FOXDid you know that today is National Cookie Day?
Oh, that's right, you probably can't hear us over the resounding crunch of all the delicious baked goods you're currently devouring. Way to get the celebration started early.
But this year, we've chosen to celebrate in a decidedly different way. You see, we're still so full from all of our pie-heavy consumption this past holiday weekend, that we're choosing to interpret the occasion as National Cookie Lyon Day. She's a cookie too, people. And one who is definitely deserving of some major praise. We may be slightly less enamored with the sophomore season of Empire than we were with its debut, but that doesn't mean we have any less devotion to the show's true heroine.
That's because not only is ol' Cooks the most entertaining part of the show, but she's also doing great things for female TV characters. We're on Cookie's side for so many reasons, and we promise only some of them have to do with her collection of furs. Now, let's get to that whole honoring part.
She's a complicated and conflicted character. It would have been really easy for the Empire writers to focus their biggest efforts on Lucious and leave Cookie for comic relief; the sassy ex-wife who pops in for one-liners and provides general sass and nothing more. But they wrote Cookie with heart and a fully-formed personality (which is way more than we can say for poor Anika—but that's a discussion for another time). She loves her children and she wants to be a good mom, but she also loves herself. And she's completely unapologetic in her desires for wealth and success: She wants it to be the Cookie Show, and Lucious is just going to have to deal with that.
Her style is ON POINT. Not to get all on a soapbox, but normally TV shows and movies lock up 40-something women in conservative dress jail (shudder) and leave the bodycon and high hemlines for the "younger" (read: 20-year-old) actresses. But in every single Cookie scene, she pops up rocking something fierce, y'all. Furs, leopard print, snakeskin, sequins, sky-high heels, statement bags—you could make an entire television show simply dedicated to every fly outfit. In fact...maybe we will.
Cookie has turned every day into Taraji P. Henson Day. Okay, so it's not like the actress didn't have a career before Empire. She had an amazing career. The woman has an Oscar nom, people! But this role has turned Henson into a pop culture icon, and she is living it up. With her amazing resumé of flicks like Hustle & Flow and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and all of her amazing activism off-screen, we can think of no better person to revel in the mayhem.