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  • Oh, Honey: The (Budget-Friendly) Beauty in the Secret Life of Bees

    Yeah, we know, we know … we covered honey-based beauty just Sunday—Veronica Webb’s experience with a $725 luxury bee-venom facial, to be exact. Understandably, some of you were a bit stung by the premise and the price tag, but we want to pull back the curtain on beauty treatments that aren’t widely known to the…

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    Maiysha Kai

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  • Like Father, Like Daughter: 20 Years After His Death, Biggie’s Legacy Launches a Clothing Line

    T’yanna Wallace was only 3 years old when her father, Christopher—the rapper the world recognized as the Notorious B.I.G., or Biggie Smalls—was brutally killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. I was 22 and a college senior, living across the street from his mother, Voletta Wallace, on St. James Place in Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Clinton…

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    Maiysha Kai

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  • Killer in the Sack? Why You Might Need to Learn CPR This Cuffing Season

    Scenario: It’s a cold winter night, and you’re happily snowed in with bae. You’ve Netflixed. You’ve chilled. You’re now in the throes of passion, but instead of clutching you, all of a sudden, he clutches … his chest?  What would you do? Sex has long been one of our favorite winter sports—and has been linked…

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    Maiysha Kai

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  • Dapper: Fashioning a Queer Aesthetic of Black Womanhood

    “Ain’t I a woman?” Black feminist pioneer Sojourner Truth famously asked that question of an all-white audience of abolitionists and suffragettes in 1861, to point out the erasure of black women from the social “protections” of womanhood. A century and a half later, black women, from Misty Copeland and Serena Williams to first lady Michelle…

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    Maiysha Kai

    Published

  • I Am Not Your Token: What Rihanna Taught Us This Week About ‘Diversity’ Casting 

    This week, one lucky Rihanna fan got an impromptu lesson in tokenism—from the star herself—after they suggested that she include transgender women in her next Fenty Beauty campaign. The new beauty mogul, who rocked the cosmetics industry this past September with her full-spectrum beauty launch, responded kindly and clearly on why even the question was…

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    Maiysha Kai

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  • Before The Glow Up: The Root Staff Reveal Their Younger Selves in a #FlashbackFriday Series of Embarrassing Photos

    It’s never all work and no play here at The Root, y’all. Though we work hard, we always make time for fun—including making fun of one another—because we’re one big ol’ happy, dysfunctional family. And because our family is spread out across the country, most of these hijinks take place on our messaging system, Slack.…

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    Maiysha Kai

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  • Treat Yourself … to Some #SelfLove

    I’ll bet we’re more alike than different. I’ll bet there have been seasons in your life when you, too, have felt like you had been incredibly blessed with so much, yet still felt a gaping sense of something missing—and you couldn’t quite put your finger on it? For me, this mysterious blanket of emptiness became…

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    Maiysha Kai

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  • Makeup Mecca: Marjani Beauty Is a Marketplace Made for Us, by Us

    Like many of us, entrepreneur Kimberly Smith is a self-confessed “beauty junkie.” This corporate attorney by day is obsessed with cosmetics, yet—also like many of us—wasn’t finding the variety she needed in mass retailers. Out of frustration, the online marketplace Marjani Beauty was born. Launched in January 2017, Marjani means “coral, or she who is…

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    Maiysha Kai

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  • Get Haute for the Holidays With Veronica MarchĂ© and Her Line of Gorgeous Greeting Cards

    Watching fashion illustrator Veronica Miller Jamison (also known as Veronica MarchĂ©) work is like watching an alchemical process: With a few deft strokes of her brushes, beauty emerges from a blank page. The Philly-based artist is known for her vibrant use of color and elegant silhouettes, and she considers women of color the ultimate muses.…

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    Maiysha Kai

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  • In Praise of Sailor J: The Woke AF Beauty Vlogger We’ve Been Waiting For

    Sailor J thinks she knows my life. My entire insecure, aggressively honest (or just aggressive), disorganized and easily distracted Aries life. She also does one hell of a bronzed cat eye. The increasingly popular YouTuber—more than 120,000 subscribers and rising—first hit my radar in October with “Getting a Man 101”— a hilarious yet poignant take…

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    Maiysha Kai

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