Princess Gabbara

Plus, pro tips from a celebrity hairstylist for maintaining your style.

From the outside looking in, the year 2000 was an auspicious one for 28-year-old Gabrielle Union. She was riding the success of now-classic films Love & Basketball and Bring It On; a year prior, the Omaha, Nebraska, native made her film debut in iconic rom-coms She’s All That and 10 Things I Hate About You. Privately, however, Union was bogged down by impostor syndrome and feelings of self-doubt.

The name of Busy Philipps’ podcast basically sums up the actor’s balanced approach to wellness: Busy Philipps Doing Her Best. The key factor in her overall well-being? Making time for self-care — something she admittedly didn’t always do.

Bustle’s “Without This Woman” is a series of essays honoring the women who change — and challenge — us every day. In honor of Latinx Heritage Month, Love & Hip Hop: Miami breakout star Amara La Negra reflects on how the late Cuban salsa icon Celia Cruz taught her to be proud of her Afro-Latinx identity.

If you miss being inspired by Amber Riley's unapologetic character Mercedes Jones from Glee, you'll be pleased to know the star is currently shooting another musical comedy series — called Dream — that she's both starring in and co-executive producing. The Grammy-nominated singer is also planning her upcoming wedding to bodybuilder Desean Black. But that doesn’t mean the singer-actor-producer doesn’t carve out time to decompress.

When it comes to style, Ciara never misses a beat, whether she’s attending the Met Gala, hosting the American Music Awards, or channeling Princess Diana during a romantic Italy vacation.

Black don’t crack, but excess shine, hyperpigmentation, melasma and other skin issues can interfere with our melanin magic. Pro tips from top derms and makeup artists.

In 2012, at nine months pregnant, Maya Smith, flew against medical advice from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles to learn more about Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation (BTWF) — which aims to support young people’s mental health and create a kinder world through programming, conversations, and partnerships. Prior to meeting with Lady Gaga and her mother Cynthia Germanotta, who co-founded the nonprofit together, Smith spent nearly eight years as the CEO and COO of Mobilize.org, a now-defunct organization that gave millennials the resources to build solutions for social issues.

Mary J. Blige regularly topped the music charts thanks to a casual nine Grammy Award-winning albums. But the singer-songwriter is also renowned for rocking multiple trendsetting hairstyles since the ‘90s: the style chameleon has worn everything from sleek blonde lengths to fiery red pixie cuts. As it turns out, Blige’s affinity for experimenting with different hairdos started long before becoming the queen of hip-hop soul.

Here’s protection you can feel good about using every day for as little as $8.

Angelica McKinley sees Google Doodles as one big welcome mat. As the site’s art director, McKinley has helped execute several hundred Doodles since joining the team in 2019, from an illustration of LGBTQ+ rights activist Marsha P. Johnson to an animation celebrating B.B. King’s 94th birthday. Each Doodle commemorates a different holiday, a different prominent figure, a different event, but she says it all comes back to bringing people together.

At 28, Rita Moreno hadn’t yet cemented her status as an EGOT-winning, trailblazing icon. (That would happen in 1977, when she became only the third person and first Latina woman to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony.) Instead, she felt stuck portraying stereotypical ethnic and sexualized roles that she felt diminished her talents.

It’s rare for a first-time novelist to land on the New York Times bestseller list, but Sunny Hostin is used to paving her own path. When she started writing Summer on the Bluffs in 2019, the book complemented some emotional heavy-lifting she was doing professionally. “[I do] a lot of reporting with social justice work, so I want to read something light on my way there or back,” Hostin tells Bustle. Her story, the first in a trilogy, follows three adopted, 20-something goddaughters over a summer in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts — a Black beach community on Martha’s Vineyard.

Pro tips for passion twists, boho locs, braids and more.

Stealing the show as the exotic dancer Candy Sparks in 1999’s The Best Man was the highlight of Regina Hall’s 28th year.