I Love Queen Latifah...Representing Big, Black and Beautiful

Queen Latifah says the definition of beauty is changing. “Beauty is not just a white girl. It’s so many different flavors and shades,” the 37-year-old rapper-actress tells People magazine in its latest issue. “It’s good for regular girls because the meter (for beauty) has been a slim white girl.”
“(In Hollywood) we’ve definitely gotten better with body type,” she says. “It used to be just me! Now with Jennifer Hudson’s success and America Ferrera, I got some successors to take the reins on this whole bodylicious thing.” Latifah describes herself as being voluptuous — “definitely curvaceous.”
“I think I’m normal compared to the statistics,” she says. “This is a big country nowadays.” The star of “Chicago” and other films says she had elective breast-reduction surgery in 2003 to alleviate years of back and shoulder pain. “I didn’t want to get it. But I had lost 25 pounds and my breasts didn't go anywhere! I was still carrying that load,” she tells the magazine. However, “I didn’t quite want them to be this small,” she laughs.
Before surgery, Latifah says she was “an E or an F cup. I was pretty big. Now I'm like a DD. I wanted to be a triple. They took one D too many! So that was hard to deal with. … I missed my old look.” Latifah says she isn’t interested in more surgery. “There are people who love (plastic surgery) and want to cut and chop anything. I’m like, `Y’all are crazy!’”


FT: "Beauty comes in all colours and sizes"