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Way of the Warrior: Danai Gurira Tells Us How She Stays So Strong and Sexy in Women’s Health
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. Not that we hope to reach Gurira-level fitness; the actress, playwright and activist works…
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Serving Face—and Tribute: Lena Waithe Honors the Trailblazing Legacy of Paris Is Burning
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 and culture immortalized in…
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Freedom Over Fear: Janelle Monáe Covers Allure’s Freedom Issue
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. The artist…
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Amandla Stenberg Makes It Official: She Is a Black Gay Woman
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. But if you do feel so compelled, there’s likely no better month to declare pride in who…
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Black Unicorns Are Real: How Tiffany Haddish Won the 2018 MTV Movie & TV Awards (in Costume)
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: Haddish’s five…
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ColourPop Just Got More Colorful With 42 Shades of ‘No Filter Foundation’
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 full-spectrum-foundation pool with the launch of its No Filter…
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We Ready! The 2018 MTV Movie and TV Awards Teased a Big Night With an Over-the-Top Red Carpet
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…
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Flawless or Forgery? Did Bey and Jay’s Homage to the Louvre ‘Borrow’ From This Black-Owned Label?
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) … The first single and video from the…
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Get in the Spirit: Celebrating 60 Years of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Ailey Spirit Gala
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 season with…
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Chloe x Halle Cover Teen Vogue and Take Us through the Playlist of Their Lives (and Ours)
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 Chloe and…