black girl magic
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The Glow Up Gaze: Mama Cax Is Redefining the Runway
When you meet model, blogger and advocate Mama Cax—Cax, for short—you’re not sure where to look first: at her gleaming brown skin and bald head, her sculpted features, whatever ridiculously sick ensemble she’s put together just to tool around town or her equally stylized prosthetic leg cover (one of 15 she owns)—a latticework of metal…
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Glow-Getter: Santana Caress Benitez Cooks Like Your Mother … and May Just Steal the Scene
Chef Santana Caress Benitez doesn’t call herself an actress. This, despite her appearance as Lourdes “LuLu” Blackmon in Netflix’s recent series reboot of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It; a scene-stealing supporting role that has literally sent Hollywood calling (as evidenced by the feature-film audition she’d sent off just prior to our conversation). Personally asked…
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Surviving a Breakup: What I’ve Missed Since Going Natural
Sometimes I look at my Afro and still can’t believe that less than two years ago, I underwent “the big chop,” after which my hair basically looked like a fuzzy tennis ball. Now my hair is a few inches past my shoulders and longer and thicker than it ever was when it was relaxed. I…
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Unnatural: The Beauty Industry’s Natural-Hair Bias
Black folks have always had a list of unwritten rules for navigating life. A quick Google search of “unwritten black rules” will yield you hours’ worth of pure comedy—there are more than 1 million hits. You’ll find pearls such as “If you drink the last of the Kool-Aid, make some more,” and “Kids, don’t ask…
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Red Lip Theology: Every Sista Deserves to Be a Stunna
The first time my mama caught me trying to cut off my lips, I was 10. Kids called me “bubblicious lips” and “Wanda” so much, I don’t think they knew my real name (and I hate Jamie Foxx to this day). As far as I was concerned, performing this minor surgical procedure in our tiny…
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She’s Your Queen-to-Be: @Krissychula Stays Saying What We’re All Thinking
Fun fact—or, in this case, funny fact, for a beauty vertical: I first fell for YouTuber @krissychula on a bad hair day in 2012. It was a really bad hair day, to hear her tell it: Since being “pissed off” at her hair (and who here can’t relate?), @krissychula, also known as Krystal, has elevated…
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Lupita Back on the Cover of Vogue Is All the ‘New Year, New You’ We Need
In #Faves news: She’s beautiful, she’s black, and this January, she’s back on the cover of American Vogue! Lupita Nyong’o is ushering us into 2018 with Little Mermaid-after-she-made-the-trade realness (The Root staff has been lobbying for her to star in a live-action remake of the animated classic, and we won’t let it go). This marks…
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From Bus Stops to Hip-Hop: An Ode to Around-the-Way Girls
Cardi B, we’re really happy for you and we’re gonna let you finish, but girls from the hood been at this for a minute … Belcalis Almanzar, better known as the reality star-turned-star rapper Cardi B, has arrived. She fixed her teeth, made Billboard chart history, and finessed her way into the ears and hearts…
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#NappyGirlMagic: She Left the Corporate Grind and Became America’s Natural-Hair Whisperer
You can see the precision of corporate influence in every crevice. The customers don’t wait a second. Appointments are tightly regimented. All scheduling is online. Kinky Curly Beauty’s Hair Studio in Birmingham, Ala., is like the love child of a Fortune 500 engineer and your favorite girlfriend’s beauty salon, but with more melanin and fewer…