Uzo Aduba Has a Plan to Help Her Daughter Become 'Her Strongest, Most Powerful Self'
I don’t think it would be a stretch to say a formative experience in Uzo Aduba’s life was getting her senior portraits taken for her high school yearbook. Because when I asked her what helped her fall in love with a former insecurity, the Orange Is the New Black star didn’t point to an epic moment like winning her first Emmy.
She pointed to getting those photos taken and seven words from a photographer who would have a lasting impact on her life. She tells me that in between shots, she was her “normal self” — laughing and making jokes. But as soon as the photographer would pick up the camera, she would go from laughing to tight-lipped. After several rounds of this, he finally asked why she kept shutting her mouth.
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“I said, ‘I don’t like my smile,'” Aduba, who has a gap in her top teeth, tells SheKnows exclusively. “I remember he had his camera in his hand and he was just sort of looking at it…And he said, ‘I think you have a beautiful smile.”
It wasn’t a magic fix, but it was a start. If you were to find her yearbook, you’d see a closed-mouth teenager, but she held onto the thought, “I have a beautiful smile.”
Aduba says she distinctly remembers things changing on her Senior Day. She has so many pictures from that moment onward where she’s just beaming. “I would not and could not stop smiling. Even now, on red carpets, I feel like smiling all the time.”
“And I say this because I want to make up for lost smiles,” she says.
And so who better than Aduba to partner with Colgate for their My Smile is My Superpower campaign?! The campaign, which includes a moving music video about the beauty of gaps, celebrates diverse smiles and reminds people — especially those timid teens who don’t want to smile in photos! — that they should own their unique smile.
Colgate is also committing to reaching 250 thousand kids this year with their Bright Smiles, Bright Futures (BSBF) program which provides educational resources, mobile dental van screening visits, teacher classroom kids, and more.
The My Smile is My Superpower campaign may be targeted toward Gen Z, but Aduba also wants it to reach a very special member of Generation Alpha: her daughter Adaiba Lee Nonyem. The Mrs. America actress shares the sweet five-month-old with husband Robert Sweeting, and though Aduba may still be deep in the diaper days, she is already thinking about how to instill a deep sense of confidence in little Adaiba.
“I think about how I want to present to the world for her to feel like she’s standing in her strongest, most powerful self,” she says. ” And part of that is embracing all of me. If I want her to embrace all of herself — which is made up of myself or my husband — then I have to also take a mantle up and do my very best of holding on to and embracing all of myself.”
And so she plans to model “celebration of self” while also constantly telling Adaiba how smart, kind, loving, beautiful, and talented she is.
“I want her cup of confidence to be overflowing,” she says, and we want that for little Adaiba too.
While Aduba says those things on repeat to her daughter, the SAG Award winner has a different message for the moms in her life. And no, it’s not “keep it up” or “hang in there” or “you’re so strong.”
“I don’t say those things. I just say, ‘You’re doing great’ because you might not feel strong some days. You might not feel like you want to keep it up some days. But you can, I think, be told that you’re doing great wherever you’re at on that particular day.”
It’s such a simple yet powerful message, and we have no doubt those three words can be just as transformative as the seven Aduba heard from the photographer all those years ago.
These celebrity parents are raising strong, resilient daughters.
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