Loni Love is doing it all.
Not only does she co-host the television talk show “The Real” and co-host the radio show “Café Mocha” with M.C. Lyte, but she will also host the Ellen DeGeneres-produced TV show “Heads Up.” She has been a stand-up comedian for years and has appeared in several movies, including Soul Plane and the upcoming Garry Marshall-produced Mother’s Day, and has a new documentary Being Loni Love on Centric TV.
But perhaps even more impressive is how Love has thoughtfully and systematically approached her life and career. By keeping an open mind, seeking out new opportunities and working hard towards her goals, Love has been able to overcome a range of obstacles such as poverty, racism, sexism, and weight discrimination to achieve success. And her inspirational story delivers a clear message:
With enough curiosity and grit, one can overcome barriers and reach new heights.
Positive psychologists attempt to understand what makes us not only survive, but also thrive. Two concepts that have been explored are curiosity — wanting to learn about new opportunities — and grit — the passion, tenacity and self-control to overcome obstacles in order to pursue one’s long-term goals. Research evidence suggests that these traits predict better health and well-being.
Curiosity can be adaptive in two ways. First, curious people may be more likely to experience positive mood because they can find interest in a range of situations. For example, curious people tend to experience more positive effects during a range of social interactions. More, because curious people are motivated to seek out new and interesting opportunities, they may be more likely to discover ways of making tangible gains such as building stronger relationships. This process appears to be associated with improved health; one study of 1,041 people found that curiosity was associated with lower incidence of diabetes and hypertension.
If curiosity is the trait that leads to discovering new opportunities and setting new goals, grit is the tenacity and resolve needed to put in the hard work to achieve those goals. One initial study found that even though grit was unrelated to IQ, grit predicted grade point average in Ivy League undergraduates and retention in West Point cadets. People who have the drive to achieve goals may be happier with their lives. And grit has been shown to be an independent predictor of life satisfaction.
It was with curiosity and grit that Love overcame one of her first obstacles in life, poverty. Estimates suggest that as many as 22 percent of the children in the United States live in poverty. And poverty has been shown to predict a range of negative outcomes in children, including poor physical and mental health and lower academic achievement.
In describing her experience of growing up in a lower-income community, she told me, “I was raised in the Brewster Projects in Detroit, so everyone was on the same income level in the projects. I did not realize there were different types of lifestyles until I watched television.”
From an early age, Love gravitated towards being curious about what the world had to offer, rather than being limited by barriers. “I was a latchkey kid, so when I saw the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” that showed me that there was a different type of lifestyle out there. I was curious about it and amazed about it …. Even though you may be in one part of your life – you need to be open to seeing different things to spark the curiosity and show you that there are different things that can happen for you.”
Love didn’t just observe different lifestyles; she pursued opportunities. “What helped was that my mother, even though we didn’t have a lot of money … allowed me to take part in the Girl Scouts. Being in the Girl Scouts took me out of the projects environment and showed me different things.”
Love’s combination of curiosity and grit also propelled her to pursue an education towards a career in engineering. During high school, Love worked on an assembly line for General Motors. She then sought out a mentor who advised her on career possibilities that Love didn’t know existed.
With no one in her family having gone to college, Love talked about how her mentor helped with the college-application process and finding a college that was a good fit for her. “While I was in high school, I ended up getting a job at General Motors. Nobody in my family ever went to college …. I ended up getting a job in the automobile industry, where I was working long hours … and it was really hard work,” she said.
“One day, there was a problem on my line, and a guy came down with a white shirt and a tie and said, ‘I’m an engineer’ and I was like, ‘Wow, what is an engineer?’ And from then on, he became my mentor. He sparked my interest in engineering even though I didn’t know what an engineer was. And after graduating, I decided I was going to be an engineer, and I saved up some money,” she said.
Love’s decision to have a mentor was wise. One meta-analytic review of 73 studies showed that mentoring is associated with emotional, social and academic benefits for youth. This effect is consistent across age and setting. Mentoring appears helpful among youth in academic and workplace settings.
“I always encourage people, if you are trying to do something, find a mentor or friend or some type of expert to help you,” Love explained.
The process of applying for and going to college brought Love into contact with one of her next obstacles — racism. Research suggests that African-American students may face discrimination in the form of disparities in educational experience. This disparity includes harsher discipline such as increased rates of suspension or expulsion for African-American students as compared to white students. For Love, racism was experienced in her perception that colleges were not always welcoming and accommodating to African-American students. Recent protests at the University of Missouri and Yale University suggest that Love is not alone; many feel that universities engage in forms of discrimination that create a hostile environment for students of color.
Love explained, “I grew up only around African-Americans in the Brewster projects. I wasn’t really comfortable around a lot of Caucasians because I never grew up with a lot of them …. I didn’t really understand racism, really, because in Detroit, we were too busy fighting drugs and poverty. Racism wasn’t a factor for me growing up. It wasn’t until I went to college and I went down to Texas that I started discovering that there’s this thing called racism.”
“I was afraid because — me being an African-American going to a predominantly white college — say, if I went to Michigan State, the classes are a lot larger. My main goal was to have employment once I went through the four or five years to get the degree. I wanted employment. So based on that, it made me seek out a smaller college, a college where I would feel comfortable.”
The experience of this type of discrimination can have negative effects. There is strong evidence that discrimination such as racism can be conceptualized as a form of stress that can damage physical and mental health. One meta-analytic review of 134 separate studies found that perceived discrimination was associated with poorer mental health. As an example, a five-year longitudinal study of 714 African-American adolescents who were 10- to 12-years-old at recruitment found that increases in perceived discrimination predicted increased conduct problems and depression over time.
Love’s response was to actively seek out a college (Prairie View A&M) that she felt would be more accepting towards black students. “I found a school in Texas that was a historically black college. The reason I picked that school is because they had the percentage of graduating the most black engineers. And I felt like that would benefit me more by going to that type of school,” she explained.
She has continued to work towards addressing the issue of racism by performing at colleges. Colleges need more “activities that will include everybody and have diverse speakers come,” she said. “And that is why, as a comedian, I perform at colleges and I try to perform at all types of colleges, and I try to present certain messages to the college students, because I understand what it’s like to be in college and maybe not have money and feel like you’re different.”
“I also reach out to colleges to speak to them because I like giving back to the students that way. So, they need to have not just separate organizations but they need to have more functions that include all types of students. And then they need to invite other students that are in the majority to different cultural events because that helps people understand different cultures. We don’t do that enough in colleges or schools in general.”
Love continues to take on issues of race in society in her current work. This was on full display when Rachel Dolezal appeared on “The Real.” Dolezal, a woman who was born white but then identified as black and went on to run her local NAACP chapter, was criticized for not being honest about her racial identity.
“From my point of view and what I asked her about during the interview was, nothing’s wrong with her saying now she wants to be black. The problem is that there are times when she’s never told people that she [used to be] white,” Love said. “And there were certain things that she got because everybody thought that she was black and she’s not. Basically, she went to Howard University on a scholarship and that scholarship really could have gone to a black female. That’s what made a lot of people upset. A lot of people felt like you took an opportunity from somebody and that’s what I explained to her.”
“It’s not that people are mad that she wants to be black or she feels she’s black. That’s not it, but there are some people who did not know. She tried to compare herself to Caitlyn Jenner and I explained to her that she and Caitlyn are two different things. To me, it’s apples and oranges. Caitlyn, we knew, was formally a male, and she took the brave decision that she wanted to be herself and we all know where she comes from.”
“And I told her, Rachel, there are a lot of people who did not know that you were white. And you weren’t true or forthcoming and you took opportunities from blacks. And that’s the main issue. Now that we know what her background is, it’s good, it’s all fine.”
“Black people have enough problems. At the end of the day, we don’t need this happening.”
As Love transitioned from college to working, she began to experience a different form of discrimination – sexism. Sexism can take many forms; even in its most benign form, stereotypes about women appear to be damaging. For example, the stereotype that “girls are not good at math” may represent a stereotype threat that can undermine academic performance.
These biases may result in women facing discrimination in the workplace. In one randomized study, 127 science faculty from research universities rated the application materials of a student for a laboratory manager position. These applications were identical but randomly assigned either a male or female name. Results showed that not only did participants rate the male applicant as significantly more competent and worthy of being hired than the female applicant, but also participants selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant.
Love faced sexism both in her engineering and comedy careers. She explained, “Both engineering and comedy, for me, were male-dominated fields. When you’re in a male-dominated field like engineering and like comedy — the same factor applies — it’s a hostile, aggressive occupation. And so when it comes to comedy, there’s still not a lot of females in it.”
“On my level, there may be seven or eight of us. You can just go to any comedy club and look at their schedule and you won’t find females. So it’s not really changing. You have a few females that reach the top if you want to call it that. There’s still not a lot. There are not 20 female comics that are national. For us to have 300 million people in the United States, it’s still sexism happening … . So when people say -‘Oh, females are not funny!’ -you haven’t seen a lot of females. That’s the problem. And it takes a really special type of female to be committed to the occupation of comedy. It’s really hard.”
And yet this hostile environment didn’t stop Love. “As a college student, I didn’t have a lot of money, and one day, I was really broke, and there was a contest at a bar: $50 for the person who has a really good story that they wanted to tell. I needed that $50, so I made up a story and that was the start of my stand-up career,” she said. “I decided to stay in school and get my degree, but I would do stand-up here and there and put on different shows at my college. I got my engineering degree and ended up getting a job in Los Angeles for Xerox. I was an engineer for eight years but I wasn’t happy during those eight years. There was just something missing.”
“One day, I went to a comedy club in Los Angeles, and I thought that there were all these men doing comedy but not a lot of women, so the idea sparked in my head to start doing comedy again. I started doing comedy at night and still working at my engineering job during the day. And eventually, in 2002, there was an open call for a comedy festival. I slipped out of work and did that and out of 600 people, I got a part. I went down to the festival that year and got a development deal from HBO,” she said. “At the same time, we had layoffs at my job so I went to my boss to please lay me off. That was in 2002 and that started my comedy career.”
Finally, Love discussed how she and other women face issues of weight stigmatization, which is a topic in her comedy. Weight stigmatization is prevalent in our society. People who are overweight or obese are subjected not only to cruelty in the form of teasing and bullying, but also discrimination in a range of areas, including housing, education and employment. This stigma is so pervasive, particularly for women, that body-image dissatisfaction is considered a “normative discontent.”
“I remember when I was at the start of my comedy career, I stopped doing comedy for a year because I said, ‘Oh, I’m gonna lose weight.’ I’ve always been a big girl, and I talk about that in my act. ‘I’m gonna take off a year and not hit the stage’ and, of course, I did not lose any weight and I wasted a whole year because I was trying to be something that I wasn’t.”
“So, I decided, instead of saying I’m gonna lose weight, I’m just gonna talk about it. And the reason why I talk about it … it allows people to see me differently… . In comedy, we talk about a lot of different things. I have to joke about myself. If I don’t talk about it, I’m not being truthful to the audience. So, I have to talk about it.“
One of Love’s career goals is to share her experience as a way to help others who may face similar barriers. It starts with encouraging the same curiosity that helped her succeed. “When I speak to lower-income communities, I try to encourage mothers, especially single mothers. No matter what, put your kids into activities because it will help to open up their minds. And that’s what helped open up my mind, because I saw different worlds.”
“There are a lot of times when I have to give opinions about what I’m doing with my life and one thing that I’m learning is that you have to find what [makes] you feel comfortable. What I started to do was, I took up swimming. And just little changes have helped me. So I would tell people to start small. And that’s what I tell people at my shows, you don’t have to start big. Find something that you like to do, find something that interests you, and then try it,” she said. “And that’s what I did with swimming, and I found a love of swimming and I’m sharing that with the viewers. I like swimming because I can disconnect. When you get in the water, you don’t have a phone, don’t have television, you don’t have radio. It’s just you and the element of water. And people are seeing results, and it’s not like, ‘Oh, we are doing these drastic results.’ It’s slight changes.”
Love also encourages grit in the form of goal-setting, planning and hard work. “First, you’ve got to listen to yourself. You have to ask yourself: What is it that you want? Once you think you know, then you need to develop a plan. Especially if you are trying to get into an occupation that you know is hard and it’s gonna take some time. You really have to plan,” she said.
“You have to prepare, and by preparing, it’s like for me being a comic. I have to go out to open mics. I have to do a lot of free gigs. I’ve done so many free gigs, it’s crazy. You have to miss certain holidays, certain events, because you’ve got to work. So there’s a lot of sacrifice. Basically, you’ve got to plan, and then you have to prepare, and then you need to be creative. If you get those things, you could possibly be successful, but most importantly, you have to try.”
“If you don’t show up, it’s not gonna help.”
“I’m happy to have a platform to at least inspire people,” she said. “And that’s what I try to do.”
Mission accomplished.
Photo credit: Ken Phillips Group
An earlier version of this article originally appeared in Psychology Today on November 17, 2015.
