You know when a dog’s so ugly it’s cute? It’s cross-eyed, scraggly, and has a goofy sounding bark—but those unfavorable qualities somehow win you over, meshing into an adorable little package in the end. I’ve always admired people whose closets work like that. They’re so skilled at putting together offbeat outfits that are so wrong, they’re right. Embracing fashion faux pas can make a look ironically stylish, and a low-risk way to get it done is to reach for notoriously “ugly” shoes.
Reworking blacklisted styles is a favorite trick among the fashion set since the choice adds an unexpected twist and says you’re a rule-breaker and an individual—which is essential to having personal style. There’s something about knowing an item is off-limits and wearing it anyway that will never not be cool—so get inspired by five street style looks that will convince you to give dad sneakers, clunky flip flops and chunky loafers a second thought.
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As expected, I only found about 10 emails between us in as many years of Gmail use. The revelation was not in anything I read but in the mere typing of his name—an icy wave of relief splashing me in the face. How good it felt to write his name for no reason, in a place that only I could see, and not on some piece of paperwork related to his death or in response to some well-wisher’s post on Facebook. It was like charging a magical sigil. I’d never been one of those writers who attached fetishistic significance to the physical act of writing (or to books themselves, or paper). But I finally understood how those writers felt. Writing to my father, I realized, was a charmed act. It didn’t summon him, but it raised the friendly shadow of him in the room; that was something.
I began writing him emails. I didn’t send them at first. Typing his email address into the “recipient” bar was enough to conjure up his listening presence. For months I transcribed the hostile anguish in my head into emails to my father, which I would then seal off with the addition of his email address and save in my drafts folder. It was the high school diary, unfiltered. He would never find out how it ended now; it felt good to “tell” him.
The first time I pressed “send,” it was by accident, and I was horrified. I was worried not that someone would receive and read the email, but that the recipient address would bounce back a message that the account had been deactivated.
I stared at my inbox for a minute, waiting for the inevitable. It never happened. The email address was still active.
So I continued the ritual, except now I sent those long-winded emails out. I wrote to my father anytime I needed him. In my letters, I tried to talk myself around to whatever he would have said to me, hoping I could reverse-engineer the advice he might have given me. Then I pressed “send,” which never stopped being thrilling—I’d sidestepped the finality of death and found a plane where my father could thrive unchallenged. I put disclaimers at the beginning of every email: Hey, if you can somehow read this, please ignore it; hey, I don’t think anyone’s checking this email, but if you are then please just delete without reading; I’m lonely, I’m grieving, I miss my father, nothing to see here. But nobody ever responded.
One day, a year and a half later, someone did respond—not from my father’s email address, thank God, or I likely would have passed out at my desk. Still, it was frightening to see another email address from the same Workplace suite, with the same subject line. I don’t know what I was frightened of, exactly. Only that the stakes felt terribly high. I’d forgotten the cardinal rule of doing anything online, even sending emails to a dead person’s inbox—everything that happens online can be witnessed by an audience.
The response I received is the reason you’re reading this, because I posted it on Twitter and it went viral. “I’m sure you remember me,” my father’s former coworker wrote. “I want you to know that I never read these emails because I can tell they are very personal. But I do see them coming in and I can see that you must still miss your dad terribly.” There was more; I’m self-conscious about typing it all out, because of how generous it was for this person to not only share memories of my father with me, but to interpret them, color them with our shared understanding of what my father and I had been together. Like, for example: “Watching the two of you together wisecracking…it was like watching a Mel Brooks movie.”
Right after he died, all I ever wanted to do was talk about how great my dad was. People never quite related to that urge properly, leaving me feeling frustrated and thwarted at every turn. I was so dialed into my grief that it was unimaginable to me how people could talk to me about anything else. I wanted other people to tell me funny stories that made my father sound as cool and charming as I’d always believed him to be, without my having to ask for it. That was the thing that my dad’s old coworker did for me. I shot the signals of my mourning into space for months, fully expecting them to die unreceived. And when I least expected it, someone sent signals back that said, “You are not the last living witness to the relationship you had with your father.”
Father’s Day—a.k.a. the hardest gifting day of the year—is looming large. But you won’t need to pencil in a last-minute trip to the mall to pick up something, anything, for your old man.
We’ve got the very best Father’s Day gifts for every type of dad, from the techie to the one who insists he “gets” athleisure. Check out our picks for 2019, ahead.
Meghan Markle hasn’t even given birth yet, but Prince Harry is already making dad jokes. His latest one happened on the couple’s current trip to Morocco. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were visiting a school in the town of Asni when someone congratulated Markle on her pregnancy. Prince Harry quickly swooped in with some dad humor. “What, you’re pregnant?” he said, pretending to be shocked at what the well-wisher said.
Markle played along, quipping, “Surprise!” as she held back her laughter. And that’s when Prince Harry jumped in with the ultimate corny joke: “Is it mine?” he said.
It’s official: Prince Harry is going to be one of those dads, the ones who wear chunky white sneakers, fanny packs, and Hawaiian T-shirts to Disney World. On Halloween, he’ll put on a costume to bring his child to school—even when they’re 16. And he’ll have plenty more jokes where this one came from.
Watch Prince Harry and Markle have this exchange for yourself, below:
Meghan Markle has been having quite the exciting month. Just last week she had her baby shower in New York City, which several of her famous friends, including Gayle King, Serena Williams, and Amal Clooney, attended. “She’s very kind. She’s very generous and a really, really sweet person. I think her friends just wanted to celebrate her,” King said about the shower. “A good time was had by all.”
Now she and Prince Harry are in Morocco, where she received a henna tattoo to celebrate her baby. “It’s for when we have a big party. Now she is pregnant we do the henna to keep her happy with the baby,” Khadeja Oukattou, an Education for All housemother, told People about the ink. “For good luck.”
Markle is reportedly due in late April-slash-early May. Let the royal baby countdown begin.
The last time Thomas Markle majorly made headlines was around the royal wedding. If you remember, he was expected to attend his daughter Meghan Markle‘s nuptials to Prince Harry, but medical issues ultimately kept him away. The most perplexing part of the situation, though, was his chattiness with the press. Every time there was an update about his royal wedding attendance, Thomas gave a statement to TMZ. He’s kept up this media transparency too, talking to outlets seemingly every chance he gets. Samantha Markle, Meghan’s half-sister, is notorious for doing this as well.
Thomas’ latest media tour is generating just as much buzz as his royal wedding quotes. In a new interview with Good Morning Britain, Thomas says he’s been trying to text Meghan for weeks but hasn’t received a response. He says he’s been “ghosted” by everyone connected to Meghan and wants Queen Elizabeth II, of all people, to help mend this rift.
PHOTO: Getty Images
But the queen reportedly has her own opinions about this situation. A new feature from Vanity Fair posits she isn’t too keen on Meghan’s strategy of ignoring the drama with her father.
“[The Queen] was very concerned that it [the Thomas Markle situation] was spiraling out of control, which it was,” one observer tells VF. “Buckingham Palace wanted to be able to do something and be proactive and make the situation go away. It was a direction from the Queen, so her courtiers were under strict instructions to sort it out. But Kensington Palace was not singing from the same hymn sheet, and that was because the message was coming from Meghan. She didn’t want to engage and thought that she could handle it on her own.”
Meghan’s silence on the matter has reportedly ruffled some feathers in the palace. “There was a lot of tension between courtiers within the two royal households, and I think it just got to a point where it was stalemate and, you know, neither could move,” the source added.
From the surface, it appears Meghan’s silence method is prevailing. No one in the royal household has directly commented on the Thomas Markle drama—yet. Of course, we’ll let you know if that changes.
Once Netflix’s To All the Boys I Loved Before became a bonafide hit, the Internet had a field day meme-ifying it. There’s the one that poked fun at Lara Jean’s not-so-stealth attempt to hide from the guys who received her love letters, the shot of fans googling Noah Centineo’s age (guilty as charged), and the hundreds of tweets gushing about that hot tub scene. However, the meme that intrigued me the most had nothing to do with Peter Kavinsky: It was a mashup comparing Lara Jean’s dad, Dr. Covey, to Dr. Stratford, the father in 10 Things I Hate About You.
Specifically, the meme compares how Dr. Covey (John Corbett) and Dr. Stratford (Larry Miller), both widowed gynecologists, stumble through “the talk” with their teen daughters. On the surface, it’s an apt comparison; but if you look deeper, the juxtaposition exposes the divide between contemporary on-screen fathers with movie dads of yesteryear. Or, put more bluntly, they’re getting woke. (And hotter. Looking at you, Josh Duhamel.)
In 10 Things, for example, Dr. Stratford puts his daughter in a fat suit and warns her, “Every time you even think about kissing a boy I want you to picture wearing [a fake pregnant belly] under your halter top.” But Dr. Covey tries to have a thoughtful conversation with Lara Jean about her reproductive choices, telling her, “Did you know most unwanted teenage pregnancies are the result of expecting abstinence?”
Dr. Covey isn’t the only movie dad leaning into a more nuanced, emotionally available relationship with their teen this year. In the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name Elio’s father, Professor Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg), comforts his newly heartbroken son by delivering an epic monologue. “You had a beautiful friendship, maybe more than a friendship,” he says of Elio’s relationship with an older man. “I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, to pray that their sons land on their feet. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is pain, nurse it.” Not only is Elio’s father understanding of his emotions, he tells him to revel in their messiness, to take in the pain.
Michael Stuhlbarg (left) as Professor Perlman in Call Me By Your Name
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
In Love, Simon, the first major Hollywood studio film to focus on a gay teen romance, Simon also finds solace in his family. While his father—former leading man turned on-screen zaddy Josh Duhamel as Jack—isn’t quite as hip to his son’s sexual orientation as Stuhlbarg’s character, once Simon does come out to his dad, he’s distraught that he didn’t realize on his own. “[My character] is upset with himself for not paying closer attention,” Duhamel tells Glamour. “I can understand why he would feel guilty about that. That [Simon] felt that he had to hide from [his dad] for so long. That he wasn’t available to him to make him feel comfortable.” In the past, we might have applauded Duhamel’s character for so readily accepting his son’s sexuality; in 2018, though, he’s forced to grapple with why he was so blind to his son in the first place.
Josh Duhamel (right) as Jack in Love, Simon
Photo by Ben Rothstein
This trend doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, either. In The Hate U Give, out this October, protagonist Starr’s father, Maverick (Russell Hornsby), empowers her to become a champion for Black Lives Matter after witnessing a shooting at the hands of the police. “When you’re ready to talk, don’t ever let nobody make you be quiet,” he says at one point in the film.
PHOTO: Photo Credit: ERIKA DOSS
Russell Hornsby (left) as Maverick Carter in The Hate U Give
Photo by Erika Doss
Bo Burnham wrote and directed this summer’s Eighth Grade, which also features a dorky-cute single dad, Mark (Josh Hamilton), to a young teenage girl. Burnham is quick to acknowledge the uptick in good-guy fathers. “Good parents [were] kind of underrepresented in film [until now],” he says. “They don’t naturally lend themselves to drama as easily.”
But for Burnham, creating a well-intentioned father better reflected the parents he’s encountered in his life, including his own, than the distant fathers of the John Hughes era. “There’s probably slightly more of my mother in [Mark] than my father,” he says. “My mom would tell me I’m super cool all the time, but my dad was always in his boxers, shirtless, in my doorway, so that image [in the film] was certainly my father.”
PHOTO: Linda Kallerus
Josh Hamilton (right) as Mark Day in Eighth Grade
Photo by Linda Kallerus, courtesy of A24
Like Dr. Covey, Mark is constantly trying to get his daughter to let him in emotionally. This tension mirrors Burnham’s real-life experience. “My memories of fights with my parents were them trying to connect with me and me pushing them away,” he says, “rather than them not letting me listen to rock and roll music and me storming off into a quarry of whatever usually happens [in teen films].”
Similarly, Jenny Han, who wrote the novel To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is based on, thinks Dr. Covey is much more representative of today’s dads—and modern, evolved men as a whole. “People are [talking] not just about Dr. Covey, but about Peter too,” she explains. “People appreciate [them] in a way where they’re noticing how thoughtful they are. There’s a general appreciation for these men who are kind and just a bit more sensitive than we’ve seen.” In other words, it’s their awareness and empathy that makes them both heartthrobs.
PHOTO: Awesomeness Films
John Corbett (left) as Dr. Covey in To All the Boys I Loved Before
Courtesy of Netflix
Han’s inspiration for the white wine drinking, cupcake making Dr. Covey actually came from a family she worked for during graduate school. “I was a nanny to a young teen who was an only child,” she says. “Her mom traveled a lot for work, so her dad did a lot of the day to day stuff. I was thinking about how caring he was and really attuned, just like Dr. Covey, [who is] the dad of three girls who lost their mom. He has his limitations, but we see him trying. You see him again and again try his best—not being perfect, but trying.”
That’s the other thing that unites these fathers. They might not always get it right—like in Eighth Grade, when Mark makes the misstep of following his daughter to the mall—but they never stop fighting to do better, to be closer to their kids. Whether it’s through having frank conversations about sexuality, or knowing when to take your daughter to her favorite diner (hat tip to Dr. Covey), these dads represent a whole new generation of fathers. They’re dads who aren’t afraid afraid to lean into the supportive space once reserved only for moms.
Maybe it’s my own daddy issues, or that the news cycle is a never-ending parade of garbage men making garbage choices, but these good male role models have become my escape. On the days when there aren’t any new photos of Barack Obama on vacation or Justin Trudeau doing anything, it’s a comfort to know I can turn on Netflix and bask in the nerdy fatherly wisdom of Dr. Covey. And for a moment, all will feel right in the world.
Samantha Leach is an assistant editor at Glamour.
Photos courtesy of Netflix, A24, Twentieth Century Fox, and Sony Pictures Classics.
