Dear Gossips,  

Megan Thee Stallion covers the May 2023 issue of ELLE,  please read the piece if you haven’t already. I won’t excerpt because these are Meg’s words, written by Meg herself, the first and only time she will address her trauma and the case since the attacker’s verdict last December, and so they should be considered in their entirety. Because she says it all, she covers all of it – her initial pain over what happened to her, and the compound pain on top of pain on top of disappointment on top of despair on top of sadness because she was not believed, she was accused of lying, she was gaslit. And not just by the attacker but by the public, on social media, and by her industry peers, as strangers and other artists insisted that they knew better than she did what she had experienced. 

 

Megan Thee Stallion had to bear all that on her own but the consequences of her situation have an impact on all of us. It was yet another reminder of how the culture repeatedly fails women, especially Black women. Her essay then is not only a reclamation of her own story but an encouragement to others who might find themselves in the same position. She is hoping that her resilience can be a source of hope and inspiration. Because Megan is healing. And part of her healing process was the decision to appear on the cover of ELLE, styled by Law Roach, with both strength and vulnerability. 

The looks are fire. That brown leather in the second shot below is unreal: 

 

But of course none of the clothes work without the energy. Meg’s Stallion energy. It’s the energy of a woman who is working her way out of the darkest time of her life, who has allowed herself the time to grieve and recover. Who is ready for what’s next, they can keep hating, but she’s poppin’, regardless. 

Yours in gossip, 

Lainey