If you’ve been keeping up with actress Gabrielle Union on her social media lately, you’ve probably seen how she’s been embracing motherhood of her beautiful baby girl, loving life as a married woman to Dwayne Wade, and see how the “Deliver Us from Eva” actress has been rocking her natural hair. She looks amazing, but years ago, you wouldnt’ve been able to convince her of that.
As a matter of fact, in a first-quarter 2021 interview with PEOPLE, the 48-year-old admits years ago, she wouldnt’ve been caught dead rocking her beautiful, short natural curls.
“When I was younger, I hated everything about [my hair]. I wanted it to be anything but what it was,”
Union said. “I wasted so much of my youth in my twenties, thirties, and certainly my teens wanting to be someone else. I was inundated with images and messages saying,
‘You’re just not as pretty as so-and-so.’”
Union went on to explain that the lack of representation on screen and in media not seeing Black women represented in the media led her to believe she didn’t have what it takes to be successful.
“The images that I saw on TV and in magazines and film reaffirmed what they were saying. That I wasn’t ‘it’, and people who look like me aren’t ‘it’,” she said. “You couldn’t possibly have that ‘it factor’ and have hair like mine or skin like mine.”
It wasn’t until her 40s that she learned to embrace her innate beauty.
“In my early forties, I just emptied my basket of f*cks and came out…