Katy Perry had the world’s most dramatic reaction to a proposal—and it wasn’t even her own. On Monday night’s episode of American Idol, the singer literally fell to the floor and broke down in sobs after contestant Johanna Jones got engaged in front of everyone.
Jones had just finished singing her rendition of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” and she was in the middle of telling the judges she was “pretty dang in love” with her boyfriend, who allegedly couldn’t make her audition because of his final exams. Just then, said boyfriend popped up next to her and told her she was the love his life. He got down on one knee and he asked her to marry him, which sent Perry into full meltdown mode.
There were tears. There were howls. There was a theatrical slump to the ground. Perry’s fellow judges, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie, both helped her up and made sure she was OK throughout the touching proposal. “Why won’t someone love me like that?” she wailed between sobs. Her reaction was so intense that a makeup artist had to come on set and touch up her mascara.
It was a lot, but Jones seemed happy to share the moment with Perry, who gushed over her ring.
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The episode was filmed before Perry’s own boyfriend Orlando Bloom proposed to her, which has us wondering how she reacted when she was the one getting a diamond ring. If this engagement is any indication, there were many tears.
Even her Idol costars took the opportunity to teases her a little bit. Bryan tweeted some backstage footage of her crying her eyes out and wrote, “Thank goodness Orlando put a ring on it, @katyperry. Thought you weren’t going to make it there for a second.” We’ve got to say, we agree.
My worst fitting-room experiences have always involved denim. It’s not because of a lack of options: I wear a size that’s abundantly stocked in most stores and online. (Normally, it’s a size 10.) Rather, it’s because of my body shape.
Not to fall into the old-school trope of comparing myself to a fruit, but I have what some would considered a “pear-shaped” body: small waist, big hips—but not in a proportional way. That means that, usually, jeans that fit my thighs and butt are too roomy at the waist; if I size down, though, they won’t make it past my knees. Over the years, I’ve gotten used to settling for jeans that are too big at the waist, just so my legs don’t feel trapped, and I’ll tuck in my shirt to fill in the gap that forms around the back. But I’ve never been able to walk up to the register with a pair I knew would fit just right. Instead, I’d take the waist gap as a given.
Last month, American Eagle launched a new style in its Ne(X)t Level 360 collection, which is made from a stretch fabric that’s meant to hug and conform to the body, with a tailored waistband that wouldn’t sag or gap. Available in sizes 00 through 20 online, these so-called “curvy jeggings” came in a range of washes, fits, and finishes. And they had started to generate somepositivefeedback on Twitter. I was intrigued.
American Eagle Ne(X)t Level Curvy High-Waisted Jegging, $44.95 $37.46, American Eagle
American Eagle Outfitters
American Eagle sent me its Curvy High-Waisted Jegging, which retails for just under $38. My immediate first impression: Though they’re called “jeggings,” this pair looked and felt a lot like skinny jeans—the fabric was just stretchier.
The main difference between these and all the other jeans I’d tried (and been disappointed by) in the past was how they sat on my waist after I had zipped and buttoned them up. The high-rise lands just above my belly button, without space leftover in the back; my thighs and butt, meanwhile, are hugged by the fabric, not choked. The waist gap I’ve come to expect? Nowhere to be found.
Courtesy of Halie LeSavage
I wore the jeans for a few days, and even after multiple #OOTDs, the waistband held its shape. (I’d always feel frustrated when I thought I’d found denim that fit in the store, but would be totally stretched out by the second wear.) It’s a relief to find jeans suited to curvy-on-the-bottom bodies that don’t require tailoring or other compromises—and at a store that I’ve shopped since middle school.
Courtesy of Halie LeSavage
Skinny jeans are, admittedly, not my favorite cut, so I’m hoping that American Eagle will expand this line into other silhouettes, like straight-leg jeans or kick flares. For now, though, I’m feeling pretty satisfied with this fit-to-my-shape pair.
Buy it now: American Eagle Ne(X)t Level Curvy High-Waisted Jegging, $44.95 $37.46, American Eagle
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Deb Haaland wears the same pearl necklace almost every day. Not a string of delicate iridescent beads that are usually coupled with the blazers and skirts on Capitol Hill, but a set of sturdy, silver Navajo pearls that she bought at the annual Santa Fe Indian Market. Soon, those beads will be making their debut in Washington D.C. following a midterm election cycle that resulted in a historic number of women taking congressional seats in the 116th Congress.
Haaland is in that group. She’s Native American. She’s a single mother. She bucks against the status quo. And she’s New Mexico’s newly-minted Congresswoman.
“A long time ago people knew where you were from by the jewelry you wore,” Haaland told Glamour over the summer. “They knew you were Navajo or what pueblo you were from because there’s different styles. This [necklace is] Navajo. I’m not Navajo, but I love it so I’ll wear it. Silver is protection.”
A member of New Mexico’s Pueblo of Laguna tribe, Haaland, 57, is now one of the first Native American women to serve in Congress. On Tuesday, she took the lead against her opponents, Republican Janice Arnold-Jones and Libertarian Lloyd Princeton, making history alongside another Native American congresswoman, Sharice Davids of Kansas. The two share more than the obvious connection in heritage and their new House status—Haaland and Davids go back, having supported each other since attending the same summer program at the American Indian Law Center.
“Deb and I spoke soon after I announced I would run. The first time I called Deb, she was like, ‘If you need to sleep on my couch, you can,'” Davids, who is also the first openly gay representative of Kansas, toldGlamour in September. “In some way, I almost feel—Deb, you don’t even know this—that just hearing her on the other end in that first call, telling me, ‘Yes, do this,’ was the validation I needed.”
It’s not hard to believe. The generational power of women and unbreakable family ties are embedded in Haaland’s DNA, she says. Her mother, who served in the Navy, raised Haaland and her two sisters and brother while her father, who was in the Marine Corps, fought in Vietnam. Haaland reflects on the unseen and under-appreciated work and the emotional labor that mothers often shoulder to keep the families together.
“There were four of us and she had to keep order, and she was by herself a lot,” Haaland says of her mom, who’s 83. “In spite of how strict she was, when it came to food, she would bend over backward to cook what we liked. As Pueblo Indians, food is important to us. I almost didn’t realize how wonderful she was about that. I didn’t like raw onions so whenever she’d make enchiladas, she’d make mine without onions and she’d put toothpicks in the top so we knew which ones were mine. You know what I mean?”
These are the little things that make Haaland who she is today. It’s how she can get so laser-focused and particular about the things her constituents need, and why she vows to show up, fully and completely, for the Native American community. “I will do my best to always bring in tribal leaders to speak to the issues that affect them,” she says. “I don’t want to speak for tribes. But I feel like I can speak strongly in defending tribes and the U.S. government’s aggregation of their trust responsibility.”
If anything, she has the background and resumé to do just that.
As the kid of military parents, Haaland moved around a lot, but New Mexico is her home base: She graduated from high school in Albuquerque, and went to the University of New Mexico and UNM Law School. Significant to Haaland being a first is that she’s also a working class indigenous woman who forged her own path into politics, without a silver spoon: As a young mom, she started a salsa company in the 1990s, delivering cases of the stuff out of her Maroon GMC Safari to grocers and gift stores across New Mexico. Her then-two-year-old daughter Somah would ride in the passenger seat.
“I wanted her with me 24 hours a day because I felt like I needed to influence her at that early age and it paid off,” she says.
PHOTO: Deb Haaland
Deb Haaland pictured with daughter Somah.
While pursuing her law degree, Haaland made ends meet with the assistance of food stamps. And with such a busy schedule, she had to teach Somah how to ride the city bus to school in case her mom couldn’t be there. She earned her organizing chops volunteering for dozens of local and statewide campaigns, and mobilized native voters on the 2004 John Kerry campaign and both of Barack Obama’s campaigns (she served as Obama’s Native American vote director in 2012). She eventually became the Chair of the Democratic Party in New Mexico and ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2014. She’s also served as chairwoman of her tribe’s economic development corporation.
Dedicating much of her career to getting out the native vote has primed Haaland to work even harder to protect it: In recent weeks, the Supreme Court upheld a law in North Dakota that requires voters to show identification with a current street address, when many reservations don’t use physical street addresses, leaving thousands of voters disenfranchised and unable to vote. “Native Americans couldn’t vote in New Mexico until 1948, [but] we’ve had elected officials who are deeply invested in making sure underrepresented folks get to the polls,” Haaland says. “Every time I think about the voter suppression happening in our country it makes we want to win even more so I can go to Congress and work to overcome that,” she told Glamour before Tuesday’s victory.
For those who can’t vote, Haaland is hoping to be their voice: Just as she stood with activists at Standing Rock to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, Haaland is committed to expanding the use of renewable energy in her state, and securing strong healthcare and education. Her inclusivity efforts won’t stop at her community, either: Somah, who’s now 24 and identifies as queer, has educated her mom on gender identity and LGBTQ issues. Haaland’s campaign priorities include working to close the pay gap for black, Latina, indigenous, genderqueer and transgender people, and fighting “bathroom bills” that restrict trans people from using public restrooms.
She’s unabashed about her criticism of Trump, too. Haaland’s called out the president’s immigration policies, which have separated thousands of children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border, and she is vocal about abolishing ICE. “It’s history repeating itself for no reason, other than a president who is just putting forward the most racist immigration policies we’ve almost ever seen,” she says, comparing the historic separation of Native Americans to the separation of migrant children from their parents.
But what makes Haaland so accessible, such a beacon for her community, is that she feels free to bare it all. Like many women who ran for office this election season, she didn’t hide parts of her story that might traditionally hurt a candidate. In one of her campaign ads, she climbs Albuquerque’s Sandias Mountains while revealing that she’s 30 years sober.
“Deb Haaland’s campaign for Congress is a representation of the culture shift that is being led by Native and Indigenous women to build a future that is safe, abundant and connected,” says Vanessa Roanhorse, CEO of Roanhorse Consulting and cofounder of Native Women Lead. “We need a voice that can advocate for women’s reproductive rights, pushing for stronger laws to protect women and children from violence and closing the pay equity gap that women, specifically Native American women face, and a voice that has directly experienced the disparities themselves,” she continued.
“Deb is that voice and solution.”
What isn’t lost on Haaland is how this moment almost didn’t happen. While enrolled in Emerge New Mexico—a leadership and training program with the goal of getting more Democratic women into public office—she says she learned that if you ask a man to run for office, he’ll say yes the first time. Women, Haaland says, have to be asked seven times before they’ll actually run.
“I bet that’s one of the reasons why women don’t say yes right away,” she says. “If it were my mom, she would think, ‘Who’s going to cook for my kids the way that I do?'”
It’s a good thing she did: Along with Davids, Haaland’s historic win means that two Native American women—on the land where her indigenous ancestors lived—are now U.S. Representatives. It took more than two centuries from the time Congress was established in 1789.
“Representation matters,” Haaland says. “I feel like some young native women are seeing me and saying, ‘Finally, somebody who looks like me.'”
Jessica Militare is a journalist living in New York City
In case you missed it, Taylor Swift’s return to the awards show stage via the 2018 American Music Awards was literally on fire. But the real star of the show wasn’t Swift—sorry, T—it was her snake, who is apparently named “Karyn.”
The giant cobra that Swift traveled around the country with during her Reputation tour—a not-so-subtle nod at the “snake” nickname Kim Kardashian gave her in the wake of their now-infamous leaked phone call—made an appearance onstage at the AMAs, and Twitter agreed that the reptile hands down won the night. Earlier this year, Swift revealed to a fan that the snake’s name is “Karyn” (with a “y”—very important), and “Karyn” began trending Tuesday shortly after the performance had finished.
PHOTO: John Shearer/AMA2018/Getty Images
“This performance was honestly everything. Just a few years ago Taylor was taunted by the entire world and repeatedly called a snake, tonight when Karyn rose so did Taylor and her confidence #TaylorAMAs #AMAs,” wrote one user.
It seems even Swift recognized Karyn’s unmatched popularity. Shortly after her performance, Swift took to Instagram Stories, reposting a Buzzfeed story about Karyn, captioning it with a thank-you to fans for “liking [her] duet with Karyn.”
Swift’s performance comes just days after her rare public political statement, in which she took to social media to endorse the Democratic candidates for Tennessee’s Senate and House of Representatives races—in turn, upsetting conservative men. Ahead of the show, fans wondered whether her choice to sing “I Did Something Bad” at the AMAs was somehow related to her political message.
PHOTO: Kevin Mazur/AMA2018/Getty Images
“It just dawned on me that Taylor Swift is the opening performer at the American Music Awards tomorrow. Awards show ratings have been dismal in recent years. Ironic that she’s never been political before, but decides to be right before the AMAs,” wrote one fan. “Taylor revealed her political stance and set the United States on fire. She will sing “I did something bad” iconic, fabulous, winning as always and destroying careers. The world is not ready for this,” shared another.
Remember that time Tracee Ellis Ross hosted the 2017 American Music Awards and planned nine full outfit changes, from vintage Halston to sparkly-and-fringed Michael Kors? If you were expecting anything less for her second go at the gig… Well, you must not be too familiar with Tracee Ellis Ross’s approach to fashion.
The Black-ish star headlined the 2018 AMAs, and she brought some show-stopping looks with her. She and stylist Karla Welch had been teasing her wardrobe on social media ahead of the big event. This time, Ellis Ross revealed, they took a very meaningful approach to picking out her wardrobe: The host showcased black fashion designers throughout the evening, from Pyer Moss on the red carpet to Dapper Dan for Gucci for her opening number. (You might remember that Issa Rae also wore exclusively black designers when she hosted the 2018 CFDA Awards back in May.) “We have a really specific theme this year—a story that I’m telling about who is making all of the clothes… That feels really special to me and very exciting, and that was sort of our guiding force and kind of the marching orders I gave Karla in how to go out and hunt for things in that particular theme,” Ellis Ross told People ahead of the show. She shared all of her outfit credits on Twitter.
From the red carpet to the send-off, see every single outfit and designer Tracee Ellis Ross wore to host the 2018 AMAs.
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Taylor Swift‘s last album Reputation was all about, well, her reputation. And while accepting the American Music Award for Best Pop/Rock Album on Tuesday evening, the country turned pop star explained just how the concept of the album came to be.
“This is actually the first time I ever wrote an album based on a title first,” she explained during her speech, after thanking her fans. “So, the whole time I was writing an album based on all the facets of a reputation and what it actually means to you, I was surrounded by friends, family, and loved ones who never loved me less based on the fluctuations of public opinion.” She added, “They all know who they are.”
Swift went on to hint that she’s already working on her follow-up to Reputation. “I always look at albums as chapters in my life. And I’m so — to the fans, I’m so happy that you like this one. I’m so happy that this means that you like this one,” she said. “But I have to be really honest with you about something: I’m even more excited about the next chapter.”
The Best Pop/Rock Album win was Swift’s 21st American Music Award. After that and the Tour of the Year trophy, which she won earlier in the night, Swift was only one award away from setting the record for the most AMAs of any artist. That’s not the only reason the 2018 AMAs were special for Swift, though: She opened the show with a fiery rendition of “I Did Something Bad,” marking her first award show performance in nearly three years.
