Actor/singer TIM CURRY, who died this week at age 80, on his love life, taking risks and the significance of the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which has had the longest theatrical run in film history…
• On the movie being embraced particularly by an LGBTQ audience: “It means a lot because I think the message of the film – ‘Don’t dream it, be it’ – is very important.
One of the things the movie does, I think, is give anyone permission to behave as badly as they really want, in whatever way and with whom. And I’m proud of that”
• On finding being a sex symbol uncomfortable because Curry worried about being typecast by Rocky Horror and on the risks of playing an overtly sexual, androgynous character: “I wasn’t sure that I had the courage to do
it and I did and that was good. I resolved to apply it to
my life.
I did think it was risky, and indeed it was. But I like risky. I would choose risky over anything. That’s the best way to be.”
Playing the character Dr Frank-N-Furter was liberating: “Enormously, because basically he can fuck anybody. That’s quite a charge. It’s important to make that believable.”
Tapping into that energy outside work: “Well, I wasn’t lonely! It wasn’t too difficult to get laid. But it was the 70s, which is crucial to what it is, I think”
• In his 2025 memoir Vagabond, Curry said of anyone hoping to discover “lurid details of my love affairs”: “I guarantee you, if it matters, that I have experienced true love, true heartbreak and everything in between, including no small amount of wreckage. Which, naturally, helps inform who I am. I have loved and been loved and I hope you have too.
But I’m not interested in your romances. And specifics about my affairs of the heart or the bedroom are – respectfully – none of your fucking business”
• On the film and its audience: “It was part of the sexual revolution really. Experiment was in the air and it was palpable.I gave them permission to be who they discovered they wanted to be. I’m proud of that”
• In 1975: “It takes a certain amount of courage to play Frank. But the only thing I’m sure about as a performer is that you have to be dangerous. If you’re going to take a risk, take a big one. It’s like the circus. You’re on a tightrope and the people come to watch you fall. If you fall with your whole heart, then that’s all right. You have to be as brave as you can in your work. Give as much blood as you can”
“How reassuring to learn that police investigating claims of sexual assault against MOHAMED AL FAYED handed a file to the Crown Prosecution Service a mere 3 years after the Harrods owner’s death at age 94 and just decades after the first survivors made reports of abuse. The CPS won’t provide a timescale for any decision.
So far over 400 allegations including rape, sexual assault, sexual exploitation and human trafficking were made from 1977 to 2014 against Al Fayed by at least
156 women (at least 21 while he was alive). He died without charges being brought against him. The alleged enablers of his wicked behaviour include lawyers, mouthpieces, security henchmen and the doctors
who carried out ‘purity examinations’ on his young female PAs.
Several Al Fayed survivors wrote to me asking why this case… seemed to lack a turbocharge of outrage. The answer is normally that significant numbers of people and institutions have a deeply vested interest in not getting to the bottom of it.
No one has [asked]… how Al Fayed was able to operate an alleged criminal fiefdom when allegations were repeatedly made and rumours were more than deafening. It was, it seems, just the way things were.
For things to be that way for so long, there needed to be whole armies of enablers and hangers-on who facilitated abuse, or looked away, or closed down or ridiculed or trashed those who stepped out of line and said anything about it, including the alleged victims.
[It’s part of what] I think of as the sex-case industrial complex.
The Justice For Fayed And Harrods Survivors group said: ‘Survivors have spent decades not being believed or being told that Fayed and those around him were too powerful and nothing could be done.’
Al Fayed’s survivors have requested a trafficking investigation for almost 2 years. This was not one bad man or corporate abuse. It was, they allege, a trafficking network involving multiple perpetrators and enablers and backed by the global movement of illicit funds. At least 5 survivors have been confirmed by the Home Office as victims of modern slavery.
It so often takes a village to do bad things as well as good ones”
WORDS Three years after his death, the Met goes after Mohamed Al Fayed. As for his enablers – well, you can’t rush things, can you? (Guardian, 25/8/26)
Actor GILLIAN ANDERSON – age 58 and mum of Piper, 31; Oscar, 19, and Felix, 17 – has been leaning “into her fun side and her sexual side, starting with Sex Education, in which she played an eye-wateringly direct sex therapist. That role spilled over into an Instagram feed full of aubergines and luscious split fruit with the hashtags #penisoftheday and #yonioftheday – which in turn inspired 2 books of female fantasies, edited by Anderson, Want and now More.
Several of her roles feature sexual ambiguity – and in the new film Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma she milks that quality to the max. It’s part lesbian love story, part bloodbath – a film she wishes she could have seen as a lonely teenager after her American parents relocated from London to Michigan, when she was 11: ‘I didn’t want to fit in. If Camp Miasma had come out then, I would have felt seen.’
Nor did Anderson feel entirely straight: ‘One of my first relationships was with an older girl in high school.’ It wasn’t her first love ‘but it felt secretive and illicit and wrong, and we had to hide. Later I had a boyfriend who found out and broke up with me.’ Did she think she was gay? ‘I didn’t, because I’d had a couple of boyfriends. But I definitely felt I didn’t have the language for it. Even later on, when I had other relationships [with women], I’m not sure I ever thought of them as being potentially for ever.’
Since 2016 she’s been in an on-off relationship with The Crown creator Peter Morgan, though she won’t publicly confirm this. ‘The person I consider my life partner happens to be male’ is what she will say: ‘I think I would feel the same way if it were a woman. I’d feel: “This is my life partner.” When I was younger, there were parts of my brain that thought [women] were temporary.’
Her parents were either too laid-back or embarrassed to talk about sex. ‘I was getting into gay bars and dancing at 12 with a fake ID. I had the conversation with my mum about the things that were allowed. I was such a strong-willed child she would say there was no telling me. But next was a boyfriend who was so much older: I was 15 and he was 24. We were together for 3 years.’
Want, published 2 years ago, was an instant bestseller but some critics complained that its (anonymous) fantasies were vanilla compared with Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, the 1973 book that inspired it: where was the truly transgressive sex, the stuff you’d never even think out loud? With More, the publishers have promised to be more daring – an editor’s note warns of ‘violence, trauma and acts that may be triggering, uncomfortable or offensive’.
Anderson says: ‘A few [fantasies] feel risky. In Want, there were restrictions on incest or rape. But I had some… thoughts about the degree to which we were silencing somebody’s truth. With More, there was a concerted effort not to have those restrictions. So yes, we got problematic letters. If we take them out, are we not just doing the same as before?’
Anderson had to override her ‘knee-jerk reactions’. But she took one out ‘because the object of their desire was neurodivergent and they were taking advantage. Every time I read it I thought: “It’s OK; it’s just a fantasy.” But then it really didn’t feel right.’
There are plenty of copies of Want at home but Anderson isn’t sure her sons have read it: ‘But it’s been important for me to mirror that there’s no shame around a book on that topic.’
When she was cast in Sex Education, the boys were just starting secondary school and the conversation was different: ‘I was nervous before saying yes. But we talked it through, how meaningful [the show] would be and they got it.’
Filming the spectacularly bloody, spectacularly orgasmic sex scenes in Camp Miasma, Anderson worried more about what her sons would think than anything else. She is not a fan of intimacy co-ordinators: ‘I did a Netflix show where one wanted a Zoom because I was tucking my son’s shirt into his trousers. Did I want to meet with him so that we could talk it through, that kind of stuff.’ Anderson rolls her eyes. With Camp Miasma, ‘the only thing on my mind was: “I’ve got kids – how will this be for them?”’
She is suddenly worried she has said too much about her sexuality: ‘I never talk like this, but it’s my own downfall. Be kind’”
WORDS Gillian Anderson on sex, Scully and the Salt Path “betrayal” (Sunday Times, 15/8/26)
“Model/actor KAIA GERBER – age 24 & daughter of ex supermodel Cindy Crawford, age 60 – opened up about her struggles with body image amid her and her family’s lives in the spotlight.
During a joint Vogue interview, she and her co-star on the TV show The Shards, Homer Gere – age 26 and son of actor Richard Gere – talked about being the subjects of online fodder because of how they look.
Gerber spoke about growing up with being compared to her famous mum, which eventually impacted her mental health.
Gerber said: ‘We’re clearly in one of those cycles right now where people are very, very, very thin. As someone who’s been thin most of my life, I’ve always been compared against my mom – like: “What’s wrong with Kaia?”’
She admitted she’s felt ‘so jealous’ of her mother’s figure, saying:
‘I would have loved to be born with boobs and a butt. People have always commented on my body, which is hard because I’m not always ready to comment on my own body, you know?’
Gerber explained that she’s previously struggled with ‘disordered eating’, saying: ‘People are like: “You look terrible” and it doesn’t exactly make you go: “Oh good. Let me get over this mental illness then!” Negativity has never saved someone’s life.’
Gere spoke of his experience with handling commentary on his looks, especially after filming a sex scene in nothing but his underwear in the third season of the HBO show Euphoria: ‘The fact that I’m apparently a body-positivity icon has opened my eyes to the absurdity of the media.’
In 2023 Crawford spoke about how Gerber, then 21, handled fame and said about the pressure of social media: ‘I’m learning along with her about that stuff’”
WORDS Kaia Gerber Comments on Struggling with “Disordered Eating” Growing Up with Comparisons to Mom Cindy Crawford (People, 11/8/26)
AND…
• Gerber: “I’ve had disordered eating in my life”
• In Gerber’s family home: “If books were prominent, so too were naked photos of her mom which lined the walls: ‘They were, to me, artistic. It wasn’t vulgar; it wasn’t objectification… [It was] a gift to grow up in a house that was without shame for the female body’”
• Crawford said: “Even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford”
“As a model I see myself as a product”
“Maybe hearing me talk about holding my stomach in for a photo shoot made me more real”
“I was never one of the people who could eat what I wanted – even I used to get annoyed when Kate Moss would be eating
a burger and fries”
“I was like: ‘Is there an age where being nude isn’t beautiful?’ It’s just a different kind of beauty”
“I know my body, and I know it’s not perfect, but maybe I have a false body image; maybe I think I look better than I do. I think most women are hard on themselves. We think we look worse than we do”
• In 2015 Crawford said she learned “to accept the body I have. By that I mean accepting myself when I’m looking at my reflection in a mirror – the real me, as opposed to a posed, lit and retouched photo…
Young models are getting thinner and sample sizes are getting smaller. There isn’t a chance in hell that I’d be able to squeeze into them. And no matter how great you can feel about yourself, when someone hands you a pair of pants that barely fit halfway up your thighs, it feels awful…
There’s a lot of criticism of models being so thin and here’s what I have to say. First, fashion is about change. The pendulum always swings back and forth, from Marilyn Monroe to Twiggy, from supermodels to heroin chic…
Sometimes I forget that the images I’m used to seeing of myself aren’t real, that they are all part of the illusion of being Cindy Crawford. And then I’ll catch a glimpse of the real, unretouched Cindy or see an unflattering paparazzi shot and it’s a shocker…
I wish I could say it’s easy for me to be getting older. After all I’ve had a lot of fun in this body”
🌈“Singer DANNII MINOGUE, age 54; actor/writer STEPHEN FRY, age 69; and Olympic athlete KELLY HOLMES, age 56, are among 30 stars joining forces for the Proud Trust’s new #DeserveBetter campaign supporting LGBTQ+ young people. It is calling for greater understanding, safer spaces and better support for LGBTQ+ young people in the UK.
The Proud Trust says that 43% of LGBTQ+ pupils experience bullying because of who they are, while 58% have seriously considered suicide. Almost a quarter of LGBTQ+ young people may also never complete secondary school, twice the national average.
Bringing 30 stars together, a new film delivers a simple message: every LGBTQ+ young person deserves to feel safe, accepted, heard and able to thrive.
Minogue said: ‘Supporting LGBTQ+ young people shouldn’t be extraordinary – it should simply be what we do.’
Fry said: ‘Every young person deserves to grow up knowing they are valued exactly as they are. Organisations like The Proud Trust provide hope, community and reassurance at a time when many LGBTQ+ young people need it most.’
Holmes added: ‘I know how hard it can be but also how important it is to be able to live authentically and without fear. Every LGBTQ+ young person deserves the chance to be themselves with confidence as well as feeling safe.’
It’s A Sin star Nathaniel J Hall, age 39, reflected on coming out at 16, saying he had to overcome both his own internalised shame and ‘the shame of everyone else around me’.
The Proud Trust operates The Proud Place in Manchester, one of only a small number of purpose-built LGBTQ+ centres in Europe.
CEO Rachel Williams said: ‘At a time when LGBTQ+ lives are being debated more than ever, it’s vital that young people know they are valued, supported and never alone. #DeserveBetter is a call for all of us to do better’”
WORDS Dannii Minogue, Sir Stephen Fry and Dame Kelly Holmes lead 30 stars fronting LGBTQ+ youth campaign (attitude, 17/8/26)
“US congresswoman ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, age 36, shared her decision to freeze her eggs, saying she knows that discussing her choice publicly could come with political ‘risk’ but she wants to give women a glimpse into the experience and give a platform to the issues women face.
In a series of candid Instagram Stories, she said of women:
‘We are not prepared for our own lives, whether that is in puberty, in pregnancy, in perimenopause, menopause … whether you want to plan to have a family, whether you don’t plan to have children biologically.
Men run for office… and people don’t think in the back of their mind: “OK, this guy’s running for office. How old is he? Is he going to want to start a family?” People don’t go down those rabbit holes and fixate on them for men in terms of their decision the way they do for women.’
AOC, who was engaged to web developer Riley Roberts, said she made the decision to ‘feel more in control of my life. If people want to make assumptions about my decision, let them.’ Her choice made her feel ‘empowered’.
AOC said she’d balance her treatment with her work in politics and planned to take her shots in the green room before doing an ABC interview.
Posting footage of herself administering a shot, she joked: ‘Don’t be weird about this, even though I know all of you will be.’ Afterwards she exclaimed: ‘That wasn’t so bad!’
In the interview, AOC – the youngest woman elected to Congress at age 29 – said: ‘In this political environment where this administration is denying reproductive care to women, from abortion rights to the ability to carry out a healthy pregnancy, it’s important for us as leaders to have these conversations and share these processes, especially for working women – and normalise them’”
WORDS AOC Shares Candid Video About Deciding to Freeze Her Eggs, Says She’ll Accept the Political “Risk” to Show Other Women Her Journey (People, 10/8/26)
AND…
• On giving herself the shot: “I want you all to see that. Because women can do anything. And I think it’s badass that I’m gonna be giving myself shots in the green room, get my glam on, roll out, talk international events, domestic policy, elections, pop out, live my life, do my thing”
“Singer ARIANE GRANDE, age 33, is currently the internet’s main character. The conversation has been about her body, her health and speculation that she may be grappling with an eating disorder.
In 2024 she and her Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo were photographed looking noticeably thinner, causing speculation on the reasons for the pair’s weight loss. In 2025 Grande looked even more frail. Recent videos of Grande onstage looking malnourished elicited concern from fans.
In the new music video of her song Petal, Grande looks thin and frail, most noticeably in a black bodysuit reminiscent of Sandy in Grease. Shortly after its release, Grande’s team announced that she will be ‘taking a step back from visibility’, ending her current tour ‘healthily and happily’ then taking a break from ‘endless, ongoing public scrutiny’.
Fans, trolls and fellow celebs have been sharing their thoughts on Grande’s health and body, with genuine concern, insensitive statements that she should ‘just eat a cheeseburger’ and debates over whether we should be talking about Grande’s body at all.
Commentator Jameela Jamil wrote: ‘This poor woman is possibly dying right in front of us’, criticising her team as ‘irresponsible’ for making decisions that clearly emphasise her small frame. Not saying anything means ‘we run the risk of normalising that image to hundreds of millions of teenage girls, kids and even impressionable adults’.
Dietician Christy Harrison says celebrity bodies are ‘held up as symbols of beauty. If this is what’s swirling around in the culture, if this is what’s publicly being put out there as someone’s image, the public has a right to a discourse about it. Grande is very emaciated.’
Dr Courtney Simpson, director of the Eating Disorders Centre at the Evidence Based Treatment Center of Seattle, says: ‘We have seen Grande’s body change over time… [We should be] thinking about framing the conversation as: something appears to be going on that’s contributing to her looking malnourished.’
Celebs like Grande may not have signed up to be role models but by virtue of their roles and success, they have become that. What they do, say and, yes, how they look sends a very public message about what’s accepted and viewed as the norm – and that can negatively impact young people or trigger those grappling with or in recovery from an eating disorder.
A 2024 University of Waterloo global study found that 55% of kids aged 10-17 felt dissatisfied with their body, with social media a large factor.
Young people’s media literacy skills and ability to think critically about are still developing.
Simpson says: ‘The more we see a certain type of image the more we get used to that as a standard even if we’re not trying.’
Harrison says that with ‘bodies that dramatically thin… we’re talking about this level of thinness that is concerning I think to many people – it raises alarm bells because of its association with sickness, stress. It makes it seem like there’s something going on… That’s part of what has created this sort of heightened moment about the discourse around her body.
[There’s] not just concern for her – it’s concern for ourselves and the fear that the beauty standard is shrinking to ever-smaller proportions… We fear that’s going to become what’s expected of us as women… the new standard we’re going to have to adhere to – not just unattainably thin, the way we’ve seen from celebrities for decades, but distressingly thin – perhaps thin to the point of illness or something going on that just feels like this could actually be deadly.’
This concern, and impact, takes this conversation beyond the typical refrain to never talk about women’s bodies – because this is an extreme example.
Podcaster Madison Mazzeo says it is ‘very dangerous to be clearly malnourished and tell everybody you’re healthy’”
WORDS What We’re Not Talking About When We Talk About Ariana Grande (Refinery29, 11/8/26)
“Singer ARIANA GRANDE, age 33, is being compared to singer Karen Carpenter, who died at just 32 died in 1983 after years of anorexia. She never discussed having the illness publicly.
Grande has never publicly admitted to any kind of disordered eating or unhealthy weight loss, maintaining that she’s perfectly happy in the body she has now. In clips from her current concert tour her arms put her sinew on display, her sternum peeks through her skin, her shoulders and elbows are especially sharp. In viewing her – which is what she asks of us as consumers of her art and something she sells to us on purpose – we’re stuck trying to avoid making unkind or unfair judgments on someone’s body while wondering if we might one day be too late to save her from a fate like Carpenter’s.
On TikTok or Reddit, there’s talk about whether Grande is in personal peril. In the music video for her song Petal, Grande goes through auditions in front of unyielding, hideous, thoughtlessly cruel old men. She transforms herself into a ‘Sandy from Grease’ type, then a buxom vixen with a breastplate, before settling on her true self in an off-the-shoulder dress. One producer’s note reads: ‘Couldn’t hurt to lose a few lbs.’ She chops them all up with a chainsaw, drenching her body in their blood.
In 2024 Grande appeared noticeably thinner; in 2025 she was thinner still. These remarkable physical changes, during a time of Ozempic shots and Wegovy pills hawked by celebrities as varied as Serena Williams and John Hodgman, have been impossible to ignore.
Everything seems to be driving us – women in particular – toward winnowing. Here’s one of our most prolific, beloved pop stars seemingly suggesting the same, if only by her own example.
The discourse around Petal is reaching fever pitch because Grande is so, so thin. Her thinness is beyond body diversity and even her expression looks pained. Her thinness is connected to a renewed societal shift toward being skinny but her self-expression speaks to young girls and women above all else. Her physicality remains a terrifying example for her audience. In most cases, this kind of weight loss is unhealthy at worst, and not ideal at best.
But no one really wants to say anything about Grande’s body. Among her fans there’s a pushpull between allowing her bodily autonomy while aiming to make sense of a triggering appearance. We don’t know if Grande has an eating disorder or is displaying anorexia the way Carpenter was. But in not discussing it, we’re left feeling implicated in a disease that thrives off becoming normalised. By talking about it, however, we’re giving oxygen to an illness that grows off attention and collusion. What is left is an unsavoury choice: the complicity of silence or the complicity of judgment.
To witness Grande at work and say nothing – about her remarkable thinness, about the speed of it – is to assist in an ominous performance of normalcy. Grande is thin in a way that merits concern. The only people who can intervene in a meaningful way are her family, friends and team. All the rest of us can try to do is stay free in our own bodies, in our unnecessary fears of weight gain, while the rest of the world reminds us how available it is to shrink.
Grande is having her body dissected for being too small (after years of being told she was somehow too big).
The public – we who have watched her bones protrude and tried mostly to say nothing – have witnessed a profound cultural shift with little cathartic open discussion of how frightening it’s been. The ever-shrinking state of our female icons is a worrying event worsened by our fear of addressing it only to make it lousier. Grande’s body has become a public message, but one we’ve struggled to talk about with any clarity.
Carpenter’s death brought in a rush of public awareness about anorexia nervosa, entering it into the public lexicon. Grande’s fame arrived after the wretched early aughts, when it seemed every young female star was becoming regrettably thin. This time we have all the words, the language, the awareness. And still we don’t have much to say except something primal and obvious: Grande’s transition into seemingly her thinnest possible self has been painful to witness”
WORDS Ariana Grande’s Fans Have Two Bad Options Right Now (Slate, 3/8/26)
Actor HANNAH WADDINGHAM – age 52 and single mum to Kitty, age 12 – has “a kind of brassy campness. On Game Of Thrones she played a ‘shame nun’. On Sex Education she was parent to a jock. In shooting Ted Lasso she met Lionesses LeahWilliamsonn and Jill Scott: ‘They are such pioneers for my daughter’s generation.’
On the subject of hostility, Waddingham, who has a no-nonsense way about her, seems adept at dealing with difficult characters. In 2023 she talked about modelling in her 20s, being on the receiving end of misogyny and how she called it out when she saw it.
In 2024 she was set to host the Olivier awards when, on the red carpet, a paparazzo asked her to ‘show leg’. Her response went viral. ‘Oh my god, you’d never say that to a man, my friend,’ she said, waving a finger at him. ‘Don’t be a dick, otherwise I’ll move off.’
People were supportive of what looked to be a stand against sexist double standards. Her response became a news story. She says: ‘He’s someone I’ve respected as a photographer for 20 years. I was like: ‘Dude, that’s not cool.’ Fair play to him: he was apologetic and I said: ‘You can’t do that.’
Did she think he was being jokey? ‘No, I think he forgot himself – there was an overfamiliarity. I was going off to host an entire evening live and my sadness was that [the evening] had been reduced to that, instead of my live performance, which is one of the greatest achievements of my life.’
The others are the birth of her girl, being a single mum, her Christmas special and ‘how I hold myself for younger women. The flip side of that is calling out moments that need to be shut down. I’m always mindful that my daughter is watching. So I try to be elegant and have a firm kindness about myself.’
Where does that imperative to stand up for herself come from? ‘That’s just inherent in how I’ve been brought up. I call people out. I’m proud of that. We, as the females in society, us older ones, we need to encourage the younger ones, to make sure we are respected, because it’s too easy for us to just take it on the chin’”
WORDS “An overnight success after 25 years? Delicious”: Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham on sexism, stunts and stardom at 51 (Guardian, 18/7/26)
The looks of actor JARED LETO, age 54, “may have helped protect him, says Alice McShane, director of the bombshell BBC documentary Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret. The film includes accusations of sexual assault, statutory rape, grooming and threats of sexual assault.
The 4 women who make the most serious allegations say they encountered him in 2002-26, when they were 16 to 18 years old and he was in his 30s and 40s.
Leto says: ‘I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life. These claims are absolutely and categorically false.’
Similar allegations were made against Leto last year. McShane says it is a ‘mystery’ why his career – he is also the lead vocalist of Thirty Seconds To Mars, the band he formed with his brother Shannon in 1998 – has not been impacted by the repeated accusations.
McShane adds: ‘There’s something about our culture at the moment that I feel might be happening 10 years on from MeToo. It just feels like the outrage about stories like this has slightly cooled.
Also with the rise of the manosphere and also people in very significant positions of power having had allegations levelled at them as well about their treatment of women, in a way these sorts of stories have been normalised in people’s minds. I just don’t think they get the traction perhaps [they] would have done 10 years ago.
Leto cultivated this persona of this kind of weird, enigmatic, mysterious guy and that sort of shielded him from accountability.
He’s also an incredibly good-looking man. There is an element of ‘pretty’ privilege here and that actually came through in a lot of the interviews with the women.’
One woman, identified as Alex, alleges that Leto threatened her with sexual assault in 2013. Alex, who said she was 19 but told Leto she was 17, says he replied: ‘Age is just a number and anyway we’re in Europe.’
Another woman alleged she first had sex with Leto at his California home in 2006 when she was 17 and he was 34 and that he referred to her as ‘my little girl’ while asking her to call him ‘Daddy’”
WORDS Jared Leto doc director says “pretty privilege” has helped shield actor from repercussions from sex assault allegations (The Independent, 30/7/26)
AND…
• “The documentary Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret delves into allegations of misconduct involving the actor and singer compiles more than 120 online allegations relating to harassment and sexual misconduct. The documentary also depicts an array of enablers: people who would make sure teenage girls were brought backstage, invited to after parties and escorted to hotel rooms. The film paints a damning portrait of a man who used his Hollywood fame and rock-star persona to initiate troubling physical and verbal contact with women, most very young, all powerless compared to him”
Actor MATT DAMON, age 55, “had to train hard and eat right to maintain the body of a hero in The Odyssey. His character Odysseus was forced to eat the now trendy Mediterranean diet, plus he got plenty of cardio by fighting off monsters or warriors – it gave him a chiseled body.
During Christopher Nolan’s film Damon goes mostly sleeveless, so we get plenty of arm and shoulder action. Guys of any age would be impressed by Damon’s lean, toned physique (even more so by his 6-pack).
Even Odysseus’s body was a topic broached with Nolan. Dr Gabe Stump helped Damon get into fighting shape (pun intended) for the role, saying the goal wasn’t to just for him to get jacked or ripped but to build a credible body: ‘Odysseus is not this buff super soldier – he’s more of a tactician. He’s got this grizzly beard and he looks really lean. You can see he’s still strong. He’s got good definition everywhere but he’s not packed on.’
In the 5 months before the shoot, Stump and Damon had a goal of Damon dropping 10lb of fat while retaining muscle, with the actor starting at around 180lb and ending at around 165lb. They focused intensely on strength training and hit each muscle group twice a week. Damon’s chest was a slightly harder muscle to build than his shoulders and arms.
They worked together 4 to 5 days a week at a modest home gym in the actor’s basement: ‘You’d be shocked at how crappy it is,’ said Stump, noting it consists of just the essentials: dumbbells, a cable pull-down machine and a barbell.
Damon benefits from having someone to prepare his meals (you can’t out-train a bad diet).
I set up a Matt Damon-esque task for myself: could I get a body worthy of completing an Odyssey – or a Bodyssey?
Despite all the buzzy TikTok influencers peddling ‘get fit by summer’ programmes or supplements, fitness is pretty straightforward.
There is no magic bullet to get you in Greek-god shape in 14 days. Even in the age of GLP1s, building muscle is not gonna happen through miracle or extreme measures. It’s about showing up consistently over time. It’s an Odyssey to get there”
WORDS The Bodyssey: Can a Mere Mortal Get in Greek God Shape by Following Matt Damon’s Workout Plan? (Vogue, 20/7/26)
“Podcaster KATIE MILLER, age 34, wife of White House adviser Stephen Miller and mum of 4 – bangs on about how falling teen birth rates are a bad thing: ‘Hormonal birth control isn’t just poison for women’s minds and bodies – it’s killing population growth. Our biological destiny is to have babies, not slave behind desks chasing careers while our civilisation dies.’
Now the Trump administration is terminating millions in grants designed to reduce teen pregnancies. And in a stupid blast from the past, we’re going abstinence only, baby!
But it’s going to be weirder and worse. The justification: anything that ‘encourages, normalises or promotes sexual activity for minors’ does not align with the administration’s priorities.
The government has funded comprehensive sexed since the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program passed in 2010. In that time teen birth rates declined by about 72%.
Donald Trump is not the first Republican to demand abstinence-only sex ed or to try to cut pregnancy-prevention efforts. But he is the first to require the teaching to fixate on procreation and, as the New York Times says, to ‘safeguard… fertility’.
Abstinence-only education results in higher rates of teen pregnancy – but conservative creeps are sad that teen birth rates are down because they’re fixated on population growth for white people, which is what the ‘pronatalist’ movement is really about.
Abstinence-based education is ineffective in changing or decreasing adolescent sexual behaviour. It doesn’t prevent pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and doesn’t impact when teens start having sex or the number of partners they have.
[With] the new rules… everyone has to learn about the purported importance of marriage. Boys are to be taught about ‘healthy testosterone levels’ and ‘the physiology of arousal’. Girls get no information about arousal.
Teens won’t learn about STIs or sexual health. There won’t be any acknowledgment of LGBTQ+ teens and their needs.
This is a hijacking of sex ed by people fixated on white people having babies even if they’re teens. This is a public health catastrophe in the making and everyone behind this awful mess knows it”
WORDS Trump’s version of sex ed: More teen pregnancies, please (Daily Kos, 23/7/26)
AND…
• “Body literacy courses for boys should include strategies for managing ‘spontaneous arousal in ways that support self-regulation, health and future fertility’. And they should address ‘how repeated or artificially stimulated arousal may affect neural development and behaviour over time’ [seemingly referring to masturbation]”
🌈 With actor ELLIOT PAGE, age 39, starring in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, “X came ablaze with accusations of Nolan ceding to
the ‘woke mob’ by daring to cast diverse groups and suggesting that a trans actor can play a soldier or a Black woman (LupitaNyongo) can be the most beautiful woman in the world.
Elon Musk posted repeatedly about the cast, claiming that Nolan ‘desecrated’ Homer to meet the ‘woke rules required to win an Oscar’. In transphobic posting on X, film clips circulate alongside hateful critiques of Page’s appearance and masculinity.
Despite Page being the most famous trans man – arguably trans person – The Odyssey marks his first major film role since he came out in 2020. But despite his low profile in recent years, Page remains in the public eye by virtue of his transness.
In 2023 I noted how he couldn’t post a selfie or speak at an awards show without overzealous congratulations from one side and transphobic hate from the other. Just look to the recent coverage of his interest in boxing: shirtless images of a very ripped Page were met with almost cloying affirmation from progressives alongside nastiness from trolls on the right.
Page’s coming out was the final domino toward my decision to start transitioning 5 years ago. The Odyssey is a step forward for trans people in popular media, even with the conservative backlash.
There may be an instinct from allies to read into Page’s casting some commentary from Nolan on gender or masculinity. In a flashback the actor playing him appears to be a cis boy – that’s a quietly radical bit of casting, as it affirms that Page’s character isn’t trans.
Opportunities for trans actors to play characters who aren’t trans are rare. Page’s 2 biggest roles since coming out feature him as explicitly trans. But one of the ideal end goals of representation should be that trans actors can play any part if they’re the right person, separate from their transness.
Page is not in this movie because he is trans. And his casting is not a woke psy-op or a move by Nolan to stir up controversy or whatever else online chuds have been saying. This film is not a Trojan horse for the woke agenda, no matter how much online posters and the richest man in the world say it is.
Page is in this movie because he’s a good actor, one whom Nolan obviously loves working with.
The film is going to make a bajillion dollars. It and many of the performances from the actors at the centre of culture-war tirades are critically acclaimed. Chalk this battle up as a win for the good guys”
WORDS Elliot Page is great in The Odyssey. Let’s talk about that (Xtra, 20/7/26)
Manosphere influencer ANDREW TATE, age 39, was arrested “standing proudly in a ballet fourth position wearing slacks so ankle grazing they could only be considered capris. As if his attitude towards women wasn’t causing enough outrage, he had to ruin pedal pushers too.
Tate and his brother Tristan, age 38, were arrested as the UK’s CPS announced 38 new charges against them including rape, arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation and offences relating to indecent images of a child.
It’s frustrating, given the extent of the crimes of which he’s accused, that it’s taken so many years for Tate to be properly tried.
He’s now been photographed in handcuffs at least 4 times wearing everything from a shearling jacket 5 sizes too small to champagne-hued velour tracksuit bottoms and the latest low-buttoned purple shirt. In it he shows off his collection of diamond chains and his pristine waxed chest. The garment, so tight he wouldn’t be able to lift his arms even if his hands weren’t bound together by law enforcement, was paired with dark aviators that left him looking less Top Gun and more like Pitbull’s evil twin.
The final horror was sockless loafers.
Right behind the actual cops were the fashion police.
‘Not exactly an alpha male outfit,’ a user noted on X as (potentially AI-doctored) images emerged of an outfit available for a bargain price in Asda. In a thread of Tate wearing various sheer patterned blouses beloved by mums the world over, one person questioned: ‘Has Andrew Tate ever been photographed wearing men’s clothing?’
He enjoys some aesthetic aspects traditionally seen as feminine.
Of course people should be allowed to wear and be anything, regardless of whether they are male or female. But others, such as Tate, think there are roles and norms to play into, which is why his overly feminine wardrobe choices is so at odds with his loud proclamations of strict gendered roles and lamentations over the feminisation of men. So it’s all the funnier that he’s out on the streets looking like someone’s divorced auntie”
WORDS Andrew Tate’s “Asda woman” arrest outfit makes him look like a divorced auntie – and the internet can’t stop laughing (Independent, 20/7/26)
US defence secretary PETE HEGSETH – age 46 & dad of 7 in a blended family – in his video The High-T Department Of War announced annual testosterone screening for soldiers aged 30 and over, including 231,000 women, to retain a “leading edge of lethality” for “warfighters”…
“Hegseth is eager for you to know that he is a virile man. He does push-ups with troops. He hung off a helicopter wearing combat fatigues and carrying a gun. He sports a tattoo in which an AR-15 assault rifle serves as a stripe of the US flag. Now Mr Hegseth wants troops to man up too. He might seem to be influenced less by medical data and more by the manosphere, in which companies flog testosterone supplements to young men”
WORDS Pete Hegseth’s testosterone-screening plan is unusual, not crazy (The Economist, 17/7/26)
AND…
• “Hegseth wants officers to be muscular white men – a military made up of living Ken dolls”
• “In corners of the internet, media and politics devoted to an exacting vision of masculine supremacy, testosterone has mythical importance.
Calling a political opponent or message-board adversary ‘low T’ is the new ‘soy boy’, ‘beta’ or ‘gay’. Rightwing influencers tout dubious pills to increase testosterone production for more energy, bigger muscles and better boners. The White House brags that Trump has the highest T level celebrity doctor/ Dr Oz has seen in a man over 70”
• “This initiative is the latest step in Hegseth’s campaign to reshape the military around a ‘warrior ethos’, rolling back diversity initiatives while emphasising traditional masculinity, combat fitness and physical appearance. Virility, low sperm count and testosterone are a fixation among men on the US right. High T is virtually synonymous with masculinity”
• “The only thing Hegseth requires from his troops is brawn, baby, brawn. The Pentagon allows a man to carry 26% body fat before he’s disqualified from looking ‘sharp, not sloppy’, in Hegseth’s words. Our burly bravest have to maintain a waist-to-height ratio under 0.55, ie a 37in waist for the average 5’9” man.
We haven’t seen these types of numbers in the military since WWII pilots painted pin-up Betty Grable, with her 36-23-3 hourglass-figure measurements, on their planes”
In what looked suspiciously like a Playgirl centrefold audition, active duty troops had to pass a body composition screening just to stand behind Donald Trump at Dana White’s UFC card at the White House. Hegseth essentially held auditions for a backdrop of camera-ready hotties.
The hypocrisy of all this is bulging. For more than a year, the Trump administration has argued in court that hormone therapy for transgender troops was an unnecessary expense.
This Cabinet has turned the government into a steamy Equinox locker room, with RFK Jr riding an exercise bike shirtless in jeans. He and Hegseth staged a nationally covered pull-up contest at the Pentagon gym.
Hegseth posted a video of himself bench-pressing 315lb, spotted by his teenage son, then did an hour-long workout alongside military trainees and invited TV cameras to capture it. The footage lingered on bodyweight drills, kettlebell swings and Pete surrounded by exceptionally fit young troops. It was verifiable Playgirl behind-the-scenes footage”
• “Testosterone is a topic for members of the Trump administration, with men like JD Vance and RFK Jr touting their masculinity.
Hegseth posts videos of himself on social media engaging in various forms of exercise. Kennedy recorded a video of himself working out and enjoying a sauna bare-chested with singer Kid Rock before sinking into a cold bath wearing jeans.
In September Hegseth told generals and admirals: ‘It all starts with physical fitness and appearance. Frankly it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals. It is bad and it’s not who we are’”
• Openly gay Democratic representative Becca Balint: “Many people in this administration have some weird, like, intense homoerotic feelings towards men while also being incredibly homophobic and hate-mongering, fear-mongering, about the LGBTQ community. Hegseth is like the example of this manly, manly, rugged macho man”
Fox news host JESSE WATTERS – age 48 & dad of 4 – after US defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement about testing testosterone levels of soldiers aged 30+: “The guys that don’t need [testosterone] are gonna take it to triple boost. And then they’re gonna get out there. And women on base, you guys better be careful. Port calls, women in Asia, you better be careful, because these guys are gonna be wild animals and you better watch out”
AND…
• In 2024 there were 6,973 reports of sexual assault from service members
• “Hegseth really, really wants you to know how badly he wants a manly military. In his 2024 book The War On Warriors he worried that the military risks being ‘effeminate and apologetic’ and scolded ‘Pentagon pussies’. He blocked the promotion of female officers and ordered a review of women’s ‘effectiveness’ in ground-combat roles. He uses Defense Department social media to post tougher-than-thou videos.
In his High-T Department Of War video Hegseth says he wants to keep soldiers on ‘the leading edge of lethality’. Like his chest-thumping workout videos, his fat-shaming of generals and his denouncement of anything he deems weak or woke, it is an exercise in projecting a masculine image”
WORDS Pete Hegseth Wants YOU to Test Your Testosterone (The Atlantic, 15/7/26)
• An ex soldier says: “You need some people who will run through a wall and some who can stand back and observe things objectively”
• “Even if Hegseth’s assumptions about testosterone were correct, they have little to do with modern warfare or the talents or ‘lethality’ of a modern ‘warfighter’. A low testosterone level MAY inhibit the intensity or endurance of someone in logistics that involves lifting heavy objects. But for most other military jobs, it has no effect at all. Some service members are engaged in realms that define a new era in warfare: drone operators, AI programmers and those coordinating intelligence assets, communications networks, missile launches etc. Far more relevant would be a knowledge of strategy and science, which Hegseth has barred officers from pursuing.
How well US warfighters are doing their jobs has little to do with their ability to drop and give Hegseth 100 push-ups”
“The Trump administration has denounced puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors. Now it has no qualms about injecting US soldiers with testosterone: US defence secretary PETE HEGSETH announced that service members aged 30 and older found to have low ‘T’ levels will be offered testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).
‘Hegseth comes out in favor of gender-affirming care,’ Democratic senator Adam Schiff wrote on X.
Hegseth’s detractors say it illustrates the Maga movement’s fixation with virility and bodily optimisation, and its belief that gender expression should be binary.
Cultural critics note the Trump world’s penchant for muscular, ready-for-primetime men and glamorous, hyperfeminine women with unmistakable cosmetic enhancements – and ridicule Mar-a-Lago Face, a look synonymous with fillers, Botox and ultrawhite veneers.
Hegseth championing ‘high-T’ warriors is part of the Maga aesthetic and physical attractiveness is seen as social currency.
‘It’s gender as performance, cartoonish,’ says UCLA gender studies professor Juliet Williams.
Hegseth’s move reflects the hard-edged masculinity that has seeped into rightwing politics from the manosphere, whose support for Trump was seen as a crucial factor in his 2024 victory. It is a world infused with testosterone, as evinced by rightwing media star Tucker Carlson’s 2022 documentary The End Of Men, which presented the decline in ‘T’ levels and sperm counts as a public health crisis and counselled men to use red-light therapy on their testicles to stimulate hormone production.
The phenomenon is part of a ‘backlash against gender fluidity’, ‘the trans movement [and] homosexuality’, argues Brunel University gender and cultural studies professor Meredith Jones, comparing it to the reaction that set in after WWII when women of the Rosie the Riveter generation who had entered the labour force in droves and ‘taken men’s jobs’ were pushed back into traditional domestic roles.
The hypermasculinisation of the US right comes at a time when men’s dominance in society is being eroded, experts say.
‘There’s uncertainty among men about their place in the world,’ says NYU sociology professor Kathleen Gerson. ‘But the answer is not returning to a time when physical strength was the determining factor of who did what. The answer is not testosterone.’
Health secretary RFK Jr, who has filmed himself working out with musician Kid Rock and sliding into an ice-cold bath with his jeans on, has admitted using TRT and praises Trump’s high ‘T’ levels. ‘He has the constitution of a deity,’ he said on a podcast hosted by Katie Miller, wife of deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller.
Maga’s testosterone fixation comes at a time when physical attractiveness is increasingly seen as social currency – a trend reinforced by the looksmaxxing movement. Streamer Braden Peters, aka Clavicular, age 20, admits to experimenting with testosterone as a teenager and using hammers to reshape his cheekbones.
‘Appearance is a dominant value. Who we are is how we look,’ says Warwick University philosophy professor Heather Widdows. ‘We are literally writing ourselves on our bodies, moving from the cut of the dress to the cut of the breast.’
Some describe talk of testosterone as performative, akin to Hegseth’s intolerance of beards and overweight generals. In a speech to military commanders in September, he declared there would be ‘no more beardos’ and it was ‘completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals’.
Democratic Congress member Becca Balint sees parallels between Hegseth’s jacked aesthetic and the work of Tom of Finland, the gay artist famous for his hypermasculine sailors and lumberjacks. She notes the contrast between the ‘intense’, at times ‘homoerotic’ relationship some Trump administration members appear to have with masculinity and their ‘hate-mongering, fear-mongering about the LGBTQ community’.
Williams makes a connection between the testosterone announcement and the administration’s policies targeting gender-nonconforming people. Under Trump, the US government has attempted to restrict gender-affirming care for minors, exclude trans girls from competing in female school sports and bar transgender people from serving in the military: ‘Hegseth has been about purging the military of anyone he feels is not by birthright entitled to its privileges. It’s a way of putting men back in the centre with respect to the military.’
Hegseth revealed his screening plan hours after blocking the promotion of 7 Navy officers – 5 of whom were women or people of colour – to 2-star admiral.
Manhood In America author Michael Kimmel says Hegseth, who spoke out against women serving in combat, pursues policies aimed at reinforcing traditional gender roles in the military: ‘The Trump administration are true believers in gender politics circa 1950. It means male breadwinners going off to fight dragons in the corporate jungle and tradwife women staying home, having babies and taking care of the house.’
The traditional view of gender roles is out of sync with a world in which both parents often have to work: ‘Women’s participation in the labour force is not optional’”
WORDS How Maga fell hard for the gender binary (Financial Times, 19/7/26
Comedian AMY SCHUMER – age 45 and son of Gene, 7 – “has never been one to shy away from reality. After dropping 50lb, the funny gal shared a photo of herself in a skimpy bikini on her Instagram Stories showing off her svelte frame and didn’t hesitate to point out her C-section scar.
‘C-section peaking out saying yeah I’m a warrior,’ the proud mum noted.
In recent years Schumer has had lots of press for her weight-loss transformation, including her use of GLP-1 medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro. In a now-deleted Insta reel she said she lost weight to ‘survive’ Cushing syndrome, a condition caused by too much of the hormone cortisol, saying: ‘Sorry for whatever feeling it’s giving you that I lost that weight.’
One thing fans can always expect from Schumer is honesty. Speaking candidly with the press about her health in 2023, she said of Wegovy: ‘I was one of those people that felt so sick.
I couldn’t play with my son. I was so skinny and he’s throwing
a ball at me and [I couldn’t].’
In a later video taken while sitting in her car, she shared about Mounjaro: ‘My symptoms of being in perimenopause disappeared. I have more energy. I want to “get down’” more,
if you know what I mean. I’m talking about sex’”
WORDS Amy Schumer’s Little White Bikini Photos Highlight More Than Her 50-Lb Weight Loss (Parade, 11/7/26)
AND…
• In December 2025 Schumer posted: “I don’t get Botox or filler. I didn’t lose 30lb, I lost 50. Not to look hot which does feel fun and temporary. I did it to survive”
• In January 2026 she posted: “This year is about self care and self love. No makeup. No filter”
• On giving birth: “I was throwing up through the first hour of my C-section. It’s supposed to take about an hour and a half – mine took over 3 hours because of my endometriosis. That was really scary”
• “Pics of yourself when you’re finally feeling strong and beautiful are not a cry for help. They are a celebration of life and health. Love to the single moms out there”
• In an Insta post of herself in a wetsuit surfing with Gene, Schumer wrote: ‘Thank you to my son for encouraging me to get back up there after such a trauma and for being proud of me’, referencing a surfing incident 30 years earlier that nearly cost the actor her leg
Singer BRANDY, age 47, posted “a lengthy statement on Instagram about body image, beauty standards and self-acceptance after she was honoured by her home town, McComb, Mississippi Photos from the event prompted comments about her weight on social media.
Brandy posted: ‘May we become gentler with one another. Not because everyone is fragile, but because everyone is carrying a story we cannot see. Our words have weight. Our judgments have weight. Our kindness does too.’
Brandy is one of the latest celebrity women to address the topic in recent years. Rebel Wilson, Drew Barrymore, Billie Eilish, Demi Lovato, Meghan Trainor and many others have opened up about their experience.
In her post Brandy touched on how she grew out of outside perception: ‘I’ve stopped trying to earn my reflection. I’ve stopped asking the mirror to tell me who I am. I know who I am. And that knowing has given me a freedom no opinion could ever take away.
Before you speak about someone’s body [or] face, before you decide who they are by what you see, remember you are looking at someone’s child. Someone’s friend. Someone’s dream. Someone’s life. A soul. And souls have always been more beautiful than surfaces’”
WORDS Brandy opens up about body image amid social media discourse (USA Today, 13/7/26)
AND…
• “Brandy opened up about why she took such a public stand against the body-shaming remarks: ‘There was a moment where people were really coming at me for my appearance and I didn’t love the way that made me feel. So I just thought about how everyone feels if someone comments about their appearance or anything like that and I decided to share in a teaching kind of way to encourage and inspire people to just be gentle with each other’”
• Brandy posted: “Perhaps we’ve been looking for [beauty] in all the wrong places. In youth. In perfection. In approval. In bodies that never changeand faces that never age. But life was never meant to leave us untouched. It shapes, humbles, refines us. Every season leaves its signature upon us. Maybe that’s where beauty has been all along. Not in escaping change but in becoming through it.’
She says she’s stopped looking to her appearance as a measure of self-worth”
Actor RUSSELL CROWE, age 62, says “women appreciated Gladiator (2000) and were a key element of its audience: ‘[With Gladiator II (2024) the studio] failed because they didn’t understand why [the original] was successful – it had a moral core.
That’s the thing a lot of people don’t realise: from the second week of release globally, there were always more women in the theatres than men. You think that on the surface Gladiator is a movie for men, but if it was a movie for men it would be about revenge – but it’s not about revenge. It is a movie for women because it is about vengeance.
The studio, the producers [thought] there should be sex between Maximus and the female characters. I kept pushing back. This is the story of a man avenging the death of his wife and his child. There cannot be a moment in that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn’t make any sense because that destroys the journey.’
Crowe says Ridley Scott, who directed both films, gave way: ‘Luckily for me, Ridley, even though he’d love a sex scene between me and Connie Nielsen, agreed with me back then that that was the emotional core of the film’”
WORDS Russell Crowe says Gladiator II failed because “it didn’t have a moral core” (Guardian, 16/6/26)
AND…
Onstage in Australia in 2017 Crowe, age 53, “appeared to chuckle to himself as he said: ‘I was sodomising Jacqueline McKenzie on the set of Romper Stomper. I didn’t actually intend to do that. I was trying to keep my bits away from her bits and she’s been given one of those pieces of elastic the girls get when you do those scenes, which protects them from all things, and my bits and pieces were in a little canvas sack with a drawstring. And it was actually my desire to keep the bits apart.Later it was pointed out by her beautiful late mother that we were, in her mind, engaged in sodomy.Anyway that was just a story about sensitivity!’
The audience had a muted response to the joke, with Australian media branding the remarks inappropriate in the wake of #MeToo.
Crowe said in a statement: ‘Actors and actresses by the nature of our jobs get thrown into some embarrassing, bizarre and extreme circumstances… The sensitivity required for the job has to be coupled with the ability to put aside your embarrassment and fears… It’s a story Jacquie and I cringe and laugh over. The way I told that story was to elicit that half-cringe/half-laugh reaction. Obviously I was only intending to make people laugh, especially Jacquie, and she did. I didn’t mean any offence to anyone and it wasn’t a comment on other issues’”
“Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham, age 63, was weirded out by
a quip about bathing suits by DONALD TRUMP, age 80, and couldn’t hide her cringe. He made the bizarre remark on Storytime With The Second Lady, a series in which vice president JD Vance’s wife Usha welcomes guests to read children’s books.
Trump sat down for an awkward reading of Presidents Play!, a picture book produced for the White House Historical Association on presidents playing sports.
Trump said of the pool installed by Gerald Ford: ‘I don’t get to use it.
I don’t know if I look good in a bathing suit. I haven’t had a bathing suit in a long time. I’m too busy.’
Ingraham later deadpanned: ‘That was a little uncomfortable. I like
Usha Vance’s expression. It’s like: “Where’s this going?”‘
What was supposed to be a wholesome storytime was filled with cringeworthy moments, from Trump admitting that he could become the fattest president ever to thirsting over John F Kennedy’s looks.
While discussing president William Howard Taft, Trump said: ‘He was
a large man, very large. He loved the hot dogs at the baseball games. He was our heaviest president.
And I have to be careful because I don’t want to supersede his record. A thing like that would be possible if I allowed it to happen. For all of you out there watching, keep yourself in good shape.’
He also offered unsolicited commentary on presidents’ appearances & athletic abilities, saying Ronald Reagan was ‘in very good shape’, Lyndon Johnson ‘wasn’t in shape’ & Kennedy ‘was the second most good-looking president’”
WORDS Fox Star Left “Uncomfortable” With Trump’s Bathing Suit Talk (The Daily Beast, 4/7/26)
AND…
• “It’s not the first time Trump has spoken about his beach body. In October he said: ‘I’d like to be like Biden. I’d like to go to the beach. My legs are not quite as thin as his. My legs are slightly heavier. My arms are slightly larger. My body is a little bit larger than his. I’m not sure it would be appreciated on the beach but I’m not going to take a chance. You won’t see me in
a bathing suit’”
• On Vance’s show Trump said: “‘John Kennedy was a great guy, handsome.’ He said of the pregnant Vance, age 40: ‘You’re in such good shape’”
“Ex-Love Island star and online safety and abuse campaigner GEORGIA HARRISON, age 31, issued a stark warning to parents about the manosphere – a loose web of influencers, accounts and communities pushing extreme anti-women views under the banner of ‘male self-improvement’. Claiming it is ‘making teenage boys angry’ and turning online misogyny into a cash machine, she says the battle against it starts with understanding who is making money from it and how teenage boys are being targeted.
Harrison waived her right to anonymity after an intimate video was shared without her consent, a case resulting in a prison sentence for her ex-partner, and was awarded an MBE for her services to victims of image-based abuse.
This month she confronted Prime Minister Keir Starmer and policymakers at Downing Street, and in the Sun newspaper detailled her warnings in a hard-hitting op-ed, calling the manosphere an ‘organised, money-making machine pumping misogyny into the phones of teenage boys every single day.
I’ve thought about this for years. I’ve lived it. I know what it is to watch your own private life passed around by strangers.
The men getting rich from this aren’t hiding. You know their names. They sell the courses, subscriptions, merchandise – and the angrier they make your son, the more they earn.
Around them sits a quieter machine: the algorithms that push them, the platforms that carry them, the advertising money that rewards the outrage because outrage keeps people watching.
It is a business. We should start treating it like one.
Underneath all that sits the everyday cruelty. People who believe they can post anything about anyone and never answer for it, hiding behind a screen, a fake name and a feeling that the rules don’t reach them.
You own what you do. The lies you spread, the images you share without consent [should be treated as seriously as anything done offline].
It’s not censorship. Not the nanny state. Just the accountability we teach our own children’”
WORDS Ex-Love Island star issues “manosphere” warning and claims “it’s making teenage boys angry” (The Star 20/6/26)
MORE FROM HARRISON…
• “This isn’t a left or right idea. It’s a parent idea. Every mother and father I meet, whatever they vote, wants the same thing: For their child to grow up without being hunted, shamed or sold a poisonous version of what a man or a woman is meant to be.
The point to listen as much as to lead – to young people, to parents, to teachers and to the men and boys caught up in all this”
• “The manosphere is a broad online ecosystem of websites, forums, podcasts and social media accounts pushing ideas around hyper-masculinity, anti-feminism and ‘red pill’ thinking. Common themes include claims society favours women at men’s expense, pop-culture language about ‘waking up’ to the ‘truth’ about relationships, and influencers flaunting wealth and dominance to project status, while selling paid subscriptions, ‘alpha male’ courses and private communities aimed at insecure young men.
Louis Theroux explored it in the Netflix documentary Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere”
Comedian-writer-director JOHN EARLY, age 38, directs and stars as the female lead in Maddie’s Secret – “a straightforward cautionary tale about bulimia. While it doesn’t necessarily trivialise the eating disorder or its harmfulness, Early is less concerned with bulimia than in its historic depictions onscreen in hokey, made-for-TV 90s movies whose campiness, clunky dialogue and melodrama he parodies.
First Maddie eats food a smidge too greedily, but soon the film reaches its first binge-eating scene, in which Maddie violently shoves fistfuls of food into her mouth. The scene is shot in extreme close-up, in borderline porn fashion, with vivid sound design. Food is shot as if through Maddie’s eyes, as objects of shameful compulsion. It looks menacing. The film’s second half often feels like a modern horror movie where the villain is a concept, like trauma – in this case food”
WORDS John Early Made a Horror Movie Where the Villain Is Food (Vulture, 8/6/26)
AND…
• “Early was careful never to make the eating disorder the joke. He points to the TV movies Kate’s Secret (1986), Perfect Body (1997), The Best Little Girl In The World (1981) and the documentary Thin (2006 ) as influences for depicting the illness: ‘I don’t find bulimia funny. The GENRE of these movies – that’s what’s funny. It’s the emotional pitch, the way they’re made, the acting style and the kind of moralistic quality while being totally pervy. And putting young gentrified LA food-content influencer culture through a melodrama-style filter – that was funny to me’”
• “Early says: ‘[Films like The Secret Life Of Mary-Margaret: Portrait Of A Bulimic (1992) are] quite perverted. They present themselves as for the whole family to gather around and learn about the horrors of bulimia. But they’re shot in this lurid way: they’re sensationalistic and very bizarrely sexual.’
Maddie’s Secret is refreshingly honest about 90s diet culture and how #bodyimage issues can linger with us despite our being told that every body is beautiful: ‘Our moment seems so confused about weight, with the simultaneous body positivity movement and Ozempic. But we were shaped as children by diet culture. No one was critical about dieting.
The ways I’m self-conscious about my body and weight are old school. In private you’re like: “I look bad. I feel fat.” But in public discourse you’re not allowed to think those things. There’s a pose of radical self-acceptance that I can’t live up to. There’s something liberating about these older modes of the TV movie where you COULD worry about not being thin’”
• “Todd Haynes’s controversial 16mm short Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) used Barbie dolls to dramatise the singer’s battles with anorexia. Its miniaturised melodrama style invited pearl clutching while winning critical plaudits. Haynes was inveighing against the kind of prime-time docudrama dreck that sought to reduce celebrities to their afflictions”
🌈 Ice hockey player LUKE PROKOP, age 24 – who in 2021 made history as the first openly gay player in the NHL (National Hockey League) – says in a documentary: ‘I’m not known as Luke Prokop the hockey player – I’m the gay hockey player.’
About that label he says: ‘I almost viewed it as a negative because I’m a pretty private person. I didn’t want extra attention or my teammates to be awkward. But I’ve grown to be really proud. I take it very seriously.’
The documentary The Hockey Player is about a young man chasing ambition, a father and son learning who each other really is (‘My dad was like: “I cry so much in the film”‘) and an open conversation about inclusivity in elite sport.
After the success of Heated Rivalry, all eyes are on the ice. On being a lightning rod for gay representation in hockey, Prokop says: ‘I don’t view it as pressure. It’s more of a responsibility.
There’s probably a lot of queer players who don’t feel comfortable coming out. If I can be visible for them, all I’ve done with coming out and making this movie makes it all worthwhile.’
Soon after Prokop came out publicly, the NHL made questionable decisions, eg the controversial 2023 league-wide ban on Pride tape and jerseys and cause-based warm-up equipment.
Pride jerseys are still banned but players can voluntarily use rainbow-coloured stick tape. Prokop says: ‘I have to teeter the line of what I can say without harming myself and my career, but I also have to be able to speak up for my community. This movie is that fine line of talking about things but not bashing the past.’
On the cultural phenomenon of Heated Rivalry: ‘I didn’t want the sex story to be associated with me. I don’t want people to perceive me that way. But the hiding, having a different name in your phone and being afraid to be out in public are things I resonated with.’
Fans of Rachel Reid’s book Tough Guy – one in the fan fiction series on which the show Heated Rivalry was based – point out the similarities between Prokop (a tall ginger gay Canadian defenceman) and Ryan Price (a tall ginger gay Canadian defenceman).
Prokop’s dad questions the timing of his son’s coming out and the lack of opportunities available to him. What does Prokop think? ‘The main thing in my mind was: “Is it because I’m gay?”‘
Prokop continues to showcase his talent on the ice but he’s already made a historical mark on the sport beyond the rink”
WORDS Gay ice hockey player Luke Prokop on being the sport’s representation and game-changing impact of Heated Rivalry (PinkNews, 26/6/26)
19 MALE CELEBS ON BEING AFFECTED BY BODY-IMAGE PRESSURES
“1) JACOB ELORDI has become hyperaware of his body: ‘What people take away from [some] movies is your stature and figure. You have all sorts of people only talking about what you look like. It’s definitely frustrating. On a shoot you’ll be getting changed and someone’s like: “Oooaaah, would you look?” Can you imagine if I said to a woman: “Daaaaamn, look at your waist!”? Like, see you later’
2) DWAYNE ‘THE ROCK’ JOHNSON was told he had to ‘slim down’
and basically change his entire self to be successful: ‘You can’t be big, go to the gym, call yourself The Rock. You’re either gonna go down
that road and be miserable and your career is probably gonna fizzle
out. Or you’re gonna say: “I’m gonna be me and we’re gonna see
what happens”‘
3) DAVID BAUTISTA on losing 75lb: ‘I started slimming down because
I was uncomfortably big. I probably overdid it – I was thinking: “I gotta get big”‘
4) ZAYN MALIK on having an eating disorder when he was in One Direction: ‘It wasn’t as though I had any concerns about my weight. I’d just go for 2 or 3 days straight without eating anything at all. It got quite serious, although at the time I didn’t recognise it for what it was. I didn’t feel I had control over anything else in my life, but food was something
I could control. I lost so much weight I became ill’
5) ZAC EFRON had ‘pretty bad depression’ after going through very intense dieting and training for Baywatch. He overtrained, ate the same 3 meals a day and took ‘powerful diuretics’ to achieve the look: ‘I went years without eating carbs.’ He had insomnia and burnout: ‘I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3% body fat. That was a dream of mine: to not have to be in shape all the time. What if I just let myself go? I tried it and felt bogged down and slow’
6) WILL POULTER on playing ‘the perfect being’ in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3: ‘It’s been a lot of gym work and a very specific diet. Not particularly civilised. Quantities of food you wouldn’t necessarily want to ingest and other times not enough food. Different diets. There’s a lot of pressure on young people, both men and women, regarding body image’
7) ED SHEERAN: ‘I was never really happy with my image because I was eating fried food and drinking beer every day. You don’t have to kill yourself by getting into shape. Just eat right and don’t drink every day’
8) ASHLEY HAMILTON: ‘I’ve been free from bulimia for years but I still struggle with food – restricting or overeating. It’s almost like drug addiction is totally acceptable to talk about in Hollywood. But food addiction? Nobody wants to talk about that. It’s really shameful as a man to have that’
9) TAYLOR LAUTNER: ‘In Twilight, when I was 16 to 20, my character was known for taking his shirt off every other second. I didn’t know it was affecting me or going to affect me. But it did. That wasn’t my natural body. I had to work very hard for it and very, very hard just to maintain it. I was forced to go to the gym multiple times a day, 6 days a week’
10) SAM CLAFLIN says Hollywood’s obsession with people’s bodies is ‘anything but normal. On one job they literally made me pull my shirt up and were grabbing my fat and going: “You need to lose a bit of weight.” This other time they were slapping me. I felt like a piece of meat. I’m not saying it’s anywhere near as bad as what women go through but I, as an actor approaching each job, am insecure – especially when I have to take my top off in it – and so nervous. I get really worked up and spend hours and hours in the gym and not eating for weeks to achieve what I think they’re going for’
11) JOHN BOYEGA wants Hollywood to get past its ‘aesthetic of people. Why do leads always have to be muscular and ripped? That kind of sometimes shows to me that the guy has too much time on his hands. What real war hero of history [looks that way]? It’s about rebranding the way we’re fed a false narrative of perfection’
12) RICHARD MADDEN was forced to wear corset-style costumes because studios wanted him to look thinner. He had his ‘fat rolls’ pinched: ‘I’ve done numerous jobs where you’re told to lose weight and get to the gym. It happens to men all the time’
13) MATT McGORRY struggled with his body image after he stopped competing in bodybuilding competitions: ‘When I had my first shirtless scene in Orange Is The New Black, those ideas crept into my mind again. I did some unhealthy crash dieting.That’s really sad. It required some loud self-narrating to challenge my own ideas of body image. I hope discussions of body issues and self-criticism will become more of a conversation among men’
14) SIMU LIU learned to let his self-worth not be dictated by his perceived attractiveness and ‘became the most self-assured and self-confident version of [himself]. I have days where I really feel sexy and on top of the world and days where I don’t. What started to click for me is that I wasn’t chosen [for a role] because of my looks or martial arts ability or anything other than my ability to inhabit a character’
15) KUMAIL NANJIANI on bulking up for Eternals: ‘To hear a bunch of people reaffirming my own darkest thoughts about myself was very difficult. It’s very easy to get obsessed with that number on the scale. It’s a tough thing, deceiving. It’s not great to weigh myself every day’
16) JACOB BATALON wanted to work out more but felt he wasn’t allowed to because of the show he was on: ‘I’m meant to be stereotypically [sic], not a “leading man” type’
17) TY PENNINGTON was body shamed after posting a shirtless video on Instagram and wrote: ‘There has been such a force behind accepting all shapes and sizes and aging in the female community which is AWESOME (keep it coming) but maybe let’s give that same grace to men? On a daily basis I’m inundated with comments like “NOOOo what happened to him???!!!” No, I don’t have a six-pack anymore or a luscious head of hair. I have wrinkles and sunspots and grey hair but that’s OK’
18) JUSTIN BALDONI said filming shirtless scenes ‘became a part of [his] identity. Because I have my insecurities with my physique, I’d put a lot of pressure on myself before I had to do these scenes. So I would get anxiety. This last season [of Jane the Virgin] I really didn’t get to work out that much. I don’t think I personally looked as good as I did in previous seasons, but emotionally and mentally I was a lot happier’
19) ROBERT PATTINSON on body dysmorphia and ‘tremendous anxiety’ about his appearance: ‘Because of these tremendous insecurities I never found a way to become egotistical. I don’t have a six-pack and I hate going to the gym. I’ve been like that my whole life. I never want to take my shirt off’”
WORDS 19 Celebrity Men Who Admitted Hollywood Completely Messed With Their Self-Esteem (BuzzFeed, 31/5/26)
“A girl who was 14 when she was raped in Fordingbridge, Hampshire – and whose teenage rapists were spared custody and will have their sentences reviewed after an outcry when they were given youth rehabilitation orders (YROs) in a Southampton court – told the BBC: ‘I just want to be able to go on a walk without being scared that I’m going to see them and they’re gonna try to do something again.’
Her father said the 2025 attack caused a ‘lifelong impact’ on his daughter and called for a custodial sentence for the boys: ‘This is a life sentence for her.’
Three boys were involved in the attack – 2 boys, then 14, were convicted of rape. A third, then 13, was guilty of rape by aiding and abetting the attack.
The teenage girl said: ‘No matter what I do, I can always feel their hands [the rapists’] on me, no matter how much I’ve scrubbed, how much I’ve tried to get the feeling away, it’s always there and it just doesn’t feel like my body anymore.’
She has ‘vivid flashbacks. I don’t sleep at night, because I’m worried something’s going to happen.
At school I have very low attendance. I’m so far behind in my education. I’m just losing out on the potential I would have had if none of this had happened.’
Her mother said she wanted her daughter not to ‘live in fear’ but to ‘be able to be free and happy again’.
Her father said the rape ‘will cause a lifelong impact on my daughter and my family. I understand that we may not be able to lock these boys up for a life sentence but it starts with a custodial sentence. I feel they have to have something in there, going forwards, that impacts them for life.’
The girl met the boys at a recreation ground, where she was raped repeatedly. One of her attackers pushed her down and used a knife to cut her clothing before forcing himself on her.
Video footage seen in court showed her lying motionless on the ground with ‘her face buried in her hands’ while another boy shouted words of encouragement.
Another girl, then 15, was raped by the two 14-year-olds in 2024. The boys filmed the rapes on their phones and shared footage online. They denied the charges but were found guilty, with 10 rape convictions between them.
Explaining his sentencing decision, Judge Nicholas Rowland said he would avoid ‘criminalising’ the ‘very young’ boys. He stressed the ‘seriousness’ of the crimes and said the filming of the assaults made them even ‘more serious’.
The girl's mother told the BBC that her daughter was a ‘prisoner in her own home’ and can’t ‘move forward with her life. She could just wander down the street and bump into one of them.’ Her family is worried they would have to move house.
The girl’s father said he felt ‘absolute horror’ about the sentences: ‘We have to put our faith in the justice system that they’re going to do right by us. And that’s completely gone because they haven't protected her. She’s still living this nightmare and will continue living it while [the rapists] just carry on with their everyday lives. Everything seemed to be about them when it came to sentencing, not what the girls had been through.’
The teenage girl told the BBC she felt ‘undermined, unheard, not listened to’ by lawyers.
The other rape victim, a teenager who was 15 when she was raped in an underpass, previously told the BBC that the sentence was like a ‘rock in my face. Why did I sit and put myself through the pain of going to court, going through a trial, reliving everything because of evidence and watching it all happen again?… What was the point in putting me through that just to say that it’s fine.’
French rape survivor Gisèle Pelicot told BBC Breakfast she was ‘deeply shocked that these individuals were in fact able to gain their freedom again when in fact the victims are suffering so hard they will never be able to heal’”
WORDS Girl raped by teenage boys tells BBC: “I’m scared I’m going to see them” (BBC, 27/5/26)
“Ex journalist E JEAN CARROLL, age 82, explains in the Ivy Meeropol documentary Ask E Jean why she sued Donald Trump: ‘He called me a liar. And I couldn’t let it stand.’
Ask E Jean is about a woman of strong character, deep resilience and sharp wit who refuses to be cast in the role of victim. An author and ex advice columnist, she’s the only woman to beat Trump in court – a feat she accomplished twice. In 2019 she alleged that he raped her in a Manhattan department-store dressing room in the mid-1990s, leading to 2 blockbuster court cases.
Ask E Jean makes the case that Carroll belongs to the ‘silent generation’ – women conditioned to endure the predatory behaviour of men with a shrug and a smile. She says: ‘We are the chin-up, move-it-on, grin-and-bear-it generation. We didn’t complain. It would never occur to me. We actually smiled about it and moved on.’
Carroll was Miss Indiana University and Miss Cheerleader USA, the first female contributing editor at Playboy and and wrote the feisty Ask E Jean column for Elle from 1993 to 2019. She hosted a cable TV show, wrote for a season of Saturday Night Live and penned an unauthorised biography of fellow gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson.
When Trump sexually abused her at Bergdorf Goodman, Carroll did what countless women of her era did, confiding in friends then buried the memory. And her initial reaction, attempting to laugh it off, was weaponised against her.
Meeropol shows how laughter served as a desperate shield. ‘She is unapologetic.’
Carroll made a list of ‘hideous men’ – including Trump – because #MeToo deeply affected her and her readers were begging for guidance on whether to come forward with stories of abuse.
Trump’s reaction lit the fuse. Standing on the White House lawn, the US president – who has been accused of sexual misconduct by an estimated 27 women – branded her a liar and ‘whack job’ and said she was ‘not my type’. For Carroll, who had spent decades building a career on her credibility and wit, the relentless defamation was intolerable.
In 2023 a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation but did not determine that he raped her, awarding Carroll $5m.
During his deposition, when Trump was shown a 1987 photo of himself with his first wife, Carroll and her husband at a public event, he misidentified Carroll as ex-wife Marla Maples, undermining his ‘not my type’ defence.
In 2024 a second jury awarded Carroll $83.3m for defamation regarding Trump’s continued social media attacks. Trump lawyers are seeking to overturn the rulings and Carroll has not yet received a cent.
Carroll says in the film: ‘When I accused Donald Trump of sexual assault, I had no idea what I was in for. The avalanche of slime has been unbelievable.’
Financiers and studios repeatedly turned the film down, blaming Trump fatigue, too many #MeToo films or Carroll not being famous enough.
Watching old tapes of Carroll, Meeropol was struck by how radically progressive Carroll’s advice was. ‘She is giving incredible advice at a time when women were not hearing that: “Don’t beat yourself up because you’re not married at 30. If you’re bored at home because your husband goes off to work and you drop your kid off at school, go to college.”
It’s such a time capsule moment in the mid-90s. As E Jean says, women were finally talking about their careers and what they want to do with their lives. She’d launched her career in the male-dominated magazine world.’
Meeropol was determined not to frame Carroll as a victim: ‘She rejects those terms herself – even “survivor”. That’s what Gisèle Pelicot [who waived her right to anonymity as the victim in a multiple rape case] has been talking about and the Epstein survivors coming out: shame has got to switch sides.
E Jean embodies the flip side of shame because she will sit there and say: “Yeah, I was flirting with Donald Trump, I did try to laugh it off and I do love men.” It’s refreshing.’
Meeropol hopes the documentary speaks beyond one woman’s experience: ‘We can’t let these stories be buried’”
WORDS “The avalanche of slime has been unbelievable”: E Jean Carroll shares life post-Trump in new film (Guardian, 26/5)
“In 2025 ex journalist E JEAN CARROLL, age 82, wrote the memoir Not My Type about accusing Donald Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room and the 2 high-profile civil trials and public fight that followed. The title references his remark that she was ‘not my type’.
Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and ordered to pay her $88m in damages (he has paid $0 & continues to appeal the judgments).
Now the Ivy Meeropol documentary Ask E Jean is out. The film endured what Meeropol, age 57, calls ‘the Trump effect’: entertainment companies reluctant to put their weight behind a project that could provoke the president’s outrage. Some producers and crew members asked to have their name left off the credits.
Meeropol says: ‘In her early life Carroll was doing all the “feminine” things.’ Drawing from archival footage, videotaped legal depositions and interviews with Carroll, the film traces her evolution from Indiana cheerleader and Montana housewife to professionally fabulous New York City raconteur who once worked at Saturday Night Live. She recalls wild journalistic escapades, like making out with actor William Hurt and writing an unauthorised biography of Hunter S Thompson.
Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba bombarded Carroll with irrelevant, hostile questions: ‘Were you wearing underwear? What about your handbags from that day? Did you wear a bra? What’s your highest level of education? What year did they stop taking your article ideas? Have you ever had acting classes?’
Meeropol says: ‘It’s this incredible chance for us to see what happens when someone who’s brought a charge of rape or sexual abuse is deposed.
With that archival material we show how insidious the misogyny is. It really delivered in telling the bigger story: from the minute we’re born, we are confronted with having to look at ourselves through how men are perceiving us. You see all of it play out through this remarkable person.’
Ask E Jean shows how Carroll internalised some of this thinking. But in 2017, she says: ‘The surge of #MeToo rose up and just swallowed America. Women started to write to me to ask should they come forward. How can I sit there silent?’
Even as she recalls the horrific details of Trump’s assault and fields deeply personal, accusatory questions, Carroll is irrepressibly funny. When asked how many men she dated after her second divorce, she says, sweeping her hands in dramatic arcs: ‘It was such a gorgeous array of chaps. Let me think.’”
The MeToo movement inspired Carroll to go public and confront the trauma of what happened at Bergdorf. Meeropol says: ‘One of the most powerful, poignant moments is when after all of it, she has to admit that she still blames herself.’
For Meeropol, making films that examine political subjects through a personal lens is nothing new. Her first documentary Heir To An Execution focused on her grandparents, Ethel & Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and executed in 1953 at the height of McCarthyism. She says: ‘I respond to stories of individuals battling these big power structures’”
WORDS Where to Watch Ask E Jean, a New Documentary on the Wit, Fury and Fearlessness of E Jean Carroll (Ms magazine, 23/5)
Singer OLIVIA RODRIGO, age 23, “responded to the controversy around her appearing in a babydoll dress in her single Drop Dead, saying: ‘People can say whatever they want.
What’s really, like, disturbing is I feel like I have worn outfits that are maybe revealing onstage. I’ve been onstage in a sparkly bra, little shorts, which is my right. That’s fun. I felt cool and comfortable in that.
And THAT wasn’t ‘inappropriate’ – but me fully covered up in a dress that people deem to be, like, childlike was ‘inappropriate’. It shows how we really normalise paedophilia in our culture.
Also it’s just this rhetoric that we’re fed as girls since we’re so little, which is: “Don’t wear that because then a man is going to sexualise your body and it’s your fault.’ Like, it’s so weird. And I didn’t think I looked sexy in that at all.
I was like: “This is so cool. I feel like I look like Kathleen Hanna or Courtney Love” – all these people who are my heroes. And I felt cool and comfortable in it. If we start dressing in a way that’s like: “I don’t want some freak to think that I am sexy like a baby” or some crazy thing like that, it’s like losing the plot a little bit.
I’m very protective of younger women and girls, and I don’t ever want them to be fed that rhetoric.
You shouldn’t be responsible for some guy sexualising you in a way that was never your intention.’
The Guardian questioned the validity of the ‘moral panic’ around Rodrigo’s babydoll look, reasoning that ‘the floaty, feminine aesthetic’ had been ‘around since the 1960s’.
Rock music researcher Dr James How says: ‘Rodrigo is engaging with these great 1990s rock stars, who were really alternative, but I don’t think she’s playing with the meanings that they were.’
He added about babydoll dresses being popularised during World War II’s materials shortage: ‘These shorter dresses were seen as a bright new version of femininity’”
WORDS Olivia Rodrigo responds to babydoll dress controversy (NME, 28/5/26)
Singer OLIVIA RODRIGO, age 23, in the music video for Drop Dead, wears an “off-the-shoulder babydoll top with silky bloomers peeking out underneath and pointelle knee socks. It didn’t impress keyboard warriors (likely bots), who accused Rodrigo of infantilising herself and invoking a ‘Lolita’ aesthetic. Onstage a few weeks later, Rodrigo donned a puff-sleeve babydoll top with bloomers by Génération78 offset by knee-high Dr Marten boots, equal parts soft and severe.
Online discourse exploded, with many accusing her of dressing like a ‘sexy baby’ and promoting ‘pedo core’; others defended her, stating that she can wear whatever she wants. Designer Ertay Deger says: ‘The babydoll silhouette sits in a history of fashion references tied to rebellion, performance, romance and girlhood culture. The look feels knowingly performative rather than regressive.
Also embracing the babydoll aesthetic are singers Sabrina Carpenter, who wore a sheer version leaning towards a retro-lingerie aesthetic, and Addison Rae, who posed coyly in a minidress on Insta. Gen Z’s favourite indie-sleaze icon Alexa Chung has worn these dresses for years.
The babydoll dress is subversive. Dr Liza Betts at London College of Fashion, UAL, says in the 1960s it developed in parallel with the mini dress – ‘a material example of the tension experienced by women between the propriety society demanded, and empowered sexual freedom and expression which was becoming more visible as a result of second-wave feminism. It was evidenced in daywear and nightwear.’
In the 90s the babydoll dress experienced a resurgence in alternative culture with the ‘kinderwhore’ aesthetic of grunge icons Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland, who used it to subvert and poke fun at a docile form of femininity.
Love defended Rodrigo: ‘If y’all are sexualising this, then maybe you’re the problem… You can pry my babydoll dress from my cold dead hands.’’
Child sexual exploitation is at the forefront of public consciousness. But this outrage towards a perceived sartorial perversion is a projection that polices young women’s fashion.
Rodrigo is not a descendant of the subversive punk ethos. Her pastiche take is more prim and polished. But even tame, sanitised style choices are fodder for the vultures of controversy.
The horrors of child sexual exploitation are at the forefront of public consciousness. But this outrage towards a perceived sartorial perversion is arguably a projection that polices young women’s fashion rather than a mark of genuine concern. Rodrigo wants her fashion to be ‘fun and laid-back’ – why can’t we let it be just that?”
WORDS The babydoll is back – and so is the moral panic (Guardian, 22/5/26)
“Actor TOM HOLLAND, age 30, did a Lip Sync Battle performance of Rihanna’s song Umbrella under artificial rain in 2017. Midway through, he removed his suit to reveal fishnet tights, black shorts and a black vest – he also had on red lipstick & a short dark wig – before launching into a tightly choreographed dance routine.
He says: ‘I get more compliments for that dance than any piece of work I have ever done.’
Comedian Amy Poehler told him on her Good Hang podcast that it’s popular because Holland appeared to be ‘comfortable with your feminine side. You’ve talked about it – being a young boy doing ballet, being a person who’s had to figure out what is typically male, typically female.’
Holland recalled: ‘In the dress rehearsal, the lady was like: “Could we cut the shorts a little bit shorter?” I was like: “I’m doing enough. This is still years ahead of its time.”
Everyone in that audience was 19 years old. I just knew in my body: “When I take this suit off, you are going to go nuts.”’
It’s one of the most widely viewed clips from Lip Sync Battle, with over 172.5m views on YouTube.
Holland’s father, writer and comedian Dominic Holland, tried to stop the performance out of concern it would destroy his son’s career.
But, says, Holland: ‘Look, I am really glad I did that show and I had a lot of fun’”
WORDS Tom Holland says he gets more praise for Umbrella lip-sync than his acting work: “Years ahead of its time” (Independent, 3/5/26)
AND…
• Holland was “armed with an umbrella and unwavering confidence. Unbeknownst to him, this was a moment that would go down in queer history”
• “The longtime ally has been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights since the beginning of his career and throughout his iconic run as Spider-Man.
He was instrumental in kickstarting one of Brand New Day’s most significant plot points: that the character Peter Parker’s powers are evolving in unusual and unexpected ways.
In the writers’ room, he says, ‘my pitch when I came to the table with it was called Spider-Puberty. What happens if Parker is losing control and things are changing?
It was shot down. But they liked the kernel of the idea and it grew into what we have in the movie’”
Actor ROBERT PATTINSON – age 40 & father of a girl, age 2 – has installed a gym in his home in preparation for filming the Batman sequel. After what GQ called the “lukewarm reception to his superhero body” in 2022, Pattinson “hit back at people who say he isn’t fit enough to play Batman. Some fans don’t think he’s got the right physique. And it seems that this continued criticism has gotten under the actor’s skin.
He says: ‘[Everyone was like]: “You didn’t work out at all.” I worked out every fucking day. Even after that, I still look like I didn’t work out. I worked out twice a day at, like, 3 o’clock in the morning.
It’s just because I said it in an interview [once – that exercise was uncool]. I was trying to sound cool!’
Six years ago he said: ‘If you’re working out all the time, you’re part of the problem. You set a precedent. No one was doing this in the ’70s. Even James Dean – he wasn’t exactly ripped. Literally, I’m just barely doing anything.’
However Pattinson is in pretty good shape, having exhausted himself working on the set of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic The Odyssey”
WORDS Robert Pattinson slams critics of his Batman body: “I worked out every day” (Metro, 2/6/26)
MORE FROM PATTINSON…
• “I’m a nut case. Body dysmorphia, overall tremendous anxiety. I suppose it’s because of these tremendous insecurities that I never found a way to become egotistical.
I don’t have a six-pack and I hate going to the gym. I’ve been like that my whole life. I never want to take my shirt off. I’d prefer to get drunk”
• On being a sex symbol: “It’s quite embarrassing when you get into a pattern of answering questions about your workout because there’ll always be a guy who’s in better shape than you”
• On the “addictive” qualities of diet culture: “Even if you’re just watching your calorie intake, it’s extraordinarily addictive – and you don’t quite realise how insidious it is until it’s too late. I have basically tried every fad you can think of, everything except consistency. I once ate nothing but potatoes for 2 weeks as a detox. Just boiled potatoes and Himalayan pink salt”
Actor RUPERT EVERETT, age 67, says “he’s suffering serious consequences from his pursuit to achieve his heartthrob physique and that the buff build he worked hard to get has cost him: ‘I ruined myself. Now I’m almost crippled as a result. I could never be bothered to do all those things, like stretching, which were necessary for lifting weights, because your tendons get tighter and tighter.
I was wonderful-looking at one point. I had muscles. Everything. It was quite short-lived. I call it my Hollywood year.’
Everett admits to feeling insecure despite his good looks: ‘Even work was about cruising, really. Trying to be attractive. Which obviously came from the feeling of not being attractive enough.
Vanity is often a feeling of deep insecurity rather than feeling how fabulous I am.’
He married his husband Henrique, a Brazilian accountant, in 2024”
WORDS ’90s movie star Rupert Everett, 67, says he “ruined” himself in pursuit of the perfect body: “I’m almost crippled” (Page Six, 2/6/26)
AND…
• “Everett is still handsome and huge. But he looks his age. The butter-cutting cheekbones of old have gone. He used to be too pretty to play character roles.
Years before building himself a new body in the gym, he hit on a simpler solution: ‘These 2 queens who made bodysuits made me a false bottom, calves, shoulders, false everything.’ Did he wear them in movies? ‘Yes. I’d go into the fittings for costumes with all my things on.’
[His] fear of missing out was usually connected to sex. Was he as sexually obsessed as he makes out in his memoirs? ‘Oh YES.’ It sounds as if he couldn’t get through a day without shagging a stranger. ‘YES! Remember, the sexual revolution had only happened 10 years before. It was a boom time for sexual liberation. I felt I could smash my past up through sex. That it would somehow liberate you.
I was just interested in myself and my own pleasure. That’s always lethal.
The hunger of one’s hormones is something one does forget once hormones dry up. Then it’s impossible to remember what that surge, those spring tides, really felt like. They’re intense’”
• “I don’t look very nice these days and it doesn’t bother me. Vanity was always being concerned about not looking good enough. Letting go of all that was a great release. I feel lucky I’ve stopped being as vain as I was”
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“Singer LIZZO, age 38, just took naked dressing to the next level. For a charity event at the amfAR Gala in Cannes, she offered a surreal spin on the body-conscious look by hanging a necklace from her dress’s nipples.
(The dress by Robert Wun was similar to a look from his spring 2026 couture collection: a strapless sculptural bust and a dramatic mermaid skirt.)
While the nipple necklace by jewellery designer Anabella Chan is certainly an attention-grabber (Hey! Eyes up here!), there was another surreal element to Lizzo’s look: gloves with another set of hands on top.
Nipple necklaces, while undeniably outré, aren’t new. In his spring 1998 couture show, Thierry Mugler sent model Erica Vanbriel down the runway in a sheer black goddesslike dress hanging from her nipple rings. The model later recalled: ‘Thierry said: “I have a dress for you and I’m going to hang it off your nipples.”’
These days piercings aren’t necessary. Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour put her stamp on the look in her spring 2023 show when she draped a pale pink dress from daisy-shaped nipple attachments.
And at the 2026 Grammys, Chappell Roan tapped Mugler to create an iteration of the dress which she hung from prosthetic nipples.
Now, with her nipple necklace, Lizzo proves that the pierced dress is here to stay”
WORDS Lizzo Just Wore a Nipple Necklace in Cannes (Vogue, 21/5/26)
AND…
• “Lizzo is flipping the script on red carpet dressing. She turned heads with an unconventional look including a necklace that hung from faux nipples on the bodice. The design was quite the statement due to its overaccentuated body parts”
• At the 2026 Met Gala: “The nipple – literally – emerged as one of the most pointed (sorry) trends. It wasn’t wearers’ actual nipples on display but instead faux versions”
“Nipples and cleavage dominated the discourse”
“Nipples, handsy moments… It was practically a dress code”
Singer BILLIE EILISH, age 24, recently said she “doesn’t see herself getting work done. ‘I am so excited to age,’ she gushed. ‘And I’m so excited for my face to age and my body to age, and not change it.’
In the future, she says: ‘I want my kids to look at me and have my face look like their face and not be some botched version of whatever the fuck is going on out there right now.’
At age 18 she’d said: ‘The older I get, the more I experience things.
I just think: “What am I going to do when my kid thinks that this is the right thing to do and I’m like: no, it’s not!” And they won’t listen to me.’
Many Hollywood favourites have been open about going under the knife, including Kris and Kylie Jenner, Cardi B and Simone Biles.
Eilish has spoken candidly about her body image through the years, recently saying: ‘I had a really, really toxic relationship with my body.
I had a lot of eating issues. I remember putting on, like, a big shirt and the relief that I felt. At the same time, it was my love for hip-hop culture and wanting to be a man.
This is the misogyny that we all have within us… which is that I didn’t want to be seen as feminine and therefore weak. It’s not right. I’ve found a good way of not feeling like that’”
WORDS Billie Eilish Explains Why She Won’t Get Any Cosmetic Surgeries: “Excited to Age” (US Weekly, 6/5/26)
AND…
• Citing Missy Elliott as a fashion inspiration, Eilish said: “I’m not the first person who’s worn baggy clothes”
• In 2023 Eilish said about wearing baggy clothes as a teenager: “‘I wasn’t trying to have people NOT sexualise me. But I didn’t want people to have access to my body, even visually. I wasn’t strong enough and secure enough to show it. If I had shown it, I would have been completely devastated if people had said anything.’
While she has ‘deep connections’ to women in her life and is ‘attracted’ to women, she still struggles with her self-perception: ‘I’ve never felt desirable. I’ve never felt feminine. I have big boobs. I’ve had big boobs since I was 9.
You wear something that’s at all revealing and everyone’s like: “Oh but you didn’t want people to sexualise you?”…
I’m literally a being that is sexual sometimes’”
“Naked dresses are a dime a dozen on today’s red carpet, but few have made as much of a splash as those at this month’s CANNES FILM FESTIVAL, which in 2025 banned nudity in the name of ‘decency’. Since then celebrities have continued to push the envelope and fans have celebrated bold, rule-breaking looks that fly in the face of the festival’s charter…
• Ex porn star and politician La Cicciolina arguably won the unofficial award for wearing the most naked dress of all time: she bared her breasts, belly and thighs (1988)
• Model Bella Hadid has shown up at Cannes in a naked dress more times than pretty much any other celebrity. Among her best looks: an entirely see-through halter dress made of sheer, stretchy pantyhose material (2024)
• Actor Julia Fox wore a see-through top made of glass paired with a much more modest skirt (2023)
• Model Leila Depina took the naked dress to new heights: the draped silver look was made entirely of what appeared to be tiny glittering chains which, unsurprisingly, left little to the imagination (2023)
• Model Winnie Harlow rocked a gown that was completely sheer save for metallic beading front and back (2019)
• Model Stella Maxwell opted for a sheer lace gown. Strategically placed ruffles provided some (limited) coverage (2025)
• Model Didi Stone sported a gladiator-inspired look with a grid of roses placed strategically over her torso (2022)
• Strategically placed beading made up the majority of actor Milla Jovovich’s dress (1997)
• Actor Cameron Diaz bared her underwear in a totally sheer gown with a daring thigh-high slit (2002)
• Model Heidi Klum stepped out in a gown with a thigh-high slit and midriff cutouts (2023)
• Actor Hari Nef wore a simple sheer shawl up top (2023)
• Model Kendall Jenner opted for a completely sheer silk tulle dress (2018)
• Model Cindy Kimberly donned a sheer metallic look with a completely open back (2023)
• Model Pritika Swarup walked the carpet in a sheer jewel-encrusted gown (2025)
• Model Nadia Lee Cohen went full sheer. She donned underwear and a pair of sunnies to complete the look (2024)”
WORDS 15 Rule-Breaking Naked Dresses to Appear on the Cannes Film Festival Red Carpet (InStyle, 12/5/26)
“Is fashion over the exposed-nipple trend? Nope. At the 2026
MET GALA on 4 May, the nipple – literally – emerged as one of the most pointed (sorry) trends.
It wasn’t wearers’ actual nipples on display but instead faux versions artistically rendered on (or as) garments. This year’s theme was Fashion Is Art, so it’s understandable that designers chose to explore the female form.
Maybe Kylie and Kendall Jenner were referencing big sis Kim Kardashian’s controversial 2023 Nipple Bra with their flesh-toned nipple moments: Kylie’s look mimicked a gown falling halfway off her frame, revealing a body-like corset. Kardashian went with a nipular look: the breastplate was ‘a nod to designer Allen Jones’ 1978
Body Armour, created for a film’.
Trompe-l’oeil nipples were a big trend. Some attendees went less overt with their bustiness: Doja Cat chose gold nipple covers beneath her sheer look, Irina Shayk wore a skimpy metallic bra and Camila Morrone’s sculpted bodice featured 2 pointy darts that drew the eye to the nipple area. Hailey Bieber and Heidi Klum went for minimalist and maximalist takes on moulded busts.
If you, like us, are thinking: ‘Where is the celebration of the male form? Why are women the only ones daring to emphasise their nips?’, see Jeremy Pope, who came through for us in a jacket covered with pearls arranged to depict a rather resplendent nude male chest”
WORDS The 2026 Met Gala Was a Celebration of Artsy Nipples (Fashionista, 4/5/26)
AND…
• “Nipples and cleavage dominated the discourse. The spotlight on sculpted bodies lent a Madame Tussauds vibe”
• “Nipples, handsy moments… it was practically a dress code. The trends were dialled up to surreal extremes: hyperreal corsetry moulded to the body and an obsession with the naked dress in ever more conceptual forms.
Designers leaned hard into the body-as-object idea, adding extra limbs, surreal prosthetics, sculpted nipples, facial accessories.
Nipples as a deliberate statement moment? Perhaps not. Still, some fully committed to the look, turning exposure into a clear fashion statement”
• “The gala wasn’t about subtle glimpses of nipples through sheer dresses but about sculpted, moulded and engineered busts as the unapologetic centre of attention”
“UK politician SAMANTHA NIBLETT, age 46, Labour MP for South Derbyshire, ‘issued a call for ‘lifelong sex education’ in a bid to improve public health & safety.
The campaign Yes Sex Please, We’re British! – a play on the 1973 film title No Sex Please, We’re British – focuses on education in understanding consent, respect and healthy relationships so as to prevent abuse and violence.
She has partnered with sex educator Cindy Gallop [the sextech entrepreneur and founder of the site MakeLoveNotPorn], who wants to steer people away from porn being the ‘default sex education’.
Niblett secured a House of Commons debate on ‘lifelong sex education’, which may take place this autumn.
The campaign calls, Niblett says, for ‘relevant, all-inclusive lifelong sex education to be integrated into the public health system and beyond’ for ‘every age and at every life stage’.
It also aims to raise awareness about life stages such as childbirth, the menopause, stress and erectile dysfunction.
Yes Sex Please, We’re British! is designed to ‘take the shame, embarrassment and guilt out of talking about sex.
The government is serious about tackling violence against women & girls (VAWG) and helping boys and men being drawn into the toxicity of the manosphere to understand their important role in society.
While we are taking action to block and ban harmful content online, we need to ensure we’re educating on what is beautiful and normal about real sex and love in real life for every consenting person in the UK.
Because if we can’t talk about good sex, how can we expect people to talk about bad sex and help keep them safe?
Sex is a significant part of most people’s lives – there should be no shame associated with it’”
WORDS MP Samantha Niblett calls for “lifelong sex education” to combat abuse (BBC, 14/4/26)
AND…
• “Where there is negative feedback and people thinking it’s inappropriate, my pushback would be: let’s have a conversation about it. Why do you think it’s inappropriate?”
• “We need to acknowledge that humans have a natural interest in sex. It’s one of the things nearly all of us want to do and nearly all of us do. There’s an opportunity to remind people that it is a joyful thing”
“UK Labour politician SAMANTHA NIBLETT, age 46, who wants to launch the campaign Yes Sex Please, We’re British!, says: ‘My daughter [Lillian, 18] said: “They called you Samantha ‘dildo’ Niblett on the radio.” It’s a bit ridiculous. But that also is a great thing about being British, right? Laughing at ourselves.’
She can put on posh so well that Lillian’s friends compare Niblett to sex therapist Gillian Anderson’s character in Netflix’s Sex Education. This is a woman who has ‘always been fascinated by sex. I have had the best sex with people who are really, really confident. But they’re the ones I’ve had a bit of a row [with].
It can feel horrible when sex is slightly oppressive or somebody does something you don’t want to do or touches you even in the slightest way. It’s so subtle. The greatest bleach is sunlight, isn’t it – and if you can’t talk about good sex, how can we ever talk about bad sex?’
This is the point of her summer of sex campaign and why she has been so open about her sex life this week. For every MP offering criticism, there has been one supporting the serious message, she insists: that violence against women & girls (VAWG) needs to be tackled with a stigma-busting approach: ‘Where’s the conversation saying what you should do? So many sexual-assault perpetrators are monsters – they flourish where there’s shame and darkness. And so we thought: if we can get rid of shame and drag stuff into the light, it’s so much harder for people to use sex as a weapon.’
She enjoys porn but avoids material that shows women in degrading positions: ‘All sorts of things I’ve watched are just horrific. I find it really hard to imagine that any woman gets turned on by that. It always looks a bit derogatory, like it’s a power imbalance.’ She backed Labour’s ban on strangulation porn because ‘in real life that would be assault – but I will not kink-shame. Even the strangulation thing, if it does turn [you] on and you have a greater orgasm for it, that is fine. The challenge has become that people [see it in porn and] assume it’s the norm.’
Is this really the time for MPs to be talking about sex so openly?
Niblett says of prime minister Keir Starmer and his wife: ‘I do not get a sense that they are shocked by or prudish about my campaign. They’ve got two young teenage children they don’t want to grow up in a world where they’re not learning about the right way to engage with sex. So I definitely didn’t get a negative vibe from them.
If there’s one thing that’s been said to me on repeat, it’s that this is so refreshing. Some people are grateful that we’re having the conversation because I dare to’”
WORDS “I’m not at it like a rabbit”: Meet the Labour MP urging you to talk about sex (Telegraph, 18/4/26)
Actor DEMI MOORE, age 63 & the mum of 3 daughters, “sparked concern with her slender, ultra-toned appearance at the Cannes Film Festival last week. But she has become empowered by her personal philosophies surrounding body image after years of intense scrutiny at the outset of her career and has addressed those pressures in candid interviews.
In 2025 she said: ‘I have a greater appreciation for all that my body has been through that brought me to now. It doesn’t mean that sometimes I look in the mirror and don’t go: “I look old” or “My face is falling” – I do. But I can accept that that’s where I’m at today. The difference is that it doesn’t define my value or who I am.’
Concerns were also raised after Moore’s appearance at the March SAG Actor Awards. She was said to have tried ‘to avoid more scrutiny’ during her next appearance – in a peacock-inspired gown at the Academy Awards. A celebrity stylist said: ‘The feathers put most of the focus on her face and piercing eyes while covering the majority of her upper body, hiding her clavicle.’
In 2004 Moore said: ‘I do have love for my body but it’s more about appreciation – I can really appreciate all that my body does for me now, not just how it looks. And the more I appreciate the lines in the corner of my eyes, the more I can find beauty in the life I’ve lived, the more my life has beauty.’
She also reflected about attempting to live up to Hollywood’s exacting beauty standards: ‘There is a lot of torment I put myself through when I was younger’, saying that amid the fallout she took responsibility for her own wellbeing. ‘The perfect example is when I was told to lose weight multiple times’, noting that a producer once ‘pulled [her] aside. It was very embarrassing and humiliating. But how I internalised it and how it moved me to a place of such torture and harshness against myself, of real extreme behaviours – and that I placed almost all the value of who I was on my body being a certain way – that’s on me.’
Moore’s empowerment is evident in her confidence and in the way she has publicly addressed body image. After winning the Golden Globe last year for The Substance, which centres on body image and physical appearance, she shared her hard-won insight on the topic in her acceptance speech: ‘We don’t think we’re smart enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, successful enough or basically just not enough… I had a woman say to me: “You will never be enough but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down a measuring stick”’”
WORDS Demi Moore has a “greater appreciation” for her body after subjecting it to “torture” at start of career (Page Six,14/5/26)
AND…
• “I have had a love-hate relationship with my body. When I'm at the greatest odds with my body, it's usually because I feel my body's betraying me”
🌈 Actor IAN McKELLEN, age 86 – a founding member of the LGBT+ rights charity Stonewall who came out while fighting against Section 28, a law prohibiting the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools – “revealed that actor Alec Guinness urged him to back down from his work with Stonewall. McKellen attributed this – the ‘worst’ advice he was ever given – to Guinness’s ‘latent bisexuality’.
McKellen was taken out to lunch by Guinness: ‘He’d heard about my work to establish Stonewall – a lobby group to present to the government & the world at large the case for treating UK lesbians and gays equally under the law with the rest of the population. He thought it somewhat unseemly for an actor to dabble in public or political affairs and advised me, sort of pleaded with me, to withdraw.’
It was advice ‘from an older generation’ that he ignored. He was reminded of this exchange while watching the play Two Halves Of Sir Alec, which a review says has an ‘understated undercurrent of gay sex’ and which McKellen says ‘hints at Sir Alec’s latent bisexuality in a way that would have upset him’.
In 2001 it was alleged in 3 biographies that Guinness hid a ‘homosexual side’ from the public, for example that he was arrested and fined in
1946 for a ‘homosexual’ act in a public toilet. Author Sheridan Morley said that if news of the conviction had come out, ‘it would have traumatised him’.
McKellen said in 2023 that coming out was ‘life changing. Almost overnight, everything in my life changed for the better – my relationships with people and my whole attitude towards acting changed. The kind of acting I’d been good at was all about disguise – adopting funny voices and odd walks. It was about lying to the world.’
Speaking of his struggles, he said: ‘People who are not gay just simply don’t know how it damages you to be lying about what you are and be ashamed of yourself. I was brought up at a time when it was illegal for me to have sex with a man. And that was not that long ago’”
WORDS Ian McKellen names “bisexual” Hollywood legend who urged him not to campaign for gay rights (Metro, 9/5/26)
AND…
• “In 1965 actor Coral Browne said Guinness had been ‘cottaging again’ – a term used to mean cruising – which prompted Guinness to storm into her dressing room and threaten her with legal action. She corrected the record by saying she had meant that he was decorating a cottage.
McKellen is still doing all he can for LGBT+ rights, including championing all-trans Shakespeare adaptations”
• Last year McKellen said of closeted stars: “I have never met anybody who came out who regretted it. I feel sorry for any famous person who feels they can’t come out.
Being in the closet is silly – there’s no need for it. Don’t listen to your advisers, listen to your heart. Listen to your gay friends who know better. Come out. Get into the sunshine”
Former tennis star MARTINA NAVRATILOVA, age 69, posted on X:
‘A photo is worth a thousand words…’about a White House photo celebrating the University of Georgia women’s tennis team’s
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship win.
The photo “drew backlash due to Donald Trump, age 79, and a group of men overshadowing the female athletes by lining up in front of them.He and 5 Georgia staffers and coaches took up the front, with 11 women standing in the background on a riser.
Social media commenters wrote: ‘Who approved this photo?’ and ‘Me when I definitely respect women’s sports teams: what if we put them behind us so you can barely see them.’
In a video Trump approaches the group and shakes the hands of the 5 men but not the women.
US championship teams have traditionally received invitations from the president to visit the White House after victories. Such visits became fraught during the first and second Trump terms.
Before 2019 no women’s championship team had made a solo visit to the White House under Trump.
This year the women’s hockey team declined an invitation to visit the White House after winning gold at the Milano Cortina Olympics.
[Inviting the gold-winning men’s hockey team to his State of the Union address, Trump said during a locker-room call: ‘I do believe I probably would be impeached [if the women’s team wasn’t invited].’ Several male players were captured laughing in a video that went viral.]
Women’s team captain Hilary Knight said Trump’s remark overshadowed their Olympic success, calling it ‘a distasteful joke’.
The women’s tennis team photo drew comparisons to other instances in which men dominated photos at events focused on women’s issues. A 2017 photo of Trump signing an anti-abortion bill with 8 male staffers was met with outrage.
Recently Trump was accused of running a ‘misogynistic administration’. His is the least diverse cabinet this century”
WORDS “Worth a thousand words”: Trump photo obscuring women’s tennis team sparks backlash (Guardian, 23/4/26)
AND ANOTHER COMMENT OVER ON SOCIAL MEDIA…
• On the photo: “I thought y’all were all about keeping men out of women’s sports” [about Trump’s vow to block transgender athletes from competing in female events]
Model ERIN O’CONNOR, age 48, posted 2 photos on Instagram for Mother’s Day celebrating her body 8.5 months pregnant with her son Albert in 2014. They were her first nude photos: “It wasn’t about nudes – it was about expectation,” she said. The post was taken down, Meta stated, because it “breached ‘nudity guidelines’. It included a note on ‘freedom of expression’, stating: We only remove things or restrict people to keep the community respectful and safe.’
In one shot O’Connor touches her baby bump with an expression of maternal bliss. The other highlights the swell of her belly and casts her erect nipples in shadow.
Removing her post because she breached ‘nudity guidelines’, Meta included a note on ‘freedom of expression’ stating: ‘We only remove things or restrict people to keep the community respectful and safe.’
With the Nick Knight photos, she paid tribute to ‘those who continue to nurture, support, love and protect children’ plus a poem addressed to her ‘baby boy’.
The post was removed then restored after she complained and the press covered the story. Minutes after the post was restored, it was flagged as ‘sensitive’ and removed.
Speaking publicly, O’Connor said banning the photos while women are ‘hypersexualised on a daily basis’ is an example of double standards.After her post was restored she’d said: ‘It means so much to have this moment of strength, vulnerability and celebration of motherhood recognised and respected… Meaningful content – like pregnancy, birth and body-positive imagery – [shouldn’t be] mistakenly removed.’
Another time O’Connor said: ‘It feels inconceivable that a heavily pregnant naked woman could be perceived as offensive when she stands in her full power, her body at its most extraordinary, embodying its innate ability to grow, birth and sustain new life.
It’s such a shame that that would be offensive in the 21st century yet in galleries everywhere you have these very sensual and erotic images of women.
Albert arrived a couple of weeks [after the photos]. It really wasn’t about nudes – it was about expectation. That abundance of life being right there.’
The model recently celebrated her 30th year in the industry and revealed she was going through perimenopause. She told the audience that she had spent most of her career feeling uncomfortable in her body. Only in the past 3 years has she come to accept herself: ‘It took 45 years. I’ve had 3 years of living well and truthfully, and it’s the most wonderful thing.’
Meta said its default response was to remove ‘sexual imagery’ to prevent the sharing of non-consensual or underage content. A spokesperson added that its policy is to restrict images of female breasts that include the nipple, but it allows images such as acts of protest, women breastfeeding and photos of post-mastectomy scarring.
Allowances can also be made for ‘real world art and certain medical, educational and awareness-raising content’.
Last year O’Connor posted both photos with a similar message. That post has not been removed”
WORDS “Double standards”: Instagram removes Erin O’Connor’s pregnancy photos again (Guardian, 29/3/26)
Producer CHRISTOPHER SCHWARZENEGGER, age 28 – the son of ex bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger & Maria Shriver – is “looking noticeably leaner. The transformation has been years in the making and he has talked openly about the work behind it.
Last May he said a turning point came in 2019 while he was living in Australia and wanted to go skydiving with friends. He quickly learned that was not an option, explaining: ‘My friends were like: “Yeah, no shot”‘ he told the Beacher Vitality’s Happy and Healthy Summit panel, which included Kelly Osbourne, who has undergone a well-documented physical transformation of her own. ‘I was like: “Yeah, I can’t skydive.”‘
Body image issues had followed Schwarzenegger through high school, where he cycled through diets including meal-delivery programmes and felt self-conscious about the unusual lunches he brought to school.
‘I tried everything,’ he said. What worked was a mix of strategies, including changes to his fitness routine and diet. Giving up bread for the 40-day religious observance of Lent resulted in him losing 30lb.
He was careful, though, not to oversell the speed of his progress: ‘It took a lot of trial and error,’ Schwarzenegger said.
Looking at before-and-after photos of himself, he does not feel like a finished product: ‘I don’t feel like I’m an “after” yet.’
Arnold Schwarzenegger, age 78, one of the most recognised figures in bodybuilding history, said last year of his son’s weight loss: ‘I could never go and say to him: “You’re overweight.” We just kept introducing healthy foods. We introduced him always to the gym and all of that kind of stuff.
And then, out of nowhere, he decided he wanted to be lean. And now he is. So that is of course fantastic – the self-discipline and self-motivation. I always felt one day it will have to come from him – and it did’”
WORDS Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son shows off slim body after major weight loss (Daily Mirror, 5/4/26)
AND…
• Christopher reflected: “It was a big process. I just saw how much my weight was prohibiting me from doing everyday activities”
• In 2020 Arnold posted on Instagram: “I know your graduation from Michigan wasn’t the big celebration you dreamed about for years, but walking across a stage isn’t what makes me so proud of you: it’s your compassion, your hard work, your vision, your critical thinking, and your selflessness that make me burst with pride. I can’t wait to watch you keep climbing and succeeding”
Actor SHARON STONE, age 68, “says onscreen intimacy has lost what made it powerful: mystery.
Interviewer Gayle King said: ‘I remember Basic Instinct. Cross the legs, uncross the legs. And: “Is she wearing panties?” That’s how crazy it all became.’
Stone fired back: ‘It was a third of a frame. It wasn’t even an entire frame of film. People were desperately trying to figure it out.
That idea of: “Oh my god” – this hope, this wonder, this mystery, this intrigue, this yearning – is something all of our profound sexuality is based in.
So often now, when sex scenes come on TV, I fast-forward. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to have to go through all of this blatant, harsh sexuality. It steals from my own imagination. And I prefer my yearning, mystery, desire. I want to keep that alive inside myself.’
On Basic Instant: ‘I lost custody of my child [Roan, age 4, one of 3 boys she adopted]. My child was put on the stand in custody court and asked if his mother did sex movies. Things that were bizarrely inappropriate. People treated me in ways that were very cruel and unkind, as if I was some sort of slatternly, vulgar person.’
In an Instagram video posted in February she called out Hollywood’s double standard over nudity and hypocrisy, saying society is uncomfortable with bodies but tolerates other content: ’Are we supposed to be terrified when we look in the mirror? Is it supposed to be a secret when we pee and poo and brush our teeth? Why are we supposed to be afraid of our own human self?’ and wrote: ‘Why in 2026 are we still afraid of aging and living in our own selves. We are more than appearance.. we are artists, mothers, sisters, wives, nurses, teachers… and the list goes on!
I got really fired up about this when I was touring my studio. The filming crew had requested to move a painting out of shot, The Goddess, who happens to be a naked woman.
We are afraid of nudity on our screens, our bodies, our home ... but not violence or every other thing we are constantly bombarded with day in and day out? Get real!’
In 2024 Stone recreated the film’s signature leg-crossing moment – a scene that sparked global debate – in a bold
Instagram post”
WORDS Sharon Stone blasts “blatant, harsh sexuality” in modern TV, says she fast-forwards through sex scenes (Fox News, 31/3/26)
AND…
• Stone posted in the Instagram video, gesturing at her body: “I wear it every day. I get up in it. I go to sleep in it. I pee in it.
I poo in it. It’s my apartment. I live here”
• On Basic Instinct: “None of us knew what we were getting in regard to that shot. [Director Paul Verhoeven] was scared to show me. And I get that. Once I had time to calm down, I didn’t make him take it out of the movie when I had the legal
right to. Once I had the chance to step back, I understood – as the director, not the girl in the film – that that made the
movie better”
Comedian/podcaster RUSSELL BRAND – age 50 & a dad of 3 who faces trial over 6 women’s allegations of rape and sexual assault and who has converted to Christianity – said in a YouTube interview: “‘In the UK, where I’m from, the age of consent is 16. I did sleep with a 16-year-old when I was 30. I was a very different person. I was immature.
Consensual sex with a lot of people when there is a strong power differential – as there is when you are a famous man who has the ability to attract women that I had – I think involves exploitation. I think it is exploitative.
My sexual conduct was selfish. I didn’t apply enough consideration – barely any, I suppose, really – to how that sex was affecting other people.’
Brand said he was among the ‘innocuous party boy-style exploiters of women. It’s plainly something that exists within our industry and one might say culture at large.
While I was transgressing lines of being a person that was sleeping with people because I had availability to – not only, by the way, with waitresses, strippers, fans and people but powerful women, powerful professional women that had gravitas, status and power – I was only really thinking of myself.
I had consensual sex with lots and lots of women. You can argue that’s not appropriate, but the age of consent is an important thing and the ability to consent is an important thing.
What fame gave me, and what addiction fuelled, was opportunity for endless consent – which led me to be a hedonist, a fool and an exploiter of women.
That is wrong and something that needs to redeemed, addressed and atoned for.
[I query that] this is a judicial criminal matter where consent was overridden.
What happened was consent was directed. That’s what being famous and being charismatic affords you – the ability to direct consent.
It’s a sin, it’s an expression of selfishness and forced idolatry.’
Brand is accused of raping a woman in a hotel room, grabbing a TV worker’s breasts and orally raping her after dragging her into a male toilet, and kissing and groping a radio worker after pushing her against a wall”
WORDS Russell Brand admits “exploitative” sex with 16-year-old girl – but denies he broke the law (Independent 23/4/26)
AND…
• To podcaster Megyn Kelly, who made sexual harassment allegations against Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, Brand said: “You’re
right to be angry with [me] as a woman who, given what I know about you in the industry you’ve worked in, I’m sure that you have personal reasons for feeling aggrieved towards powerful men. It’s plainly something that exists within our industry and one might
say culture at large’
Actor ANNE HATHAWAY, age 43, “has garnered attention for her very youthful looks on red carpets. But she has insecurities and worries about how her body looks sometimes, saying: ‘Some days you look in the mirror and you’re just like: “Not bad.” And some days you’re like: “What?”‘ – which hints at a struggle with body dysmorphia.
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a mental health problem. People with BDD may be so upset about the appearance of their body that it gets in the way of their ability to live normally, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Hathaway said: ‘You know how you have your aspirational swimsuit that you keep around just in case you have a good day? Then you have your swimsuit that’s got you no matter what? I accidentally packed the aspirational swimsuit. Which I then had to wear on a “What?” day. So I’m ready to have this great day with my family. And I’m going to be in front of strangers and people have phones.
I looked and I just went: “What?” Then I looked again and I said: “You are 43.” And looking at a 43-year-old body, I was like: “Nice.”
When I was expecting to see something that I am not, I felt insecure. But when I actually looked at what it actually is, I was OK with it. You realise that worry should be reserved for the really big stuff.
Very often, conversations about ageing presume that the first part of life is the happiest and most fulfilling. I don’t necessarily think that’s true. I wasn’t expecting to find another gear at 40.’
Hathaway didn’t want to ‘discuss medical information’ after fans insisted she looks so young because she had a facelift. She credits stopping drinking and using Shiseido products (she’s a brand ambassador) for her amazing appearance.
Last year she hit the red carpet looking as if she was in her 20s, which ignited rumours.
She has never suggested she’s gone under the knife, though in 2008 she stated she felt pressure to be ‘cookie-cutter beautiful’ when she was younger and even considered a nose job.
In 2024 she said asking about surgery is ‘extremely intimate’ and she doesn’t judge what other actors do: ‘Whatever means they find to not live crushed by shame or a lack of self-confidence, I say bravo.’
In the past she denied taking injections, saying in 2010 that she did not want Botox because she liked her face to ‘reflect a personality’ and keep the same smile she had as a child.
But her youthful appearance has led to speculation from fans and plastic surgeons. This reached fever pitch last year, when publications suggested she had ‘tweakments’ like Botox, fillers or a ‘ponytail lift’”
WORDS Anne Hathaway, 43, reveals her anxiety over body dysmorphia as she shares very candid story (Daily Mail, 27/3/26)
Actor THEO JAMES, age 40 – dad to a girl aged 4 & a son aged 2 – says about the manosphere: “‘It’s a lot about deep-seated insecurity. Men who feel they need to be performative or misogynistic – it’s about them not feeling good enough but it’s hidden with meaningless bravado.
On top of that is what we’ve reached at the moment, this cataclysmic capitalism. You are celebrated, no matter what you are, if you’re stinking rich and driving around in flash cars. That has been epitomised with Trumpism.
It’s terrifying having a son, because people get lured into this idea very easily. And you don’t have to be, as people like to say, “hyperwoke”. It’s about a base level of empathy and some semblance of morality. That isn’t cool, is it? It’s not cool to talk about those things – it’s cool to be like: “Fuck you! I earn loads of cash – bring it on.”
But there is a deep emptiness within that, as we all know. Eventually all those people will find that out. The bottom of the bell curve is waiting for them, particularly people that throw themselves into empty commercialism and toxicity in that way.’
James got candid about the pressures of being a leading man in an industry obsessed with physicality, saying the idea that men have to be really muscular and go to the gym a lot is central to the manosphere because it’s a way of ‘forming identity.
Body image is a problem. Obviously women have dealt with it for thousands of years. With men there’s this toxic-masculinity thing about forming identity through your body. You have to be bigger and more muscular.
There’s this epidemic with steroids and performance-enhancing things with younger and younger kids.
A lot of toxic masculinity comes down to unclear identity: they feel untethered, reduced. The misogyny comes from lots of successful strong women around them – they don’t know how to deal with that.
They’re confused by who they are or should be, so the easiest thing to do is to latch onto something and money, going to the gym a lot. Telling people to go fuck themselves – that’s easy, an easy win, but the ramifications of what it does to a generation of men is the trickier part.’
Previously he’d said: ’When I turned 40 it was more existentially seismic than I thought. This industry – and the world we live in – is more and more visual. People, everything, is filtered. It’s definitely something that plays on your mind. But people like to see history in someone’s face and personality. So literal and metaphorical lines on the face are interesting because they tell a story’”
WORDS Theo James says it’s “terrifying having a son” as he weighs in on the “deep emptiness” of the manosphere and “toxic masculinity” (Daily Mail, 8/4/26)
“From daring gowns with high-waist slits to saucy sheer panels that come dangerously close to revealing it all, celebrities have a new body power move. Going knickerless is a trend only for the brave, but celebs including Gwyneth Paltrow and Elizabeth Hurley have embraced it and dared to go bare down there.
Not only does it make outfits look seamless, but the trend is also a cheeky way for celebs to show off their flawless figures in the ultimate power move.
On Instagram GWYNETH PALTROW, age 53, showed off snaps from the Oscars, where she donned a gown with a completely sheer side slit, revealing she was wearing no underwear. In a video on her Goop YouTube channel, she revealed she had to be sewn into the dress, saying: ‘I won’t be able to pee the whole time I’m there.’
Opting for high-stakes attire on the red carpet and in everyday life is a clever way for celebs who spend their lives in front of flashing cameras to regain control over their body and it totally flips the script for those in the public eye.
Celebs like Rita Ora and Zara McDermott have showed off outfits with a notable lack of underwear, but fashion presenter Naomi Isted says it’s not just about stars wanting the shock factor of wearing no knickers – it can also be a more tasteful way to show skin: ‘If they are trying to get away from trashier styles they may have worn, celebs are more inventive in the way they flash skin.’
Many celebrities like KIM KARDASHIAN, age 45, spend several hours a day working out with gruelling exercise regimes, so who can blame them if they want to flaunt the results of their hard work?
Kardashian has generated a buzz time and time again as she’s shared countless saucy snaps showing off her famous behind. She ‘went without underwear for years’ because she found it ‘uncomfortable. For quite a while I simply wouldn’t wear any.’
For someone as influential as Kardashian, there’s probably little in the way of rest days or downtime, so being able to bare all with no underwear is a great way to boast about her dedication to maintaining her killer bod amid running businesses, being a mum and breaking the internet.
JLo, another fan of going commando, has flaunted her curves in dresses with sheer panelling and side splits high enough to make the smallest gust of wind something to fear. You could even say she started the trend, at least on red carpets, with her ultra-glam sheer looks in the early 00s.
LADY GAGA said: ‘I rarely put on underwear. It just seems unnecessary. And I don’t feel embarrassed about it.’
KATE BECKINSALE, also a lover of the ultimate power move, showed off her figure at 52 with a daring display on social media and celebrated her 60th birthday last year with a picture of her sitting pretty in some grass in the total nude. In 2011 she said: ‘I don’t use knickers unless I have a really short skirt on or I’m layering up for something like a hike. Otherwise I just don’t care for them.’
Although it may look as if celebs are wearing no underwear at all, a few sneaky stars have tried the naked-dressing trend by wearing specialised undetectable thongs or even stick-on underwear.
Hollywood Fashion Secrets pros say that celebs opt for adhesive thongs since normal underwear ‘bunches and bulges in all the wrong places and totally ruins the impact of a tight-fitting dress’.
But celebs not quite brave enough to go completely without their knickers, opting instead to show off lingerie and corsets, just make those who do bare all that much more powerful”
WORDS Going bare: How going knickerless became the new celeb body power move as stars including Gwyneth Paltrow & JLO share cheeky snaps (The Sun, 2/4/26)
“Insurance agent BRYON NOEM, age 56 & a dad of 3, is a cross-dresser. That’s no one’s business but his own. But he’s married to Kristi Noem, age 54, the fired Homeland Security secretary who serves in the most ruthlessly hostile administration ever when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community and gender nonconformists.
Last month photos were published of Bryon in hot pink shorts and what appeared to be balloons as fake breasts under a T-shirt in selfies he posted to adult sites. The Daily Mail said he spent at least $25,000 in chat rooms with models on the ‘bimbofication’ scene, which fetishises women with bodies cartoonishly enhanced via surgery and silicone injections.
A spokesperson said Kristi is ‘devastated’ over the revelations: ‘The family was blindsided and ask for privacy and prayers.’
What Noem wants is the kind of compassion she denied others when, as DHS secretary, she sent ICE agents into neighbourhoods with impunity. What she wants is privacy to deal with a private matter that should be of no concern to anyone outside her family.
Her husband’s cross-dressing isn’t a problem. Her hypocrisy is. That
hypocrisy flows through the administration Noem continues to serve. In saying ‘That’s too bad’, Trump expressed a level of empathy to which he is usually immune.
On social media, which runs on schadenfreude, empathy for the Noems seems to be in short supply. There are reminders that Noem expressed anti-LGBTQ sentiments even in 2022, when as South Dakota’s governor she said: ‘I’ve never supported gay marriage as far as the legality of it in our state. For me, a lot of my faith has to do with that and the legal documentation of that.’
Only Bryon can identify his sexual orientation. But his wife is part of an administration that has made Americans’ private business – about healthcare choices, bodily autonomy and living an authentic life – the government’s business, especially for trans and nonbinary people. Instead of empathy and legal protections, they’ve had executive orders and court challenges designed to criminalise and legislate them out of existence.
If Bryon was a teacher in South Dakota, a conservative school board probably would have fired him. In 2024 a principal in Oklahoma was forced out of his job because he had a side gig as a drag performer.
Since Bryon is the husband of a Trump loyalist, Republicans are mostly ignoring the news about him. There’s nothing wrong with that – his actions broke no laws. But his wife does not deserve the grace that, as a former governor and DHS secretary, she never gave to those who were disparaged, brutalised or killed on her watch”
WORDS Bryon Noem’s cross-dressing isn’t a problem. Kristi Noem’s hypocrisy is (Boston Globe, 3/4/26)
“UK royal QUEEN CAMILLA, age 78, expressed solidarity and sympathy with female survivors of violence and sexual abuse in an International Women’s Day speech viewed as ‘a very thinly veiled reference to the “Epstein issue”‘. She warned that a ‘culture of silence’ can ‘empower violence against women and girls’ [VAWG].
The royal family is faced with numerous allegations about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s links with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
A long-time campaigner against domestic violence and sexual abuse, the queen spoke at the event hosted by Women of the World, of
which she is president, about her meetings with French abuse survivor Gisèle Pelicot and the family of Carol Hunt, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2024.
Camilla was wearing a badge, given to her by Ms Pelicot, which read ‘Shame Must Change Sides’. She said: ‘To every survivor of every kind of violence, many of whom have not been able to tell their stories or who have not been believed, please know that you are not alone.
We stand with you and alongside you, today and every day, in solidarity, sorrow and sympathy.
Every woman has a story. And these stories must be told. Because when we live in a culture of silence, we empower violence against women and girls.’
She spoke about the misconception that violence against women is ‘a woman problem’, saying: ‘Nor is it helpful to frame it as a “man problem” in a way that casts all men as potential perpetrators. It is “everyone’s problem” – and only by treating it as such can this scourge be eradicated for good.’
Royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills said: ‘While accepting that “every woman has a story”, Camilla says: “So too does every man.” Her reference to this being just as much about how we raise our boys felt like a new avenue to explore’”
WORDS Queen supports abuse survivors in speech seen as reference to “Epstein issue” (Sky News, 10/3/26)
Musician/actor MATT WILLIS, age 42, wants his son Ace, 14, to see him onstage as the “gender-fluid, flamboyant Emcee in the adult-themed musical Cabaret at London’s iconic Kit Kat Club, saying: ‘This show puts a middle finger up to toxic masculinity. Cabaret’s been around for a long time and it still resonates today.
My son has come to watch this – I think that’s really important. There’s a whole world of people embracing differences and all different parts of culture and humanity. That’s what the Kit Kat Club does’”
WORDS Matt Willis’ unexpected parenting move with 14-year-old son to challenge “toxic masculinity” (Hello, 8/4/26)
AND…
• When Ace, at age 9, “rocked a pink crop top on social media”, his mum – TV presenter EMMA WILLIS, age 50, – said: ‘If my son wants to wear a pink top, I’m certainly not going to stop him.
It’s a really individual, personal thing. My son likes what he likes and far be it for me to stop him expressing himself or experimenting however he likes with clothes.
Let kids explore. They don’t just have to explore in the dirt with worms and spiders – they can explore with colour, clothes and hair. I just let him be him.’
Willis said she was overwhelmed by the support Ace was met with, adding: ‘He’s always had long hair and he’s a very free and open-minded boy [who’s] like: ‘Why do I have to dress in green, blue and grey if I like pink, red and purple – why isn’t that OK?’
He’s kind of always been that way. We, I think, are trying to raise him as a very open-minded and inclusive individual.’
About wanting to protect Ace from critics, she said: ‘This was just a young boy expressing himself the way he wants to. I thought: “Did you not watch ‘80s dance movies? All the boys wore crop tops and it was cool!”
He is very individual, he dresses the way he wants and he’s really happy doing that. Why would I try to suppress that?’”
• Willis started “thinking about stereotyping. How bonkers it is that a boy, just because he has long hair and is wearing pink, is mistaken for a girl.
For Children’s Mental Health Week she said of her kids: ‘Raised in exactly the same way, yet all unique. My teenager before her time, my boss lady baby and my rainbow boy”
Actor AMANDA PEET, age 54, hasn’t “given in” to the pressures of being “surrounded by peers opting for Botox and the latest injectables, saying: ‘I haven’t had any work done yet on my face – not that I need to explain that because, like, it’s really evident. But it’s something I’m contemplating. I think about it. I have a lot of friends who do it and a lot of friends who don’t, and it’s very much wrapped up in my identity. Like: who am I if I get a facelift and who am I if I don’t get a facelift? And why does it matter? And does it matter?’
In 2016 she wrote an essay, Never Crossing The Botox Rubicon, about navigating the entertainment industry having drawn a hard line at cosmetic procedures.
Peet revealed she wasn’t above reconsidering her image and softening the effects of ageing: ‘I’ve bleached my teeth, dyed my hair, peeled and lasered my face and tried a slew of age-defying creams. More than once I’ve asked the director of photography on a show to soften my laugh lines. Nothing about this suggests I’m aging gracefully.’
But she feared Botox and filler: ‘I’m afraid one visit to a cosmetic dermatologist would be my gateway drug. I’d go in for a tiny, circumscribed lift and come out looking like a blowfish. Or someone whose face is permanently pressed up against a glass window. Or like I’m standing in the jet stream of a 747.
What’s the point of doing it if everyone can tell? I want the thing that makes me look younger, not the thing that makes me look like I did the thing.’
Peet laughs about having to hold herself accountable to her essay: ‘I wish I hadn’t fucking written it, so now I can’t cross the Rubicon because I said I wasn’t going to. I boxed myself in.
It was about my fear of doing things to my face that were more than superficial. It feels to me like: if you do it, then… is that tantamount to not having acceptance about death?’”
WORDS Amanda Peet, 54, Still Hasn’t Gotten Botox or Filler. The Reason Has to Do With Death (Today Show, 3/4/26)
AND…
• In 2016 Peet said: “I’ve never gotten Botox or fillers. I’ve never done anything to my face that’s ‘invasive’. I think it has a lot to do with having 2 girls.”
And she wrote: “Since we’re all going to get wrinkly and die, maybe we’ve got to move in the direction of acceptance about that. Botox or no Botox, we shouldn’t feel bitter, because we’re ALL going to look like shit”
Actor HALLE BERRY, age 59, spoke on the Sex With Emily podcast about “the great orgasm gap. This gratification for many women is not so easy to reach every time, causing many to fake their climax to bring disappointing proceedings to a close.
According to Psychology Today, 59% of heterosexual women admit to faking an orgasm at least once with a sexual partner, which stems from unrealistic social expectations and how women’s bodies work.
This is in part influenced by porn use in men, a medium where orgasms and sexual enjoyment are almost immediate and frequent. This representation of sex is not informed by reality but has become how some men view intercourse.
Even though they come thick and fast in porn, climaxing from penetration every time is not a common experience for women.
Berry faked it because of ‘what we see in porn’. As a result, sex was frequently ‘very performative’.
While not wanting to hurt your partner’s feelings is a valid concern, pretending that what they’re doing is driving you wild can double down on a core sexual malfunction rather than act as a learning moment to improve your sex life.
Berry added: ‘I’m like: “I come first like you come first to you. We both deserve to have this be a mutually enjoyable experience so we both can roll over and go to sleep because we feel good – not one snoring and the other one looking at the ceiling, going: What the hell?”‘”
WORDS Reasons why so many women fake orgasms as Halle Berry vows to never do it again (Unilad, 25/2/26)
AND…
• “It’s better because I can now say to my partner: ‘Here’s what I want. Here’s what I don’t want. This feels good, this does not. You might have heard that that was a good thing to do to a woman’s vagina but it’s actually not. Not mine anyway.
It’s having the confidence to show up for myself and realise that I deserve an orgasm also. I know in our youth sometimes everybody has faked it because you just want it to be done.
Sometimes you just want the pounding to stop, so you just say [comedically imitates orgasm]: ‘I’m good too’ then you go find your vibrator in the bathroom and you handle it yourself.
We had to get there so he felt good about bringing us to orgasm and we had to say we did it so he felt good about himself. But that’s putting his needs before our own. I don’t do that anymore. I’m like: ‘I come first like you come first to you. We both deserve to have this be a mutually enjoyable experience’”
Documentary-maker LOUIS THEROUX, age 55, was inspired to make the upcoming Netflix film Inside The Manosphere by hearing, in 2022, his 3 teenage sons discuss Andrew Tate: “The manosphere runs on an engine of misogyny, fundamentally – it’s become quite normal to say that women shouldn’t vote. That feels shocking. Also when you hear them say gay people shouldn’t be allowed to mix with straight people.
A lot of these guys are almost role-playing as alphas – as silverbacks with harems of subordinate females. That’s the dream.
Being a dick is enormously profitable on the internet.
They are managing to make a kind of success for themselves in this bizarre media wilderness we now inhabit. It feels like there’s a culture of rather traumatised people who’ve come out of households in which things weren’t always OK and had to learn these strategies of survival then packaged them. The ideology is a compensation for the weakness they felt as children.
You have to hold the influencers responsible [for the manosphere] and the media barons who are profiting from cynically deploying algorithms and platforms and technology in a way that kind of makes us the worst versions of ourselves. And to an extent a political and cultural establishment.
The thing is, we’re all kind of complicit in this to different degrees. We’re kind of colluding in our own moronification. Helplessly drawn in, aware at the same time, as we are endlessly lashed to the screens of our phones as Odysseus was to his mast.
[On spending time with 2 young Tate fans] You realise there is a hunger for something. There’ve always been people who feel left behind by life. We’re all pressing our noses up against the shop window of Instagram and TikTok, seeing things we feel should be ours. That can be hugely demoralising.
[With the muscles and Lamborghinis] it’s like: ‘I need something to feel less empty, to feel like I’m competing in the game of life.’
[On boys being let down or left behind in some ways] As a father of 3 boys, I’m conscious of boys feeling that they’ve got a place at the table, while recognising that historically women have been underrepresented or discriminated against. People should be sensitive about the message boys are getting. That ‘puppy-dogs’ tails’ mentality has crept into some areas of life. ou’ve got to separate masculinity from toxic masculinity.
[On how making the film made him better as a father] If you’re a dad and you’re in the home, you’re already ahead of the game. Not to say you can’t still be a great dad if you’re not living in the house, but I don’t think there’s any substitute for being in the lives of the people.
But I’m aware I’m having to compete with versions of masculinity that exist on the internet from guys with their harems of women and their big, muscly bodies.
And if you’re 15, 16, and you’ve got a grey dad who’s kind of stumbling around the house in a dressing gown versus an alpha-male influencer with his big muscles, then you can see why you’re slightly behind the curve in a sense. So you’ve just got to be hands on.
I suffer from being overly agreeable; I’m conflict averse. So one of my internal things is how much to model a sort of masculinity that’s more imposing, more assertive”
WORDS How Louis Theroux took on the manosphere (GQ, 25/2/26)
Actor JESSIE BUCKLEY, age 36, has revealed that “she went through a battle with an eating disorder and depression during her teenage years. She credited a love of music and theatre for helping her recover.
Buckley said on the radio show Desert Island Discs: ‘I had an eating disorder. It took time, it took a lot of help and also it was depression.
I didn’t know how to be alive the way I wanted to be and it was difficult… I think I’ve been able to transform it and recognise our vulnerabilities as humans in the world.’
@TheJessieBuckley has been in therapy since age 17 and still goes weekly: ‘When I moved to London, I still wasn’t out of the woods. There were moments where I was like: “If I don’t get better here, this music, this being part of theatre – I’m not going to be able to do this anymore and I probably won’t survive.”
That was the thing that turned it in my head. I was like: “I don’t want to sacrifice that – this is bigger than that” and won.’
About being criticised for her appearance on the BBC talent show I’d Do Anything, she said: ‘That was a young woman who’s trying to discover her body and herself, like we all do.
I think I was putting a brave face on, because really what I wanted to do was sing, act and be part of this industry and all of a sudden you had to be a certain kind of person. I just wasn’t.
I’m so proud of that girl. I think she did great’”
WORDS Jessie Buckley reveals teenage battle with eating disorder (Telegraph, 8/3/26)
AND…
• On being on I’d Do Anything: “I don’t know if I’d have that courage now – and I don’t know if that was kind of innocence or ignorance.’
‘Not fully well’ and ‘depressed’, she experienced her treatment on the show as ‘a lot of body shaming and bringing me to femininity school. I was growing into my body. I was 17. I was in a moment of discovery. As women, it’s such unfair objectification.’
Judges and stars on the show commented on her appearance, with a choreographer encouraging her to be ‘more ladylike’ and learn how to dance in 6-inch heels: ‘I was just trying to move into a space of myself.
I really hope that a 15, 17, whatever-age woman never has to be brutalised quite like what happened on that show. But I didn’t recognise it fully. I just felt it, which was difficult’”
Actor NICOLA COUGHLAN, age 39, “has insisted she does not want to be a pin-up for body positivity or any discussions about the shapes and sizes of actors.
She says she doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as an advocate for her body image, adding: ‘The thing I say sometimes that pisses people off is: “I have no interest in body positivity.”
When I was a kid growing up, I never thought about that. I didn’t look at actors and think about their bodies. So I actually don’t care.’
Coughlan has been dealing with lots of comments since the nude scenes in the second half of season 3 of the Netflix show Bridgerton. She says: ‘What was really bizarre was when I was shooting that series I was exercising a lot because I knew I had to, so I had lost a bunch of weight – I was probably a size 10, and one of the corsets was a size 8. And then people talked about how I was plus size and I was like: “How fucked are we that I am the biggest woman you want to see on screen?”
I remember this really drunk girl once talking to me in a bathroom being like: “I loved Bridgerton because of your body.” And
started talking about my body and I was like: “I want to die. I hate this so much.
It’s really hard when you work on something for months and months of your life, you don’t see your family, you really dedicate yourself and then it comes down to what you look like – it’s so fucking boring’”
WORDS Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan says she has no interest in “body positivity” and wants to be judged on her acting (Mirror, 5/3/26)
AND…
• Coughlan found it “hard to take the weight of thousands of opinions on how you look”
• “There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera and that was my idea, my choice. It just felt like the biggest ‘fuck you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body; it was amazingly empowering. I felt beautiful in the moment and I thought: ‘When I’m 80, I want to look back on this and remember how fucking hot I looked!’”
• “I’m a few sizes below the average size of a woman in the UK and I’m seen as a ‘plus-size heroine’. Making it about how I look is reductive”
• “All I care about is the work. Bodies change. If I lose or gain weight or I do anything it’s no one’s business”
Actor EMMA STONE, age 37, “sparked health concerns” after going to the Baftas (British Academy Film Awards) last month in a dress “featuring a halter neckline and keyhole cutout below the chest.
Many social media users expressed concern over the apparent change in her appearance, claiming she looked unhealthy and pointing to her visible collarbone, sunken cheeks and slender frame as signs that she was underweight.
One user wrote: ‘This is a body eating itself, I’ve been through this, many women and men too. It’s not something to romanticise.’
Another said: ‘She looks cadaverous. The effect of that extreme thinness on teenage girls’ minds is a tragedy.’
Another fan called the beauty standard that glamorises thinness ‘extremely concerning. Let’s leave the EDs [eating disorders] in the 00s and stop pressuring women to be so thin.’
Others noted that Stone was ‘half the size’ she'd been in the film Bugonia.
In 2012 Stone said she struggled with self-confidence and sometimes felt ‘disgusted’ with her body.
Stone said: ‘I do have that thing of: “Oh my God, I’m disgusting – I ate a huge Wagamama lunch, the whole yaki soba, and I feel so fat.” But I’m still gonna eat that stuff, and you know what? You can get nice, loose clothes that cover it all up.’
She said she has body image issues ‘because I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t’.
Stone said she indulged in Mississippi’s comfort food while filming The Help: ‘Suddenly nothing fitted me, but then they have such delicious food in the South and I don’t believe in depriving yourself. Growing up, I’ve seen people who have horrible issues with food.’
Two years later she said she struggled to keep weight on ‘especially when I’m under stress and as I’ve gotten older’. Stone attributed her weight to genetic factors and called out body-shaming commenters: ‘People have a right to imagine what they want to imagine. My job at those moments is to tell MYSELF the truth. My great hope for us as young women is to start being kinder to ourselves so we can be kinder to each other. To stop shaming ourselves and other people for things we don’t know the full story on. There’s a sense that we’re all “too” something and we’re all not enough.’
Stone said she viewed weight-related insecurities as a societal issue that especially affects women and girls, famous or not: ‘No matter how things look from the outside, we can all be super critical of ourselves and of our image in the mirror’”
WORDS “Sends The Wrong Message To Young Women”: Emma Stone’s Look At 2026 BAFTAs Worries Many (Bored Panda, 23/2/26)
TV personality KELLY OSBOURNE, age 41 and the daughter of singer Ozzy Osbourne, “spoke out against body shamers on social media after being inundated with comments about her weight loss, posting: ‘Literally can’t believe how disgusting some human beings are! No one deserves this sort of abuse!’
The mother-of-one’s weight has always been a topic of discussion in the media, especially after she and her mother Sharon attended Ozzy’s funeral in July looking slimmer than ever. Since then Osbourne has had to defend her trim appearance, explaining that the stress of her father’s death has had a huge impact on her body.
Osbourne grew up in the public eye as the daughter of a mega-famous rock star and as part of her family’s popular reality series The Osbournes, which ran from 2002-05.
Last year she recalled: ‘I got pulled into the head of the agency’s office and he gave me a whole speech about how I was too fat for TV and I needed to lose weight, and that if
I lost weight I would look better. He was just saying: “You’re not a movie star, but you could be one if you lost weight."’
In 2018 Osbourne underwent gastric sleeve surgery, calling it ‘the best thing I have ever done’. With a combination of the surgery, a strict diet and high-intensity interval training, Osbourne was able to drop 85lb after struggling with her weight and body image her whole life.
In 2022 she gained around 100lb and developed gestational diabetes when she was pregnant with her son and stayed out of the spotlight to avoid the trolls. In the last few years, Osbourne has slimmed down considerably.
Recently she said: ‘I know everybody thinks I took Ozempic. I did not take Ozempic. I don’t know where that came from. My mom took Ozempic’”
WORDS Kelly Osbourne hits out at “disgusting” trolls over body shaming comments (Mirror, 24/2/26)
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• On social media criticism of her body: “Most of the comments are coming from grown-ass women. It’s absolutely devastating that women can’t support other women”
On the language for orgasms used in the Netflix series Bridgerton by actor HANNAH DODD, age 30, as the character Francesca, who “can’t get no satisfaction.
Dodd laughs: ‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said the word pinnacle in the last year.’ That’s because Francesca is on a quest to discover the secrets of female pleasure and pinnacle is the word she uses for the orgasm that eludes her.
Newly wed, Francesca realises she is ignorant about what happens in a 4-poster bed and resolves to discover the secrets of sex from her married friends and family.
‘I wonder if that was a bit of a workshop with, like, what word they were going to use,’ Dodd muses during an interview.
Showrunner Jess Brownell says they discussed which term to use. ‘It felt like orgasm wasn’t a word that was used in that time period,’ says Brownell of the Regency era (early 1800s). ‘It needed to be a word that sounded right coming out of Francesca’s mouth over and over again.’
Pinnacle was deemed obscure and funny enough for her to use. Did that term hit the spot?
Novelist and historian of sex Jessica Cale says that pinnacle isn’t quite historically accurate – but it is ‘very effective. One of the more common terms is “the crisis”, which is probably the funniest one.’
The Oxford English Dictionary dates the word orgasm to the late 1600s, but it was usually used as a clinical term. The first evidence of its use is in medical literature by physician George Thompson in 1671.
Euphemisms have abounded for centuries. Cale references popular erotic fiction like Fanny Hill, aka Memoirs Of A Woman Of Pleasure, which was published in parts during the late 1740s. The novel refers to orgasms as ‘the point. The critical period. The die-away moment – and this is the best one – the “critical ecstasy, the melting flow, into which nature, spent with an excess of pleasure, dissolves and dies away”’
WORDS The crisis? The point? For Bridgerton, the word “orgasm” wouldn’t quite do (AP, 3/3/26)
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• Dodd on the orgasm gap: “It’s this unfair thing where men are allowed to have experience and women are not.
It was nice to see Francesca leaning on her female counterparts to get information. Unless you can have those conversations, I don’t understand how women were meant to get this information, physically and anatomically. Francesca doesn’t know what’s meant to be happening!
Francesca and John really have to push themselves outside their comfort zones to have those conversations. It was nice to show the honesty of that in relationships”
Ex child actor VALERIE BERTINELLI, age 65, has revealed “that she was sexually abused at age 11, saying: ‘Because I’m healing from it, it’s not so scary anymore. I can say it out loud: I was sexually assaulted. It doesn’t feel like it owns me anymore.’
It’s part of the ‘raw truth’ she shares in her new book, Getting Naked: ‘It’s about getting naked with who I am emotionally, physically. It was really about getting to the parts I thought were shameful and come to find out they’re not. They’re all kinds of different facets of what makes us who we are.’
She included a picture of herself at age 11 ‘because that was the little girl that was sexually abused. And it boggles my mind that this little girl was taken advantage of that way. It boggles my mind because it’s still happening. I’m furious about it. We need to start speaking up and saying: “Enough.”
I’m pissed off that it happened. At 11 years old I loved to colour, read, play with my Barbies and ride my bike around the block. I loved my cats. I was just a little girl.
I had a huge anxiety attack in 2024 that brought me to my knees.’ That meant digging into what was behind the body shame and self-criticism she’d held over the years.
‘All of that shame had nothing to do with my body. It was just something to take out my shame on. My poor body. I was so mean to it. I just needed to get all those voices out of my head.
People will wonder: “Why do I have so much self-loathing? That’s not normal.” It’s because trauma happened in my childhood for the most part. It’s pretty textbook.
I’m a survivor,’ she says”
WORDS Valerie Bertinelli Reveals She Was Sexually Abused at Age 11: “I Don’t Feel Shame About It Anymore. I’m Pissed Off That It Happened” (People, 4/3/26)
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• Getting Naked “addresses Bertinelli’s ‘insecurities that have haunted her for decades’, including body image issues and a persistent need to be perfect – insecurities that a wide range of women can identify with, per the book’s synopsis: ‘It’s about the myths we believe when we’re young – about beauty, love, success – and how we carry them until they break us open. It’s about unlearning the script that says women must please, endure and stay silent”
Entrepreneur PARIS HILTON, age 44, is advocating – based on her own experience – for victims to take legal action against creators and distributors of AI-generated porn deepfakes with the DEFIANCE (Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits) Act. Last year she campaigned to pass a bill protecting institutionalised young people.
Standing on the US Capitol steps, Hilton said of the 2004 leak by her boyfriend of a sex tape: “When I was 19 a private, intimate video of me was shared with the world without my consent. It was abuse. There were no laws to protect me. There weren’t even words for what had been done to me. The internet was still new and so was the cruelty that came with it.
They called me names, laughed, made me the punchline. They sold my pain for clicks then told me to be quiet, move on, even be grateful for the attention. These people didn’t see me as a young woman who had been exploited.
They didn’t see my panic, humiliation or shame. I lost control over my body, my reputation. My sense of safety and self-worth was stolen from me.
What happened to me then is happening now to millions of women and girls in a new and more terrifying way.
Before, someone had to betray your trust and steal something real. Now all it takes is a computer and a stranger’s imagination. Deepfake pornography has become an epidemic.
Over 100,000 explicit deepfake images [of me have been] made by AI. Each time a new one appears, that horrible feeling returns, that fear that someone somewhere is looking at it right now and thinking it’s real. No amount of money or lawyers can stop it or protect me from more. It’s the newest form of victimisation happening at scale to your daughters, your sisters, your friends and neighbours.”
The statistic that 1 in 8 girls experience deepfake porn Hilton finds “staggering. Too many women are afraid to exist online or sometimes to exist at all. I know how that feels, because I lived it.
Now I have a daughter who’s just 2.5 years old and I would go to the ends of the earth to protect her. But I can’t protect her from this, not yet. And that’s why I’m here.
This isn’t just about technology, it’s about power. It’s about using someone’s likeness to humiliate, silence and strip them of their dignity. Victims deserve more than after-the-fact apologies. We deserve justice.
When your image is violated, it doesn’t disappear. It lives inside you, but so does your power. Telling the truth helped me heal.
I am Paris Hilton, a woman, a wife, a mom, a survivor – and what was done to me was wrong. And I will keep telling the truth to protect every woman, every girl, every survivor now and for the future”
WORDS Paris Hilton Opens Up About Nude Video Leaking When She Was 19: “People Called It a Scandal. It Wasn’t. It Was Abuse” (People, 22/1/26)
Actor SAM CLAFLIN, age 39, “struggled with his self-image after working in Hollywood for 15 years and developing body dysmorphia because of the appearance-obsessed industry, saying: ‘I had a topless scene in one of my first movies, but it wasn’t in the script and I got told a week before they were going to [take] my top off.’
About this expectation of constant physical perfection he said:
‘I was like: “Shit, I haven’t been working out – what am I going to do?” This is my first introduction to the world.’
He can barely stand to see his own face onscreen: ‘I’m incredibly insecure. I just went to a screening of a film I was in and everyone [asked]: “How was it?” And [I was like:] “I hated it.” It’s my face
I don’t like.
There’s this Hollywood assumption that it’s the men with the
6-packs who sell the movie. So there was a pressure that was what I needed to look like.
As a result I developed a form of body dysmorphia. It wasn’t quite an eating disorder and I’m not blaming anyone but myself, but it was definitely because of the industry I’m in.
I’ve been massively affected [by body dysmorphia]. I’d say most guys are, but I would say mine got quite bad. It’s a real struggle. It’s like an everyday struggle. I am massively impacted by what other people think and if they think I look good.’
His deep sincerity about the difficulties of masculinity saw many viewers share how social expectations impact their self-image. One praised Claflin’s ‘brutal vulnerability’”
(Unilad, 5/2/26)
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• “Claflin says his body dysmorphia may have stemmed from his teen years because he hit ‘puberty late’ and didn’t feel ‘like
I was good-looking or strong enough’. When he couldn’t do a pull-up in phys ed he was ‘incredibly embarrassed’.
In 2017 he was body shamed on one job: ‘They literally made me pull my shirt up and were grabbing my fat and going: “You need to lose a bit of weight.”’ He ‘felt like a piece of meat’.
Claflin gets ‘nervous’ when he has to take his top off on set: ‘I get really worked up to the point where I spend hours in the gym and not eating for weeks to achieve what I think they’re going for’”
Musician GARY BARLOW, age 55, “opened up about his battle with an eating disorder in Netflix’s new Take That docuseries, sharing that he spent years trying to shed his boyband image when the group split.
Opening up about his bulimia struggles, Barlow said: ‘It was just so excruciating. You just wanted to crawl into a hole. There was a period of about 13 months when I didn’t leave the house once. And I also started to put weight on. The more weight I put on, the less people would recognise me.
I thought: ‘This is good, this is what I’ve been waiting for, living a normal life.’ So I went on a mission. If the food passed me, I’d just eat it… and I killed the pop star.
I would have these nights where I’d eat and eat and eat, but however I felt about myself, I felt 10 times worse the day after.’
Barlow said he developed an eating disorder in the 90s after his solo career failed to take off, admitting he was consumed with ‘jealousy’ over bandmate Robbie Williams’s success: ‘I was incredibly competitive, so yeah, I think I was jealous.’
He added: ‘I called him Blobby instead of Robbie one day – which, I hold my hands up, I shouldn’t have done.’
Detailing the start of his bingeing and purging cycle, he said: ‘One day I thought: “I’ve been out, it’s 10 o’clock, I’ve eaten too much – I need to get rid of this food.”
You just go off to a dark corner of the house and just throw up, just make yourself sick.
You think it’s only once and all of a sudden you’re walking down that corridor again and again – is this it? Is this what I’m going to be doing forever?’
In 2003 came ‘the day when I just went: “I’m not having this anymore. I’m going to change. I want to change and I’m determined that this is not who I’ve become.”
It only took a few years to get that low, but it took me years to get back to who I wanted to be. 10 years probably’”
WORDS Gary Barlow says he WANTED to be fat so he could have anonymity and “kill” his pop star persona after sharing unseen snaps from his bulimia battle (Daily Mail, 28/1/26)
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• “Not being recognised felt wonderful. The more weight I put on, the easier life became. Fat, I was invisible.
I’d go back to bed and lie awake… my heart racing, sore throat, worrying and overstimulated. I can never sleep after I’ve done it.
With every day and every binge, I am eating the pop star to death”
🌈 The documentary Give Me The Ball!, which premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, chronicles the life, legacy and “decades-long friendship of tennis champion BILLIE JEAN KING, age 82, and Rocket Man singer ELTON JOHN, age 78. Their bond deepened as they opened up about their shared struggles with sexuality and food addiction.
King says: ‘We confided in each other about how it was for each other and how hard it was to be gay. We talked a lot about that and how it was horrible hiding. What do you do? How do you figure it out?’
John says: ‘Billie Jean King being such a household name in sport and being gay, it was difficult. It was much easier for me. Everybody in the business knew I was gay. I mean, in show business, it’s not that big of a deal. It was much, much harder for her.’
About food addiction John says: ‘Those sorts of things take their toll and we had very honest conversations about food as an addictive substance. You have to eat to stay alive. I did other drugs, but the hardest drug to give up is food. We both suffered from that’”
WORDS Elton John Says He “Instantly Clicked” with Billie Jean King Over Shared Struggles with Food Addiction and Sexuality (People, 27/1/26)
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• In 2019 John “admitted his obsession with food was all-consuming. He said: ‘I was always rushing, always thinking about the next thing. If I was eating a curry, I couldn’t wait to throw it up so that I could have the next one.’
The singer has spoken before about simultaneously battling bulimia and addictions to cocaine, alcohol and sex.
King said on the podcast Wiser Than Me: ‘I’m a binge eater. Every morning I wake up, I tell myself I have an eating disorder. I still go to therapy. I still think about it’”
🌈 Ex Big 10 college football player JAKE ELDRIDGE, age 21, referenced the smash gay-hockey TV show Heated Rivalry with the recent TikTok caption: “When I watch Heated Rivalry, all I can think about is… how much it would have helped me.”
Eldridge says: “I spent so many years worrying about what people thought about me. Coming out should not even be a question.”
Revealing his sexuality in an emotional 2024 YouTube video, he said: “I went about my life for so long trying to fit a mould and hide who I was. It really, really wrecked me.”
He said about being “hospitalised with ulcerative colitis due to extreme levels of stress heightened by hiding his true self: ‘The stress, in my opinion, was me faking my life every day to please those around me rather than please myself. It was a part of myself that I knew but denied for years and years and years. And I think football for me kind of helped mask that. But football was also the reason I had to mask it’”
WORDS Jake Eldridge says Heated Rivalry might have helped him come out in American football: “I was faking my life every day” (Attitude, 6/2/26)
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• On being gay: “I knew from a young age. But football kind of pushed everything else aside. It felt like everything I’d worked for was finally coming true; at the same time, it felt like an imprisonment.
[At uni] my roommate said people were asking if I was gay. My biggest fear wasn’t just people knowing – it was people knowing before I was ready.
My parents were very accepting. They supported me the whole way”
• “The first time Eldridge considered coming out on the team felt like ‘jumping off a diving board’. So he stayed silent: ‘You don’t know if it’ll be a soft landing or if you’ll hit the pavement. Is my scholarship going to get taken? Am I going to play anymore? Am I going to get bullied to the point where I don’t want to be here? That was terrifying”
• On becoming ill: “It was the stress of being closeted – going in every day and faking who I am for years on end. I’d been saying for years: ‘This is making me sick.’ And then my body finally proved it”
• “I would love to see more and more people be out and be who they are while they're playing. At the same time, do it whenever you're comfortable. Not necessarily pressuring people to come out while they're playing, because football, whenever I was playing, was still very much not the most accepting.
Just do it on your own time and don’t listen to the noise of other people or feel pressured to explain to anybody who you love, why you love them. Live your life for you, not others. It’s one of the hardest things to do, but once you start, it’s one of the most rewarding”
🌈 Watching the hit show Heated Rivalry – about 2 male ice hockey players in a secret relationship – inspired hockey player JESSE KORTUEM, age 40 and from Minneapolis, to come out as gay. He believes the show, which went viral in 2026, “shows attitudes within the sport have shifted for the better.
Kortuem stepped away from playing at 17 as he felt he wouldn’t be accepted because of his sexuality. In 2017 he joined Cutting Edges, an LGBT-inclusive team that plays in North America.
Kortuem says: ‘I’m grateful for where my life has ended up. To finally have that relief – to bring 110% of myself into the locker room. Something was speaking to me through the show – I had to let something out.
People have reached out to say it inspired them to have the conversation with their parents. I’m honestly speechless.’
Seeing the show stirred repressed feelings: ‘I had to hide and looking back now it was tough. It was a place of comfort, but a place I had to edit myself.’
Like many LGBTQ+ amateur athletes, Kortuem has a nagging feeling that having to repress a part of his personality stopped him being his best and potentially cost him sporting opportunities: ‘But I’m now at peace. To have that pride on the ice, it feels like home.
It really hit me and a lot of gay athletes: our whole lives we were taught it was not OK to be gay. To see the show’s positive reception – not only from gay people but straight hockey fans – and watching them cheer on these queer hockey players really resonated, even if these are fictional characters who get this Cinderella story.
The sex part in the first 2 episodes might have been a bit much. I had to tell my 77-year-old parents to stick with the whole show. But hopefully it opens people’s minds. I wouldn’t want my 12-year-old niece watching it, but for it not to be edited down speaks volume about wanting to show positive representation of a love story’"
WORDS “Heated Rivalry inspired me to come out as gay” (BBC, 31/1/26)
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• From Kortuem’s coming out statement: “For a long time, the rink did not feel like a place where I could be all of me. I felt I had to hide parts of myself for far too long.
Growing up as the youngest of four boys in the #StateOfHockey (Minnesota), sports and competition were not just what we did. They were who we were. As a young teenager, I carried a weight that did not seem to fit into that world, and I lived in a constant state of dichotomy.
To my younger self, that identity could never be revealed. I did not think those two worlds could occupy the same person, let alone the same locker room. Coming out in the 2000s did not feel like an option, especially with so little positive representation in the media at the time and it would have been a social disaster at such a large high school. At 17, I walked away from the high school team and the brotherhood of hockey friendships I had developed from a young age…
I want to speak to the athletes out there who are still in the closet or struggling to find their way. I want you to know that there is hope and you’re not alone. There is a life and a deep happiness waiting for you on your path. You will get through this, and it is going to be OK”
🌈 Singer TROYE SIVAN, age 30, is ”reclaiming the narrative after
a TikTok doctor dissected his appearance and suggested he have cosmetic procedures. Sivan posted on Substack: ‘I oscillate constantly between feeling like i’m aging in a good way, getting “sexier” with time, then feeling like gollum’s very close pop-singing relative. So decrepit, somehow both skinny and fat at the same time. I’ve struggled with my body image for a lot of my life, as i’m sure most people have.
I’m historically famously skinny and i’m not THAT skinny anymore. I’m historically famously twinky (I am still the google search result image for twink), and i’m not THAT twinky anymore. Oy vey.’
His reaction to online scrutiny – Prong #1: ‘I am body positive to my core and believe that every body is beautiful. I’m grateful for mine (and yours, sexy) and that it allows me to do all the things I want to, free of pain and illness. It’s also cool to age.’
He was told by ‘a person at the very top of the fashion world: stay ugly. That essentially means: ‘Don’t f*** with your face.’
On going to the gym and following a nutrition plan since December: ‘I’ve been getting bigger — still lean, but more muscley, defined and toned. Sometimes I’ll run my hands over my chest and feel like it belongs to someone else.’
But he has often criticised himself and dabbled with the idea of nips and tweaks while saying they can be ‘dangerous’ and turn out ‘bad’. He had a consultation about getting a fat transfer to the under-eyes: ‘I really don’t want that frozen look but I do notice my “elevens” are starting to show even when i’m not frowning.
Hearing this unsolicited medical advice given publicly by a doctor I do not know pushed me toward Prong #2 for a fair few days. My all-knowing and evil algorithm saw the opportunity in this moment of vulnerability and pulled every lever. I saw video after video of deep plane face lift recoveries and ads for unapproved GLP-1 meds in pill form (I weigh 59kg).’
The doctor deleted his video and apologised”
WORDS Troye Sivan Speaks Out After TikTok Doctor Gives Unsolicited Plastic Surgery Advice: “Every Body Is Beautiful” (US Weekly, 22/1/26)
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• “I like my body and I think that makes some people uncomfortable”
• “Having reservations about being the right age to start getting Baby Botox, Troye candidly said: ‘I guess if i’m backlit, or only show the half of my face where the volume loss under my eyes is less pronounced (my right side is worse than my left) and angle my phone up high above my head and look up sort of doe-eyed, I can kind of still look the same as I did 5 or 6 years ago. The cracks are starting to show though’”