“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)
AND…
• 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)
AND…
• 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)
AND…
• 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)
AND…
• “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)
AND…
• “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)
AND…
• 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)
AND…
• 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’”