Pulsating beats. Undulating bodies. Scantily-clad swag under a spectrum of colorful lights. Is it a music video? A concert appearance? Rihanna’s recent text-filled (and highly controversial) trip to see Slave Play on Broadway?

Instagram is entering a new era—hopefully, one that’ll be healthier for the self-images of users under 18.

C’mon, melanin! The crush of New York Fashion Week coincided with the latest batch of black girl magical covers headed to newsstands as fall arrives this weekend, so we’re just catching up on the hauteness of October’s covers, several of which star some of our favorite faces. Our consensus? Hot Girl Summer is clearly…

She may be retiring from music—or maybe (likely) not—but Nicki Minaj is still at work, giving first looks at a new collection with Fendi. She initially teased the collaboration in July, and now tells Elle that her fans “are going to be really surprised when they see that I did think of things for them. I totally know…

It was mid-August, and just weeks into her new job as acting president/CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of American and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Alexis McGill Johnson was out front, defending the organization from attack.

The icon who brought drag mainstream is now giving us a bit of the magic to bring home. Twenty-five years after he launched the philanthropic Viva Glam collection with MAC, RuPaul is once again lending his glamour to a beauty brand; this time with friend and celebrity makeup artist Mally Roncal.

To date, there have been 22 school shootings in the United States in 2019, with 2018 the deadliest on record for school shootings—94 incidences of school gun violence were reported (h/t Vox). In fact, according to the Washington Post, more than 228,000 students have experienced gun violence in their schools since the…

We fell in love with Angelica Ross as the always-ready-with-a-clapback “Candy” on FX’s Pose, but it’ll be the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who will soon get a taste of the actress and activist’s charm and wit. This Friday, Sept. 20, Ross will host a national presidential candidate forum on LGBTQ+ issues at…

The movement known as the Women’s March announced a change in leadership on Monday, as co-founders Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Bob Bland stepped down from their co-presidential roles in the organization. The march’s fourth founder, Carmen Perez, will be staying on.

One in 16 American women considers her first sexual experience a forced one, according to a new study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, titled “Association Between Forced Sexual Initiation and Health Outcomes Among US Women,” analyzed 13,310 American women between the ages of 18…

Most of the fashion world (read: this writer) is still recovering from New York Fashion Week, but the die-hards among us subsequently made their way across the pond to see what the British are serving for Spring-Summer 2020, as London Fashion Week kicked off last Friday.

As the most recent New York Fashion Week wound down last week, several members of our team here at The Root found ourselves at perhaps the hottest party of the week. In fact, it was figuratively and literally the hottest, as legendary burlesque venue The Box was surprisingly short on air conditioning as it hosted a…

“I have taken trauma and turned it into triumph,” says Brittany “Tru” Kellman, founder of Jamaa Birth Village in Ferguson, Mo. At the age of 13, Kellman found herself in an unfamiliar city, running away from a violent home, and pregnant. At 37 weeks into her pregnancy, a physician decided to induce her labor without…

Is she or isn’t she? That was the question consuming Black Twitter after images and video from Rihanna’s 5th annual Diamond Ball surfaced, raising speculation that her delayed ninth album might be due to another, far more important project currently in production...

If you think about some of the most innovative, gorgeous hair looks of your favorite celebrities, there’s a solid chance Ursula Stephen’s hands were involved. The star stylist is the talent behind any number of Rihanna’s most iconic and shape-shifting looks, and, in recent years, has helped create the same…

Among the demographics celebrated by the beauty industry, darker-skinned and older women have historically been ignored. While the marginalization of darker skin has been dramatically shifting in recent years (thanks to Fenty Beauty, among others), the industry has been significantly slower to embrace aging as a facet…

Last week was a good week. Well, socially, that is.

The Anchorage School District in Alaska is appealing a recent decision to disqualify a champion 17-year-old swimmer because a referee thought her school-issued swimsuit showed too much of her buttocks.

To watch Michael B. Jordan’s ascension to Hollywood A-lister and now, the first global face of Coach Men’s—a face that just happens to be black—is astonishing.

“I thought you had to be a rapper to make clothes,” Kerby Jean-Raymond told Business of Fashion Sunday night after his latest runway presentation, staged at the Kings Theatre in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. The designer went on to share that he used to work across the street from the historic theater, renovated and…