00:00Hi everybody. How's everybody doing? Good? Well, I am super touched, and I want to speak to
00:14one person in this room, and I'm going to try not to cry.
00:20I want to speak to my mother, and she's here. Mama, can you raise your hand and wave?
00:30I want to speak to my mama because one thing that you said is resilience, and that's not
00:38just me saying, oh yeah, girl, you got knocked down, keep getting up. That was somebody pulling
00:44me up. Pulling me up. I remember, and for y'all that were born after 1995, there was a time
00:57when there were no cell phones. There was no Uber. There was none of that, and I can remember
01:04living in Paris, France as a young model and going through hell, and I walked three blocks
01:12to a pay phone, and I called my mama, and I said, I can't continue. I have to. I'm just
01:20coming home, and she says, I didn't raise a quitter. That is not what we do, and I kept
01:31going on because of you, mama. I was paid 90% less than somebody that was less known than
01:40me, and I cried, and I said, Mama, I'm not going to sign this. I can't sign this, and she
01:47says, you will sign that because perception is reality, so you're going to sign that, and
01:53you're going to be everywhere, and then that perception is going to make that next check
02:00worth what you are truly worth, and I signed it, shaken, and she was right, so thank you,
02:13mama. Thank you.
02:20I want to thank Essence Magazine because I remember being a young model in Paris and getting a phone
02:27call that Essence Magazine wanted 19-year-old me on the cover of their magazine, and this,
02:34it brought me to tears because that was my vogue. That was the magazine that was on our coffee table
02:42every single month, and then cut to October 2024 when I decided to step on that damn catwalk
02:55again for Victoria's Secret, Miss Tiana Taylor, and I was like, am I just going to do this and just
03:05step
03:06away, but then Essence called again and said, we want you on the cover of our magazine, so I came
03:16out
03:16of modeling retirement on a runway with Victoria's Secret and came out of modeling retirement at 51
03:23years old, on the cover of Essence Magazine this month.
03:33I have dedicated my life to expanding the definition of beauty. Over 20 years ago, I created a television
03:43show called America's Next Top Model, and I fought, and you guys have no idea how hard we fought
03:54to bring the diversity to that television show at a time where it didn't exist, to show different
04:01beauties, at a time when the world was like, what? You casting that, and what? And what is that? A
04:08time when
04:09people in the fashion industry were telling me, oh, you putting the girls in the hood on your show?
04:15I was like, why can the girl from the trailer park become a supermodel, but the girl that's chilling in
04:21the park in the hood can't? And we fought, and we struggled, but we made it happen. Did we get
04:29it right?
04:30Hell no, I said something dumb. But I refuse to have my legacy be about some stuff linked together
04:41on the internet, when there were 24 cycles of changing the world.
04:51We all evolved. We all get better together. And I am so excited that I and so many of us
05:05has opened
05:05that door for others to follow. And now my 51-year-old dimple cellulite, bigger tummy, 10 million times
05:15bigger titties, is walking through that door that I opened with all of us behind us on that runway,
05:23saying, baby, it's just beginning. Thank you so much, mama.
