Some argue that we’re living in an age of oversharing. But there are a few circumstances in which we, women in particular and maybe celebrities more than most, prefer to keep to a limited inner circle the times that we feel most vulnerable. Ranking high up there would definitely be that very instant when we enter the hair and makeup room, sit in a stylist’s chair, and slowly remove the shades, hat, and head scarf that we use to conceal whatever’s going on up under all that cover. Camera-ready faces and hairdos are built by the hands of saints whose anointed fingers perform miracles; they apply the lashes and concealer and those pops of color for the cheeks, lids, and lips, and then top it all off with a few expertly placed bobby pins, a flick or two of that wrist working the flat iron, and a well-placed hairpiece or wig, and we are single-handedly saved from drowning in an ocean of TMZ-style “Check Out How Crazy This Celebrity Is Looking Right Now” gossip posts and Twitter draggings. I salute the hairstylists and makeup artists who get us ready for whatever it is we need to conquer. They are the true MVPs of the industry, and they guard my beauty secrets like the Pentagon does American war strategies.
Not that I look like some kind of monster beneath the MAC lipstick and Cookie wigs. I’m blessed with equal parts “Black Don’t Crack” skin and that good Gordon DNA—the genes that have kept my mother, aunties, and me looking a good fifteen years our junior.
Just before he died, my daddy said, “God’s preserving you for a reason.”
I giggled. “What am I, a pickle?”
He laughed that easy, hearty laugh, soft like low thunder. “I don’t know, but He is preserving you for a reason.”
The reason, I now know, is because of my profession. My youthful look has opened doors for me to roles that were written for actresses much younger than me. I was already twenty-six when I scored the role of a sixteen-year-old in the television series Smart Guy, and twenty-nine when John Singleton tapped me for the role as Yvette, an early-twentysomething single mom who, because of her youth and inexperience, can’t get herself or her relationship with her knuckleheaded boyfriend together. Not much has changed now that I’m on the other side of forty-five, either. Though I work in a business that has casually and callously shut down the career of all too many women long before their beauty has become weathered by time, I’ve managed not only to reel in meaty parts, but also to grace the covers of beauty, fashion, and women’s lifestyle magazines that tend to reserve the spot for subjects who only recently discarded their sippy cups. I look good. And not just for my age, either. On my good days, when I am alone in my own space, barefaced, with my natural hair plaited tight to my scalp and my ninnies hanging free and low, I feel every bit as pretty as I do with a face full of makeup, a fresh weave, and a push-up bra that makes my cleavage salute the paparazzi.
But dig this: nobody needs to see that part of me except with my permission. It is a part of my most intimate, treasured space—my most stripped-down self in the element I love, when I’m kicking back and not worried about anything other than which jazz giant is up next on my Apple Music playlist and what story among the pile of scripts on my coffee table will feed my soul. I don’t want anyone seeing the basket weave braid patterns I’m wearing under my wigs, no matter how comfortable I am with them, unless they are a part of my clique of close family and friends or my makeup artist and stylist.