SZA Opens Up About Her Self-Love Journey at the Dove Girl Collective Summit

When was the first time you were told you weren't good enough? For many women, it starts at a terribly early age. As anyone who has ever heard such negative comments can attest, those words can have lingering effects on your self-esteem, so much so that it can completely warp your self-perception to where you start believing other people's criticism as truth. It’s time to change that narrative and start telling our own stories. It’s up to all of us to define ourselves, on our own terms.

Such is the guiding force of Dove’s newly launched Girl Collective, an empowering sisterhood on a mission to raise the spirits of young women around the world and to help them recognize their inner beauty and the power that lies within them to be change-makers. This past weekend, the beauty brand brought the collective to life for a day-long summit in Los Angeles, where 300 attendees were able to learn from inspiring trailblazers, like Shonda Rhimes (the powerhouse behind some of the biggest shows on TV, including Gray’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder), transgender activist Jazz Jennings, Monique Coleman of High School Musical fame, and some key body-positive influencers.

During her keynote speech, Rhimes stressed the importance of living life on your own terms. “Decide for yourself — what defines you? Once you decide to define yourself instead of letting others define you, that's when magic happens.” After that inspiring and moving address came a panel on representation in the media, and a master class led by five-time Grammy-nominated songstress, SZA. Since the beginning of her career, the incomparable talent has been an open book about her struggles with confidence, whether she’s sharing tidbits about her weight loss or, more recently, the impact having cystic acne has had on over the years. Though she has her moments, like anyone else, she refuses to let negative self-talk bring her down. In turn, she’s inspiring her fans to do the same.

Backstage at Dove’s Girl Collective, Teen Vogue caught up with SZA to speak about her journey with self-love and why she refuses to let other people dictate how she should wear her hair. Keep scrolling to find out what she had to say. And head over to the Girl Collective Facebook page, where you can speak and connect to other likeminded women from the community. Together, we can redefine what beauty means and prove to the world (and ourselves), once and for all, that who we are is more than enough.

Teen Vogue: What’s something you used to hate about your features that you are learning to love or, at the very least, embrace?

SZA: Did you read that everyone thinks I have a new nose?! Now you can see in person that I don't have a new nose. Go tell everyone. I don't really care about my nose, it's not a big deal. But what I didn't realize is that when I was heavier, my entire face changed. I was heavier for three years and then my nose adjusted to that. I spent most of my life being slim before then, being in sports. And then I kept growing, and I think my nose adjusted to my new face. You can look at all my baby pictures, when I'm younger and my nose looks like this, but five years ago, when I came out as a singer, I was heavier, and my nose didn't look like that.

People who know me are like, "What? This is her nose." But it's just funny, especially [when] everyone is like, "Rhinoplasty, plastic surgery!" But it's like, you don't always have that. Sometimes it really comes [down] to getting a [different] makeup artist. That's why, like, the being-your-best-self s**t is really important. I don't think I am ugly without makeup, but I do think that the makeup artist makes a difference. And I think for a long time, not knowing how to contour or the right shade for anything — without that, I would look crazy or, like, the same way I normally look every day. But now I know how to play [with makeup]. I'm grown as hell. I better have learned something.

TV: You mentioned in a previous interview that you had terrible cystic acne growing up. How did that affect your self-esteem?

SZA: It's terrible. Oh, my God. Acne is so crazy. It’s like, your [face is your] base. This is what you are supposed to be in the world with. How am I supposed to be in the world? I can't rely on my teeth. I mean people enjoy my teeth, but my teeth make me really self-conscious because they are really big. So, it's like, I don't want to do the smiley thing all the time, but I might have to if you force me. Most times when my face breaks out, it's because I'm not doing the right thing, like if I'm on the road a lot and I'm not washing my face or I'm not drinking water. I wasn't doing any of that and after awhile, it builds up and then pops out. It's just like, "Hey, sis, remember when you weren’t taking care of me? I'm here now."

TV: I love that you’re not afraid to wear your hair a multitude of ways, and how you can go from rocking a blowout one day to a neon-green wig the next. It's awesome to see, but as you probably know as a black woman, we get a lot of grief for how we wear our hair. What do you think about people who say black women who wear wigs and weaves don’t love themselves?

SZA: I think a lot about that. I even joked with my friends that God low-key hit me with some karma because I was really hoity-toity about not wearing wigs and wearing weave. I would be like, "No, I don't need to wear a wig. I don't need to wear weave. I don't need to do any of that." I'm just going to do my little wash-and-go [hairstyle]. I'm going to do my little roller set, a little blowout...until your hair starts falling out. You’ve got multiple shows, and now you’re putting levels of heat on your hair that you never put on it before. Then you want to be cute and dye your real hair orange while everyone else is dyeing wigs, and then you went bald. Then you went to level-10 blonde after that because you were like, I don't need a wig, I can still dye it. My hair fell out after I went level-10 blonde. My hair finally said, "Guess what? It's not what you thought and you are going have to deal with it like the rest of us." Then I started from scratch and I started wearing my ‘fro, dealing with this in-between thing on vacation with no weave and no wig and no [idea] what I'm going to do with it.

But now, I just don't care — I'm off that. It's like, whatever keeps your hair healthy. Whatever makes you feel good and look good. Sometimes I want some pastel-pink hair. I'm not about to be bald for y'all. I'm supposed to just be out here bald with my natural pink hair so that you can be like, "Oh, she's so natural. She doesn't have any weave?" I feel like Bernice Burgos is just as brave as Erykah Badu because she's brave enough to be bad as hell, wear her hair how she wants to, live her life how she wants to, and just be happy and beautiful. It took me a long time to stop doing that to myself, to stop being like you're lesser than because you are wearing a weave.

TV: Why was it important to you to participate in Dove’s first-ever Girl Collective Summit?

SZA: I love Shonda Rhimes. Also, self-esteem is funny, because it's very subjective and it's just like, what is that? What is self-esteem? It was laughable for me to even talk about self-esteem [in] a conversation like "Kids, love yourselves." It's more so about [having] that honest conversation where it's like, “I've never seen a girl who is just like, I actually don't a 100% love myself. I’m trying things every day. I’m working on being delusional to trick myself into loving myself the way that I want to love myself. And I’m finding new versions of myself every day." Am I going to be this grown woman who lives in the mountains with a bald cut and wears white linen, [or] am I going to, like, get [my hair] texturized and move to Italy and hit Capri? Where are my other wigs? Am I going to get dreads or sister locs? The type of woman I want to be comes with a different outfit, a different home, a different dog, a different man, a different reality. And I like that, that I never know who I'm going to end up being.

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