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)
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• “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)
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• 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)
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• 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)
AND…
• 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)
AND…
• “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’”