Salma Hayek: Hot Mama!
By Julia Savacool
Salma Hayek
Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador
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MC: Are you ever insecure about your body?
SH: Of course. Especially when I have to appear somewhere in public, and there are cameras and all these eyes. The stress is sensational. Some-times I don't like the dress-the way it fits, the way I look. And there are a million people looking at me, telling me to smile, and I don't feel like smiling. But then, you have to keep everything in perspective: It's a dress, hair, makeup-c'mon, let's go! We have to stop this obsession that starts when we're teenagers: "Am I pretty enough?"
MC: I can't believe you thought that.
SH: Absolutely I did, at a certain age. Because if John Smith doesn't like me, I must be shit. If you are a brunette and he picks a blonde, for the rest of your life, every time you see a blonde, you think she's prettier than you. You start programming yourself at that age. What happens to you at 12, 13, 14 marks you, and you don't even realize it.
MC: Why do women focus on what's wrong with them instead of what's right?
SH: We get so obsessed with the idea of happiness that comes only in this one box. Happiness slaps you in the face a thousand times and you never notice it because you are so fixated on the box.
MC: Men don't seem to have that problem.
SH: Men have been running the world and-I'm sorry-but they have not taken us to a good place. We are in crisis. And I'd like to know something: What would happen if women were in power? What decisions would we make? If women are going to have the self-respect they need to go out and make a change in society, it has to start with how they're treated in their homes.
MC: Which brings us to domestic violence, an issue you care deeply about. Do we have an oversimplified view of it?
SH: Sometimes. I remember, as a child in Mexico, walking down the street with my family and coming upon a man who was beating a woman. My father went to break it up. But instead of being grateful, she turned and started beating him up for defending her! Some people might say, "Well, then it's her fault." But it made me realize she needed much more help than someone breaking up a fight.
