional weight she carried after this traumatic experience, feeling at times guilty, as though what happened to her had somehow been her fault. “I was sitting in that soup of guilt and shame that often follows an unwarranted sexual experience,” she said. “My body hurt and my mind was on a one-track loop, dissecting all the things that I was culpable for, that must have led me to my predicament.”

Stenberg explains that her assaulter was someone who was “respected” by her peers, stating: “It seemed to me that often the trade-off of being invited into spaces by these sorts of cis straight men and getting their approval was the acceptance that what I had to contribute was the value of my body as a woman. Implicit within that was the notion that, because my body served such a transactional purpose, it was no longer just my property. That was a form of social currency I was familiar with and, honestly, at times accepted.”

An often-debated topic throughout the Kavanaugh hearings revolved around the question of whether or not Dr. Ford should have come forward with the sexual assault allegation sooner. But as Stenberg points out in her essay, doing so immediately throws assault survivors into “a battle where you’ve been appointed defender of your own legitimacy.” She goes on: “You are given the responsibility of, after having just been subjected to devastating trauma, navigating impossible protocols, lest you be charged as the culprit in your own attack. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Damned to subject yourself to physical and public scrutiny, more vulnerability and social repercussions, or damned to allow the residual feelings to fester inside. Either way, you sacrifice comfort and safety within your own body, and sometimes it’s easier to just keep that pain to yourself and hope it goes away. And that is understandable and OK. We should not be condemned for being unsure of how to move through pain.”

Ultimately, it was watching Dr. Ford’s testimony that pushed the actress to “move through discomfort that [she’d] buried” and speak out: “Although these tipping points are chaotic, disorienting, infuriating, and often heartbreaking, I like to believe that real change begins with the eruption of truth.”

Read her full essay here.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can seek help by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673). For more resources on sexual assault, visit RAINN and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

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Tags Amandla, assault, Hearings, Kavanaugh, Opens, Sexual, Stenberg, Wake

Health

Amandla Stenberg: Stylists Have Made Me Feel Like My Natural Hair Is 'Too Challenging'

Post author By news22
Post date September 18, 2018
No Comments on Amandla Stenberg: Stylists Have Made Me Feel Like My Natural Hair Is 'Too Challenging'

Amandla Stenberg knows firsthand how the right haircut can change more than just your outward appearance. In a new essay for InStyle, Stenberg discusses how the actor’s relationship with hair has changed over the years. It turns out Stenberg’s recent decision to chop off hair for an upcoming movie was a game changer.

In the essay Amandla describes the recent decision to shorten, little by little, the afro that had become “a symbol of my self-acceptance” and a profession of “loving my blackness.” “As soon as I got tired of that [look] being my identity, I cut my hair shorter,” Stenberg writes. “I was curious how that might affect people’s perception of my gender too, so I kept cutting it shorter and shorter. I wanted a hairstyle that felt less feminine.” So when the director of upcoming film Where Hands Touch told Stenberg to chop off hair to play a biracial teen in Nazi Germany, it was sink-or-swim. “I wanted to truly connect with my character, and that meant understanding firsthand what it was like to live without hair,” the actor wrote.

The cut, however, ended up bringing enriching Amandla’s personally. “Shaving my head was wild. I felt a sense of complete neutrality. It was so freeing. This summer I came out as gay, and I must say, having no hair made me feel even more comfortable with my gender and sexuality,” Stenberg explained. “My hair is still short, but I let it grow out a bit to give myself more options. Sometimes it’ll be a more masculine look with little-boy curls, or I’ll part it in the middle and slick it down to look more feminine. The best part: It’s totally up to me.”

PHOTO: John Sciulli/Getty Images

Stenberg, who stars next in The Hate U Give, also writes about accepting natural hair. “As a kid I was endlessly frustrated by my hair,” Stenberg said. It didn’t help that the stylists on the set of The Hunger Games, one of Stenberg’s very first films, had no idea how to style natural hair. “They also openly expressed frustration about how it was too challenging. I wasn’t all that self-conscious, but I remember very clearly feeling that my hair wasn’t acceptable, that something was wrong with it,” the actor recalled.

Once again, it was a haircut that changed everything. “When I hit 16, though, I got my hair cut by someone who knew black hair and black curl patterns. That haircut changed the game for me. It brought out my curls in a beautiful way. I learned to appreciate my natural hair texture, and I realized that it was really special if I let it do its thing,” Stenberg wrote. Since then, Amandla has learned the power and significance of natural hair.

“Black hair carries the weight of our ancestors and our tradition. Almost all black women grow up sitting with their moms, whether it’s once a day or once a week, having their hair combed through and then getting it twisted or braided or whatever it may be,” Stenberg wrote. “There’s something so beautiful about that act. It carries all the love, tenderness, strength, and uniqueness about where we’re from. It’s something most black women share, even if every person’s curl pattern is different.”

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Tags 039Too, Amandla, Challenging039, Feel, Hair, Natural, Stenberg, Stylists