{"id":42331,"date":"2014-04-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/actress-says-you-cant-eat-beauty\/"},"modified":"2014-04-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T00:00:00","slug":"actress-says-you-cant-eat-beauty","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/actress-says-you-cant-eat-beauty\/","title":{"rendered":"Actress Says, &#8220;You Can&#8217;t Eat Beauty&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Kenyan actress, Lupita Nyong&#39;o, who received the 2014 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in <em class=\"citation\">12 Years as a Slave<\/em>, offered this moving reflection on the nature of true beauty:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>I remember a time when I too felt unbeautiful. I put on the TV and only saw pale skin. I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin. And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned &hellip; [But] every day I experienced the same disappointment of being just as dark as I had been the day before. I tried to negotiate with God: I told him I would stop stealing sugar cubes at night if he gave me what I wanted; I would listen to my mother&#39;s every word and never lose my school sweater again if he just made me a little lighter. But I guess God was unimpressed with my bargaining chips because He never listened.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>And when I was a teenager my self-hate grew worse &hellip; My mother reminded me often that she thought that I was beautiful but that was no consolation: She&#39;s my mother, of course she&#39;s supposed to think I am beautiful &hellip; And my mother again would say to me, &quot;You can&#39;t eat beauty. It doesn&#39;t feed you.&quot; And these words plagued and bothered me &hellip; until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be &hellip; And what my mother meant when she said you can&#39;t eat beauty was that you can&#39;t rely on how you look to sustain you.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[308],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[409,411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3475,3726,3781,3784,4175,4252,4761,4917,4920,4923,5227,5286,5308],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-42331","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-beauty","tax_ctp_tags-culture","tax_ctp_tags-dignity","tax_ctp_tags-disabilities","tax_ctp_tags-human-body","tax_ctp_tags-inner-person","tax_ctp_tags-racism","tax_ctp_tags-self-esteem","tax_ctp_tags-self-hatred","tax_ctp_tags-self-image","tax_ctp_tags-vanity","tax_ctp_tags-women","tax_ctp_tags-worth"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Actress Says, &quot;You Can&#039;t Eat Beauty&quot; - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/actress-says-you-cant-eat-beauty\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Actress Says, &quot;You Can&#039;t Eat Beauty&quot; - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Kenyan actress, Lupita Nyong&#039;o, who received the 2014 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 12 Years as a Slave, offered this moving reflection on the nature of true beauty: I remember a time when I too felt unbeautiful. 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