To commemorate this Friday’s release of Tyler Perry‘s film, For Colored Girls, Essence will print two different covers for their upcoming December edition.  The special issue hits newsstands Nov. 12 and will feature one cover with the film’s male stars (director Tyler Perry, Richard Lawson, Hill Harper, Omari Hardwick, Khalil Kain, and Michael Ealy) and another with the female characters (Thandie Newton, Kimberly Elise, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Loretta Devine, Janet Jackson, Tessa Thompson, and Whoopi Goldberg).

For Colored Girls is based on Ntozake Shange‘s play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.  Shange’s work is acted out in a series of 20 poems and was nominated for best play at the 1977 Tony Awards.

The cover story “Over the Rainbow” will appear on page 115 of the 150-plus page magazine.

Take a look at the men of For Colored Girls cover after the jump.

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Nothing gets New Yorkers to jump on a bus faster than a party, especially a party where the guest of honor is the Barack Obama. For the second time this year, journalists and celebrities flocked to the Beltway to party it up with the prez–this time for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.

Our colleagues over at FishbowlDC have extensive coverage of the weekend in the capitol. They hit all the fashionable pre-parties including ones hosted by The National Journal and The Atlantic and CBS. They hung out with celebs like Connie Britton, Ellen Burstyn, Tim Daly, Dana Delany, Kerry Washington and Rachael Leigh Cook at the Creative Coalition’s Thursday night fete and spied Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Rashida Jones, Jon Bon Jovi, Owen Wilson, Jason Bateman, Natalie Portman, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Brad Hall, Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Dennis Leary, Glenn Close and BJ Novak at the Vanity Fair/Bloomberg after-party.

Of course, FBDC correspondents were also at the main event. If you missed it, you can watch Obama’s full (and pretty funny) speech here. Our favorite part of the President’s speech was when he teased Rahm Emanuel with a Mother’s Day jab: “He’s not used to saying the word day after ‘mother.’”