Featuring Rachel Nicks
© 2017 - xonecole.com

It is like witnessing magic when you watch an athlete do what they do best. To see a mere human soar in the air over to the other side of a bar or to witness someone run at a speed quicker than a human thought. A basketball player defying gravity just to get a ball into a hoop. A ballerina turning their body into a top, spinning and spinning without fatigue.
We all know the athletes whose talents have defied logic. The Jordans. The Woods. The Copelands. However there is probably no person who has achieved alchemy in their career quite like Serena Williams.
For decades we’ve watched the magnetic chemistry Williams has fostered between her racket and the ball. The thunderous force in which she served. Her muscular physique that looks as if it's been sculpted in the image of a Goddess.
In the recent issue of Vogue she speaks on her plans to retire or “evolve,”as Williams put it, from tennis, the sport she’s dominated since the 90s. In the article, Williams is frank about the mixed emotions she’s experiencing with this decision she’s made. “There is no happiness in this topic for me,” Williams says. “I know it’s not the usual thing to say, but I feel a great deal of pain.” She continues: It’s the hardest thing that I could ever imagine. I hate it. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads. I keep saying to myself, I wish it could be easy for me, but it’s not. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next.”
It seems like Williams’ anxiety over leaving can only be rivaled by fans’ sorrow of having to say goodbye to the sports legend’s career.
To have watched Williams play tennis since she was just a child was a chance to watch as someone took the gift they were born with and turned it into something otherworldly. From the moment she stepped into our collective imaginations donning a head full of beads that adorned her braids at just 14 years old in 1995, she was bringing all of us Black girls along with her.
Serena Williams 11 Sep 1999: American tennis player Serena Williams kisses her trophy after winning a match (against Martina Hingis of Switzerland) during the US Open at the USTA National Tennis Courts in Flushing Meadows, New YorkCredit: Jamie Squire /Allsport
There were people perplexed that a Black girl and her equally talented sister hailed from Compton, California — a place that had become synonymous with violence and poverty. Their story had become one about defying the odds, as if not becoming a casualty to the various societal ills was an accomplishment and not an indictment on the system they had to work against in the first place.
This would become a recurring problem throughout her career. From dog whistle comments from the “competitors” she frequently bested like Maria Sharpova, to the media and sports officials, Wiilliams was never able to be just an athlete. She was also forced by the many instances of misogyny and racism in her career to embrace a life of activism.
It's difficult to surmise how much she’s impacted a new generation of athletes like Naomi Osaka, Sloane Stephens, and many more Black girls who see themselves in Williams. We are her legacy of Black woman magic and excellence. Whatever the future holds for her is yet to be determined, but if it’s anything like her tennis career, it will be iconic.
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Lori Harvey’s dating life has consistently been a hot topic on social media and now the model is shedding light on some of her dating do’s and don’ts. In an episode of Bumble’s new “Luv2SeeIt” content series, the SKN by LH founder sat down with the series' director, producer, and host Teyana Taylor and disclosed some quote-worthy thoughts on dating and relationships.
One of the 25-year-old’s dating don’ts is being close with an ex. “Cordial, okay, you speak. I don’t want y’all to have beef because then it gets messy,” she clarified. What she does appreciate, however, is transparency, openness, and communication from a partner.
When asked what makes her feel “powerful” in a romantic relationship, she answered, “Not compromising my values, standards, and my requirements.”
Lori’s last relationship was with Michael B. Jordan. The former couple dated for a year and a half before calling it quits in June 2022. Prior to dating the Creed actor, the model also dated Future and Trey Songz. During her interview, Lori opened up about what influenced her approach to dating.
Courtesy of Bumble
“I almost got married very young,” she said. “I felt like I hadn’t really experienced anything. I didn’t really know myself, I didn’t really know what I liked, what I didn’t like. I just feel like I hadn’t really experienced life.”
“At that point then I was like I’m about to, like I said, just date on my own terms. However I want to move, whatever I want to do, I’m going to do it. And if it’s no longer serving me, I’m going to move on.”
Lori was engaged to professional soccer player Memphis Depay when she was just 21 years old. She admitted that she wasn’t the same person at 21 that she is at 25 and has learned so much about herself and relationships.
“I’m very much in a space right now where I’m not doing anything that’s gonna compromise my peace and happiness,” she stated. “So, I think just taking control making sure you maintain your power, don’t give your power away to anybody, that I feel like is the key to truly being happy in or out of a relationship.”
Lori Harvey spills how she’s grown through dating | Bumble presents Luv2SeeIt with Teyana Taylor
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Tisha Campbell has a new show on Netflix called Uncoupled which stars Neil Patrick Harris as his character learns to rebuild his life after a breakup with his long-term partner. While Tisha’s character may not be going through a breakup, the veteran actress has had a similar experience in real life. The Martin star divorced the L.A.’s Finest star Duane Martin after 22 years of marriage and 27 years together in total. Soon after the divorce was finalized, Tisha claimed that Duane left her with $7 to her name but now she is in the restoration phase of her life.
The beloved actress sat down with Hot 97’s Ebro in the Morning and talked about life after divorce.
“One of the things that goes through your mind is who am I outside of this person?” she said. “I took marriage, my wifely duties…and being a mother, that was at the forefront of everything. Career came second. I had to find myself.”
Tisha began acting in her childhood and has had memorable and iconic roles throughout her extensive career in films like School Daze and House Party as well as TV shows like My Wife and Kids and Martin. The 53-year-old is also a mother to two boys, 20-year-old Xen, and 12-year-old Ezekial. Her divorce was finalized in 2020 and during that time she shared that she went through the “five stages of grief.”
“It was complete devastation. It was disbelief, it was anger at times. It was literally five stages of grief, and then there was more than acceptance,” she said. “It was acceptance of myself, I’m stronger than I really knew, and it was getting rid of any baggage, setting boundaries for myself.”
But the actress was able to get to the other side of the grief and focus on what she loves, which is entertaining people. Along with her new Netflix series, she also joined Martin Lawrence and the cast of the 90’s hit show Martin for a reunion, and last year, she and her bestie Tichina Arnold hosted the 2021 Soul Train Awards.
“God kept giving me something. He kept paving the way for me and kept gifting me all these wonderful miracles,” she said. “I never understood what faith was until I was at absolute zero. I thought faith was getting on your knees, praying, and getting up and doing the work until I could not do anything and my hands were tied behind my back, or up in the air, and there was nothing I could do. That’s when I understood, things were going to work out because He’s going to work it out.”
For years, Tisha had been known both professionally and personally as the hyphenated Tisha Campbell-Martin. In May of this year, she made the decision to change her last name back to her maiden name, Tisha Campbell. In an interview with Bustle, she shared, "When you first break up, there are a lot of different feelings. Some people might feel anger, some people might feel vengeful, and some people might feel uncomfortable because there are a lot of lows when it first happens.”
She continued, “But then you start to understand the journey, and how beautiful it is when you come out of it and how hopeful the future is. When you discover yourself — your true self — oh my god, it’s so sexy! It really is. Yo, I’m so joyful. Joy is a badass bitch.”
Real Talk w/ Tisha Campbell On Moving Forward, Martin, Putting Yourself First + Success
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When the NYT posted an article this week about the recent marriage of a Black woman VP of a multi-billion-dollar company and a Black man who took her on a first date at the parking lot of a Popeyes, the reaction on social media was swift and polarizing. The two met on Hinge and had their parking lot rendezvous after he’d canceled their first two dates. When the groom posted a photo from their wedding on social media, he bragged about how he never had “pressure” to take her on “any fancy dates or expensive restaurants.”
It’s worth reading on your own to get the full breadth of all the foolery that transpired. But the Twitter discourse it inspired on what could lead a successful Black woman to accept lower than bare minimum in pursuit of a relationship and marriage, made me think of the years of messaging that Black women receive about how our standards are too high and what we have to “bring to the table” in order to be "worthy" of what society has deemed is the ultimate showing of our worth: a marriage to a man.
That's right, the first pandemic I lived through was not Covid, but the pandemic of the Black male relationship expert. I was young – thirteen to be exact – when Steve Harvey published his best-selling book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Though he was still just a stand-up comedian, oversized suit hoarder, and man on his third marriage at the time, his relationship advice was taken as the gospel truth.
The 2000s were a particularly bleak time to be a single Black woman. Much of the messaging –created by men – that surrounded Black women at the time blamed their desire for a successful career and for a partner that matched their drive and ambition for the lack of romance in their life. Statistics about Black women’s marriageability were always wielded against Black women as evidence of our lack of desirability.
It’s no wonder then that a man that donned a box cut well into the 2000s was able to convince women across the nation to not have sex for the first three months of a relationship. Or that a slew of other Black men had their go at telling Black women that they’re not good enough and why their book, seminar, or show will be the thing that makes them worthy of a Good Man™.
This is how we end up marrying men who cancel twice before taking us on a “date” in the Popeyes parking lot, or husbands writing social media posts about how their Black wife is not “the most beautiful” or “the most intelligent” or the latest season of trauma dumping known as Black Love on OWN.
Now that I’ve reached my late twenties, many things about how Black women approach dating and relationships have changed and many things have remained the same. For many Black women, the idea of chronic singleness is not the threat that it used to be. Wanting romance doesn’t exist in a way that threatens to undermine the other relationships we have with our friends, family, and ourselves as it once did, or at least once was presented to us. There is a version of life many of us are embracing where a man not wanting us, is not the end of what could still be fruitful and vibrant life.
There are still Black women out there however who have yet to unlearn the toxic ideals that have been projected onto us about our worthiness in relation to our intimate lives. I see it all the time online. The absolute humiliation and disrespect some Black women are willing to stomach in the name of being partnered. The hoops that some Black women are willing to jump through just to receive whatever lies beneath the bare minimum.
It's worth remembering that there are different forces at play that gather to make Black women feast off the scraps we are given. A world saturated by colorism, fatphobia, anti-Blackness, ableism, and classism will always punish Black women who demand more for themselves. Dismantling these systems also means divesting from any and everything that makes us question our worth.
Because truth be told, Black women are more than worthy of having a love that is built on mutual respect and admiration. A love that is honey sweet and radiates a light that rivals the sun. A love that is a steadying calming force that doesn’t bring confusion or anxiety. Black women deserve a love that is worthy of the prize that we are.
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Some may see romantic comedies and dramas as a guilty pleasure. But author Bolu Babalola indulges in the genre with no apology.
“I love romance,” Babalola tells xoNecole. “I’ve always consumed romance. I’ve always read romance. I’ve always written romance,” she says. “It wasn’t even a conscious decision, it’s just a part of me. It’s just what I enjoy reading.”
In her debut romance novel Honey & Spice, Babalola follows up her debut anthology Love in Colour by once again allowing her love for all things love to bloom into a world brimming with vibrant and lively characters. In Honey & Spice, we are introduced to the character of Kiki Banjo who Babalola describes as “the resident romantic adviser” at the university where Kiki also hosts a love advice radio show for Black women on campus called “Brown Sugar.” When a mysterious man arrives at the school and sows discord amongst the ladies, it threatens to undo the work that Kiki has put into trying to lead them all down the right path in their love lives. “A confrontation ensues, an entanglement ensues, and eventually they find themselves having to fake a relationship to save both of their reputations,” Babalola says.
Babalola says that creating Kiki allowed her to write about a Black female character that is flawed. “She is messy. And she is giving romantic advice to women at the university but she doesn’t have it figured out,” Babalola says. “And it was really freeing for me to write a young Black girl like that.”
Babalola is joining a recent wave of writers who are allowing audiences to embrace Black women to be their whole complicated and imperfect selves on screen and in books. Along with debut author Raven Lelani’s hit book Luster (that Babalola describes as one of the books that made her heart beat fast,) and Insecure’s Issa who Babalola describes as a “delight” and “messy.” “She’s so gorgeous, but she’s not exactly smooth,” Bablola says.
Of course, romance is one of the many genres that suffers from its share of anti-Blackness, both with who gets to write them and the kind of characters we constantly see being loved and desired. It’s the Julia Robertses and the Meg Ryans of the world who are seen as the kind of women that society deems to be worthy of affection. While those women as some of her fave on-screen leading ladies, she also cites Vivica A. Fox in Two Can Play That Game and multi-hyphenate entertainer and rom-com queen Queen Latifah who Babalola says is “beautiful, self-possessed, sexy, deep brown skinned, and fully aware of her beauty.”
During our conversation, I was reminded of when Toni Morrison famously said that she “wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.” That was one of my favorite Toni Morrison quotes,” Babalola says when I brought it up to her. “It’s a compulsion. Maybe it’s a little bit narcissistic, but I love writing those stories for my younger self,” she says. More than just herself though, Babalola feels a sense of pride every time young Black girls tell her how much her work impacts them. “When they come up to me and say they felt seen, they felt held, ‘You made reconfigure my idea of romance, and gave me hope about it,’ that makes me really happy.”
Despite the cynicism that many critics have of the romance genre, Babalola says that she doesn’t let that impact her love for the genre. “I really believe that people who think love is a weak or frivolous thing are –” Babalola pauses for a second. “–I’m trying to say they’re dumb but in a nice way,” Babalola jokes. “They really don’t have an awareness of the kind of complexity that’s within that genre, what it takes to forensically explore emotions and human vulnerability.”
While binge-watching television when she was in university, she got the idea to expand her writing skills and her love of romance to the screen. Last year, the pilot for her 30-minute hangout comedy Big Age, aired on Channel 4 in the UK. It follows the life of a Black woman who quits her lucrative law job to pursue writing all the while juggling the prospects of a budding new romance and an old flame.
“I’m a storyteller,” she says when I ask her if screenwriting was always in her cards. “Books and novels were just the first things that I gravitated to because I read books so I’m gonna write books.”
Be it on screen or in a book, Babalola’s love for stories about love and messy Black girls will always find a platform.
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