Tracee Ellis Ross for Upscale Magazine August 2014.

Tracee Ellis Ross for Upscale Magazine August 2014.
An excerpt:


Those big, captivating eyes. That voluminous curly hair. Tracee Ellis Ross flashes that hypnotizing smirk on the cover of Upscale.
The actress is serving face in an over-the-shoulder headshot on the magazine’s August 2014 cover. Ross, 41, is less than two months away from the premiere of her new ABC comedy “Black-ish” alongside Anthony Anderson. The two play a married couple in search of a cultural identity as they raise their kids in an upper-middle class neighborhood.
The cover star talks to Upscale about how to be Black, feminism, love and the power of her body.
On her new show “Black-ish”:
“The beauty of the show is that it’s just a family comedy, but it has another layer to it. I don’t know what I necessarily want people to think or talk about after watching it, but for me in general with cultural identity, racial identity and feminist identity, dialogue is important. People communicating in a light and open way about issues that have a lot of depth and weight to them is a great thing.”

On what it means to be Black:
“What is blackness? What is being black? Who defines that and do we need to define that? I don’t have the answers to all of those questions but I think these are the conversations we’re all still having.”

On loving her body:
“I’m proud of my body—I work very hard to keep my body at 41 years old, because my booty could drop… Gravity is not a joke.”

On advice and romance:
“Any one rule [as it pertains to romantic relationships] that people think works everywhere is just not true. In general, with everything it’s an intimate discovery of trusting yourself and allowing yourself the room to have curiosity about life and self.”
The full cover story is on newsstands now.