Sheletta: Don’t be a ‘hidden figure.’ Celebrate your success.

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In honor of International Women’s Day on Saturday, let us raise our McDonald’s cups and tap together our quarter pounders with cheese, onions, bacon and BBQ sauce in a burger toast.

That’s the Angel Reese Special, McDonald’s first-ever national meal collaboration with a female athlete. The partnership with WNBA star Reese shows that corporate America realizes what “Bayou Barbie” already knows about herself: She is fabulous.

“I’m going to be a basketball player, model, influencer business woman, fashion girlie, podcaster, unapologetic, take care of my family/friends, set records. Create history … win at everything,” Reese recently posted on social media. “My goal in life is to be a billionaire & I will without a doubt.”

Then came along former Timberwolves and current Miami Heat player Kevin Love. Instead of supporting the big dreams and bigger goals of a gifted young Black woman, he just couldn’t resist taking a shot at her billionaire declaration.

“I’m gonna go ahead and take the under,” commented Love, who at 36 is past the peak of his basketball career while Reese, at 22, is at the dawn of hers.

If I could have a heart-to-heart talk over a hamburger with Reese, I’d give her four words of advice: Haters are gonna hate! Don’t let anything anybody says stop you from being fabulous.

Angel Reese gets applause every time she suits up for a WNBA game. She hears it. But most women don’t have an audience. That’s why we must clap for ourselves.

I am always going to be my biggest cheerleader.

I’m a beautiful, brilliant, bold Black woman. I say it to myself in the mirror every day. I say it on TV when I do my monologues on TPT’s “Almanac.” I talk about it on the radio when I’m hanging out on WCCO. I write about it right here in my Minnesota Star Tribune columns.

I’m not waiting for you or anyone else to recognize my accomplishments because you may never shine a spotlight on my success.

No one gets the chance to Katherine Johnson me.

In my vocabulary, “Katherine Johnson” is not a noun, it’s a verb. Johnson was the pioneering Black mathematician whose long-unheralded genius at NASA was critical to getting manned missions launched into space and safely home.

She was literally a “hidden figure,” as stated in the title of the book and movie that told the story of the crucial calculations performed by Johnson and her fellow Black female mathematicians.

By the time President Barack Obama hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around her neck in 2015, Johnson was 97 years old and in a wheelchair.

What took so long? Why did she have to wait 45 years after she helped save the Apollo 13 moon mission to be recognized?

Her bosses and those in power knew of her brilliance and remained silent. In fact, her white male counterparts took credit for her calculations, erasing her name and her contributions.

In the words of Celie from “The Color Purple”: “Folks don’t like nobody being too proud or too free.”

Don’t I know it, because I’m proudly and unapologetically both.

You should read the emails and hear the calls from readers who complain that I “promote [myself] too much,” “shouldn’t say I’m brilliant” or “do too much bragging.”

You are damn right, I do. In the words of that great American prophet Uncle Charlie Wilson, I’m outstanding. I’ve got two Emmys, five bestselling children’s books and a couple of Edward R. Murrow awards. Girl Scouts River Valleys recently announced that I’d been selected as their 2025 Celebrate Changemakers honoree for courage. I’ll pick that trophy up at a ceremony in May.

My promotion and production company ShelettaMakesMeLaugh.com partners with Fortune 500 companies that hire me to come up with ingenious ways to advertise their products and services that nobody else can create.

My children are cute and well-behaved, and my ex-husband is still in love with me.

I’m gonna talk about all my wins today, tomorrow, and every day until the Lord calls me home to be with Jesus.

I’m not going to wait for you to decide that I’m worthy. I walk in the room worthy. You don’t have to ask anybody about my achievements because I’ll be taking out billboards and talking about them in my daily newsletter.

When I was a little Black girl, my great-grandmother Freddie Welcome warned me not to show out too much. She was afraid my fearlessness, even at a young age, would have deadly consequences.

Grandma Freddie was alive during the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921 and knew how white men burned down homes and brutally murdered African American entrepreneurs and their families to destroy Black Wall Street, a business ecosystem created to build generational wealth for Blacks in the Oklahoma town.

What had these Black people done to deserve this? What was their sin? Success.

As a result, a lot of us were taught to dumb down our accomplishments. “Hard work is its own reward,” they told us. That didn’t work out for Katherine Johnson, and it won’t work out for me or Angel Reese or you either.

This International Women’s Day, I want every woman reading this to make it her business to talk openly about her accomplishments, especially to her children. Be proud of your victories and if anyone in your sphere doesn’t celebrate you and cheer when you succeed, then walk your fine ass out the door, as Lizzo suggests.

Leave a job, husband or friend who doesn’t throw imaginary rose petals on the floor before you like they did for Eddie Murphy in “Coming to America.” Tolerate nothing less.

Dads, free your daughters from one day having imposter syndrome. She needs to know and have no doubt about her greatness. Celebrate her good grades. Make sure she knows it’s safe to succeed. She shouldn’t wait to be in her 90s to realize she’s special. She should know it when she’s 9.

This column comes with a homework assignment.

Ladies, instead of writing down a list of things to do or groceries to buy, put all your recent accomplishments on a sheet of paper. Number them. Remind yourself you’re a badass.

I don’t care if you lost 18 ounces or 18 pounds, write it down.

That promotion at your job, that public speaking gig you got, that book you published, that project you just finished, that business you started, write it all down.

Once you finish your list, put a chip clip on it and hang it on the fridge. You need to see it. Read it daily.

Your family and friends need to see it, too.

If you live alone, take the list to the office and leave it lying on your desk for your nosy coworkers to check out.

Brag on yourself, boo! You deserve it.