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Whether it's the lazy afternoons spent laying out on the beach, or nights spent sipping cocktails at your local rooftop hangout, there are so many reasons to love and look forward to summer. It's a time for respite, fun in the sun, and adventure. But as any Chicagoan can tell you, there's something particularly special about "Summertime Chi." The vibes in the Windy City are on 100 when the temperatures rise, and the city literally comes alive in the most magical way.
Chicago-based personal trainer and fitness influencer Sara Hunt knows this all too well. The Grand Rapids, Michigan native came to Chicago for college in 2008. After falling in love with Chicago, she decided to stay and put down roots in the bustling city. And the summers spent in Chicago really underscore her love for the Chi each year. "My favorite thing about Chicago is 'summertime Chi,'" she tells xoNecole. "There's just so many festivals and things to do. There's a plethora of really good food, whether it's healthy or not-so-healthy food. Summertime in Chicago is unmatched [compared to] other places, with the amount of [activities] that are available to you."
Just like the Toyota Corolla Cross, Sara is always on the move. She's a mom with a busy career who maintains an active presence in the gym. Throughout all of life's demands, Sara is diligent about showing up for herself. It was her motivation to make fitness a lifestyle in the first place. But that discipline has carried her through in so many ways. "I used to put everybody else before me. Now, I put myself in a category that I would put other people in," she tells xoNecole. "I'll even put it in my calendar that I need to book a massage or go and get my nails done. Because if I don't do that, then sometimes my own personal things will go under, be left behind."
She sees her fitness journey through the same lens: a way of giving back to herself that isn't motivated by external sources. "Before getting serious about my fitness journey, I was starting and stopping. I wasn't really doing it for myself. I had a boyfriend at the time and it felt like I was trying to look good for him. And then when I started [working out] for me, that's when I started to love it."
See Sara's Chicago city guide below:
Swallow Cliff Stairs, 8999 W 123rd Street Palos Park, IL 60464
"There is a place in Palos Hills, a suburb of Chicago, called Swallow Cliffs, and there are these massive stairs. Sarah. It's very daunting to look at. People look at it and think, 'I don't know if I'll be able to survive.' But all the extreme fitness people will drive from the city to go here. One round is up and down, and then you have to walk around [to go again].10 rounds for me takes about an hour. So there's that."
Cryobar, 1205 W Webster Ave, Suite 1 Chicago, Il 60614
"I love going here to get cryotherapy done. It's the equivalent of taking an ice bath. There are a lot of benefits to getting cryotherapy. For instance, if you did a really intense workout and your muscles are really sore, doing cryotherapy helps out with that soreness so that you can continue working out the next day and not be in pain."
Lou Malnati's, 439 N Wells Street, Chicago, IL 60654
"I think Chicago has the best pizza, and I can agree with other Chicagoans that deep dish pizza is overrated. We like tavern-style pizza, and we have the best. Don't get me wrong, we have great deep-dish pizza too, but that's a touristy thing. There's a place called Lou Malnati's, and they're my favorite place to get pizza. I personally like veggie pizza."
Mesler Chicago, 1411 East 53rd Street | Chicago, IL 60615
"One of my neighborhoods to hang out in Chicago is Hyde Park. I personally feel like that's an area where it is pretty diverse and it's also safe. There's a lounge in there that I like to go to sometimes called Mesler. It has a nice little upscale vibe to it. The drinks are great and it's the perfect place to take someone who is visiting from out of town."
Lake Shore Drive
"Everyone's favorite place for a drive in Chicago is Lake Shore Drive. It's the perfect place to just clear your mind, see the city, and look at the skyline. And if you go when the sun is setting, it's the most beautiful time to drive down because you'll see the sun setting on Lake Michigan which is breathtaking. And then you see the skyline. I think Chicago has one of the best skylines, but of course, I'm a little biased."
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Celebrity News
Summer Walker Gets Honest About Motherhood And Her Child's Father: ‘I Wish I Paid More Attention’
14h
When Summer Walker began gaining popularity with her debut album Over It, her personal life also took center stage. The “Body” singer worked on her first album with her now ex-boyfriend, producer London On Da Track, and they welcomed a daughter together, Princess Bubblegum. Their relationship was challenged by cheating rumors, and the 26-year-old found herself going back and forth with London’s exes on social media for consistently bashing the singer and the producer.
Summer and London have broken up multiple times but they put the final nail in the coffin in 2021, the same year their daughter was born. (London has four kids in total.)
That same year, she dropped her highly-anticipated second album Still Over It filled with songs inspired by their breakup. She even titled one of the album’s singles “4th Baby Mama," with the title inspired by her experience.
The Atlanta native was interviewed for Essence’s Festival of Culture issue, where she opened up about soul music and motherhood. “It’s really stressful and it’s really a lot of sacrifice. Sometimes, it’s like, is it worth it? Then they smile and make your day, and the answer is yes,” she said about raising her daughter.
While she loves her daughter, she confessed that she wished she made better decisions about London. “I wish that I paid more attention to the person I procreated with,” she revealed.
“It’s still like you never really know anybody. Even how long you can be with people, you just never really know,” she added.
“People be in long-ass marriages, and they just switch up and you’ll be like, “Yo, what the f–k?” So, I guess you can just never really know.”
Summer is currently dating Larry aka LVRD Pharoh who is a rapper and someone from the “No Love” singer’s past. When news spread of their relationship, the rapper shared a message on his Instagram story, addressing those questioning who he was. “FYI: I'm not the 'new boo' lmaoooo. The real ones know we been in each other's life since 2014.”
They also have each other’s names tattooed on their faces.
Summer is working on her healing, telling Essence, “I have a scholarly teacher and different people who are really good in their fields that are helpful with my healing.” She also noted that therapy and religion have helped her in that journey as well.
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Featured image by Amy Sussman / Getty Images
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With a YouTube channel that boasts millions of views from her hair and skincare tutorials, beauty influencer Candice Jones knows what it takes to look great on the outside. But when it came to her mental wellbeing, Jones started feeling a disconnect. “Because a lot of the things that I was seeing on social media like: take a bath, pour you some wine,” Jones tells xoNecole about her initial attempts at self-care. “I was doing all of those aesthetic things, but it wasn't making me feel better.”
Jones’ turn to wellness came during a time in her life when she was dealing with a series of compounding anxieties. “What I considered the lowest point in my life,” Jones says, “where I graduated, I was working in a job that I didn't feel passionate about and I had my parents kind of like pushing me in a certain direction.” She continues: “And I felt very guilty for not performing the best when I was in school and then not pursuing my doctor career that they really wanted me.”
Unable to afford traditional therapy, Jones turned to the internet to begin her self-love journey. But she would quickly run into another unexpected roadblock. Jones found that a lot of the websites and online guides she turned to didn’t resonate with her as a Black woman. “The information was not coming from people that looked like me and people that I felt like other people would trust with their journey,” she says.
This led to Jones creating her wellness website Everything She Is. She describes the site as being “a platform for self-love, self-development for young girls and young women, self-empowerment, all of those kinds of things,” Jones says. “And we create tools and resources to help women along their self-love journeys as they come into womanhood.”
When creating the website, she says the first thing she wanted to address was self-acceptance. “That was something I grappled heavily with: finding myself,” Jones says. “Once I kind of uncovered a lot of the stuff that was there, a lot of things that I didn’t feel proud about, how to move forward and how to heal through self-acceptance I feel like a lot of people go through that when they’re transitioning - especially through womanhood.”
Jones sells guided self-love journals on the site that have helped in her process. “I was my first customer,” Jones says, “and it is something that really helped me kind of get to the bottom of what was really weighing me down.”
Jones says that her readers have also shared how much these journals have helped them too.
“It helps them dig deeper, ask questions that they would have otherwise not asked,” Jones says. “[Customers say] that the work has been difficult, but rewarding that a weight has been lifted, that they feel much freer and it's really just a story of, releasing. And sometimes that's what people need. Sometimes people just are carrying so much.”
Jones says that she also hopes that her website can be a guide for Black women on how to set their boundaries. “A lot of people around me are very self-sacrificing,” she says. “That strong Black woman trope that a lot of people are touching on now and resisting against with the soft-life movement is what I saw and what I wanted to breakdown the idea of kind of having to put yourself to the side in order for other people you’re around to advance.”
She is mindful about saying that her website is not an alternative to therapy for people who are able to access that and more so a companion to it. “Therapy is very, very, very important and something that we encourage,” Jones says. As she considers adding a formal education to her informal wellness training, she says that creating the website has been a way for her to help people in the meantime, “Just from a human aspect," she says. "Not from a scientific aspect or accolade or certification, but just being a human being and seeing women and myself struggle and wanting to be there and offer some help.”
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This month, SZA released the deluxe version of her debut album CTRL in observance of the fifth year anniversary of the album’s release. Featuring previously unreleased tracks, including an alternate version of “Love Galore,” which fans got an opportunity to hear during one of the Grammy-winning singer’s live performances, the revamped collection of songs has given fans a chance to reflect on life when the album first came out vs. now.
Despite the fact that only five years have passed, 2017 feels like several lifetimes ago. A series of personal and societal catastrophes have taken place over the course of the half-decade since CTRL was released. Relistening to the album recently activated a tender pang in my chest for the Black girl I was when the album first came out and all the Black girls that have similarly found themselves in the lyrics of Solána Imani Rowe.
In the opening track “Supermodel,” you first hear the voice of SZA’s mother saying “That is my greatest fear/ That if, if I lost control/ Or did not have control/Things would just, you know/I would be fatal.” From there SZA sings about finally laying to rest a relationship with a toxic ex. “I'm writing this letter to let you know/ I'm really leaving/And, no, I'm not keeping your shit.”
Throughout the entire album, we hear SZA wrestle with the heartache brought on by both a toxic relationship and the growing pains of being in your twenties. In “Love Galore” we hear her exclaim to her partner “why you bother me when you know you don’t want me?!” In “Drew Barrymore” she posits: “I get so lonely I forget what I'm worth/ We get so lonely we pretend that this works.”
It’s the disarming honesty that draws people into SZA’s world. We hear her attempts to gain some form of power in her relationship in “The Weekend” where she casts herself as an adulterous seductress who arranges the timetable with her man’s woman for when she can see her man.
Naming the album CTRL, despite it being so much about the loose, unmanageable time of your twenties, feels apt for all the contradictory moments when you’re just so desperately wanting things in your life to make sense. When CTRL first came out, I felt aimless. I was a 22-year-old college dropout who was worried I had ruined any chance I had at a fulfilling life. Listening to her song “20 Something,” in particular when she says “How could it be?/ 20 something, all alone still/ Not a thing in my name/ Ain't got nothin', runnin' from love/ Only know fear/ That's me, Ms. 20 Something/ Ain't got nothin', runnin' from love/ Wish you were here, oh,” that resonated with me the most. It felt like for the first time in my adult life I was no longer so consumed by the loneliness of assuming that I was the only one feeling this unbearable cluelessness.
The newer tracks don’t offer anything new by way of insight, only reaffirming the initial message of CTRL. A lot has changed since we first heard SZA singing about her sneaky links and love gone awry and about her love for Narcos and Tacos. But singing about the growing pains that plague so many Black women in early adulthood is why five years after its debut, during a time when music often fades into obscurity, we are still all under SZA’s CTRL.
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Money Talks
This Full-Time Content Creator Went From Making $15 An Hour To Six Figures In A Year
24 June
Money Talks is an xoNecole series where we talk candidly to real women about how they spend money, their relationship with money, and how they get it.
Full-time content creator Yvette Corinne has made waves in the content creation space. On the outside looking in, while some might feel like you have to have hundreds of thousands of followers in order to make a full-time living as an influencer, Yvette has managed to bring in six figures with a highly engaged Instagram community of more than 24,000 followers. And how did she do it? Well, her journey to wealth wasn't one without struggle. The Los Angeles-based micro-influencer got her start in content creation through blogging in 2016. That would lead to her growing her following on Instagram, which allowed her to balance her part-time retail job with being a part-time content creator.
Income from brand deals and partnerships eventually led to her toying with the idea of quitting her job to pursue influencing full-time. But she had a specific goal in mind before she felt confident enough to make the leap. The 32-year-old tells xoNecole: "I knew it was possible to go full-time in 2019. I kept telling myself if I can make at least $4,000 a month consistently, then I can quit my part-time job. All the while I had a goal to save $5,000 just in case I needed money when one of my brand payments came late. Well, about four months in a row I made the amount of money I desired, but I was still scared to quit my job."
Although she planned to quit her job at Topshop in March 2019, Yvette ultimately decided to stay on until the company's closing in July of the same year so that she could collect unemployment as an additional safety net in case things didn't go as planned. She left the retailer with about $3,000 saved. About a month into full-time content creation, she shared, she received the confirmation she needed to know she was on the right path. "I got my first big campaign. It was $5,000! That made me feel like, 'OK, Yvette, you can do this.'"
Keep reading to learn more about Yvette's budget breakdown, the lowest she's felt about finances, and the jobs and salaries that led her to what she does now for a living.
Courtesy of Yvette Corinne
On the jobs she worked before doing what she currently does:
"I’ve actually never had a full-time job. When I moved to L.A. after undergrad, I went straight into my master's and didn’t have time to work full-time. So I picked up part-time work at Zara and then, after graduating, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. I quit that job and was unemployed for a few months and then started working at other retail jobs for the holiday season. Shortly after I got hired at Topshop doing their admin, [it was] still part-time because I started taking modeling and content creation seriously. In the midst of that, I transferred to the personal shopping department. I worked as a personal shopper until I eventually was a full-time creator. My pay started at $12/hr at Zara, $13/hr doing admin, and then $15/hr as a personal shopper."
On how much money she makes a year:
"Last year I ended at about $180K and this year, if everything stays consistent, I expect to make at least $200K. No month is the same, but this year I started off the first quarter strong and basically booked enough gigs to cover my necessary expenses. That has really set the tone for this year."
On the lowest she's ever felt because of her finances:
"2020 was the first year I made six figures, but in the first quarter of 2020 before lockdown, I was struggling. I remember needing $4,000 to cover my bills, my new apartment down payment, and making sure I was making all my payments on time while I was waiting for checks. My unemployment stopped and I was patiently waiting for the net60s and net90s (the 60-day and 90-day period from when an influencer fulfills their obligations and thereby is expected to receive payment for their deliverables). It was a struggle! Thankfully my mom gave me the money, and I paid her back as soon as I got back on my feet that same year. A true definition of anything can happen in a year."
"Mentally, I was stressed because the lockdown was shortly after and I had no idea if brand deals would be a thing anymore. But I just prayed and prayed that God would show me my next steps and He did! The year turned around and I made about 75% of my income in the second half of the year! Now, I don’t really worry about finances, because I know God’s got me."
On the revenue streams she uses to diversify her income:
"My streams of revenue are mainly brand partnerships which consist of me creating content for brands to use on their website, social media, and/or newsletters, and sponsored posts that I post on my personal social media accounts. Another stream of income that I have is affiliate marketing."
On how she approaches budgeting and tracking expenses:
"I use a spreadsheet and I have a budget planner that I love from a new company called MSTRPLN. I use Trello to track my brand deals and invoices/payments since I don’t have a manager to do those things for me."
On whether she is a spender or a saver:
"I consider myself both! I worked hard to enjoy the lifestyle that I have. I treat myself and make sure I am not saving to the point where I am not enjoying my money. I’ve always been obsessed with finance and I am a true Capricorn. If you know you know! When it comes to saving money, I live for a cushion. I have a few savings accounts with different banks. I have one tax savings account where I transfer money into as soon as I get paid to have it when it’s time to pay the man. [I also have] an emergency savings account that I transfer a certain amount of money to until I reach the goal I want to have there. For me, that’s about $30,000 because I want to have at least six months' worth of money to live off of just in case.
"My last savings account is my house fund! Hopefully, I’ll be engaged soon (laughs) and my boyfriend and I will be planning to get a house within the next few years. So we both have been saving for that moment separately, in our own personal savings accounts. I put a certain amount of money in each account every time I get a check!"
On unhealthy mindsets about money she had to let go of:
"There was a time where the savings was all I cared about and I didn’t want to spend money. The first time I spent a lump sum of money (it was for my electric car down payment), I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t feel attached to money as much because I knew that it was going to come back."
On the money mantra she lives by:
"'Money comes to me and through me. Period. I am no longer attached to money because I know that it will and can come back to me."
Yvette's Basic Monthly Budget Breakdown
- Apartment: $2,200; My portion of the rent because I live with my boyfriend, and yes, we split the bills. I have no problem with that. I have an office in our townhome, so I write off that room for my taxes.
- Utilities: $300
- Food: $750
- Car: Luckily, I have an electric vehicle, so it cost me like $50 a month to charge! I spend $250 on car insurance.
- Self-care: $250
- Overall Savings/Retirement: $20,000 in emergency savings; I'm still working on my retirement with my new financial adviser. It’s all so new to me. Building my emergency savings has been the most important thing for me because I don’t want to experience the stress that comes with waiting on checks ever again.
For more of Yvette, follow her on Instagram @yvettecorinne.
Featured image courtesy of Yvette Corinne
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