We’re always happy to see Tracee Ellis Ross. Our current favorite TV mom and best friend in our head is always good for a laugh, a brilliant quip or a fashion statement. But now she’s put an image in our heads that we simply can’t shake—that is, unless it happens.
She may have taught us all the “pleasure principle,” but beloved icon Janet Jackson’s happiness didn’t come as easily as a song and dance. In an exclusive essay and cover story for Essence magazine’s first-ever Happiness issue, the living legend—who will also headline the 2018 Essence Festival on Sunday, July…
In the now-heated rush for every cosmetics brand to come to market with at least 40 shades of foundation (thanks, Fenty), there’s still a question of how truly inclusive their shade ranges are. Whether it’s an issue of the majority of shades still falling firmly in the “beige” category, or undertones not being…
Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk—her hit Facebook series featuring herself, daughter Willow and mother Adrienne Banfield-Jones—has provided us with no end of topics to cover. In the month since its debut, the series has explored a number of intimate matters, including blended families, body issues, “mean girls,”…
Just when we’d decided that the beach was gonna get whatever body we decided to give it this year, here comes Danai Gurira on the cover of the July/August issue of Women’s Health, reminding us that we could probably do better.
Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the “unbought and unbossed” Shirley Chisholm to Saturday night’s MTV Movie & TV Awards, Trailblazer Award honoree Lena Waithe proved that she will always use her platform to elevate the marginalized, transforming her moment at the podium into a tribute to the gay and transgender icons…
You strip away the makeup, the costumes and everything you know about Janelle Monáe the artist, and I’m still the African-American, queer woman who grew up with poor, working-class parents. When I walk off a stage, I have to deal with these confrontations. I have to deal with being afraid for my family.
We long for the day when no one feels compelled to “come out”—or for straight folks to feel equally compelled. Ideally, sexuality should just be considered another natural and accepted part of identity—but then again, so should blackness.
“Whenever I’m doing Zendaya’s hair, it’s always a collaborative effort between her, her stylist Law Roach and myself,” says celebrity hairstylist (and The Glow Up fave) Ursula Stephen. The hair aficionado has made a name for herself teasing the tresses of some of the best-known beauties around, including Rihanna,…
Chrissy Teigen has never been known for her shyness; she’s loud and proud about pertinent social issues, uses her spare time to play Twitter troll to the tangelo in chief, and has been open about the challenges she and husband John Legend faced in becoming parents to 2-year-old daughter Luna and 1-month-old son Miles.
Give Tiffany Haddish all the gold-plated popcorn. If you got through the first five minutes of Monday night’s 2018 MTV Movie & TV Awards without laughing your way into tears, you need your humor checked. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out your new Marvel superhero, T’Tiffany Haddish:
Will the Fenty effect ever end? We hope not, because more inclusive foundation options for women of all shades are quickly becoming the norm. The newest comer to the market? Award-winning, vegan, cruelty-free and cost-friendly cosmetics cult favorite ColourPop, which just dipped its toe into the…
After a lot of hype and a major heist, the all-female franchise that is Ocean’s 8 has proved to be well worth the undoubtedly hefty salaries of its cast, several of whom appeared on BBC stalwart The Graham Norton Show to promote their new film ahead of its British premiere last week.
Fun fact: Every few months, I play this game with my co-workers where I excitedly mention the singer and rapper known as Lizzo, and they all play like they have no idea who I’m talking about, despite likely hearing her music on about half a dozen commercials daily (“Worship,” anyone?). Then I hit them with a link to…
Remakes are a tricky business. Attempting to reinvent a classic for a new generation is rife with potential missteps—not to mention the potentially tepid response from an audience who may not be interested in being retold an old tale. And then there’s timing; opening weekends can be hell when contending with…
The MTV Movie & TV Awards air Monday night, but Saturday’s pretaping gave us a lot to look forward to by way of the red carpet. The annual ceremony, now in its 27th year, is where the most current phenoms in film and television collide—and the red carpet is a reliable range of good, bad and WTF fashion (because ...…
Angelic iconography. The streets of Paris. Baroque architecture. The halls of the Louvre Museum, lined with French and Italian masterworks and iconic Greek and Egyptian sculptures that date well before Christ. The murals that adorn the ornately gilded ceilings of the museum’s Galerie d’Apollon (the Apollo gallery) ...
Legends gathered at the Lincoln Center in New York City on Thursday night to attend the 2018 Ailey Spirit Gala celebrating the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, now in its 60th year. Cicely Tyson, Carmen de Lavallade, honorary chair Jussie Smollett and more were in attendance as the company kicked off the spring…
It’s fun proving people wrong. Even with our music, early on when we were even much younger, people sometimes said our music should be more simple, more digestible, but my sister and I, we just pushed through together and we’re like, “Bam. We’re gonna do what we want to do.” — Chloe Bailey
While our heads were turned looking to see what designer-of-the-moment Virgil Abloh would produce for our favorite low-priced, high-style housewares store, Ikea, another bound-to-be-coveted collaboration was in the works: Solange Knowles’ Saint Heron “cultural hub” also has a collab on deck with the retailer, and our…
