I have always felt that, when it comes to dressing for your size, you could do a lot worse than to emulate Queen Latifah. She is a big, beautiful, curvy woman, and she always looks damn good. It makes me extremely happy that they weren’t afraid to use that in Chicago, and it makes me sad that I haven’t seen Bessie yet, because I’m sure that’s stunning, too. She doesn’t try to hide her size. Yes, she’s done Jenny Craig, but to me, Queen Latifah is the definition of confidence. If she lost weight, it was probably for health reasons and not to be skinny. She has to know, as I know of myself, that she’s just never going to be skinny. Some people aren’t made to be.

But there’s more to Queen Latifah than the fact that she’s stacked. (And has either excellent colour sense or someone in her life with excellent colour sense.) I can’t really speak much to her rapping, since it’s not a genre that appeals to me particularly, but she’s apparently quite well regarded in the field. Maybe one of you knows more about that than I. What I do know is that she’s got a knack for comedic acting. She produces. She’s done some fine drama. And she’s got a heck of a set of pipes and can bump and grind like a champ.

I think she first came to my attention when she played a minor character in “the first hiphop mystery,” Who’s the Man? IMDb lists her as playing herself in it, and maybe she does; that movie does kind of blur a lot of lines on that subject. But in a movie filled with awkward cameos, she shines as someone actually comfortable in front of the camera. Not bad, given how little acting she’d done—though given that her first movie was Jungle Fever, it’s not too astounding.

Of course, if you’re talking Queen Latifah the actress, you have to talk about her Oscar-nominated role as Matron Mama Morton in Chicago. She runs the women’s section of the prison in a notoriously corrupt Chicago sort of way. She takes bribes and allows all sorts of privileges she shouldn’t. But when you’re good to Mama, Mama’s good to you, after all. The role is minor enough that the Wikipedia page for the show doesn’t say who played the character in any of its incarnations, but with Queen Latifah in the role, it wasn’t going to be overlooked. She lost to Catherine Zeta-Jones, also for Chicago, but the fact that Velma Kelly is the second lead after Renee Zellweger’s Roxie Hart should indicate how much Queen Latifah brought to the role.

I will also always have a certain soft spot in my heart for the otherwise dreadful Bringing Down the House, for which she educated Steve Martin and Eugene Levy on hiphop slang. It’s definitely not a good movie, but it’s the movie Graham and I saw on our first date all those years ago. (I’ve mentioned before that this time of year is not a great one for having an anniversary; there’s not a lot in the theatres to choose from.) It’s not her best movie; it’s not even close. But I have a hard time imagining how much worse it could have been if it starred someone without her level of talent.