Mindy Kaling Thinks We Can All Look Like Blake Lively

Mindy Kaling's upcoming book, Why Not Me?, doesn't hit shelves until September 15. But The Mindy Project project star (who is at least one of your fantasy besties) shares an excerpt from her book in the September issue of Glamour. The sampled selection focuses on confidence, her own and other's opinions on it. In one passage, she recounts a question posed to her by a teenage girl, who asked Kaling where she got her confidence. Kaling writes, "If this question had been asked by a white man, I might actually have been offended, because the subtext of it would have been completely different. When an adult white man asks me 'Where do you get your confidence?' the tacit assumption behind it is: 'Because you don't look like a person who should have any confidence.'" Kaling offers some reassurance to anyone struggling with self-confidence, especially those trying to emulate Hollywood beauty standards, insisting, "Every average-looking American is just a treadmill and six laser-hair removal sessions away from looking like Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively (who are a great couple, by the way)." She also cautions against letting people who feel threatened by your success drag you down, pointing out, "People do not get scared when you're failing. It calms them. That's why the show Intervention is a hit and everyone loves 'worrying' about Amanda Bynes. But when you're winning, it makes them feel like they're losing or, worse yet, that maybe they should've tried to do something too, but now it's too late. And since they didn't, they want to stop you. You can't let them." Kaling obviously hasn't let anyone stop her; The Mindy Project's fourth season will debut on Hulu, and she's writing a third book with B.J. Novak.