A lesson for every girl who’s never had the ideal “look,” Raven’s breakout success is a tribute to a strength of character that keeps her real and lets her true beauty shine. In this exclusive interview, this triple-threat star shares her goals and passions with Pageantry Editor FRED ABEL.

n the 2003 made-for-TV movie The Cheetah Girls, she plays one of four members of an all-girl singing group who resist a music producer’s attempts to change their style for the sake of a record contract. As Raven Baxter, an otherwise normal teen with psychic visions in The Disney Channel’s That’s So Raven, she often carves a path for herself and her friends to lessons in growing up that can benefit any young woman who thinks for herself. In her 2004 solo album for Hollywood Records, This Is My Time, she elevates pop music to a sophisticated artistic statement of female strength and independence. Later this year, in the major motion picture All-American Girl, she will play Samantha Madison, a self-described “urban rebel” who foils a presidential assassination and becomes a reluctant national heroine.

“If being bad and showing your skin — selling your body to sell your music — is hip, I guess I’ll never be hip.”

“I want to be the person to create wonderful roles and stories for girls like me, who don’t fit the mold. I want to create a new mold.”

In all of these projects, Raven-Symoné stands at the top of the heap, joining Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan, as one of the new leading ladies of “girl power” — a thematic strategy aimed at “tweens” (girls between the ages of 9 and 14) that has become a tried-and-true approach of The Disney Company’s TV, film, and music divisions.
Indeed, over the last three years, Raven has become the poster child for that girl-power strategy, a role that also thrusts her into the “good-girl-vs.-bad-girl” pop-culture battle for teen pocketbooks. At the front lines of the “bad” side are the “sex kittens next door,” young women like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Christina Aguilera enticing the lucrative tween fan base with risqué daring. If you’re a preteen or teen pop-culture consumer — or the parent of one — who’s not especially enamored of exposure to such acts, what other choices are there?
Well, on the flip side of Tinseltown, there’s Raven-Symoné, a Disney marketing department dream — uplifting, idealistic, family-friendly — an actor and pop-music star who has chosen not to cave in to cultural decadence as other artists of her generation have. As a likable teen who plays younger than her age (19) and believably conveys the insecurities and vulnerability that all tweens share, Raven is a natural who also is on familiar territory, having started down that road with her parents managing every step of her career. A child model with the Ford Agency at 18 months of age, she first broke into the spotlight when The Cosby Show made her, at age 4, the character Olivia Kendall and an “instant” TV star. It’s nearly 15 years later, that precocious “Cosby Kid” is all grown up, and her string of successful ventures since her childhood days — the Dr. Doolittle films with Eddie Murphy, The Cheetah Girls, Princess Diaries 2, the Kim Possible and Zenon series, and three music CD releases — confirms what Bob Cavallo, chairman of the Buena Vista Music Group, concluded: “Raven-Symoné is a triple-threat performer — TV, film, and music.”
As many of you may remember, Raven was a Pageantry cover girl at the age of 7 in the summer of 1993, when she was already a veteran child actor and recording artist whose confidence to articulate and follow her dreams made her an ideal role model for Pageantry’s many talented child performers with their own dreams of stardom. That self-confidence was still on ample display one day this past March when, exactly at the appointed hour, the Pageantry office phone rang, and it was Raven herself placing the call for our interview. The voice at the other end of the line sounded friendly and familiar, but at the same time higher-pitched and somewhat more vulnerable — like a daughter with a scraped knee asking for a Band-Aid. Part of Raven remains Olivia Kendall and Nicole Lee (Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper), two characters she imbued with her wide-eyed innocence and comedic brilliance between 1989 and 1997. Yet, once she ventured beyond the first few minutes of conversation, Raven demonstrated a maturity that belies her age. “I’m 19, but I don’t act 19,” she candidly admits. “People usually think I’m younger than I am, because of the way I dress or the way I act — you know, ‘Yes, ma’am, no ma’am, yes, sir, no sir.’ My parents made a point to raise me that way. I turn down endorsements that aren’t for me, and let me tell you some of them are pretty crazy. I do stuff that makes sense to me, because I’m not just in it to make money. I’m here to make people happy, to smile, and have fun and dance.”
Raven’s unpretentious and positive attitude is a perfect fit for Disney’s brand of “girl power,” which traces to Hilary Duff and the “Lizzie McGuire” character that still pulls big numbers on TV, in movies, and for the company record division. The strategy first proved its mettle on the silver screen in 1998, with Lindsay Lohan reprising the roles of twin sisters that Haley Mills rode to stardom in The Parent Trap. More recently, girl power demonstrated its powerful box-office appeal with Freaky Friday, a teenage-daughter-meets-mother’s-angst romp with Lindsay and Jamie Lee Curtis, and will be on display later this year in both Lindsay’s Herbie: Fully Loaded and Raven’s All-American Girl feature films for Walt Disney Pictures.
In the same vein, The Disney Channel has positioned That’s So Raven as its girl-power flagship series, and, as it approaches its third season, the TV show is clearly the place where Raven-Symoné seems most in her element. As the funny, touchy-feely Raven Baxter, whose psychic visions of the near future cast her into a cornucopia of sit-com scenarios, Raven can play off of all the wonderfully silly mannerisms she learned from her masterful mentor, Bill Cosby. Says the actress, “Being on his show taught me so much about how to be and how

“I had to create my own style and realize, you know what, I’m going to wear what I like, because it fits me and it’s what I like. Because if I like it, it’s always in.”

to act, being a professional on the set even though I was young. I didn’t know I was soaking it up, but I was. It wasn’t necessarily the words, it was his example on how to behave and how everything worked in a business-type manner.”
When it came time for Disney’s Hollywood Records and Raven to execute the girl-power strategy in the pop-music realm with last September’s This Is My Time CD, Raven went for an eclectic mix designed to walk a fine line between “hip” and “mother-approved,” while standing apart from the “gangsta” influences of rap and the backing-track pretenders of pop. Explains Raven at one point when I ask her for comparisons to other pop artists: “I’m not the type of girl who’s going to go on stage and show off her body, but I’m also not the girl who’s bubblegum pop or a rocker girl. When I grew up, I listened to Alanis Morissette, Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder, Angela Bassett…. If there’s anyone whom I am most like, it would have to be Janet Jackson — but with most of my clothes on — because she has wonderful messages in her music. It’s true that, in the music industry, sex does sell, but I think being smart, like an Alanis or Michelle Branch, sells just as well, so why not mix dance and smartness. I think that’s pretty much who I am.”
Although My Time CD sales fell short of some overly optimistic expectations, Raven nevertheless likes what she is hearing about it from fans. “The album didn’t go platinum like people thought it was going to,” she says, “but the parents I talk to have said, ‘Thank you for being a role model to my child.’ ‘Thank you for showing my daughter that she doesn’t have to take her clothes off to be popular.’ ‘Thank you for not talking about sex.’ ‘Thank you for showing her that you don’t have to follow after a boy to complete yourself.’ That’s how I was brought up.”
A while later in our discussion, she comes back to the subject of her demure self-image as an example of her willingness to go against the grain in Hollywood. “If being bad and showing your skin — selling your body to sell your music — is hip, I guess I’ll never be hip. But when I’m with my friends, they think I’m hip, because I have respect for myself.”
Body image and the common perception of “beauty” by industry decision-makers have also played a part in Raven’s rejection for numerous parts that she’s auditioned for. “The powers-that-be say you have to look a certain way to be popular, that you have to wear certain clothes to get into the magazines. I think that’s messed up, because, one, my body type is not the typical body for the fashions that are out there. When I was in school and I looked at what was on television, there was no one on TV who looked like me. I didn’t have anyone to look up to. I had to create my own style and realize, you know what, I’m going to wear what I like, because it fits me and it’s what I like. Because if I like it, it’s always in. I mean, why not be who you are, because you are beautiful.”
Along with a firm sense of her own identity, Raven has developed a strong social conscience, too, as is evidenced by her participation in a Lifetime original movie, For One Night, based on a true story about an African-American teenager who, in 2002, successfully holds the first interracial high school prom in the history of her small Georgia town. Raven will star in the film later this year. “It’s a wonderful story of courage for her and girl power,” Raven says, “because it shows that one person can make a difference, and open the country’s eyes. It’s a story that needs to be told, because there is still racism in our country, and it’s a shame and it’s ridiculous because we’ve been on this planet for I don’t know how long, and we’re still acting like this? Come on, you guys, grow up, you know what I’m saying? Kids don’t mind, so why are the adults still having problems?”
While she is an open book in her show-business life, her private affairs remain largely hidden from public view by design, and Raven declines to answer my questions about the potential for boyfriends, marriage, or raising a family (she is an only-child). So what can we expect in the future from Raven-Symoné as a triple-threat artist? For the next year or two, she wants to maintain a slow-but-steady pace by taking smaller roles, explaining, “I’ve been out there a lot and I don’t want people to get sick of me too early, because I have so much more I want to do.” Beyond that, she would like to eventually create a record label and production company that opens doors “for those who might not come across as mainstream stars. I want to be the person to create wonderful roles and stories for girls like me, who don’t fit the mold. I want to create a new mold.”
Before she signs off, Raven mentions that her parents still keep a blow-up of the 1993 Pageantry cover on the wall of their Atlanta home. “Pageantry and Raven — both survivors,” I say. Raven squeals with delight and, with no warm-up for her vocal chords, breaks into a spot-on rendition of the 2001 Destiny’s Child hit, “Survivor,” singing, “I’m a survivor, I’m gonna make it, I’m a survivor, keep on survivin’.” She laughs, and then adds with a sigh, “I sound nothing like Beyoncé.”
Nevertheless, with the perfect combination of sweetness and girl power, Raven continues to amaze her growing legion of fans as she keeps breaking, and remaking, the mold of Hollywood success in her own unique image.

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