As promised, Taylor Swift delivered the music video for her latest single, “You Need to Calm Down,” this morning—and it’s packed with famous faces and a lot of color.
Over the weekend, Swift released a list of some of her celebrity friends who appear in the video, like all the guys from Queer Eye, Ellen DeGeneres, Ryan Reynolds, Pose‘s Billy Porter, RuPaul, and Ciara.
But one name was conspicuously left off the list: Katy Perry. That’s right: Katy Perry, dressed in her Met Gala burger costume, reunites with Taylor Swift, who’s dressed as an order of fries. The two approach each other hesitantly, but then end up awkwardly slow-dancing like you did back in middle school. Rumors began swirling over the weekend that Perry would appear in Swift’s video, and that they kissed during their burger-fry dance. But Swift shut this down, saying, “To be an ally is to understand the difference between advocating and baiting.” It turns out that the fast food concept was true—just not the kiss.
We already knew these two were back to being friends after the cookie peace offering seen ’round the world, but now it’s officially official. Does this mean Swift will be making an appearance in an upcoming Perry video? We hope so.
[embedded content]
“A happy meal,” Swift captioned a photo of her and Perry on Twitter.
“This meal is BEEF-free #MeatFreeMonday ?♥️?,” Perry wrote on Instagram.
Swift wants to celebrate all the friends she asked to be in the video. “The #YNTCDmusicvideo is out! First, I want to say that my co-stars in this video are AMAZING. Please celebrate by supporting their work, following them, and going to see them perform. I’m SO grateful and SO EXCITED I ACTUALLY DO NEED TO CALM DOWN,” she tweeted, before going on to tag them all in subsequent posts.
But what of all the other Swiftian references in the video? There, naturally, are many. Here’s a rundown of some of the best ones.
The end of summer is still another month or so away, but Blake Lively is apparently ready for fall fashion.
The actress was photographed on Friday in New York—mid-August, where the temperature is a balmy 87 degrees—wearing a blue velvet pantsuit. But that’s not all: Rather than pop on a shirt underneath, Lively layered another velvet blazer on top, this one, by Brunello Cucinelli, in a rich red color. She finished off the outfit with a dark blue leather back, hoop earrings, and spiked nude heels by Christian Louboutin. It’s an outfit that would look perfectly at home on Serena van der Woodsen, or maybe Cate Blanchett’s character in Ocean’s 8.
Check it out.
PHOTO: KEVY/Backgrid
You know this look is all Lively because the actress doesn’t use a stylist. In an interview with WWD from May, she joked: “Probably because I have control issues and a big ego—that’s probably the honest answer.
“I love design and I love fashion, and it’s a way to be creative,” Lively continued. “In my job I get to be creative, but it’s over a period of time and so many other people are involved, whereas this is a beginning, middle, and end, and I get to be creative and there’s an end date in the near future.”
PHOTO: KEVY/Backgrid
“The hard part is going through all the fashion shows and screenshotting all the looks you like and calling them in,” she added to WWD. “I have an assistant who helps in calling in the looks. But a lot of it is I have relationships with the designers.” We’d love to see who the style inspo was for this look.
How she deals with the profuse sweating that comes with wearing velvet in August is still unclear, though.
I first came across the Kama Sutra at the tender age of 13 when I stumbled on—and by “stumbled on,” I mean dug deep in my parent’s closet—an unmarked VHS.
A quick push into the VCR, and there it was: one memorable scene featured a sari-clad woman, breast exposed with her torso twisted into a pretzel-like knot who was in the process of getting joyfully pounded by her male suitor at the edge of a lake. I later discovered that the sequence of yoga-esque sex positions was the Kama Sutra, a 2,000-year-old treatise on erotic pleasure. But for all the shock it once provoked, I didn’t think much of it. I deemed it an outdated porn tutorial and moved on.
Even when it cropped up in the pages of coffee table books or on posters tacked up in a dorm rooms, I still considered it to be a relic of the past, a thing nobody actually uses. So you can imagine my surprise to see a new edition had been published during the summer of 2018 and that, for the first time ever, a woman had illustrated it. Now more than ever, women’s pleasure is political; wouldn’t we need new rule books, not ancient ones?
But the artist and illustrator Victo Ngai wasn’t as quick to dismiss it. When the London-based Folio Society, which specializes in illustrated editions of classic texts, decided to produce a new edition of the manuscript, it tapped Ngai to update the images. It released 750 copies of her version of the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana last month.
With her interpretive illustrations, Ngai makes the seven-chapter work about not just elaborate sex positions, but also meaningful relationships. Still, she knows that the balance she tries to strike—between the Kama Sutra’s emphasis on the female form and her own intention to use it to encourage women to explore their own sexual expression—isn’t simple. (Until she took on its illustration, the most comprehensive version of it she’d seen had been on the shelves of Urban Outfitters.) But then, good sex has its tensions. Here, Ngai tells Glamour.com what about Indian art piqued her interest, how she interpreted centuries-old illustrations, and how to cope with a culture that still hasn’t gotten comfortable with sex.
Image from The Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra, edited by Lance Dane, 2003. Used with permission of Inner Traditions.
Image from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, illustrated by Victo Ngai, 2018. Used with permission of The Folio Society.
Glamour: What was the appeal of a project like this one?
Victo Ngai. I think the main reason I was interested in this was because of my fascination with Indian art, in general. I’d seen an exhibition called “Wonder of the Age” at the Metropolitan Museum [in 2011], and it was all Indian paintings and manuscripts, which sparked my interest, and this new version of the Kama Sutra seemed like a perfect excuse to incorporate that.
Glamour: After spending some more time with the text more, was it different than you’d expected?
VN: Yes, I think the focus of sex has been over-exaggerated, at least in western popular culture. In the book, the part they talk about actual coitus position, it’s one-seventh of the book. There’s different chapters in the manuscript, and there’s one chapter on sexual union. And before that, there are different chapters about social and societal concepts about wives, about courting, about how to make yourself attractive. So in general, this is a guidebook on how to have a good sexual relationship with someone of the opposite gender, but it’s not limited to the bedroom.
What surprised me was how much I learned about Hinduism from it. I grew up in Hong Kong, and I went to a Christian school so I was more familiar with Buddhism and with Christian faith. Hinduism is more human-centric, whereas the other religions I was familiar with focused on the afterlife. “Kama,” as it talks about in the introduction, is one of the four pursuits. But to achieve liberation or a proper human life, there’s three other pursuits including Artha, which is about economic and materialistic pursuits, Dharma, which is about justice and moral values, and Moksha, which is the ultimate spiritual values. I like the idea that it teaches you how to have a good, full life, not in heaven, but here. To me, it’s modern—the whole idea of having a Kama Sutra is that men and women should enjoy their married lives, including the sex part. I think that’s pretty cool and runs counter to a lot of patriarchal ideas. The book is focused not just on men’s pleasure, but it talks about women’s pleasure, too. Yes, part of it is still patronizing, but still, all that surprised me.
Glamour: But about that; do you think the Kama Sutra, which has been around for thousands of years, is still relevant? How does it fit into a modern, progressive feminist framework, and in particular, when it comes to sex?
VN: It reflects its time, definitely. For example, part of it is about how people should make themselves attractive, and it’s almost this sort of voodoo formula. It includes recommendations like, burn animal bones or some kind of herbs and then rub that on your genitals. That might not work for more scientific minds now.
Glamour: What were the greatest challenges in working on the project, artistically speaking?
VN: Designing the human figures was actually the biggest challenge. I went through a few rounds, especially for the black-and-white illustrations that show the actual positions. We knew we wanted this book to be very beautiful and sumptuous, to reflect the classic that it is. It was important to me that the people and the scenes not look low-taste or porn-ish.
Image from The Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra, edited by Lance Dane, 2003. Used with permission of Inner Traditions.
Image from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, illustrated by Victo Ngai, 2018. Used with permission of The Folio Society.
But at the same time, even though I wanted them to look tasteful, the drawings couldn’t be too shy. Because the book is definitely not shy. It’s a fine line to walk. And even now that the book is out, the promotion has been difficult, which I didn’t foresee. Any pictures I post could be considered “graphic.” I posted a video on social media, and after 15 minutes, it was taken down. We’ve known for centuries that sex is a natural and important part of relationships. But it’s still really hard to talk about, I think, in many societies.
Glamour: Has your mom seen the book?
VN: I’m not sure. She hasn’t volunteered to talk about it and neither have I [laughs].
Glamour: Do you think this book could be a tool to address how women’s sexuality is illustrated?
VN: I definitely hope so. It was my goal to make these illustrations look beautiful. Too often, our approach to sex and to an illustrated text like this is, like, “Hey! This is a dirty little book. We should all look at it and giggle.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Lede image: Background images and foreground (right) from The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, illustrated by Victo Ngai, 2018. Used with permission of The Folio Society. Foreground image (left) from The Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra, edited by Lance Dane, 2003. Used with permission of Inner Traditions.
Two days ago, Ariana Grande sparked major collaboration rumors when she posted a cryptic tweet thanking Madonna. Accompanying a photo in which Grande gasps while Madonna beams at her in a crocheted bustier, the ponytail icon wrote, “thank you @madonna … u know why ♡.” And now, so do we. On Friday, Grande released her music video for “God Is a Woman,” and in it, Madonna (or at least her voice) appears briefly in an instantly iconic cameo.
The appearance in question takes place around the 2:24 mark. In keeping with the theme, Grande has appeared so far in the video as a variety of female deities, sitting on top of the earth, bathing in paints, and doing an interpretive dance within the cosmos. In this interlude, she’s dressed like what appears to be a female version of Thor, complete with a gavel for a hammer. While Grande lip-syncs, Madonna recites what Billboard identified as the bible quote Samuel L. Jackson’s famously says in Pulp Fiction. “I will strike down upon thee, with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my sisters, and you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon you,” she says.
Meanwhile, Grande made sure to give Twitter shout-outs to Madonna, as well as to Imogen Heap, who The Fader reports will also feature on her upcoming album, sweetener. “All women. but …. top five: joan grande, nonna, imogen, madonna, whitney. #godisawomantonight,” she tweeted in answer to a fan question about her inspirations, adding later, “The fact that both of my idols have blessed this project in their own little way. @imogenheap @madonna. it’s ………. unbelievable to me. i cry thinking ab it. bye i’m crying.”
Time magazine revealed its newest cover yesterday, and it features nearly 50 first-time female candidates who say they were inspired to run for office following the election of Donald Trump and the 2017 Women’s March.
Time calls the candidates The Avengers, and a corresponding story by journalist Charlotte Alter explains how after marching, these women have taken politics by the reins and launched campaigns of their own. Alter also examines how a new grassroots movement has encouraged women to run for office in droves and empowered them to become more politically engaged in the Trump era.
“Call it payback, call it a revolution, call it the Pink Wave, inspired by marchers in their magenta hats, and the activism that followed. There is an unprecedented surge of first-time female candidates, overwhelmingly Democratic, running for offices big and small, from the U.S. Senate and state legislatures to local school boards,” Alter writes in the piece.
Pictured on the cover, and highlighted in the story, are women such as Lauren Underwood, a nurse with a heart condition who says she decided to challenge Illinois Congressman Randy Hultgren after he broke his promise to protect pre-existing conditions in a Republican healthcare bill, and Mai Khanh Tran, a pediatrician running for Congress in California.
Recent data shows that there is a significant new wave of political interest from women. In the article, Alter tracks stats from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University that show that at least 79 women have thought about runs for governor in 2018—that’s about twice as much as a record previously set in 1994. Political action organizations like Emily’s List, which helps train and elect prochoice Democratic women, have also reported an increase in women who have reached out to them, interested in campaigns.
“In dozens of interviews with Time. progressive women described undergoing a metamorphosis. In 2016 they were ordinary voters,” Alter writes. “In 2017 they became activists, spurred by the bitter defeat of the first major female presidential candidate at the hands of a self-described pussy grabber. Now, in 2018, these doctors and mothers and teachers and executives are jumping into the arena and bringing new energy to a Democratic Party sorely in need of fresh faces.”
The new cover was published just weeks after Time revealed its 2017 Person of the Year: the women who started the #MeToo movement and spoke out about instances of sexual misconduct in Hollywood. It’s exciting to see Time continuing to put the spotlight on women spurring change across the country.
If you haven’t watched Black Mirror, now is a very good time to start: The British show, now on Netflix, has four incredible seasons on the streaming platform. If you haven’t seen it, it’s set in a not-so-unrealistic future, usually with varying levels of hits-far-too-close-to-home dystopia commenting on things like dating, marriage, and, of course, governments gone awry—a Twilight Zone for 2017. And each episode is a different story with different characters, like a mini-movie each time. The six-episode fourth season, which hit Netflix on Friday, has a twist, though: every single one of the season’s main characters is a woman.
Of course, if every character was a man, this wouldn’t exactly be news. But the stats still show that women are a minority when it comes to owning lead roles on television: in the U.K., where Black Mirror hails from, of the top 50 television shows, just 18 have female protagonists. In the U.S., only 42 percent of shows have women playing a “major character,” according to a study covering 2016-2017 shows from the Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television at San Diego State University.
Apparently casting a woman for each lead role wasn’t the intention—it just kind of happened, according to The Hollywood Reporter, who talked to Annabel Jones, a co-executive producer on the show (alongside creator Charlie Brooker).
“Charlie and I don’t tend to think about the stories that way. Sometimes, it just comes out,” Jones told the publication. “But it’s great — great! — that they’re all strong female protagonists. I think what’s lovely about the show is that it’s not a strident statement. It’s more: Why not? We don’t even think about it from a gender perspective and I hope that’s progress. It’s more that we explore the best story and the best way to tell it.”
If that weren’t enough to get Black Mirror on your watchlist, the new season sounds empowering AF: “Whether they are survivors in the traditional sense or not, they each reach a moment in their story where they are challenged to reclaim their power, stand up to some level of tyranny or fight to write their own ending,” writes The Hollywood Reporter. Sounds like just what we need to close out 2017.
