Queen Latifah looked breathtakingly beautiful on the red carpet at Variety’s 2026 Power of Women event, which was held at The Beverly Hills Hotel on Wednesday, September 23.
Queen Latifah Wows on the Red Carpet
GettyFor the occasion, the actress and new “The Voice” Season 30 coach wore a floor-length, fitted black dress with a high neck and long sleeves. It was the perfect combination of elegant and timeless, and also featured a striking gold closure. The “Taxi” star styled her hair in an updo, with two strands loose at the front to frame her face. The entire look was gorgeous!
Queen Latifah, whose real name is Dana Elaine Owens, chose the perfect outfit to highlight her incredible weight loss. In an interview with People, she revealed it is challenging for women over a certain size to find clothes because stylists and brands don’t cater to them.
Getty“There are a lot of stylists who are carrying baggage [and want to say] if you are not a size 6 or less, or 8 or less, then you are difficult to dress. No, you just don’t know how to style me,” she said. “If you’re a stylist, then you need to go find this. It’s there; you need to source it. If not, you need to make it, and if you can’t really do that, then you shouldn’t have this job because none of us are a size six. So the job is to dress these bodies… This is the way we were when you got the job. It’s actually not us who needs to lose weight; it’s you who need to figure out how to dress us.”
Queen Latifah Advocates For Removing Stigma Surrounding Obesity
Prior to her weight loss, Latifah revealed that she had been pressured to lose weight. In an appearance on Facebook Watch’s “Red Table Talk” in 2022, she opened up about trying to change the stigma surrounding obesity with the “It’s Bigger Than Me” campaign. “It’s about the shame attached to weight, the stigma attached to it,” she said, USA Today reports. “What people talk about, how they talk about you, the little words people drop. If people understood it more, then it could change the conversation.”
Latifah also discussed the term obese, and how she never truly knew what it meant. “I didn’t connect with this ‘obese’ word as applied to me. I just thought I needed to stop eating something and get in the gym,” Latifah said. “But it did wake me up in terms of it being not just a physical thing: This can be a genetic thing, a hormonal thing. Once you’re aware of that, then you can maybe do something about it.”
Queen Latifah’s Inclusion on ‘The Voice’
There has been great excitement about Latifah joining the coaches on “The Voice” Season 30, alongside Riley Green, Kelly Clarkson and Adam Levine. Executive producer Audrey Morrissey told TV Insider that Latifah’s inclusion is something they have “wanted for so long.” She continued, “We wanted her to be a mentor, and we weren’t able to get the planets to align for that. … She’s one of those rare people, I’d say. She has this internal light switch. She literally radiates.”
Morrissey continued, “She was one of those coaches that had to be really careful about when she turned her chair because she was likely going to get that person. I mean, she was like a magnetizer. Even if they weren’t necessarily thinking they would go with her, she just had that pull.”
