Over the weekend, Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan of an apparent suicide. The moment it happened I could almost hear the sound of a million conspiracies blooming on the internet, each more insane than the next. It hadn’t been unthinkable, though—it was after all his second attempt.
But within minutes, there was talk of a swap, a body double, a plan hatched to get Epstein to Guantanamo Bay. Rapid-fire connections were drawn to the convoluted (and not real) QAnon conspiracy theory, which alleges a vast (and not real) “deep-state” effort to undermine Donald Trump. I saw supposed pictures of the corpse, and comments that it obviously didn’t match Epstein. I saw threats leveled against the Clintons and deceptive hashtags spring up like daisies. But what I didn’t see—at least not at first—was a great effort to think about what Epstein’s death would mean for his alleged victims. The focus had been switched, veering from the real plight of his victims to the fantasy of his death. We can leave investigations into Epstein’s death to the professionals, but the Twitterverse could stand to turn its attention to a conspiracy that we already know is legitimate: how badly run America’s jails are, how badly treated America’s victims of sexual assault and rape are, how the criminal justice system makes allowances for the powerful and the well-connected, while millions of people convicted of lesser crimes are made to suffer more. There is an actual miscarriage of justice here, and you don’t need to turn to Reddit to find it. Epstein’s alleged victims deserved better.
In the time since his suicide, a number of his accusers have spoken out to express their frustration.
“I am extremely mad and hurt thinking he once again thought he was above us and took the easy way out,” Jena-Lisa Jones, 30, who claims that Epstein abused her when she was 14, told ABC News.
In a statement, Jennifer Araoz, 32, who has accused Epstein of rape, expressed her own disappointment: “We have to live with the scars of his actions for the rest of our lives, while he will never face the consequences of the crimes he committed, the pain and trauma he caused so many people.”
These women haven’t accused the government of a wild master plot or drummed up support for internet theories. They’ve just asked to be heard, listened to, and respected. But of course, in Trump’s America, the prospect of a vast web of lies appeals more than the simple fact of a group of women’s truth. campaign. Trump got into politics on the back of birtherism, a conspiracy theory that suggested Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. (Spoiler: He was.) Since he was elected president, he’s continued to make references to various supposed schemes, egging on his base. So it should come as no surprise that, as Mother Jones put it, within minutes of the news that Epstein had died, “Trump appointees, Fox Business hosts and Twitter pundits revived a decades old conspiracy theory, linking the Clinton family to supposedly suspicious deaths. #ClintonBodyCount and #ClintonCrimeFamily trended on Twitter.”
It’s crucial to call out Trump’s insane and dangerous social media activities, but not at the expense of Epstein’s accusers who are begging us to remember who the real victims in this case are. It was exquisitely Trumpian: Another potential moment of restorative justice stolen from women who just wanted a powerful man to be held accountable.
The #MeToo movement shook Hollywood, the media, and high-powered corporations across America, but questions remain about its ramifications in other industries and professional work spaces. Now, new research published in the scientific journal Plos One indicates there might be some measurable changes in the workplace as a result of #MeToo: In the group interviewed, reports of sexual coercion and unwanted sexual attention in professional settings decreased since the movement took off. But not without some other (perhaps related) side-effects.
Researchers first talked to 250 working women in the U.S. in 2016 and asked questions about the gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion faced at their jobs. The researchers conducted a second survey in September 2018, reconnecting with women from the first group to see how their experiences had changed as conversations around #MeToo evolved. The researchers found that 25 percent of women reported being sexually coerced at work in 2016, but that number declined to 16 percent in 2018. Unwanted sexual attention also dropped, with 66 percent of women reporting instances in 2016 and 25 percent in 2018.
While these data points do seem like progress, one troubling stat stands out. In this study, there was an increase in reports of gender harassment, with numbers rising from 76 percent of women in 2016 to 92 percent in 2018. The researchers attribute this to what they call a “backlash effect,” or an an increase in hostility toward women following the #MeToo moment.
“Organizations should also pay attention to gender harassment, including bullying and sexist comments about women,” the researchers wrote in the Harvard Business Review. “One woman told us she believes that women who have been empowered by #MeToo to call out inappropriate behavior have faced more hostility among coworkers. It is important that organizations are aware of this, as constant exposure to gender harassment can be just as damaging to women as the most egregious forms of sexual harassment.”
An uptick in gender harassment is even more worrisome, given research that LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey released a few months ago that found 60 percent of male managers admitted to feeling uncomfortable participating in common workplace activities with a woman. Those fears could affect mentorship and support for women at work, barring their opportunities to prove themselves and move up if their managers are male. Between that and the gender-based harassment that this report illuminates, it’s clear that there are still post-#MeToo hurdles to navigate, and plenty of work to be done on the part of employers and work organizations.
Full disclosure: I haven’t ever been a holiday movie person. The constant suspension of disbelief you need to get through one (how did they not see that mistletoe hanging above them?!), the chuckle-inducing over-exposition, the heteronormativity of it all… It’s all a bit much. But they’re an annual tradition for hopeless romantics and seasonal spirits—and networks go all in on them.
Lifetime is releasing 14 original holiday movies this year, while the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries properties are pumping out a whopping 37 through New Year’s Day. In 2017, 82 million—48 million women and 34 million men—watched Hallmark holiday programming “at least once” during the season, according to USA Today; Lifetime’s seasonal movies attracted 56.9 million viewers, per E!. This year, Netflix is getting in on the game, with such titles as The Princess Switch and the much-anticipated (and timely) A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding. And if you watch enough of them—as I now have, in the name of research—you start to notice how the fashion in these movies plays as much as a role in driving home those cherished holiday tropes as all those snowy carriage rides do.
There are the buttoned-up suits worn by the big-city lead, who has been disconnected from her roots (and holiday spirit.) There are the spectacular ball gowns that all those wink-wink implausible coincidences built up to. There are, of course, more red and green outfits that you’d normally see in any given closet. While you see some IRL trends reflected on screen, they might feel a little bit heightened—that’s because clothing plays a different role here, one that directly correlates to the emotional journey the character goes through.
For starters, structured pantsuits and corporate environs frequently help establish the lead character in these movies as no-nonsense, over-scheduled, and, oftentimes, job-obsessed. In Lifetime’s Every Day is Christmas, Atlanta finance CEO Alexis (Toni Braxton) wears a black streamlined Calvin Klein suit, courtesy of costume designer Patricia Hargreaves, in the opening office scenes—as she withholds her beleaguered staff’s holiday bonuses and makes them work on December 25 (when the markets aren’t even open!) When we first see lawyer Lucy (Tatyana Ali) in Hallmark’s Christmas Everlasting, she’s wheeling and dealing in an aubergine pantsuit. The message becomes clear: This is a person in need of some holiday down time.
PHOTO: Brian Douglas
A still from Christmas Everlasting.
Fashion exemplifies the divide between the two worlds coming head-to-head in the film: big-city and hometown, royalty and commoner… Like the towering heels Lucy wears when she first goes back to Nilson’s Bay, teetering around the snowy town square (there’s always a town square!): They’re totally out of place, and that’s precisely the point. Costume designer Amanda Riley tells me that Lucy’s impractical footwear is reflective of a fish-out-of-water New Yorker packing for a supposedly brief visit to the Midwest. Over time, though, this friction gradually subsides, as our heroine begins to feel the holiday spirit.
These movies regularly make us of a handful of beloved seasonal tropes, from the treasured tradition that is holiday cookie decorating to the climactic, perspective-altering event the plot hinges on, which could be anything from saving a treasured hometown landmark (Christmas Everlasting) or salvaging the Aldovian economy (A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding.) There’s also plenty of red and green, namely in the character’s wardrobes when they’re partaking in these holiday-specific events.
In Christmas Everlasting, Lucy demonstrates the can-do holiday spirit to save childhood favorite McHenry’s Bakery, while wearing in a polished red wool coat and forest green sweater. “It’s such a powerful time for reflection and family,” explains Riley. “I just wanted something felt like it really popped and really felt like there was a lot of strength brought to the moment.” (Fun fact: At one point in the movie, Lucy wears a fit-and-flare dress by Ted Baker in a cheery holiday hue—which department store HR manager Noelle also wears in A Shoe Addict’s Christmas, costume designed by Marya Duplaga.)
PHOTO: Brian Douglas
A still from Christmas Everlasting.
The red and green might read as “on-the-nose,” but designers have other ways of referencing the season through color. “The holidays feel really wrapped in a lot of these rich colors,” Riley says, specifically of Lucy’s affinity to purple: “Purple felt very close to red, which felt like this heart-opening color, which is the whole point of the movie. Lucy is really opening her heart for the first time in a really long time.”
If you’re really paying attention, you’ll also catch some reference to beloved holiday classics—we’re talking A Christmas Carol—in the costumes. In Every Day is Christmas, Alexis is clearly the Ebenezer Scrooge time-jumping with Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future—and while a set of Victorian-costumed carolers appear in a party scene, her nod to the Charles Dickens classic is more subtle: “We play a little bit with corseting [of the Victorian era] with the form fitting-ness of her clothes,” says Hargreaves.
Arguably, the most important fashion moment in any of these films is the major community event —a black-tie party, a Christmas wedding—that usually marks the pinnacle of the plot, when the lead comes to realize the value of family, the spirit of the season, and their true sense of love and self. That’s where the show-stopping (perhaps even “princess”) gowns come in.
PHOTO: Steven Ackerman
A still from A Shoe Addict’s Christmas.
In A Shoe Addict’s Christmas, Noelle relishes the chance to wear a striking red halter ball gown (a noticeable departure from the streamlined, earth-toned silhouettes she wears earlier in the movie) to the climatic holiday gala. Before the winter ball in A Very Nutty Christmas—and after a shopping montage full of delightful rejects, like an ‘80s studded “Madonna”-inspired number—Kate splurges on an ivory tulle and crystal-embellished confection, which costume designer Chantal Filson custom-designed with “a lot of Cinderella elements.” (“Her skirt had 10 layers of netting and I crammed in a glitter layer in the middle,” the costume designer adds.)
Then, of course, there’s the Royal Wedding dress of A Christmas Prince: Royal Wedding. The process of picking out said dress in the movie is a metaphor for Amber’s central conflict: reconciling her practical, journalistic roots with the reality of her imminent royalty. Her options start with “inspiration from the rigid Victorian era,” according to costume designer Luminita Lungu. “Then, I went more into the past for inspiration from the Renaissance period. Therefore the entire outfit is ridiculous and flamboyant—and, of course, uncomfortable. The result needed to be ridiculous.” But in the final reveal, Amber walks down the aisle in a streamlined, more Kate Middleton-esque style, paired with high-top sneakers that are so clearly her.
PHOTO: Courtesy of Netflix
A still from A Christmas Prince: Royal Wedding.
“The wedding sneakers are, of course, Amber’s trademark,” Lungu adds. “The wedding outfit would not have been authentic in their absence”
Your eyes may be fixated on the seemingly fake snow, but the effort that goes into the costumes of your favorite cheesy holiday movie—as romanticized and polished as the plot points—are just as crucial in immersing the viewer in this world. That’s as true for the big ball gown reveal as it is for the earmuffs and scarves worn by the background actors you see milling about the requisite holiday market and convening for tree-lighting ceremonies.
Because when it comes to holidays, everyone has to look the part.
In 2018 it feels like the world is at last prepared for Janelle Monáe. Ten years ago her EP, Metropolis: The Chase Suite, arrived as if from another continent, even planet. The layered, literary R&B album referenced classic space operas like Star Trek and the works of David Bowie and Prince. It seemed to foretell a world where black girls could imagine themselves without limits. I first heard about Monáe around then, from a much cooler coworker. I remember listening to “Many Moons,” the single that merited her first Grammy nomination, as my colleague and I traded visions of black self-determination.
It was 2008, before the social media heyday, when mass portraits of black identities were still controlled by a narrow-minded media complex. But Monáe kept working her own grooves anyway. Next came The Arch-Android in 2010, which broke the Billboard top 20 with tracks so infectious even Michelle Obama put them on her workout playlist.
PHOTO: Danielle Levitt in Los Angeles. Stylist: Sean Knight; hair: Vernon François; makeup: Jessica Smalls; manicure: Sreynin Peng; set design: Carl Hopgood; production: Emily O’Meara. Calvin Klein 205W39 NYC gown, hat. Alison Lou
Calvin Klein 205W39NYC gown, $1,900, hat, $390, calvinklein.com. Alison Lou hoops, $125, alisonlou.com.
It didn’t occur to me then to wonder where in the world Monáe had come from. But as I reached out to interview her this fall, it all of a sudden seemed essential to know. Every superhero has an origin story.
This is hers: Monáe, 33, was born in Kansas City, Kansas, the product of a black working-class neighborhood called Quindaro. The area was a settlement for Native Americans and, during the Civil War, a haven for abolitionists and black people who escaped enslavement. Her grandmother still owns the house Monáe played in as a child. When she visits, the stories she was raised on flood back to her. Her grandparents, Monáe tells me, passed down the tales from their ancestors about watching slaves escape during Bleeding Kansas, a series of violent clashes in the lead-up to the Civil War. “You can still see some of the ruins there,” she says. “Just knowing that I come from a place where people were trying to be free and fighting for their survival, it makes me feel like I have a lot of people to make proud. I don’t want their work and their blood and their sweat and their tears and their sacrifices to go in vain.”
It’s because of her parents (mother, a janitor; stepfather, a post office worker) that Monáe started to wear a black-and-white tux to public appearances, she says. The outfit was her uniform, an homage to the uniforms that blue-collar workers have worn for decades.
“I’ve always taken issue with people trying to place an image on what a young girl could be,” says Monáe. “I was going to decide that for myself.”
When Monáe released Dirty Computer in April 2018, she seemed to want to break out of even her self-imposed strictures. Her latest work is a new beginning, showing us the fullest vision of Monáe to date. She describes the single “Pynk” as “a brash celebration of creation, self-love, sexuality, and pussy power.” And in its music video Monáe flaunts pubic hair and showcases a parade of voluminous pants shaped like vaginas. “I knew that I wanted to embrace all of me,” she says. “The good, the bad, the complicated, the humble, the cocky, the many dimensions of who I was.” In December, audiences will see her in Welcome to Marwen, her first feature role since Hidden Figures in 2016. The movie is as distinctive as its leads—a combination live-action and animated film about an artist named Mark Hogancamp (Steve Carrell) who tries to recover from a brutal attack by creating a miniature World War II town. Monáe stars as his physical therapist and friend. In other words, the healer.
“I’ve always taken issue with people trying to place an image on what a young girl could be. Early on I told my parents that I was going to decide that for myself.”
Monáe was raised in the Baptist church, a place that both fostered her love of music and emphasized, in her view, that she was different from some of her fellow worshippers. “I grew up with 12 aunts that I was very close to and that loved and cared about me,” she remembers. But with their affection came a host of opinions that they didn’t hesitate to make known. “They would say, ‘Oh, no skirts above the knees,’ or, ‘You can’t wear pants,’” Monae recalls. “I would…come in and just want to express myself. You had to deal with the looks and the community saying, ‘When you come in here, you need to look this way.’ I’ve always taken issue with people trying to place an image on what a young girl could be. Early on I told my parents that I was going to decide that for myself.”
The church may have sometimes stifled her, but it was also where Monáe learned the power of activism. She went door-to-door to feed the poor. She walked around the most dangerous parts of her neighborhood, “praying with people that people [would] put down their guns.” It felt good, she says, like, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing.” Monáe has carried that commitment to activism into adulthood. She has been an outspoken and frequent supporter of the Women’s March. At the 2018 Grammys she gave one of the most powerful speeches about Time’s Up; it was an extension of her own work with Fem the Future, which she launched in 2016 to empower female music executives, filmmakers, and sound engineers. The organization is her response to her own frustrations about opportunities for women in the business. That zeal for justice will continue to permeate her artistic work; her videos in particular create worlds of both oppression and rebellion. These fictional worlds, she says, “allow us to see where we could be headed. If we don’t right our wrongs, this could be our future.”
At this moment, even as the country seems bitterly polarized, she’s focused on a path forward. “We are going to have to figure out how to protect each other better than we have been,” she says. “We have to prioritize that, do a better job of looking after each other. I think we get an F in that. We’re going to have to stop getting lost in our own individualism because we are a [community]. We literally rely on each other to survive.”
“We are going to have to figure out how to protect each other better than we have been,” Monáe says. “We have to do a better job of looking after each other.”
Helmut Lang coat. Celine top. See by Chloé pants, $345. Stetson hat, $115. Alison Lou hoops,$125. Louise Olsen silver rings, $220, $230. JaneD’Arensbourg ring, $132.
And how do we do that? For Monáe—an exceptional talent but one hell-bent on collective deliverance—the best chance we have at freedom comes to us as it did to her as a child: through stories. “Having real vulnerable moments allows us to see each other in each other,” she says. “Once we can reach a level of empathy, maybe we can like each other more. Maybe we can love each other more.”
It’s a kindness Monáe has tried to extend inward over the past year in particular. Her various identities have rallied her: “I’m a part of the LGBTQIA community. I’m a black woman. My parents are working class,” she says. None of us, she adds, has “our shit together,” so why not just own it, whatever we are?
“We can pull down the fake wallpaper, break the mirror that has been lying to us and making [us] believe that we need to be perfect,” she says. “We don’t need to be perfect to be respected.”
Kaitlyn Greenidge is the author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman.
Hair: Vernon Francois at The Visionaries Agency; makeup: Jessica Smalls at The Wall Group; prop stylist: Carl Hopgood at Celestine Agency; manicure: Sreynin Peng; production: JN Production.
Full Frontal host Samantha Bee is revisiting the controversy she ignited last May when she called Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt” over her lack of response to President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, which separated migrant children from their parents.
In a new interview with The Daily Beast, Bee now explains that she has some regrets abut how the moment unfolded—primarily because the comment diverted attention from the subject of those family separations.
“I was very regretful that that moment really took away from what I was trying to say with the segment. And the segment really effectively disappeared, you can’t find it anymore. That’s really a shame, because the subject matter was really important to me,” she said, adding later, “I felt like it did a disservice to the [separated] families. Not that we would expect to have a huge impact on them, but I felt that anything that took away from that story, which is so critical and an ongoing story that continues on to this moment, I felt terrible.”
In the segment, Bee noted Trump’s silence around the border crisis, showing an Instagram photo the First Daughter posted with her son—something many people criticized as being tone-deaf. (Trump often touts her commitment to women and children as part of her role in White House.) Bee then looked into the camera and addressed Trump directly: “Let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad’s immigration practices, you feckless cunt. He listens to you!”
The use of the C-word drew intense backlash, with some insisting that Bee had gone too far. But Bee also sparked a discussion about the implications of the word and the complicity of Trump, who serves as an advisor in the President’s administration. Later, Donald Trump even got involved, shooting off a tweet in which he wondered why Bee hadn’t lost her job. “Why aren’t they firing no talent Samantha Bee for the horrible language used on her low ratings show? A total double standard but that’s O.K., we are Winning, and will be doing so for a long time to come!” he wrote.
Bee, who eventually issued an apology to Ivanka Trump, described the entire experience as “unpleasant,” particularly the moment in which she was singled out by the President. “It definitely unleashes a different kind of beast into your life when the President specifically tweets about you, so that was a bit new. As a person, it’s helpful for me to keep the show small in my brain,” she said.
Still, Bee is moving past it. She’s taking a break as she prepares for a new season of her show, which is going to get an updated look with a new set. “I think we’re ready to take up more space in the world and so why not have a set that reflects that,” she said.
While much of the outrage has been focused on the separation of families and the conditions for young children, a new Buzzfeed News report states that circumstances for pregnant women can be just as disturbing.
Until recently, according to Buzzfeed, there was an Obama-era directive in place that stated pregnant women were not to be detained, except in extreme circumstances or rare cases of expedited deportation. But the new Trump administration policy makes no such exception and states that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is responsible for “ensuring pregnant detainees receive appropriate medical care including effectuating transfers to facilities that are able to provide appropriate medical treatment.”
However, Buzzfeed’s reporting shows that this may not be happening—and women are suffering. The outlet talked to one woman (who wanted to keep her identity private for fear of repercussions) seeking asylum in the U.S. from El Salvador. During her time in an Arizona facility where she was pregnant, she says that she began to bleed and feared she was suffering a miscarriage.
“An official arrived and they said it was not a hospital and they weren’t doctors. They wouldn’t look after me,” she said. “I realized I was losing my son. It was his life that I was bleeding out. I was staining everything. I spent about eight days just lying down. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t do anything. I started crying and crying and crying.”
“My soul aches that there are many pregnant women coming who could lose their babies like I did and that they will do nothing to help them,” she continued.
Buzzfeed has also spoken to or received written affidavits from four other women who say that they were denied proper medical care or attention while pregnant and being held either by ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Some alleged incidents of physical abuse by CBP officers. (Per Buzzfeed, legal aid and medical workers interviewed confirmed that they have seen—and sometimes documented—cases of pregnant women not receiving or being denied medical care in more than six different detention centers in the Southwest.
“All detainees, determined to be pregnant, are provided appropriate education, prenatal care, and postnatal care,” ICE officials said in a statement. “Such care includes referral to a physician specializing in high-risk pregnancies when high-risk pregnancy is indicated.” They also referred to the policy as written on its website. While ICE and CBP referred to their website, the Department of Homeland Security did not individually respond to Buzzfeed’s request for comment.
Outrage, of course, began anew once the story broke—from private citizens to U.S. Senators like Kirsten Gillibrand.
