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Demi Lovato Just Proved There's No Bad Blood Between Her and Taylor Swift


It’s not exactly surprising news, unfortunately, when two female pop stars are publicly pitted against each other. That’s pretty much a tale as old as time—and recently, both Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato have been on the receiving end of all sorts of speculation about their working relationships with other women in their field, including each other.

While rumors of a full-on feud might have been overblown, it’s been fairly clear that the two have not necessarily been buddy-buddy in recent years. Back in 2016, Lovato appeared to throw some shade at Swift in an interview with Glamour: “Don’t brand yourself a feminist if you don’t do the work,” she said at the time.

“To be honest, and this will probably get me in trouble, I don’t see anybody in any sort of squad that has a normal body,” she continued. “It’s kind of this false image of what people should look like. And what they should be like, and it’s not real.”

Then there was the Scooter Braun drama, where he purchased the masters to Swift’s earlier recordings. Swift was furious, but Lovato (a Braun client) defended him. More recently, fans thought Lovato was referencing Swift as the “reason” she didn’t attend the 2019 VMAs, which Swift opened. But the singer quickly shut that down on Twitter: “Btw.. I didn’t ‘shade’ anyone last night. My REASON for not going is because I’m literally living my dream being on Will & Grace rn so stop reaching thaaaaannnnkkssss.” (Lovato will appear in the final season of the NBC show’s reboot.)

But now, the two superstars are showing each other some genuine support with a couple Instagram shout-outs—and we’re here for it.

Lovato and Swift at the premiere of the Hannah Montana: The Movie in 2009.Jeff Vespa

Lovato took to her Instagram Stories to praise the song “Cruel Summer” from Swift’s latest album, Lover. “Life’s too short for women not to support other women…especially when women release great music,” she continued. “Great job @taylorswift.”

Demi Lovato Instagram Story
Instagram/@DDLovato



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Willa Ford: From ‘I Wanna Be Bad’ to Scott Disick’s Interior Designer


It sounds like the plot of a knock-off A Star Is Born, but Willa Ford‘s 2001 hit single “I Wanna Be Bad” stemmed from her being, well, bad. The then unknown singer tells me she was working with a record label at the time that asked her to make more “wholesome” music. She had other ideas.

“Everything I was writing was funky and, you know, like me,” Ford says. “I remember one day I was like, ‘I’m going to do the opposite of what they’re telling me.’ If somebody gives me an authority figure, I’m like, ‘Let me go the other way.'”

That’s when her “aha!” moment came. “I said [to my writing partners], ‘I want to write something where I just wanna be bad,'” Ford recalls. “And they were dying. They were like, ‘This is hilarious. The record label’s gonna kill us, but let’s do it.'”

“I Wanna Be Bad,” a stomping anthem with lyrics like, “I’m losing all my cool / I’m about to break the rules” was born. Ford says the record label liked the song but wanted a softer (read: cheesy) pre-chorus. But then a record executive from another label, Jason Flom, heard Ford’s original version and saw her potential. The rest is pop history: Flom signed Ford, and “I Wanna Be Bad” became a smash, reaching No. 4 on Billboard‘s dance charts and 11 on the Top 40. She was 20 years old.

“Doing the opposite of what I was constantly being told to do and being defiant is how that song came about,” Ford says.

Willa Ford on the set of the “I Wanna Be Bad” music video in 2001

Getty Images

Defiance is in Ford’s DNA. It’s what ignited her pop-music career—and what gave her the courage to walk away when things went awry. Her journey to career fulfillment isn’t so well-known, but anyone contemplating a professional reinvention should hear it.

Born Amanda Lee Williford in Ruskin, Florida, her music talents appeared at an early age. She even scored a spot studying opera in a competitive program. “I was getting free opera training from about 12 to 17. I loved it,” she says. Her chops were strong (listen here), but Ford found herself rejecting opera’s rigid practices. “I was a 16-year-old girl, and my teacher was telling me, ‘You can’t talk on the phone because you’re straining your vocals’ and, ‘You can’t drink that’ and, ‘You can’t eat this.'”

Ford just wanted to let loose, so she pivoted. “I knew in my soul that I wasn’t meant to wear a black dress in front of an orchestra and sing,” she says. “In that moment I decided, ‘I want to dance and have fun and write fun music.'”

The industry was ready for her. Bombastic, bubblegum pop dominated radio in the early aughts, and most of the women making it looked like Ford: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson. Ford crossed paths with most of them as she made her transition to pop. “Britney was always the loveliest human—just a really cool, sweet, normal girl back in the day,” she says. “Jessica was always a doll. The only person I didn’t know was Christina, believe it or not. For whatever reason, we never came into each other’s circle.”

Willa Ford From I Wanna Be Bad to Scott Disicks Interior Designer



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We Need 'Our Bodies, Ourselves' As Much Now as In 1973. Too Bad It Will Be Out of Print.


“One gripe that I’ve always had is that, if I meet someone at a demonstration or some random place, they’ll tell me, ‘I still have the first book that I had in college!’ I didn’t usually say anything about it, but at the same time, I’m thinking, Uh, could you buy another book?” Doress-Worters says, only half joking. In an informal survey of about 60 female friends of mine, more than 86 percent said they knew about Our Bodies, Ourselves, while only 17 percent said they actually owned a copy.

“It was just truly a financial burden. We’ve been, for better or for worse, a classic nonprofit. We don’t have a corporate mindset,” Ditzion adds.

“The problem back then was that there was no information, we were all sort of always living in ignorance. We didn’t know anything,” Norsigian explains. “Now, there’s a ton of information, and most of it is not accurate. You have a very different problem, which is that you think you’re informed when you’re not.” The original purpose of the book was to give women the power of knowledge about their own bodies, as a response to the powerlessness doctors had made those same women feel. It was as simple as it was subversive.

Which is not to say that Our Bodies, Ourselves has not had its own missteps. The founding team lacked diversity. Editions have had to be expanded to include sections on transgender health, environmental considerations that affect women’s bodies, and mental health. For its eighth edition, in 2005, a shift to a pink cover earned criticism from New York Times’ editor Alexandra Jacobs for having “a clichéd feminine color one suspects would’ve horrified the original authors.” (The founders wrote to the paper, describing Jacobs’ piece as having “several mischaracterizations” of the update.) And while the most recent—and now final—edition of the book feels more like a textbook than a manifesto, the information, the autonomy, and the power is still there, albeit softened.

For now, all is not lost. In 2020 Suffolk University in Boston will launch “Our Bodies, Ourselves Today,” an online hub that will present a wealth of resources—through podcasts, panels, expert research, and otherwise—that aim to inform women about their own bodies without hawking jade vaginal eggs.

“We’re not going to be generating new information, we’re not going to be in bringing in writers and researchers,” says Amy Agigian, the director of the Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights. “We’re putting together panels of content experts who will come up with things that are already there, and we’ll link to, annotate, and curate them.”

Agigian and her small team will maintain the spirit of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and are working closely with the founders on what the site will be, but one thing Agigian insists is that it’s essential that this new era of Our Bodies, Ourselves be inclusive and welcoming and reflect the world that we live in. “We not only want to be sensitive, but we want to be honest and self-reflective,” Agigian says. “Our new tagline is, ‘Trustworthy, inclusive women’s health resources.’ We are for all kinds of people.” Even cis-men, she adds.

No matter the form Our Bodies, Ourselves takes now, it’s hard not to fear for its future, especially as the founders enter their seventies and eighties. “You never know, maybe there will be a new generation that wants to revisit the book or talk about it,” Doress-Worters says, while acknowledging the book’s limits. “We did this, we’re proud of having done it, we’re glad that people welcomed it and got something out of it, and when it’s over, it’s over.”

Dayna Evans is a writer based in New York.



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Kim Kardashian Called Out Tristan Thompson for Not Feeling Bad About Cheating


We know from a Keeping Up With the Kardashians clip released earlier this week that Kim Kardashian was not pleased with Tristan Thompson after news of him cheating on Khloé broke in April. (If you forget, Khloé was just days away from giving birth when this happened.) Kim was literally ready to fight Tristan when they first came face to face in Khloé’s delivery room after the scandal, but she held her tongue and kept the peace.

She didn’t hold back, though, during a conversation the family had off-camera with Tristan shortly after Khloé had her baby. In a new KUWTK clip, Kim recounts exactly what she said to Tristan during that heated discussion.

“I told him, ‘I think you’re more remorseful because it’s affecting your job,'” Kim said, referring to how Tristan was booed at Cleveland Cavaliers games after fans learned of his cheating. “I think he’s more embarrassed that he looks stupid. I think it’s more of that than anything.”

Watch Kim say all this for yourself, below:

[embedded content]

Kim said that off-camera convo was “OK at the beginning.” “And then it got heated. It kinda took a left turn…Overall I think it was definitely necessary for us to just let out how we all felt.”

She continued, “He got mad because [Kris] was like, ‘You can make your decision. If you want to live this life of dating these Instagram [girls] and doing your thing, live that life.’ Mom’s like, ‘If this doesn’t work out with you guys, we’re always going to rise up.'”

Tune into this Sunday’s episode of KUWTK at 9 P.M. ET on E! to see how this all plays out.

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Kim Kardashian Just Apologized for Using the R-Word on Her Instagram Story



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I Feel Bad Wasn't Written for a Woman of Color. Then Sarayu Blue Auditioned.


Sarayu Blue was debating a career change—or, at very least, a pivot—when the actress landed the part of Emet on I Feel Bad, NBC’s new comedy from Amy Poehler. “I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I quit,'” she explains. “It was more of a really deep frustration with the industry and feeling like there was a cap on what, as a woman of color, I was going to be allowed to do.”

That’s not to say Blue isn’t proud of her résumé so far. She is! She’s had great experiences with roles on just about every hit procedural and sitcom you can name (NCIS: Los Angeles, Grey’s Anatomy, The Big Bang Theory) as well as a memorable part in this year’s Blockers. But after more than a decade auditioning for what she jokes are “four-line doctor roles,” Blue started to feel discouraged. She questioned her long-term plan. She thought, “I gotta figure something out to be able to not be broke at 85.”

Acting is like being in a dysfunctional relationship, she explains. Right when you’re ready to call it, you get just enough to keep going.

“In my experience, if it wasn’t written specifically for a woman of color…a lead role wasn’t going my way.”

“I turned to my husband and said, ‘I think I’ve got about one more pilot season in me,'” Blue remembers. “And he looked at me with heartbreak. I mean, he was so sad that’s where I was. It really broke his heart.” She tears up remembering this story, because, “it just makes it mean so much more now.”

That “it” is playing Emet, a mother/daughter/wife/coworker who’s just trying to keep it all together. When Blue saw the role, she knew she wanted it. Bad. She remembers shaking as she left the audition, thinking, Oh my God, I think I nailed it. After that came a studio test, then a network test, and a read with Paul Adelstein, who plays Emet’s husband David. Still, Blue knew well enough by now that roles can come and go at anytime, for any reason. It’s the nature of the business.

Another factor she considered: Emet wasn’t written specifically for an Indian woman. “I was the only woman of color testing for it,” she says. “It was one of those experiences where you go, ‘Oh, it’s either going to go that way or this way.'” In other words, she wasn’t really in competition with anyone for the part—she was auditioning for “the concept of me doing the role.”

PHOTO: Getty Images

PHOTO: Getty Images

PHOTO: Getty Images

But it worked: Blue got the part, and it had ripple effects for the rest of the show’s casting. “It brings this cultural specificity,” she explains. “You have to get Indian parents, you have to get biracial children.”

Blue compares this to a Cinderella story: Colorblind casting is still so unheard of in the industry that it’s a fairytale. A fantasy.

“There have been plenty of times I read for the leads of pilots, and I’ve called up my manager and said, ‘I’m not going to get this. You still want me to go in?'” Blue says. “Not to be cynical. I’m happy to go in; I love auditioning. But I had the awareness at that point that it was like, ‘They’re not going to do that.'”

“I’ve heard a lot of people when I got [I Feel Bad] say, ‘Where did she come from? We didn’t know you could do this!'”

When I ask her to elaborate, she says, “In my experience, if it wasn’t written specifically for a woman of color—and even more specifically, Indian—a lead role wasn’t going my way. It just wasn’t on the table. It wasn’t an option. There are plenty of lead roles that I think lots of women of color are fantastic for, but more often than not they’re creating that work for themselves. That’s what I’ve seen.”

She’s also seen people of color or other marginalized communities being limited to those aforementioned four-line doctor roles. “When you watch any story, there are characters that are fleshed out and there are functional characters. There’s nothing wrong with either,” she says. “But if you keep putting [people of color] in those roles, audiences aren’t going to know what those actors can do. I’ve heard a lot of people when I got [I Feel Bad] say, ‘Where did she come from? We didn’t know you could do this!'”

But that’s the point: She can do this. She has been doing this. She just finally has a platform to show it.

“The thing about the show that’s so special is how honest it is. None of us feel like we’re enough or doing enough or that we’re allowed to just take a break. We’re all just trying to get by,” Blue says. “I wanted to let Emet be the flawed human she is. Because I think that’s how we all feel, like treading water and trying to keep afloat. That, to me, is very human.”

I Feel Bad airs Thursdays on NBC.



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Kim Kardashian Faces Backlash After Claiming She Has 'Nothing Bad to Say' About Donald Trump


Kim Kardashian West turned heads when it was announced she would be meeting with Donald Trump in May to advocate for the release of Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old great-grandmother who had been serving life in prison for a non-violent drug charge. Her efforts worked—Trump commuted Johnson’s sentence, but that hasn’t stopped people from calling out his other policies and the West family’s alignment with the administration.

The backlash continued to pile up on Monday, after Kardashian went on Jimmy Kimmel Live, telling the host she had “nothing bad to say about the president.”

On the show, Kardashian explained she wanted to discuss Johnson’s case with Trump because she “knew there was only one person in power that could make this change and get this woman out of prison.” She added that she has a list of people in prison that she wants to take to Trump, and said she is “very grateful and very hopeful that more good things are going to come out of our conversations.”

She also tried to explain her husband Kanye West’s controversial endorsements of the president. On social media, West has gone on several rants supporting Trump, and his inflammatory tweets have included everything from calling Trump “his brother” to posting pictures of a Make America Great Again hat.

“To make it clear, we’d talk about it and his policies, and he doesn’t necessarily agree with his policies. He likes his personality…and how he made it to be president when everybody really underestimated him,” she said, adding, “He’s not political so he doesn’t dig deep into what’s going on.”

Following the Kimmel interview, Twitter quickly took Kardashian to task, calling her uninformed and pointing out policies the Trump administration has initiated that deserve scrutiny, including the separation of children at the border. Critics also took offense to the tone of the interview—Kardashian laughed and joked that she had been naked when Trump called to tell her he had commuted Johnson’s sentence.

Kardashian’s comments don’t address insults Trump has made about her in the past. In a 2013 interview with Howard Stern, Trump made crude remarks about her physical appearance, saying, “Does she have a good body? No. Does she have a fat ass? Absolutely.”

Others have questioned how committed Kardashian is to prison reform. On social media, many dismissed her initial meeting with Trump as a publicity stunt that benefits both reality show stars.

Related Stories:

Alice Johnson Is Free, But Is the Trump Administration Actually Committed to Criminal Justice Reform?

President Trump Commutes Alice Johnson’s Sentence a Week After Meeting With Kim Kardashian





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