Queen Latifah Speaks About “Living Single” Cast Being Pressured To Lose Weight

January 11, 2022 ruthmaxey1 342 Views african american entertainment news, african American lifestyle, body shaming, celebrity activisim, celebrity gossip, celebrity news, dana elaine owens aka queen Latifah, fox network, living single 90’s sitcom, living single tv show, queen latifah, Queen Latifah Speaks About “Living Single” Cast Being Pressured To Lose Weight!, tv production weight loss requirements

YourBlackWorld.net, By Victor Omondi, Posted January 11th 2022

One of the things Queen Latifah hasn’t really openly mentioned in all the years she’s been a household celebrity is her weight. She’s, however, discussing her health experience for the first time to bring attention to her new partnership with Novo Nordisk, a pharmaceutical company. The partnership’s fundamental focus is to transform the obesity narrative.

Their goal is to eliminate the stigma and guilt people attach to the condition by creating a series of short movies that play out like modern TV episodes, and to focus more on factors like hormonal imbalances and biology that might cause it.

**‘LIVING SINGLE’ ERIKA ALEXANDER, QUEEN LATIFAH, KIM FIELDS AND KIM COLE**

Because of her own experiences shaming herself over her body as a teenager, the project made sense to the actress. “The feeling of self-hate is really, really scary. I would get those flashes of this feeling through my teenage years and I was like, ‘This is a dark place,’” she says in an interview with ESSENCE. “And around 18, I just remember looking in the mirror and I said to myself, I was like, ‘Dana, you have a choice. You are either going to choose to love yourself, or you’re going to choose to hate yourself. What you going to do?’ And I chose to love myself.”

Queen has been able to overcome any worries and criticism about her size, particularly when it’s projected onto her by others in the industry, by operating from a position of self-love since that time. She hopes that with the campaign, she and Novo Nordisk will be able to shift people’s perceptions about obesity, from those who are obese to those who know someone who is.

“I remember when I was doing Living Single, the word came down that we needed to lose weight and it was like, what?” says Latifah. “And we have a hit show and you’re telling us we need to lose weight. Telling us this exactly. Why are you telling us this? We look like real people. We look like real women. We all look different. And those are the kind of things that come to you that can chip away at your self-esteem. That’s the kind of insensitivity that we’re fighting against right now. That’s the kind of shame planting that can destroy self-esteem.”

The campaign with Novo Nordisk will be titled “It’s Bigger Than Me.”