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Watch: Let’s Talk About Stretch Marks
They’re on our butts, arms, thighs and breasts. You name it. Stretch marks are discolored, white, red or dark brown and are caused by hormonal changes, genetics or rapid weight gain or loss. Eighty percent of women of color have stretch marks—so let’s talk about them for a minute. Check out the video above to…
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Watch: Color Complex: Questioning Beauty Standards as a Biracial Woman
Skin color both unites and divides us. Whether you live in India, East Africa or Japan, the color of your skin shapes your identity and opportunities. Color Complex is a narrative series that explores how people of color around the world struggle for visibility and learn to navigate the prejudices and social hierarchies associated with…
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Watch: The Natural-Hair Movement Keeps on Growing
For centuries, black women have been measured by a white standard of beauty. Lighter skin was preferred to dark skin, willowy figures preferred to curves, straight hair preferred to curly hair; and the list goes on. “I was born in Senegal, and relaxing your hair is, like, as normal as waking up and brushing your…
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Watch: Growing Pains: Nicole Paultre Bell Learns How to Move Forward After Sean Bell’s Death
Nicole Paultre Bell became a household name—but not from success or fame but because of the infamy of her fiance Sean Bell’s death on Nov. 25, 2006, the night before their wedding. Fifty shots rang out that night, claiming Sean’s life and severely wounding his two friends Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman. Each officer involved…
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Watch: The Power of Representation With Matthew A. Cherry, the Creator of ‘Hair Love’
Representation matters. We know this and still, representation is missing from the media we consume. For Matthew A. Cherry, seeing other black directors in action assured him that filmmaking was an attainable goal after he transitioned from the NFL. Now Cherry is making it his mission to normalize natural hair and black fatherhood in the…
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Watch: A Timeline of R. Kelly’s Troubling History of Sexual Allegations
By now you’ve heard that R. Kelly has allegedly formed a sex cult with women ranging in age from their late teens to late 20s (Kelly denies the allegations). Was anyone really surprised, though? Kelly, who acknowledges that he was molested by a family member from age 7 to 15, according to an interview last…
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Watch: Color Complex: Meet Jayne Waithera, the Extraordinary Kenyan Woman Giving a Voice to Albinism
Skin color both unites and divides us. Whether you live in India, East Africa or Japan, the color of your skin shapes your identity and opportunities. Color Complex is a narrative series that explores how people of color around the world struggle for visibility and learn to navigate the prejudices and social hierarchies associated with…
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Watch: ‘Yo Soy Afro-Latina’
If there is one thing that Sammy Sosa, an Afro-Latino man, and his skin-bleaching fiasco has taught us, it’s to be proud of who you are. The term “Afro-Latino” (or the gender-neutral “Afro-Latinx”) is used to refer to African descendants from Latin America. For many growing up, being black and Latinx was not always beautiful.…
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Watch: Angela Rye Says Black People Shift the Culture
Here at The Root, we have a new video series we want to share with you all, and it’s called Black and Proud. In it, we get the chance to chat with a lot of our favorite black celebrities, tastemakers and thought leaders, so we decided to ask them about their pride in being black.…
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Watch: Filmmaker Shaka King Is Making Sure We Really See the Black Experience
Director and writer Shaka King is busy in the TV-and-film industry at the moment, but that wasn’t always the case. “It took a while, but once I started getting the work, it kept coming in. For a while I wasn’t getting shit, but ‘Mulignans’ really did a lot for my career,” says King, who hails…