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Still look prettyyy! *Kimbella voice*

Kerry Washington is on the cover of Allure’s November issue in no-makeup makeup and weave-less cornrows, and she looks STUNNING AF!!! The award-winning actress, who’s in her final season of Scandal, gets real about politics and beauty pressures.

Sharif Hamza for Allure

Charlottesville happened the day before Washington’s cover story with the magazine, and she’s basically all of us when it comes to what’s going on in the world. “‘I have to dip in and dip out, because it suffocates me. Like, I become unable to function,'” she told the mag. “‘So it’s a tricky balance between staying aware and also staying connected to a sense of hope and productivity and showing up for life.'”

Sharif Hamza for Allure

In several photos, Washington opted for unlaid edges and loose cornrows that look like a black girl’s attempt to get her hair just flat enough for a new wig — and she looks absolutely perfect. On beauty pressures, specifically as they relate to black women and our hair, she said she likes to wear her natural texture because “‘I want [my children] to know that their hair is perfect as it is. They don’t have to change it or straighten it.’”

She added, though, that her children could straighten their hair if they choose to.

In a separate beauty Q&A, the Scandal star said, “I have grown to like my hair more and more over the years. I won’t have any chemicals in it. I stopped relaxing my hair in my early 20s.”

Sharif Hamza for Allure

BuzzFeed talked to Takisha Sturdivant-Drew, Washington’s hairstylist, about the look, and she said the thick, long braids are all Kerry’s hair. Drew wanted to show the star’s “raw beauty” because she’s ordinarily glammed up.

Sharif Hamza for Allure

“[Black women] have been wearing braids, but everybody’s wearing them now, and they’re so perfect. But it doesn’t always have to be so neat and with extensions,” she told us.

To get the look, Sturdivant-Drew blew out Washington's naturally curly hair and cornrowed it very loosely. For “a little bling,” she added gold loc cuffs — which she found at a beauty supply store in Brooklyn. The shoot took place on an exceptionally hot day in California, and “whatever fell out of place, fell out of place.”

Sharif Hamza for Allure

YAAASSS! TO ALL THE BLACK GIRLS ‘ROUND THE WORLD WHO WILL SEE KERRY AND FEEL SEEN AF!!!

Sharif Hamza for Allure

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