Gabourey Sidibe's break out acting role was in Precious. Her new book is This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare.From the transcript of her NPR interview with Rachel Martin:
MARTIN: I want to ask you about this chapter in the book devoted to the acronym MYOB, which doesn't stand for mind your own business but pretty close. Explain what that means to you and why it's so important.--Marshal Zeringue
SIDIBE: Yeah, MYOB - mind your own body. It's important because I don't happen to have the kind of body that we usually see on television and in films. I am plus-size. I have dark skin. And I am 100 percent beautiful. But I get a lot of flak - oh, you should lose weight. And now that I have lost weight - and I lost weight for health reasons - I get, you look good but don't lose too much weight because your face is starting to sink in. And it's, like, I don't know you, sir. You have no...
MARTIN: So what do you say?
SIDIBE: I say - I literally - someone said, congratulations on your - I see you lost weight, congratulations. And I say, that's a weird thing to congratulate me on because this is my body. This is - and it's not just the male gaze. It's, like, the human gaze. People do this to me. I mean the gaze not gays.
MARTIN: G-A-Z-E.
SIDIBE: (Laughter) Yeah, G-A-Z-E.
MARTIN: Not the gays.
SIDIBE: Yeah, people staring at me and like this - but also this has been my body since I was 5-ish, you know? It's been a 30-year thing of other people putting their own stuff on my body. But...[read on]