Star tennis player Serena Williams made history last week as the first woman to ever wear cornrows on a Teen Vogue cover, reports the Huffington Post. Williams looks serene and powerful on the magazine’s December cover issue, sporting a coral jacket and delicate gold earrings. “We put cornrows on the cover of Teen Vogue for the first time in the publication’s history,” the magazine tweeted on Dec. 12. As part of the cover issue, Williams is featured in conversation with Teen Vogue’s new editor-in-chief Lindsay Peoples Wagner and gun control activist Naomi Wadler. Peoples Wagner explained why one of her first moves as the magazine’s new editor-in-chief was to feature a Black woman with cornrows on the cover. “My mother once told me that to sustain myself in this industry, I would have to be what I needed when I was younger,” Peoples Wagner wrote in the introduction. “So here we are ― Serena in cornrows for the first time on a cover, in conversation with two young Black girls just trying to figure out our magic.” Williams explained in the interview why it’s so important to support women, but especially her fellow women of color. “We really have to support each other,” she said. “I always like to say that women really should support each other, because the success of one woman should be the inspiration to the next. If we look at it that way, there would be so much more that we can accomplish.”
Another Black woman, British photographer Ronan McKenzie, shot the cover.
