Queen Latifah enlarges upon notion of beauty

Queen Latifah sees beauty in a different way.

Photo: Queen Latifah enlarges upon notion of beauty

"Beauty is not just a white girl. It's so many different flavors and shades," the 37-year-old rapper-actress tells People magazine in its latest issue. "It's good for regular girls because the meter (for beauty) has been a slim white girl."

"(In Hollywood) we've definitely gotten better with body type," she says. "It used to be just me! Now with Jennifer Hudson's success and America Ferrera, I got some successors to take the reins on this whole bodylicious thing."

Latifah describes herself as being voluptuous - "definitely curvaceous."

"I think I'm normal compared to the statistics," she says. "This is a big country nowadays."

The star of "Chicago" and other films says she had elective breast-reduction surgery in 2003 to alleviate years of back and shoulder pain.

"I didn't want to get it. But I had lost 25 pounds and my breasts didn't go anywhere! I was still carrying that load," she tells the magazine.

However, "I didn't quite want them to be this small," she laughs.

Before surgery, Latifah says she was "an E or an F cup. I was pretty big. Now I'm like a DD. I wanted to be a triple. They took one D too many! So that was hard to deal with. ... I missed my old look."

Latifah says she is not interested in more surgery.

"There are people who love (plastic surgery) and want to cut and chop anything. I'm like, `Y'all are crazy!"'