Kourtney Kardashian is no stranger to a detox—and let’s just say that the Kardashian-Jenners in general aren’t averse to social media spon-con, subsidized by products like “appetite-suppressing lollipops” (looking at you for that one, Kim). The messages these posts send about body image, nutrition, and health are, in a word, harmful, considering that the products haven’t been proven to be safe or effective—and Kourtney’s latest one seems to have left her Instagram followers a little frustrated.
On Friday, Kourtney posted a photo to Instagram that features her in a gray Calvin Klein bra and underwear set. She’s holding up a water bottle with a thick, chocolate-y liquid inside of it, and behind her are two pink jars that, we can make out, read “shakes.”
“#ad Back from Aspen and back on the @flattummyco meal replacement shakes…they’re exactly what I need right now. Day 3 on the program and I’m already feeling good again. I’m starting to see my tummy toning up nicely. Chocolate is my favorite, but they’ve got 20% OFF all their flavors right now so you guys should check them out!” she captioned the post.
Needless to say, her followers weren’t super pleased: “Disgusting that anyone would promote this stuff – meal replacements are NOT the way to healthily obtain a toned look (if ?? that’s ?? what ?? you ?? want ??) Eat healthy and exercise is the only way!,” wrote @callapetra.
“I want to see you actually ingest this. As anal as you are about organic sand [sic] healthy food, you’ll still shill this? Shameful. Anything for a buck,” wrote @nosillamp.
Another follower called her out: “Lol liar. You need a pay check this bad? You don’t drink that trash and you know it!”
Kim, FWIW, was also shilling Flat Tummy Shakes this week.
We love a celebrity baby announcement here at Glamour.com—especially seeing and reading about how excited the parents-to-be are to meet their child. But let’s be real: pregnancy isn’t all ice cream and gorgeous glow, nor is childbirth the glossed-over, relatively sterile before-and-after we so often see onscreen. After all, you’re growing an entire human inside you for nine-ish months—it’s not going to be sunshine and roses around the clock.
We tend not to see this other side from celebrities: After all, a glam squad and years of professional training means they always look like they’re feeling at the top of their game, with not a hair out of place. But over the years, women in the spotlight have started to use their platform to talk about the not-so-pleasant sides of pregnancy and childbirth as a way to raise awareness of common experiences and issues women might not otherwise hear about (so many aspects women’s health today still aren’t discussed openly). And honestly—if this doesn’t prove that pregnancy and childbirth are beyond different for each woman, we don’t know what does.
Read on for a few celebrities who have told it like it is, from Chrissy Teigen being her usual candid, hilarious self to Serena Williams recounting a life-threatening birth experience.
Colton Underwood literally just made his exit from Bachelor in Paradise on Monday night’s episode, after ending things with Tia Booth for good. But clearly, the 26-year-old former NFL player has been keeping busy since returning stateside. On Tuesday morning, September 4, ABC announced on Good Morning America in a surprising twist (or not?) that Underwood will embark on a whole new journey to find love as the next Bachelor.
Underwood appeared on GMA for the announcement, telling host Michael Strahan, “Third time’s the charm. That’s what they say, right? That’s what I’m hoping for!” Underwood then elaborated on his hopes for his upcoming turn as the Bachelor, saying, “That’s what I’m looking forward to the most, is being engaged and then getting married shortly after that.”
As for the status of his and Booth’s current relationship, Underwood said, “We are finally on the same page for the first time in our relationship, and we are just good friends.”
Underwood first appeared on Becca Kufrin’s season of The Bachelorette, where he sparked scandal over the revelations that he had dated Booth, Kufrin’s friend, shortly before coming on the show. The fact that he’s a virgin was another storyline during the season. Underwood told Strahan of his experiences on The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, “I think that’s one thing that I took pride in on both seasons, is just being true to who I am,” he said. “I think it took all of that to get to where I am now and know who I am as a person and what I want in a life partner.”
Booth, for her part, took to Twitter to congratulate her ex—and to confirm that she won’t be appearing on his season. “Congratulations @Colt3FIVE ? I hope your season is full of protein powder, puppies, and naps! #TheBachelor,” she wrote in a tweet. “And NO I will NOT be a contestant on Colton’s season. Lord bless.”
Blake Horstmann, who was considered to be in the running for The Bachelor, tweeted his support for Underwood as well. “Thank you all for the support over the last few months! It has been incredibly humbling and meant the world,” he wrote. “I am excited to close this chapter and see what the future holds! I have nothing but respect … I wanna wish @Colt3FIVE luck on his Journey.”
A few weeks ago, a friend texted me about dim sum using only Chinese characters. “Oh no, you’re fake Asian. Hold on,” he continued before he translated his order into English for me. “Fried dough, scallion pancakes with egg, and soy milk.”
“You mean you tiao, but okay,” I replied. “My family only eats it with juk.” I speak very little Cantonese—I’m talking 20 words at most—but when it comes to dim sum, I know how to order.
We’ve been friends for years, and while I can usually put up with his antagonistic brand of teasing, it’s been getting to me lately. I’m “only” half-Asian, something the world feels the need to remind me of at every turn, like when the guy at dim sum hands me a fork and I hear my dad say my name as he’s speaking Cantonese to my Nainai. But I’m also Italian, which for some reason didn’t come up when the popular girl in seventh grade called me a chink, and when everyone—at the coffee shop, in the cab—plays the “but where are you really from?” game. I might be made up of two ethnicities, but I don’t really count as either.
That’s why I’m probably more offended than most at the “controversy” surrounding some of the cast members of Crazy Rich Asians and why, conversely, their inclusion is so legitimizing to me. Henry Golding, the male lead, and supporting actress Sonoya Mizuno are both half-Asian—and thus, according to some critics, not Asian enough to star in the movie. Actress Jamie Chung referred to Golding’s casting as “bullshit” in an interview. (She later apologized.) One op-ed about Golding had the candid title, “We’d Love to See a Full Asian Lead for Once.”
PHOTO: Sanja Bucko
I understand the frustration at the constant whitewashing in Hollywood. (See: Scarlett Johanssen playing a Japanese character in Ghost in the Shell, Emma Stone starring as a woman of Hawaiian descent in Aloha, and Matt Damon somehow playing the hero in a movie literally entitled The Great Wall, as if we haven’t been defending that shit for centuries.) It’s so rampant that a producer even suggested casting a white woman for the lead to Crazy Rich Asians author Kevin Kwan—who, of course, gave it a hard no.
But to impose whitewashing narratives onto biracial people feels like erasure of half of who I am. And, for me, it’s not “whitewashing,” anyway. It’s more like “whatwashing”: What are you? What’s your background? It’s what so many mixed-race people who don’t pass as white have to contend with on a daily basis.
Since when does being more than one thing cancel the other out? According to Golding, who’s Malaysian and English, some people implied he won the role because he’s half-white, as if being biracial comes with special perks. Please. Science, for what it’s worth, backs me up here. (See how Asian I am?) A 2008 study from UC Davis found that Asian-Caucasian mixes are twice as likely to suffer from psychological disorders, like depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, than full Asians. Lauren Berger, one of the authors, surmises that a lower or conflicting ethnic identity—that is, the extent to which someone ascribes to one identity over another—may contribute to it.
It’s hard to establish any sort of ethnic identity when I keep receiving conflicting messages about what that identity is. I’m too white for my Chinese friends to consider me a “real” Asian, but still Asian enough to catch the occasional slur. And I don’t understand why other people are slicing and dicing my ethnicity in the first place, something both Golding and Mizuno have called out. “If I can’t play that [Asian] part, what can I play?” Mizuno asked in an interview earlier this month. “A part that’s half Japanese, a quarter English, and a quarter Argentinean? How many parts are there for that?”
Golding concisely summed it up in an interview with Glamour: “It was quite strange that people were saying I wasn’t Asian enough. It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re not Asian enough to play an Asian role.’ So what does that mean for people who come from mixed heritage? I grew up in Asia; I’m Malaysian. You can try to justify how Asian you are, but you’re never going to make everybody happy … When does the point come that these stereotypes are thrown to the wind? Making something the norm is the only way of not making it a talking point.”
However, I think one reason for it may be my own doing. I refer to myself as “half”: I’m half-Asian, or, if I’m feeling generous, half-Chinese and half-Italian. I’ve been saying it for as long as I can remember, mostly because it’s succinct and typically satisfies whoever’s rude enough to ask. And it’s accurate (although recent results from 23andMe suggest that there’s some Mongolian and North African mixed in there).
PHOTO: Courtesy of Deanna Pai
But maybe I should start to replace the word “half” with “both.” I am both Chinese and Italian. One doesn’t have to negate, or overpower, or defer to the other. It’s like how my comfort food is fried rice with lap ceung, but I’m also freakishly good at making dragged pastas like cavatelli. Both can be true.
In a new interview, Golding described this ownership over identity in a way that made me tear up. “There was always a struggle with being Asian and not being Asian enough. It’s going to be down to me to own my race,” he said. “Once you’re secure with yourself, it doesn’t matter who the fuck says whatever.”
It’s validating to see people like me confront similar feelings in real time. They get it! And better yet, they’re talking about it. Sure, the haters will hate. They’ll say we’re fake Asians, that we’re not Asian enough, that we’re watered down. But that won’t make it true.
Deanna Pai is a writer and editor currently based in New York.
Kim Kardashian and her sisters are very into working out. That’s no secret. However, sometimes people perceive their obsession with looking a certain way as problematic. Exhibit A: When Khloé Kardashian offered tips for looking “thin AF” on her website. And now we have exhibit B: A new round of videos in which Kim Kardashian’s sisters praise her for looking skinny.
Here’s what happened: On Sunday evening (July 29), according to BuzzFeed, Kim was attending an event with her sisters Khloé and Kendall when, at one point, the conversation turned to Kim’s recent weight loss. Kim, of course, documented the conversations on Instagram Stories. “I’m really concerned, I don’t think you’re eating. You look so skinny!” Kendall says at one point, prompting Kim to let out an excited, “What?! Oh my God, thank you!”
“I’ve never seen a human being look so good. You are a walking Facetune doll,” Khloé says, while Kendall interrupts to hold up her tiny handbag and say, “My purse is as tiny as you!” “Oh my god, the compliments!” Kim says, before turning the camera on herself to show off her body in a pair of skintight latex pants. She goes on to trade more comments about looking “skinny” with Khloé, then films a conversation in which Khloé and her friend Malika Haqq speculate that Kim must only be eating “celery, maybe some lettuce,” and “different flavors of oxygen.”
As you can imagine, Twitter users aren’t pleased with Kim, Kendall, and Khloé’s word choices in these Instagram posts. Many are saying the sisters repeatedly complimenting each other for being “skinny”—rather than the much more empowering “healthy” or “strong”—sets a toxic and dangerous example for their followers. See some of the disappointed comments, below:
This should go without saying, but “skinny” and “hot” aren’t synonymous. Beauty and health come in all shapes and sizes. It’s high time for everyone (the Kardashian-Jenner sisters included) to remember that.
As the Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s travel ban by a margin of 5-4 on Tuesday, it was two of its female justices—Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg—who provided the harshest critiques of both the ruling and the policy itself.
As a refresher, this version of the travel ban (the administration’s third) restricts entry into the United States from seven countries, many of which have majority Muslim populations: Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Venezuela. The rules for entry vary by country. For example, immigrants (even those seeking asylum) and non-immigrants from Syria are barred from entering the country, but most Venezuelans will be unaffected. (Per CNN, the ban will mostly affect government officials from that country.)
Citizens from banned countries are able to apply for waivers on a case-by-case basis, like traveling to the US for medical treatment, or to visit a close family member. But The Guardian reports that there are a very limited number of waivers actually being granted.
Sotomayor, who was joined by Ginsburg in her dissent, boldly stated that the court failed to uphold the fundamental right of freedom of religion in her opening remarks. “The United States of America is a Nation built upon the promise of religious liberty,” she wrote. “Our Founders honored that core promise by embedding the principle of religious neutrality in the First Amendment. The Court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle.”
She continues by calling the ban one that is designed to keep Muslims out of the country and calls out attempts to repackage it. “It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’ because the policy now masquerades behind a façade of national-security concerns.”
Sotomayor calls out fellow justices in the majority saying they are “turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens.”
And the justices were not afraid to mention the president directly in their formal dissent.
“Ultimately, what began as a policy explicitly ‘calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’ has since morphed into a ‘Proclamation’ putatively based on national-security concerns,” the dissent reads. “But this new window dressing cannot conceal an unassailable fact: the words of the President and his advisers create the strong perception that the Proclamation is contaminated by impermissible discriminatory animus against Islam and its followers.”
Sotomayor did not shy away from noting the instances of Trump calling the policy a “travel ban” and his negative remarks about Islam and Muslims. “Despite several opportunities to do so, President Trump has never disavowed any of his prior statements about Islam. Instead, he has continued to make remarks that a reasonable observer would view as an unrelenting attack on the Muslim religion and its followers.”
“History will not look kindly on the court’s decision today—nor should it,” Sotomayor concluded.
While many applauded the justices’ passion in calling out the bigotry in the policy and ruling, the New York Times classified Sotomayor as having “lashed out” against President Trump in a tweet—and Twitter users were not happy about it.
