Gabourey Sidibe was recently speaking at the Women’s Inspiration and Enterprise conference in NYC. The actress discussed issues like self-confidence, body image, weight and everything that concerns many women around the world nowadays. Especially young women.
Read some of the highlights of her speech below.

On how she gained her confidence:
“I didn’t really get to grow up hearing that I was beautiful a lot, or that I was worth anything nor did I grow up seeing myself on TV. Then at some point when I was 21 or 22 I just decided that life wasn’t worth living if I wasn’t happy with myself so I just took all the steps that I could to figure out how to love myself and become confident. Truthfully speaking if I hadn’t found this person before that movie [Precious] I wouldn’t have even be in that movie”

On her weight in Hollywood:
“People see me as a confident person but I get shaken a lot, especially being in this business. A few weeks ago I was on vacation and I went into a CVS [a pharmacy chain of shops in the US] and as I’m paying I see a picture of myself on the cover of a magazine and they’re guesstimating what my weight is? The headline was ‘Gabourey Sidibe 250 pounds. In that moment I had to deal with not only the cashier seeing the horrible and inaccurate article, but also everyone else in the shop and in other shops.”

On her own rules:
“I have to keep going and living my life, so when things like that upset me I have to find things that build my confidence back up”, says Sidibe, who also hopes to start writing and working behind the camera to enhance the range of colours, shapes and sizes we see on the screen, and “because I don’t want to wait for work I want to make work.”

She is such a positive person! Gotta love her.