The glow up

You didn’t think we forgot, did you? Admittedly, it’s been a busy week here at The Glow Up, with the GLAAD Awards, a lingerie line from Rihanna and the questionable Catholic imagination of the Met Gala (oh my!). Frankly, we’re ready to slow it down for the weekend, so we thought we’d start by going classic, and belatedly celebrating a very special anniversary. On May 10, 1988, our forever icon Prince released Lovesexy, an album as famous for its angelically provocative cover as for any of its songs. It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years, since I remember clearly the day I saw the CD on display at Sam Goody while out with my friends at Lincoln Mall in Matteson, Ill. (OK, so maybe it has been 30 years.) But while the album perhaps wasn’t his most famous, it still spawned some eternal classics, such as the sweet and sexy slow jam “When 2 R in Love” and our Anthem of the Week, “I Wish U Heaven.” Aside from the fact that we … [Read more...] about The Glow Up Anthem of the Week: Prince’s ‘I Wish U Heaven’

Any video that starts with elaborate nail art is likely a good fit for The Glow Up, so we have to thank commenter “Monkeypox0104” for suggesting this week’s Anthem of the Week, Tierra Whack’s 15-minute audiovisual medley “Whack World.” Born from the rapper-singer’s series of one-minute Instagram shorts directed by Thibaut Duverneix and Mathieu Léger, the mini-movie guides us through a sampling of Whack’s sounds as she changes outfits and scenes with each track and plays out each song title in surreal detail. It’s at turns delightful, disturbing and pretty dope to watch, and we have to agree with the Philadelphia Inquirer writer who saw Whack perform at the 2018 Roots Picnic on June 2: “She has style and swagger to spare.” But what we might love most about Whack’s quirky brand of #BlackGirlMagic is that she’s not afraid of #BlackGirlWeirdness. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the type of … [Read more...] about The Glow Up Anthem of the Week: Tierra Whack Invites Us Into Her ‘Whack World’

There’s an innate groundedness, a humility, about actress and singer Merle Dandridge. It’s a quality that’s immediately calming to the listener and connects you with her. The Glow Up had the pleasure of catching up with Dandridge during her current run on Broadway as Papa Ge—a riff on the Haitian Creole god Guédé—in the revival of the Caribbean-inspired Broadway musical Once on This Island at New York City’s famed Circle in the Square Theatre. Papa Ge is a major departure from Grace Greenleaf, the role bringing Dandridge national recognition as the star of Greenleaf, on the OWN Network. Aside from the gender-bending roles of this production, which also stars Glee favorite Alex Newell as goddess Asaka, singing the house down, Dandridge’s embodiment of Papa Ge is raw, sinewy and very dark. Fitting, for the god of death. As she tells The Glow Up: People who know the show have real opinions and feelings about how it should be done, and … [Read more...] about Amazing Grace: The Glow Up Talks to

When you meet model, blogger and advocate Mama Cax—Cax, for short—you’re not sure where to look first: at her gleaming brown skin and bald head, her sculpted features, whatever ridiculously sick ensemble she’s put together just to tool around town or her equally stylized prosthetic leg cover (one of 15 she owns)—a latticework of metal that simply looks like another piece of jewelry amid all the other regalia she’s giving you on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday afternoon. The Haitian-born beauty, now represented by JAG Models, the New York agency democratizing the modeling industry, makes body positivity more than a catchphrase; it emanates from her entire being. At an age when most girls are beginning to experiment with makeup and boys, she was diagnosed with a rare cancer in her teens and forced to undergo an amputation of her right leg—along with painful subsequent treatments. Now in her 20s, Cax has made it her mission to … [Read more...] about The Glow Up Gaze: Mama Cax Is Redefining the Runway