Tracee Ellis Ross

If you look back at what I believe and what I stand for, I am certainly a proud feminist.

I'm always touched by people's different stories of who they are and why they made the choices that they made. I feel so empowered by the story behind the person.

I think we're as happy as we make up our minds to be.

I cook naked, and I walk around naked. I'm very comfortable with my body.

My mom had beautiful clothes. My mom is elegant; my mom is glamorous. But my mom is also really real, and I grew up with a mother who had babies crawling on her head and spitting up on her when she was wearing gorgeous, expensive things, and it was never an issue.

I grew up on the ragged edge of self-acceptance, where I was holding on to it, but it was easy to fall off. But as I found my way inside myself, I've been able to accept my own hair, my own shape.

As a woman of color, we're raised to know we have to be twice as good.

I'm extremely blessed to have the extraordinary mother that I have, and I don't mean Diana Ross, I mean the mother. My mom paved a road that didn't exist, as did Oprah.

In this day and age, I ask anyone I date right away: 'Are you married? Are you in a relationship with anyone? Does anyone think they're in a relationship with you?' And by the way, if someone says, 'Yes, I am dating other people,' that's not necessarily a deal breaker. But you have to communicate it, not hide it.

I need to see my own beauty and to continue to be reminded that I am enough, that I am worthy of love without effort, that I am beautiful, that the texture of my hair and that the shape of my curves, the size of my lips, the color of my skin, and the feelings that I have are all worthy and okay.

There are things about my body that I don't love, but I'm not trying to look perfect every day - I'm trying to look like me!

I don't do what I do to get nominated. I do what I do because I love it.