A Quote by Teyonah Parris

As a girl, I remember looking up to pop singers, and they all had long, straight weaves and light skin. And I thought, 'That's what I have to look like if I'm going to be fierce and sexy and all those things.'
I don't feel like I look like the other perfect little pop singers. I think I'm changing what people think is sexy.
I find people sexy, and I find personalities fascinating and sexy and appealing and charming. So a sexy girl wrapped in a sheet is a sexy girl, and an un-sexy girl in a low-cut dress is still an un-sexy girl.
I grew up listening to Beethoven and old jazz singers like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Anita O'Day. But those were, like, the only women I listened to - I hated women pop singers.
For me, I've written and produced for pop singers, but, like, female pop - I love that. I think it's putting me in the game that I love girl pop. All my writing is inspired by it.
It's a wonderful way to get at who someone is through their own love of music and going right at their subconsciousness if you will. You don't play girl singers for girl singers. You know, there's certain things. You do play Ellington for Bobby McFerrin.
When I was, like, 5 years old, I used to pray to have light skin because I would always hear how pretty that little light skin girl was, or I would hear I was pretty to be dark skin. It wasn't until I was 13 that I really learned to appreciate my skin color and know that I was beautiful.
What's the big deal? I have really strong morals, and just because I look sexy on the cover of Rolling Stone doesn't mean I'm a naughty girl. I'd do it again. I thought the pictures were fine. And I was tired of being compared to Debbie Gibson and all of this bubblegum pop all the time.
My parents told me from the time I can remember that, 'Yeah, you're adopted. But this is your family.' I can remember my mom, she tells me this story: when I was little, I was looking at her, and I was like, 'Why isn't my skin the same color as yours?' She was like, 'Oh, you're adopted, but I wish I had pretty brown skin like you.'
When I first went on TV, to make you look like a successful woman you had to be ball-breaking. I remember looking at these shows and thinking 'I'm not sure that's me'. It seemed like you had to behave like a man - but I think that's all going to go down completely, that's not the way we're going to live.
I would rather be thought of as pretty rather than sexy. It feels good to be voted by fans and that too in such huge numbers, but I don't think if you wear a bikini or show skin, you look sexy.
I never lived the life of 'Oh, you're so good-looking'. People thought I was a girl when I was little, because I looked like a girl-maybe because my mother would keep my hair really long in a bowl cut. I was in a coffee shop once and the waitress was like, 'What do you want, Miss?' I was 10 or 11-the worst age to have that happen. I had a jean jacket on and a Metallica pin. I thought I was really cool.
I hear in the big city, girls dress up like sexy witches and sexy vampires and sexy Easter bunnies, and go to parties where they do all sorts of scandalous things," Kami said. "Luckily you and me, we got to walk around our town looking at our neighbours' gardens and remarking 'My, that's a good-looking scarecrow' to each other. I guess this is why our natures are so beautiful and unspoilt.
Cinema is a little over 100 years old, and a lot of what we do is built around film emulsion. Those things were calibrated for white skin. We've always placed powder on skin to dull the light. But my memory of growing up in Miami is this moist, beautiful black skin.
When I was doing those things with the Berlin circus, playing the accordion, going to North Korea - I felt all those things were just me experimenting and letting myself go. Everything before seems like a constant searching. Now that I think about it, I feel so lucky that happened; that I didn't find my voice straight away, that I didn't find my passion straight away, that it took so long.
The model is just one element of the photograph. There's also the location, the light - all that junk. It helps if the girl is really good-looking, but a girl can be not super good-looking and it'd still be a really good photograph. I ask people to send some photos of where they live if that's where I'm shooting. I go for shabby places over too-nice places, because most of these girls are going to look better if they're not made to look rich.
When the waif look first came into fashion, Anna Nicole Smith was in the Guess campaigns looking like a real woman. A girl who looks too thin and unhealthy does not look sexy to me, and she does not look right for Guess.
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