Janelle "Penny" Commissiong Quotes

Responsibility dictates behaviour and winning never dictated how I lived my life.

Only when we got there did I realize that I was really in a competition.

looks."One of the things I'm thankful for is that I have all my original body parts.

may help young people coming up have a sense of our history.

I had just moved back to Trinidad, so I did it for promotion. I hadn’t been there for some years and wanted people to know who I was. I went into a local pageant without any expectations.

Retirement has traditionally been tied to the 60s and that image hangs over it, but it just doesn't fit.

The George Floyd incident was a perfect storm — for the world to see and understand that these changes have to be made.

I’d never even been on a stage before. Seeing the competitive spirit around beauty was very interesting.

Except we never saw a black contestant on the cover.

No fillers, no replacements, no substitutes."This seems miraculous in a world she recognises as revolving around instant beauty at all costs.

A person of colour was not a typical beauty.

There are so many pre-conceived notions of what '60' is first and foremost 'old'.

It was a hostile industry, but over the years I think I earned their respect.

In the quest for perfection the line keeps moving.

Without George Floyd we wouldn’t have seen all the rest that’s happened over the past few months, or understood what’s at the root of parts of America.