My Unconventional Crush on Queen Latifah

Filed under: Black Music Month

There was a message in "U.N.I.T.Y." - the first single on Queen Latifah's 1993 album, 'Black Reign' - and it was loud and clear: No one was going to be calling Latifah or any other woman the b-word.

Message received.

I had a thing for the Queen, so not only was I going to stop myself from using the word, I was going to enforce not using it on her behalf to all my friends. When you're a young boy and you have a crush on a woman, you do things for her like get behind whatever cause she's pushing.
For years, Queen Latifah was my idea of eye candy, but even then I knew this wasn't a conventional notion amongst my peers. This was the early-mid 1990s, I was in middle school and most of my friends agreed Lark Voorheis ("Lisa Turtle" on 'Saved By The Bell') was the dream girl.

But my dreams were different.

I wasn't ashamed to share my affections for the Queen. Even though my friends never said she was unattractive, it seemed understood that a crush on her was a stretch. Anyone with a working pair of eyes could see that she didn't have a Halle Berry type of frame. Watching her on my television screen, though, she seemed to tower over most of her more petite female co-stars. But back then, my eyes were drawn to her face and that radiant smile of hers.

Post-pubescence, I grew to appreciate Latifah for something beyond aesthetics. She is a modern day renaissance woman - so unapologetic about her beauty, her sexuality and her work as an actress, that it's almost impossible not to respect her.


Way before Lauryn Hill was doing the rap-sing thing, Latifah was busting mics with a pit bull like flow, and then pulling back to reveal a soft, Sunday-morning type of voice on songs like "Just Another Day" and the aforementioned "U.N.I.T.Y.." Her hit sitcom, 'Living Single' was 'Sex and The City' before such a show existed (and yes, if I had a choice to go out on a date with Regina, Maxine, Synclaire or Latifah's character Khadijah, I'd have chosen Khadijah), and her role as the thugged-out Cleopatra Sims in 'Set It Off' made me believe women were just as capable of robbing banks as men.

But what I learned to appreciate most about Latifah is her understated and subtle embrace of being a different kind of beauty. With all the talk these days of how black women are somehow less attractive, Latifah finds a way to dispel such superfluous notions not by being gratuitous but by making choices that show a woman her size with her skin color is just as beautiful as any other woman, including her more popular and conventionally beautiful peers like Beyoncé and Halle Berry.

Ten years ago, it was Latifah who became one of the faces of CoverGirl when she was given her own make up line called The Queen Collection, which is specifically targeted towards women of color. Consider also, her movie roles and the way she's proven herself to be a believable leading lady in spite of the insistent rumors about her sexuality.



The most pronounced statement of all was in her 2010 film, 'Just Wright'. Another romantic comedy, Latifah's role as a basketball-loving physical therapist who eventually lands in the arms of the hotshot basketball stud (played by the rapper, Common), not only turned up the volume on all the sexuality rumors, but also sparked criticism over the believability of the premise. In 'Just Wright,' Common's character is at first in love with Latifah's best friend, played by the unarguable beauty, Paula Patton.

When Patton's character reveals herself to be a superficial gold digger, Common realizes Latifah is the one he really wants. A lot of critics found it unbelievable that any man would choose a woman who looks like Latifah over a woman who looks like Paula Patton.

But as someone who has had a crush on Latifah for nearly 20 years, I would have made the same choice.

 

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