Teyana Taylor has been winning since she starred in Kanye’s 2016 Fade video. Teyana has been around since her Sweet 16 days, but Fade put her on everyone’s radar. This past year Teyana starred in the Coming to America sequel, and was asked by Auntie Dionne herself to play her in a yet unplanned Dionne Warwick biopic. Now Teyana is making history as Maxim’s first ever Black “Sexiest Woman Alive.” Maxim made the announcement when they tweeted out Teyana’s cover. Teyana shared in an Instagram post how her shoot day went. Teyana said that she had dropped her daughter Junie off at school and went straight to the shoot in a beanie, sweatpants and her hair undone. The beanie made an appearance in the shoot and so did Teyana’s toned abs. Below are a few more highlights via Huffington Post:
The singer, actor and dancer celebrated the honor on Instagram on Monday, writing, “Somebody pinch me!!!!”
“WOW…. Stepping back in front of the lens has been a journey of self-reflection and self-confidence,” she wrote in the post’s caption. “Living up to [the] name and title of this shoot wholeheartedly made me nervous.”
Taylor, who shares two daughters with her husband, professional basketball player Iman Shumpert, later noted in the post that her busy lifestyle often robs her of time to “feel sexy.”
She said she arrived at the photo shoot after dropping her 5-year-old daughter, Junie, off at school, and that the sweatpants and beanie she’d been wearing had made appearances in the shoot.
“Embrace and love yourselves for who [and] what you are because only the purest heart shines through,” she later added.
Maxim announced Taylor as its “Hot 100” cover star on Monday, celebrating her as a “graceful choreographer-dancer, actor-director and top ten recording star.” She is the first Black woman to land the No. 1 spot on the list, according to an archive of the publication’s past honorees dating back to 2000.
This is a well deserved honor. Teyana is absolutely stunning and talented. I also agree with several of the tweets that said that they were glad Maxim has finally caught up to modern times. I am actually stunned that, in the year of our Lord Beyoncé 2021, no Black woman had won the “Sexiest Woman Alive” title. Let me leave you with tweets from folks congratulating Teyana while throwing shade at Maxim for their myopic understanding of beauty and sexiness. Maxim has decided to wait until 2021 to acknowledge the plethora of beautiful AND sexy Black women running around this planet, hmmkay. Congratulations to Teyana, I hope that her career continues to grow and we get to experience how talented she is. In the meantime I am gonna go find her Fade Fit Workout vides, because I need to have abs like that.
funny, i didn't even know Maxim still existed. apparently, they didn't know Black women did either.
— Rodney Carmichael (@rodneyology) June 8, 2021
I had the same reaction. Great for Teyana Taylor, but that is an awful look for Maxim. Pathetic. https://t.co/l85qyKy3xg
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) June 8, 2021
I'm glad that @MaximMag finally caught up with the rest of the world cause Black women been gorgeous for a very long time. https://t.co/IbWKXroxd7
— Gyasi Ross (@BigIndianGyasi) June 8, 2021
I mean.. it’s 2021. THE FIRST?! It took so long?!?! That’s infuriating.
It’s f****** 2021 and we consider being named „sexy” by some magazine an honore?!!
This!
Maxim isn’t worthy. The gall.
I mean better late than never but wow this is a terrible look for them.
She looks incredible.
Maxim is trash, Teyana is much too good for them. I can’t wait to see her as Dionne Warwick!
I so hope she gets the credits she deserves. Everything she drops is a win in my book. I really like her. And she is gorgeous.
I’m not really sure who Teyana is, but she is giving me Rihanna vibes – especially her profile! They could easily be siblings. She’s stunning. Maxim is lame for never celebrating a black woman’s sex appeal. Like really lame.
Ummm 🤔 I need to see where this comment goes, because Teyana looks nothing like Rihanna. 🤣 Both gorgeous, but not similar looking, no.
Haha yeah I don’t think they look alike at all (their features are so different to me?), but I can maybe see a Rihanna VIBE? In the photo where she’s smoking, I could see Rihanna doing a similar photoshoot. Mostly they both have “Carefree & Badass” vibes I guess.
They don’t really look alike, but have kind of similar profiles.
Teyana is really beautiful, and I just looked up that video, she’s a great dancer.
It is worth heading to YouTube to watch Kanye’s music video for Fade because Teyana’s dance performance is incredible and she looks stunning. She’ll have you mesmerised the whole way through.
She’s amaaaaazing in the Fade video.
Okay, this is so unfair! She’s had two kids and she looks this stunning! And she went to the shoot in sweatpants and is absolutely gorgeous! I need to go full Karen and complain to someone! 😂
What?!? 2 kids?? No! What?!? How why WHAT?
Teyana inherited her mom’s frame. She is super active as a dancer, but has said several times that her eating habits are crap. Some people are just really lucky in terms of genetics.
Her second was born in October. My long forgotten abs are crying. 😭
October?! I gave birth in September and I’m still looking 4 months pregnant 😭 she is gorgeous
Teyana is hot and Maxim is trash. There have been plenty of other gorgeous black women that could have graced their cover in the past, but they decide that 2021 is the year in which black women are hot. Sure Jan.
Just want to point out that those are her breasts AFTER a reduction and the woman had a baby not too long ago. Her body is insane!
She could turn me.
Maxim is irrelevant. But Teyana is fire 🔥
Finally! Teyana is so beautiful, dang.
I love her, and it is so nice to see her get the attention she deserves. She is a force of nature, and she seems like a real sweetheart. She is going to be terrific as Dionne Warwick. Auntie Dionne blessed it, and I can’t wait!
This reminds me how has a black woman I have been indoctrinated all my life that my ugliness was my colour and I would never be considered as worthy, sexy, beautiful or wanted as a slender, young white woman, preferably blonde. In high school and university I wasn’t even looked at to date because of my colour while my white friends were getting dates and engaged. Society has been and still is very clear, black women are not the ideal beauty and will be passed up for just about any thin white woman, preferably blonde. So I wake up to this and see that changes are still only just beginning in getting rid of these ignorant, racist and untrue beliefs regarding these societal concepts of beauty and possibly worth.
This isn’t proof of anything; it’s just one stunt cover.
Yowza!
All the heat + that smoking ass body!
To be fair, Maxims editorial team is completely different from the ones that existed way back in the lads mag era and named Sarah Jessica Parker the unsexiest woman in the world. I mean, Sarah Jessica sucks but for other reasons.