black women
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Indelible Beauty: Makeup Maven Cashmere Nicole Talks Success, Survival and Building a Brand Built to Last
Beauty Bakerie founder and CEO Cashmere Nicole knows about staying power. She’s built a successful and evolving brand that started on the strength of one product: her best-selling “Lip Whip.” Famed for smudge-free saturation in no fewer than 45 shades (and counting), the day-to-night finish is vegan, nontoxic and 100 percent cruelty-free … and so…
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Sizing Each Other Up: Why Do Other Women Try to Kill My Vibe?
In high school, I loved hanging out with other women, particularly those who exhibited a level of confidence in their stride. But cliques didn’t work well for me—I despised the thought of shadowing the queen bee of a pseudo girl group. Besides, even among my female friends, I felt different. It felt like puberty had…
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Top 10 Moments Black People Won in 2017
2017 has been, how do I put this succinctly, a fucking shit year. From the plagues of biblical proportions that this administration keeps trying to drop on us to the fact that Mother Nature is sick of the bullshit and has been trying to finally kill us all via hurricane, 2017 has not been skimpy…
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Queen: CCH Pounder Celebrates the Art of Black Womanhood With an Exhibition at Xavier University
If you watch television, chances are you’ve watched CCH Pounder. Over the past 38 years, the Emmy-winning Guyanese actress—who celebrated her 65th birthday on Christmas Day—has accumulated well over 100 acting credits, including recurring roles in the Avatar franchise, ER, The Shield, Law and Order: SVU, Sons of Anarchy and, currently, NCIS: New Orleans. New…
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#BlackWomenDemand: What We Insist the Democratic Party Does for Us
Black women have done a lot of heavy lifting in the past year. This comes as a surprise to no one, because black women in America have been doing heavy lifting since we were brought here. It’s more significant at this particular point in time because of the political climate in which we exist. As…
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Wonder Woman: Happy Birthday, Flo-Jo!
The track and field and fashion phenomenon Florence Griffith Joyner—fondly known as Flo-Jo—would have been 58 years strong today, and undoubtedly still slaying us with her inimitable style. Long before Serena Williams stunned in her on-court ensembles or Ibtihaj Muhammad stayed true to herself and her sport in hijab, Flo-Jo was showing the world what…
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For Colored Girls … Who Need to Talk About Colorism
How do you feel about this film? Or, perhaps a better question is: How does this film make you feel? I’m going to be honest: When I saw this film, Marian Edusei’s Dark Skinned Girls, on Dazed, I felt a mixture of horror, wonder, disappointment, disgust, confusion, intrigue, envy and amusement—perhaps in that order. But,…
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Stigma Against Sex Workers Must End
I’m a black woman who is over 35, and for a little over a decade, I was a sex worker. It doesn’t matter what kind of sex work; what matters is that I have an adult lifetime of experience, not only in sex work, but also with the painful stigma attached to it. The thing…
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Shedding Light on Reproductive Health: Understanding Adenomyosis
U.K. native Kat François, 44, is a reputable performance artist, writer and playwright, best known for her televised appearances on the BBC3 Poetry Slam Championships in 2004 and the World Poetry Slam Championships in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 2005. But despite her accolades and extensive global résumé, we initially found ourselves bonding over our reproductive-health…
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Celebrating Ourselves: A Toast to #TeamNatural
The year 2017 was a good year for black hair. Solange did the absolute most, impressing us with African-inspired avant-garde hairstyles. Then there was Erykah Badu—aka “Sara Bellum,” aka “Fat Belly Bella,” aka “Medulla Oblongata,” aka “Low Down Loretta Brown,” aka “Analogue Girl in a Digital World”—who pushed all the way through in what she…