Not sure if you've noticed, but um, it's a bonafide heat wave sweeping the nation! When it comes to styling hair in this heat? Ain't nobody got time for that! Master a super simple topknot with these totally easy tips.
Tika Sumpter swept her bone straight hair into a topknot, an easy, simple style that will have you set for the summer.
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Go Curly
Thandie Newton added even more pizzaz to her curly topknot by wearing it slightly off-center. Give it a try for a dazzling one-two punch of style.
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Twisted Sista
Tina Campbell’s layered bun gives the standard topknot a new twist—no pun intended. Get the look by using synthetic extensions to create a large twisted ponytail. Take the large twist and wrap it into a chunky knot.
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Parting Ways
KeKe Palmer put a new spin on the classic topknot by adding a center part. To recreate this look, smooth your hair down towards each ear before brushing it back up behind your ponytail and securing with bobby pins. This is perhaps one of the simplest ways to makeover your topknot!
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Load on the Layers
A layered look is an eye-catching way of remixing your typical topknot. Fan out your bun a la Kerry Washington by looping loose sections around one another until you have a 3-D look you love.
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Get Your Fill
Christina Milian flaunted this sky-high topknot for a refreshing new look. Create a funky supersized bun by adding extensions or a foam donut into the inside of your bun.
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Add An Accent Braid
An easy way to remix your topknot is to add a braided headband like LaLa Anthony’s. As a bonus, the braid in the front will help camouflage frizzy edges and keep your hairstyle sleek despite summer’s humid temps.
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Bun and Go
The biggest “secret” to perfecting your topknot is, well, not to worry about it being “perfect!” At the Roc Nation Pre-Grammy Brunch, Garcelle Beauvais rocked an easy-breezy topknot that was unstructured, fuss-free and fabulous!
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Add Bangs
Adding full, face-framing bangs is sure to upgrade your traditional topknot in a new way. Kelly Rowland was the center of attention when she arrived at the 24th Annual GLAAD Media Awards in a high-shine topknot with trendsetting fringe.
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Take It Higher
Create an attention-grabbing bun by making your topknot sky high like Ashanti’s. If your hair isn’t long enough to create this look on your own, feel free to experiment with extensions to get the look.
Since taking office about three weeks ago, Donald Trump has issued a blizzard of 200+ executive orders. Among them are two key anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) directives that threaten to roll back decades of progress in expanding opportunities for people of color, women and other historically marginalized groups.
The first executive order eliminates DEI enacted under President Biden, who required all federal agencies to create plans to “address unequal barriers to opportunity” and ensure workplace equity. Trump’s order terminates all DEI, DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility), and environmental justice jobs as well as any programs, grants, or contracts related to its implementation, calling them “forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”
The second executive order eliminates all DEI orders from previous administrations, including one by President Lyndon Johnson from 1965, which required federal contractors to provide equal opportunity measures. In rolling back the policies, Trump called DEI “immoral” and “illegal” and painted it as a “corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system” that robbed “hardworking Americans”—implicitly white men—“of opportunities because of their race or sex.”
President Trump also warned of “adverse consequences” for those federal workers who fail to report colleagues who refuse to dismantle DEI policies.
While the order is limited to the federal government, it directs federal agencies to find ways, including potential litigation, to pressure the private sector also to abandon its DEI policies. This threatens to accelerate a corporate anti-DEI trend that has already been in the works. Walmart, which back in 2020 announced a $100 million investment in a center for racial equity, announced several days after Trump’s election that it was dropping the center and would no longer use the terms DEI and Latinx in official communications. McDonald’s, Meta and Target have also dropped their DEI initiatives as reported by Axios.
After the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, which deemed affirmative action in university admissions unconstitutional, attacks on DEI proliferated, and the term became a right-wing bogeyman blamed for almost anything that goes wrong in any workplace. For example, just one day after the tragic plane and helicopter collision over the Potomac River which claimed 67 lives, Trump baselessly blamed DEI policies for the crash—while the investigation into the crash’s cause had barely begun. Language in President Trump’s executive order also portrays DEI policies as inherently dangerous declaring they “threaten the safety of American men, women and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society.”
These statements seem to suggest that DEI exists in opposition to excellence and hard work—and that providing opportunities to non-white people automatically lowers standards.This is false. DEI requires the same standards for everyone and only hires those who fulfill the requirements of a given job, a point echoed by Everett Kelly, National President of the 800,000-member American Federation of Government Employees “The federal government already hires and promotes exclusively on the basis of merit. The results are clear: a diverse federal workforce that looks like the nation it serves, with the lowest gender and racial pay gaps in the country. We should all be proud of that.”
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Black people make up a larger share of the federal workforce (18.6%) than they do of the civilian workforce (12.8%),according to Pew Research. It’s unclear how many people will be affected by the order. Still, the federal government is the biggest employer in the US and Black people, who have the highest unemployment rates, risk greater job loss as a result.
The vagueness of President Trump’s orders have also left agencies struggling to comply and erasing Black history in the process. For example, the Air Force recently removed the Tuskegee Airmen from their training videos, and it was only reinstated after public outcry.
The anti-DEI trend is part of a larger attack on anti-discrimination efforts, sparked by the push for racial progress after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Now that DEI is under fire, the question is—how do we keep these policies alive?
Despite mounting political pressure, companies like Apple, Costco and JPMorgan Chase remain steadfast in their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, refusing to bow to conservative attacks. Additionally, most Fortune 500 companies have not abandoned their DEI policies.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a non-partisan group that fights “government abuse” primarily through lawsuits, counters President Trump’s claim that DEI or DEIA is illegal, saying, “The executive orders attempt to conflate these lawful efforts with discrimination, weaponizing enforcement to bully institutions into abandoning critical programs.” “However, no court has declared DEIA efforts inherently illegal, and President Trump cannot override decades of legal precedent.” The ACLU supported and launched numerous lawsuits against the rollback of DEI during Trump’s first term and have vowed to do so again.
In the meantime, the Civil Rights Act is still the law of the land, and it remains illegal to discriminate against anyone based on race, gender, and other protected characteristics.