Zerina Akers’ resume is long and fruitful, OK? Her experiences as a stylist, Emmy Award-winning costume designer and wardrobe curator include working with Beyoncé, Chloe x Halle, Megan Thee Stallion and Niecy Nash. In fact, it’s likely that if you’ve picked up a magazine or kept up with any of these stars on social media over the past several years, you’ve seen her creative touch. She does all of this and more, including working as the founder of Black Owned Everything.

“The proudest moment in my career right now is being able to launch Black Owned Everything. You sit back and watch it and it’s affected so many people, and shifted the trajectory of so many people, and we have barely scratched the surface,” Akers told HuffPost. “It has been very challenging to launch something that, quite frankly, didn’t exist in many ways. I still think we have a long way to go. I learned that the support of my people is invaluable and that it takes just us to make things move.”

As a leader in promoting and embracing Black-owned businesses, we asked Akers to share what her daily routine looks like when she uses only Black-owned products from the time she wakes up to the time she goes to sleep. It’s so easy to incorporate these awesome brands and others into your everyday life, and her guide below will help you get started.

A woman who had her scalp torn off by a Brentwood, California police dog is filing a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the city and police department caused her severe injury because of police negligence and violation of policy.

Talmika Bates was brutally attacked by a police K-9 in February 2020 when she and three other people suspected of stealing cosmetics from a beauty store fled from police. 

Bates, who was 24-years-old at the time, had run into a field and hid among some bushes when Brentwood police Officer Ryan Rezentes released a German shepherd police dog. The dog found Bates and attacked her ferociously, immediately sinking its teeth into the unarmed woman’s head, according to the lawsuit.

The suit alleges that Rezentes, “stood by and watched his canine viciously maul the young victim” as she screamed and cried in pain.

“Help me! The dog is biting me,” BAtes can be heard screaming in the body camera video. “My whole brain is bleeding!” 

Instead of immediately pulling the dog off of Bates, police can be seen in the body camera video standing near the bushes telling Bates to crawl out to them. She eventually crawls out, covered in blood and revealing massive head wounds. During the attack, the dog tore chunks of Bates’ scalp from her head, “exposing bone and tissue,” according to her lawsuit.

Bates was transported to a nearby hospital where “surgeons were able to reattach her scalp,” the lawsuit states. 

She pleaded no contest to grand theft and resisting a police officer charges, both misdemeanors, according to court records.

Bates is now seeking monetary damages; her lawsuit alleges that Rezentes used excessive force and violated her constitutional rights. The suit also names the City of Brentwood as a defendant.

“This unbridled use of an apparent blood thirsty dog to track, hunt and then attack an unarmed fleeing woman as she lay in a set of bushes harkens back to the days of slavery and slave catchers,” the lawsuit says.

“This is an example of the way in which police do not look at Black and Brown people, or criminal suspects, as humans,” Adante Pointer, one of Bates’s lawyers, told The Washington Post. “Instead, they are numb to … the pain their use of excessive force causes.”

The suit does not ask for a specific sum of money, but instead “general damages in a sum according to proof,” plus legal and medical costs, and “such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.”

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Black women are severely underrepresented in state legislatures, with 19 states that have zero Black female state senators and nine that have zero Black female state representatives.

Out of over 1,900 state senators nationwide, only 84 are Black women, according to a new analysis from Vote Run Lead, a political group that helps women run for office. There would need to be at least 120 Black women in state Senate seats across the country to be representative of the U.S. population.

Six states have zero women of color at all in their state senates: Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.

Georgia is the state with the most Black women in its state legislature: Ten out of 56 state senators are Black women, and 31 of 180 state representatives are Black women.

However, all 28 Black women in Congress are in the House. There are zero Black female U.S. senators.

Venus Williams shines in her first campaign for Lacoste. The tennis legend stars in a series of images for the iconic French brand, showcasing a chic, but laid back style.

“Her clothes really transform you once you put them on,” Williams said of Lacoste creative director Louise Trotter. “I’m into what makes you happy, and fashion and clothes make me so happy. It’s where I belong.”