Superstar Zendaya is on the cover of New You Magazine

She is 19 years old and already has two wax figures at Madame Tussauds, a platinum album, a hit Disney show, and 18.5 million Instagram followers. For someone so young, Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman—known simply as Zendaya—demonstrates an uncanny maturity for a young woman who hasn’t even touched two decades on the Earth.

Just recently, the actress, singer, and dancer called out the editors of Modeliste for unnecessary Photoshopping of her pictures, which she feels perpetuates “unrealistic ideals of beauty.” Her dismissal caused such a rukus, it prompted the Los Angeles-based fashion magazine to pull its November 2015 issue in order to restore the images to their original, natural, realistic beauty. And who can forget the media frenzy that erupted after she took to Instagram in scolding response to E! News anchor Giuliana Rancic’s acerbic remarks about her braided hair on the red carpet at the Oscars? Timemagazine voted Zendaya one of the most influential teenagers of 2015 and it is her aspiration to use this platform to impact society through her positive role-model actions. Zendaya—which means giving thanks in Shona language, spoken by African tribes in Zimbabwe—is truly living up to the sentiment of her name. Here, she speaks freely about her journey, her family, her desire to give back, and a girl’s best weapon to have in her arsenal: self-confidence.

Read the full interview in www.newyou.com