For those of you who’ve been desperate to hear from Meghan Markle since the duchess and Prince Harry stepped down from their senior royal duties, pay attention.
Over the weekend, Good Morning America advertised the appearance, noting that Markle will share an exclusive first look at her the Disney documentary she narrated, Disneynature’s Elephant.
Narrating the documentary, which follows a herd of elephants as they cross 1,000 miles of the Kalahari Desert in search of water, marks Markle’s first gig announced since leaving the U.K. “She was absolutely intrigued by the elephants and transfixed, especially by the female empowerment side,” filmmaker Vanessa Berlowitz told People on April 2. “It really is all about female leadership. It’s a different form of power—it’s about consensual leadership. It’s also very inclusive, as well—very contemporary.” Prince Harry even made an appearance in the recording studio.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Markle and Prince Harry, who recently made the move to Los Angeles, have been volunteering with Project Angel Food, a Los Angeles organization that prepares and delivers healthy meals to those affected by COVID-19 and other serious ailments. Entertainment Tonight reports that the couple first volunteered on Easter Sunday and then delivered another 20 meals on Wednesday, April 15.
“They told us they heard our drivers were overloaded and wanted to volunteer to lighten the drivers’ workload,” Project Angel Food’s executive director Richard Ayoub said. The couple reportedly followed all social distancing guidelines, staying six feet away from others and wore masks and gloves. “I am blown away that they chose us. They care about our vulnerable population,” Ayoub said. “Our clients are most at risk to contract the coronavirus, having compromised immune systems including heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, and most are over the age of 60.”
No word yet on whether or not Markle will open up about her family’s choice to step back from life as senior royals, but we’ll definitely be tuning in to Good Morning America on Monday, April 20 at 7 a.m. EST.
“I stole my first romance novel from my mom. She saw me reading it and freaked out, because nobody should have to explain an orgasm to a five-year-old,” remembers Seattle-based author Olivia Waite. Decades later, her interest hasn’t faded. Waite is one of around 1,900 people in attendance at the Romance Writers of America conference in New York and among her people.
RWA is the largest annual meet-up for professional romance writers in the world, and the association behind it boasts more than 9,000 members, hundreds of whom make a point to attend its signature event. Because as Alabaman writer Louisa Cornell—who has been to 12 conferences—puts it, “Being a writer can be a very lonely job, especially with romance. This genre is picked apart and looked down on. When it’s a situation where it’s a lonely business, and you’re looked down on for what you write, being able to be with your tribe is very important.”
That sense of camaraderie makes the event feel more like a Panhellenic conference than a traditional work requirement. One woman—a doctor with aquamarine hair—trekked from Toulouse, France, just to be there. In another corner, two women set up shop on the floor, and, over pizza, explained that they’d met at a previous conference and had spent the past 12 months co-writing a romance series together. Seasoned veterans were quick to spot orange ribbons on attendees’ badges, an indication it’s the wearer’s first time, to help bring them into the fold.
Tom Smarch Photography
For these women, who often experience online harassment and are subjected to crude or dismissive assessments of their work, the chance to connect with writer and fans, judgment-free, is a welcome change. “I had a friend of my sister’s ask her how I could write romance novels even though I’m single,” recalls novelist Rebecca Connolly, who had come to New York from Indiana. The comment stung, but she’s used to the criticism. “People think if you write romance novels you’re silly, you’re writing ‘mom porn,’ or you’re setting everyone up for unrealistic expectations. It’s sad because it completely belittles our craft, which we put a lot of work and heart into it.” Jen Geigle Johnson, Connolly’s Denver-based writing partner and roommate at RWA, has also experienced this. “It’s a feminist issue,” Johnson says. “Romance is viewed as a ‘women’s genre,’ which is why it’s downplayed, but the imagery can be just as beautiful as a ‘literary work,’ even though you’re writing a love story.”
It can also be life-changing. While Waite, for example, started off her reading traditional, heteronormative romance stories, she soon decided to check out queer and lesbian literature, sometimes known as F/F in the genre. “I wanted to read more inclusively across sexuality and racial lines. Then I read F/F, and it was like staring into a mirror,” Waite says. She came out as bisexual, and has dedicated herself to writing within the sub-genre. “I wanted to write F/F novels because I wasn’t seeing enough of them in stores. It feels so magical to get more queer romance voices out there, because there’s a real divide between the lesbian romance presses and the mainstream ones.”
Tom Smarch Photography
“There are young girls who are having a tough time with abusive boyfriends, who read young adult romance and see there’s a way out. There are older ladies who are widowed and read romance about women their age and realize there’s happiness still out there,” Cornell adds. “I wish people knew how much people’s lives are saved by these novels. Because there’s nothing better than laughing at a romantic comedy who’s just as clumsy, or spunky, as you are.”
Ready to dive into the happy endings? Read on for some of the RWA members’ favorite romance novels of all-time.
Jenna Bush Hager grew up in a house of bookworms. Her mother, First Lady Laura Bush, was a former librarian who read her twin daughters Little House on the Prairie. Her father, President George W. Bush, had a large anthology of Canadian fairytales that he’d read selections of to his girls. From childhood on, a love of reading was ingrained in her life. During adolescence Hager obsessed over The Baby-Sitters Club, and later on The Bluest Eye. Then by the time she reached adulthood, she became the de facto person in all of her friends and family’s lives to go to for a book suggestion.
“Yesterday my sister [Barbara], who’s out of town called and was like, ‘What should I read now?’ I’m always recommending books to friends, and I’m always asking for recommendations,” Hager tells Glamour. Which is why when Hager was named cohost of Today with Hoda & Jenna, she decided to launch a monthly book club, called Read With Jenna. As she puts it, “[Recommending books] is something I do in my day-to-day life, and I just gave it a little bit of a larger platform on the show.”
When Hager modestly made her first selection back in March, Tara Conklin’s The Last Romantics, the book jumped up to number 6 on the New York Times best-seller list (despite the fact that it hadn’t made the list the week before). Then lightening struck twice. Her next featured read, The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams instantly became a bestseller, and it became clear that Hager had something really powerful on her hands. Since, all of her subsequent recs—A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum and Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok—have also hit the list. Though her July pick, Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes was only announced on Tuesday, it’s already the bestselling book on Amazon.
While Hager is immensely proud of the fact that all of her selections have had such success—especially since she makes it a point to frequently feature first time and little-known authors— its in the community of Read With Jenna followers that she really feels its impact. “Yesterday a woman wrote on my Instagram, ‘I really wish I could afford this, but between bills and this and that, I can’t afford this book.’ Ten people wrote in and said, ‘Send me your address, and I’ll send you a book,'” Hager says. “That’s the power of really creating a place where people can come together to read, and also start a really great conversation. We created a Read With Jenna Facebook page, but readers have also created their own group called, ‘Finished Reading Jenna’s Book Club,’ so there are no spoilers. The momentum is crazy and I love that the members of the group are creating their own [spaces], which is what would happen in a normal book club.”
Hager isn’t the only celebrity who shares their passion for books with their fans. Sarah Jessica Parker, Emma Watson, Reese Witherspoon, and more regularly post what they’re reading on social media. But it’s Hager who has been dubbed the heir apparent to Oprah, whose stamp of approval catapulted authors like Cormac McCarthy, James Frey, and Janet Fitch to fame. Hager credits the book club’s meteoric rise to, “the platform of Today. We know that the people watching our show trust us, and they are part of our lives. This isn’t the first time I’ve done segments about authors or books. Since I started, really ten years ago, I’ve discussed books. So I think they trust me, and like what I’m choosing.” She’s also quick to point to Reese Witherspoon’s club as an inspiration. “I admire what Reese does for uplifting female authors. Nobody does more for publishing, because she buys these books and [turns them into] incredible television shows and movies. I think she’s done it right because she loves to read, it’s authentic. And I think anybody who has ever watched Today knows I love to read, which I think is the secret to the success.”
If one thing becomes crystal clear when talking to Hager, it’s that she really, truly loves nothing more than a good book. She recently read her daughter, Mila, the entire Junie B. Jones series. At night her husband has to ask her to turn down the light on her iPad as she stays up late pouring over novels. Though she reads six to seven books in full per month, there are countless titles she read portions of—before realizing that they’re not the right fit for the club—that she’s dying to get back to. And when you ask Hager for her favorite summer reads, she lights up at the opportunity to recommend some of her most coveted.
Read on for Hager’s exclusive summer picks, and follow along at Read With Jenna to see which book she’ll spotlight next.
This week Alabama passed the most restrictive abortion ban in America, outlawing the procedure from the moment of conception onward. There are no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, with a lone allowance made for instances in which a woman’s health is at risk. As Glamour has reported, doctors who administer an abortion could be prosecuted and face up to 99 years in prison. One headline summed it up well: “Under Alabama’s Abortion Ban, Doctors Who Perform Abortions on Rape Victims Could Get More Prison Time Than Rapists.” The article goes on to explain that even doctors who just attempt to administer one could be sentenced to up to 10 years behind bars.
So who voted to strip women of their reproductive freedom, a right that has been enshrined in our law at the national level since 1973? Well, in Alabama, the antichoice movement has a look. All 25 state senators who voted for the bill are Republican white men; there are just four women in the chamber and all of them are Democrats, who opposed the bill.
This means that despite widespread support for Roe v. Wade nationwide and in both parties, just over two dozen men have voted for a bill whose explicit purpose is to challenge the Supreme Court decision. In other words, 25 men who will never need this procedure (but who can, of course, put a woman in a position where she might need one) have limited the medical options available to 51 percent of the population. The lopsidedness of this equation was not lost to people on social media, some of whom pointed out that just nine women have ever served in the Alabama state senate.
Here are the names of the senators who’ve decided that, in Alabama, women don’t deserve the right to make their own health care decisions: Greg Albritton, Gerald H. Allen, Will Barfoot, Tom Butler, Clyde Chambliss, Donnie Chesteen, Chris Elliott, Sam Givhan, Garlan Gudger, Andrew Jones, Steve Livingston, Del Marsh, Jim McClendon, Tim Melson, Arthur Orr, Randy Price, Greg Reed, Dan Roberts, Clay Scofield, David R. Sessions, Shay Shelnutt, Larry Collins Stutts, James Thomas “Jabo” Waggoner, Cam Ward, and Jack Williams.
It should be noted that the bill will now head to Alabama’s female governor, Kay Ivey, who has not commented on the law but who is antichoice. If she signs it, it could take effect within six months. Women, and white women in particular, have of course supported antichoice legislation. But no matter what Gov. Ivey decides to do, the optics of the bill at this point are impossible to ignore.
For the 14 years I spent competing in pageants, the preparation leading up to a competition weekend was always the same: Go to the hairdresser to get my sewn-in weave uninstalled, my hairline relaxed, and then the weave sewn right back in. The routine took anywhere from six to eight hours and cost hundreds of dollars.
After, I would fret with my mom and aunt about how limited I was with the hairstyles I could do because I had a full weave; if I could just wear my natural hair, this wouldn’t be so complicated. But the idea that I would walk out with my own hair for competition was ludicrous: Years of weaves, relaxers, and just simply not caring for my hair properly left it breaking and my edges thin. But more than that, what was really stopping me from embracing my natural kinks and curls was a truth over which I had no control: I had never seen a Black girl with my hair texture wear her natural hair for competition, let alone win or place with it.
There’s a rule in pageantry that most competitors and coaches know about but never speak out loud: The default beauty standard is white. Although Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss Universe have crowned a handful non-white women, most of these women wear “pageant hair”—flowing weaves and extensions with bouncy waves and curls. As a competitor, I wasn’t one to rock the boat. Even with an “acceptable” look, I had to listen to photographers and hairstylists make backhanded comments about my hair, how difficult it was to style and blend with extensions. Pageants did help me feel empowered, but they could also make me feel dejected, especially when it came to my hair.
When a Black girl wins, comments on Instagram and message boards show the darker side of our experience. “The pageant is no longer about beauty,” one person wrote on Instagram after Kaleigh Garris—an 18-year-old who wore her natural curly hair for competition—won Miss Teen USA last week. “It’s all about political correctness.” In other words, Garris didn’t win because she deserved the crown, the user felt, but because she’s Black. I saw dozens of similar comments when Cheslie Kyrst, a 27-year-old attorney from North Carolina, won Miss USA over apparent fan favorite, Alejandra Gonzalez of New Mexico. Like Garris, Kyrst is Black and wore her natural hair. (The current Miss America, Nia Franklin, is also a Black woman, marking the first time all three title-holders are Black, but chose to wear a more traditional pageant look for competition.) When you’re a Black woman in pageants—or just a Black woman who succeeds, period—the dominant culture will do its best to communicate to you that your win was not earned, but handed to you to fulfill a quota. Your achievements are not your own; they’re a box for someone else to check.
Former Miss USA Deshauna Barber, who won in 2016, has spoken about the racism she faced during her reign and her decision to wear her 4c hair for her final walk. She’s also addressed how hard it can be to push an institution like this one into the future when pockets of it seem stuck determinedly in the past. “When you’re crowned with a look, then that’s the look you’re expected to maintain. A lot of people in the pageant world are still very old school. They believe in a traditional look, a traditional Miss USA. [The organization] is trying to, in my opinion, open up that world,” Barber wrote in an essay for Refinery29 in 2017. “So, when I said I wanted to wear my natural hair, they were jumping for joy. I appreciate them for that—[but] I didn’t want to stretch it too much. I wanted to take baby steps. If I take a small one by showing my natural 4c hair, the next girl will take one, and then we’ll ease our natural hairstyles into the pageant community.”
America Ferrera is a relatively new mom, but she’s definitely not a new activist.
She kicked off January 2017 by investigating the realities of health care access in South Texas. By that October, Ferrera had publicly joined the ranks of women saying #MeToo, revealing on Instagram that she was sexually assaulted when she was just nine years old.
This May, she announced the birth of her son, Sebastian Piers Williams, with husband Ryan Piers Williams, and by August, she’d shared with the world—via Instagram—a photo of herself smilingly nursing the baby in public to mark World Breastfeeding Week. In between, the “Superstore” and “Ugly Betty” actress lent her voice to the Families Belong Together movement in Washington. A daughter of Honduran immigrants, she denounced the separations of migrant parents and children as they tried to enter the U.S. via the southern border.
And, she’s no stranger to politics. Ferrera hit the campaign trail back in 2016, and now, true to character, she’s making a return in one of the most contentious midterm election cycles in history.
She spoke to Glamour about her civic engagement—and how we’ve failed at making voting accessible to all—during a recent visit to Nevada to campaign for Rep. Jacky Rosen, the Democrat trying to oust incumbent Republican Sen. Dean Heller and loosen the GOP’s grip on Washington. Here’s what she had to say:
It’s actually been 10 years that I’ve been engaged in getting out the vote for elections, and obviously everything’s different [now]. It really feels like everything is at stake. Everything that I care about, everything that I believe in, the idea that I grew up with about our country—who we are, what we are, and why we are—that’s all up in the air, and it feels truly like, this midterm election [will] be our opportunity to either negate what’s been going on in our country in this administration, or allow it [to] change the very fabric of who we are.
I am most concerned about the wealthy owning our democracy. [It] feels as if very real efforts to disable our democracy are underway. Between the way our rights as voters are being attacked, the way elections themselves are being gerrymandered… I really think that if we don’t show up in this moment, we will [have] missed potentially our last opportunity to really check this administration.
America Ferrera speaks at a Nevada Democratic Party gathering in Las Vegas ahead of the Nov. 6 election. Photo by Celeste Katz.
I think elections and politics being something that is hard to understand and untouchable is by design. I think it benefits the people in positions of power to make it so murky and hard to understand. What all these people in this [field] office do, and what I try to do from the position that I’m in, is to try and make it as easy to understand as possible, and as easy to engage with. There are real reasons why people are disenfranchised. I think the easiest and most beneficial [thing] to a lot of people in power to believe is that, “Oh, people are lazy and they don’t care, and they’re complacent.” But there are all kinds of genuine obstacles that have been intentionally placed to keep people from participating in democracy and mattering in democracy. Sure, when you look at your life and you feel like nothing about our government or the way the system is working is positively impacting your life, of course you’re going to feel disenchanted and cynical about those institutions. That’s only natural and human.
But what we have to remind ourselves, and each other, is that our democracy only works for us if we show up. Getting ourselves to show up and re-energizing people who have been on the margins for so long is the work we have to do to save our democracy right now, because power is so obviously concentrated in the hands of institutions that have been in power for a very, very long time. That’s what’s also so exciting [about] this midterm election, of course—there’s the gravity of it and the necessity of it, but we have an opportunity to wake up on November 7th and make history across the country. You know, the first female black governor in the history of the United States, the first Native American governor in the history of the United States, a majority female state legislature [in Nevada]. There’s so much opportunity to take what has been a very painful and truly devastating couple years and have some light come out of these elections—if we can harness people’s outrage and [get them to] take that to the polls and vote.
Regarding [low voter turnout in midterms], I think there’s a lot of reasons as to why that’s true, and I think the number one reason is our civic education in this country. It’s not accessible, it’s not made accessible, it’s not easy to understand, it’s not easy… You know, voting is the only Constitutional right that we have to register for, that we have to sign up for. [You] don’t have to register to exercise your right to free speech, or register to exercise your right to free assembly, [but] voting, for so many people there are a ton of obstacles in the way. [There have been] last-minute, blatant attempts to suppress votes—and mostly people of color—and this is not new to our history… It’s an illness, and our democracy cannot survive this way.
America Ferrera joins Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada), a candidate for U.S. Senate, other candidates, and volunteers at a Democratic Party field office in Las Vegas. Photo by Celeste Katz.
Honestly, [this election] isn’t even about, for me, if it’s red or blue. [I’m] a Democrat. I’m a registered Democrat. But there are plenty of Democrats who need to go, you know? And I’m excited to see some fresh blood in the Democratic party, and I want to see good, decent people running as Republicans. I don’t think this needs to be a country where one party rules. I think we need a democracy that works, because we are doing everything in our power to make it work, to give people access to democracy, not box them out so that it’s easier to stay in a position of power.
One of my favorite and most succinct quotes around all of this is [from farm worker organizer] Cesar Chavez. He said, “We don’t need perfect [politics], we need perfect participation,” and if everybody shows up, and if everybody has an equal say and everyone’s voice matters and counts, [then] we can know what [our] country really [stands] for.
But, we know, in our hearts, that what’s happening in our country right now is not a result of everybody’s voice mattering and every voice counting and every vote counting, because there have been so many blatant attacks to really nullify people’s voices and votes and keep them home, or make their votes not count. And so we have to fix that, and I personally think that’s the only long-term solution…
What I’m saying is: It isn’t about who is the majority in Congress. It’s about, are people educated and enfranchised and resourced enough to participate in the government that purports to be of the people, by the people, for the people? We’re missing the people part—and not because people don’t care, but because we’re not doing our job as a country, as a culture, to make democracy work.
Celeste Katz is senior political reporter for Glamour. Send news tips, questions, and comments to celeste_katz@condenast.com.
In a pivotal election year, Glamour is keeping track of the historic number of women running (and voting) in the midterm elections. For more on our latest midterm coverage, visit www.glamour.com/midterms.
