I met Bon Jovi on the way to Washington, D.C. I think I called him Jon Jovi. Ugghhhh. I just smiled and pretended it didn't happen. I love him and his wife; they're so sweet. I was very nervous.
I laugh about it all the time, but, for whatever reason, a lot of people think that I wear a wig. I get emails and tweets about people commenting on my hair being a wig. It's one of the strangest but most entertaining things I've read about myself online.
I've been engaged a couple times.
I remember reading the cruelest, most awful thing about my hair online. A person speculated about who I was as a person and even read into my personal life based solely off my hairstyle. He or she said I must be lazy because I have short hair. It was just devastating.
I am followed in department stores. I have walked in dressed professionally or dressed in jeans, and I have walked into stores, and instantly, security is on my back.
I mask every single day. I mask every morning - since I was 27 years old. I don't care the brand: it can be from the drugstore or high end. I can be walking my dog in the mask scaring children and people off, but it's my routine that I commit to every single day.
Someone - a man - advised me not to become a news anchor because my eyelashes were too long, and they would distract the viewers.
On career day as a young journalist, I scraped up my money and went to this big conference for young journalists, and the great feedback I got was that I would not or should not become an anchor because my eyelashes were too long and too distracting.
I was 7 years old, and I challenged everything. I never accepted answers on face value.
I date, don't get me wrong. I'm not up here filing my fingernails on a Friday night. I want to find someone to share my life with.
I love Rihanna. She represents that strong, independent woman that you cannot keep down.
I have three incredible nieces and a nephew who's going off to college. To hear them say they're proud of me left me in tears.
When I first started out as a young journalist, I know that on at least two occasions, when I walked into a newsroom, I knew I was replacing the black person in that job.
I have an incredible phobia of divorce.
Every time a young girl comes in and asks me for advice, if you start your conversation with, 'How hard is it as a black woman,' or, 'How hard is it as a woman,' I turn you around. Because I cannot - we cannot look at the roadblocks and see the road at the same time.
We all have roadblocks; we all have challenges.
I think when I first straightened my hair, I was a teenager. I don't believe that I was consciously doing it to look white or to be on television. It never crossed my mind. All of the girls in my neighborhood got perms and their hair straightened. But I know that historically it was to assimilate and there are some people who do it for that reason.
We are presented with a unique situation in the black community in that we have embraced the beauty of hip hop, the real rawness of it, the real fun of it, but we also have to address the damage it has done. We have to look at what it's done to our black girls, especially when it comes to domestic violence.
We all have these challenges and stereotypes that exist, but you can't let that hold you down... If that's the first thing you think about as a black woman - the challenge that lies ahead - you are thinking in the wrong direction, in my opinion.
