Lupita Nyong’o reacted swiftly when her former high school instated a no makeup rule on campus. The Black Panther actress helped start a petition asking the school to let young girls wear cosmetics.
Lupita regularly wears layers of makeup with bright colors on her eyes and lips on the red carpet.
But the 35-year-old actress didn’t makeup when she was a young girl growing up in Kenya.
In an interview with InStyle magazine, she said she saw the injustice when her school dictated that none of the girls could wear makeup.
“I went to an all-boys school for high school, and they had girls in the last two classes. This is a school with 700 boys and a handful of girls,” she told InStyle magazine. “At one point, there was an archaic rule that said that girls could not wear make-up to school. I was angry that the powers that be were trying to basically oppress and control the small female population. It infuriated me to the point that I started a petition.
“I said to myself, ‘Look, if a woman wants to wear makeup to school to feel confident in an environment where she’s a minority, why not? It doesn’t actually change whether or not she’s able to take in the information being given to her in the classroom.’ I personally had no interest in wearing make-up, but I just did not think it was right.”
“At the end of the day, though, make-up should never take the place of self-love,” she said.
Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
