Remember back in May when we shared this post! It was the first time in history that Miss America, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA were all black women. Today Essence released its digital cover featuring all three women and the pictures are stunning. Read below via Global Beauty Director Julee Wilson:
For the first time in history Miss America, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA are all Black Women. But we’ve known forever that Black women reign supreme.
To celebrate this milestone in history we captured all three women @niaimanifranklin @chesliekryst & @kalieghgarris for a DIGITAL cover in their crowns AND some of our beloved cultural crowns (Church hats, do-rags, headscarves and kufis).
And there was no one better to write this feature than the incomparable @michaelaangelad, who eloquently breaks down the importance of our place in culture — today, tomorrow and always!
Check out the pictures:
This was my favorite part of the feature Via Essence.com
Black women not only create crowns out of our hair, we also crown our crowns in the most majestic ways. We wear elaborate hats and regal head wraps not to hide our hair but to glorify its beauty, creativity and power.
Whether Black women are standing on the floor of the Senate or napping in a college dorm lounge, their presence alone is often seen as an act of aggression—yet we refuse to diminish ourselves for the benefit of the underdeveloped vision of others.
In the face of the brutality, ignorance and blandness of White supremacy and its standards of beauty, Black women dare to flaunt our flyness by adding extra embellishment to our already radically expressive heads.
“Pageants weren’t always welcoming to women of color. It took decades of persistence and courageous women showing the world a new kind of beauty.” — Cheslie Kryst, Miss USA 2019
We are only too much for those without enough. Black women have consistently displayed the most diverse, audacious and glorious crowns, from Dana Elaine Owens proclaiming herself Queen Latifah and bedecking herself with tall and proud African fabric headpieces and declaring “All Hail the Queen” on her debut album to the big, blinged-out bow on Aretha Franklin’s charcoal church hat at the 2009 Obama -Inauguration.
Then there was Minnie Riperton’s poetic wreath of baby’s breath on the cover of Adventures in Paradise, Winnie -Mandela’s magnificent turbans, Grace Jones’s crystal-encrusted stingy brim bowler projecting miniature lasers from the stage and Erykah Badu’s gravity–defying head wrap on the cover of her Baduizm album.
And who can forget a resplendent, pregnant Beyoncé ruling the night in a headdress of golden roses and sunrays at the Grammys?
Of course, the most powerful, spectacular and glorious part of a Black woman’s head is how we use it—the revolutionary way we love, the holistic way we organize, the creative way we make, protect and sustain life. And as the whole world knows, when it comes to hair and everything we put in or on it, Black women rule.
Just stunning!