DEEP WATERS

By the time I watched actress Lupita Nyong'o win an Oscar - after watching her dance with grace and confidence in the aisles, give host Ellen Degeneres a tube of her lipgloss and take part in the crazy Oscar selfie that actually crashed Twitter - I was already a huge fan. Her portrayal of Patsey, a slave woman in the critically-acclaimed and Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave  - which I blogged about here  in November of last year - was at once beautiful and haunting. It was a role that Lupita, with dual citizenship in Mexico and Kenya, was born for. She understands the meaning of "beautiful and haunting" first-hand. Her deep sense of Patsey's pain spoke through her portrayal, and I immediately wondered, "Who is this woman?" I screamed when screenwriter John Ridley won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. I screamed when the production team, including Director Steve McQueen, won Best Motion Picture. And I absolutely screamed when Lupita won an Oscar for...

I've got a bone to pick. I'm sick and tired of something, and I can't think of a better place to vent but here in Deep Waters . Now let me just say, I'm a fan of print media, especially magazines. Just today I was doing my thing on the elliptical machine fully absorbed in a recent copy of Ebony . So absorbed that a dude I see in the gym all the time said, "Wow, you were in a zone." Of course I was. I was getting my read on. But I digress. So, about that bone I've got to pick. I'm getting so tired of popular women's magazines and their covers. And not just the photo-shopped images of perfection. I'm tired of the headlines. Here's a few I've seen recently: A testimonial from a star I'll leave unnamed: "How I Lost 30 Pounds and Got My Confidence Back!" "Feel Great Naked: 9 Foods that Burn Fat While You Eat"  "131 Little Ways to Your Best Body" And this little beaut from a billboard on an...