If you’re anything like me, you may be seeking comfort during these unsettling times in the form of nostalgic TV shows and movies. Mandy Moore definitely gets it and is here with the content you need right now as we start another week of isolation.
The singer-actor and her husband, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, have taken to performing music sets on Instagram Live from their home. Moore has been doing songs from her latest (excellent) album, Silver Landings, along with many other classic covers. But on Sunday, April 5, Moore brought out the big guns—emotionally speaking—when she sang “Only Hope” from her famous teen tearjerker, A Walk to Remember.
If for some reason you’ve never seen the movie, based on Nicholas Sparks’s hit novel, it follows the love story of Jamie, the sweet preacher’s daughter who’s battling leukemia, and Landon (Shane West), the popular bad boy forced to join the school play after getting into trouble. You can imagine where things go from there. In one of the movie’s pivotal moments, Landon starts to realize the true depth of his feelings for Jamie as he’s on stage with her during the play. Jamie is famously singing “Only Hope” during this scene—so to hear Moore belt it out again on IG brought on all of the feels.
Check it out for yourself below; it’s beautiful.
Fans were beyond excited.
This scene is super meaningful to Mandy Moore as well. “The most memorable scene [in A Walk to Remember] for me is the school play and singing the song ‘Only Hope,’” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. “I remember putting on that beautiful ice blue, silk dress and everyone fawning all over it. It was the first time that I wasn’t in a ratty sweater and an oversized housedress.”
A few weeks ago—maybe even a few days ago—being asked to stay home with not much to do but watch Netflix and cycle through your collection of sweatpants might have sounded pretty good. Fun, even. But that was then, and this now: A new reality we’re grappling with in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The most frightening and frustrating part of this reality is that we’re being urged by lawmakers to remain inside our homes to limit contact with others, even those we love. The mandate isn’t in vain: Staying home is the single most important thing we can do to slow the spread of the Coronavirus and to protect those in our communities who are most vulnerable to it.
An exception to this rule is, of course, health workers, emergency-response personnel, grocery store employees, pharmacists, and others whose essential jobs we depend on. They must go out to perform life-saving tasks, and for that we should all be grateful.
They’re doing their part, and you can do yours: think positively. Be patient but upfront with your children. Read a book. Brainstorm ways to help your local businesses which might be struggling. Take this opportunity to reflect. There will be plenty of time to cheers with your friends in bars, ride the bus, linger over long dinners, and hit the beach for a much-deserved vacation. The future is bright, but the present is challenging.
The good news is that we’re all in this together, so the Glamour team is joining our colleagues at Vogue and taking the pledge to stay calm, to stay safe, and—if you can—to stay home. We hope you’ll do the same.
Share this post and caption it with a ? and your pledge to #StayHome.
But last month, I registered a shift. In me. In the people I know. Even on Twitter. An odd thing has happened. For the first time since the presidential election, some of us have started to feel…hopeful?
The sensation is so novel, I didn’t recognize it at first. But it began with that old nemesis of mine—polls. After months of ambitious plans, hundreds of photo lines, and countless appearances, Elizabeth Warren surged ahead in them. At last a woman whose hard work seemed to be noted and appreciated. The first primaries are still months from now, but for a lot of women, Warren presents a chance to finish what Geraldine Ferraro, Margaret Chase Smith, and Shirley Chisholm started. For a lot of us, the fact that we’ve never had a female president still stings. Even prim-and-proper England had Margaret Thatcher. (Yes, I know.)
Sure, Clinton had her problems, but those issues paled compared to her opponent’s deficiencies; the harassment and assault allegations, his numerous bankruptcies, the grift. I’m not here to re-litigate 2016, but the stark fact was that one candidate was qualified and the other didn’t know who Fredrick Douglass was.
Then, the Ukraine news broke. As reports trickled out, we learned that Trump has been pushing Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden. Even moderate Democrats backed impeachment proceedings. And in the time since, I have sometimes wondered: What would happen if we didn’t all get dark and doubtful again? What would happen if we decided to hold the Trump administration accountable for once? Stranger things have happened.
There’s an expression in politics that “Republicans fall in line and Democrats fall in love.” As much as I hate the idea, I think there’s some truth to it. But I’ve held off on following my heart. I’ve been burned, and it’s so much easier to just assume the worst than hope for the best. At least that’s how I felt until now.
For the next few weeks, the Trump administration will have to answer for their actions. And in the meantime, women continue to run rings around him. Harris is on the cover of TIME Magazine! Warren, with her focus on childcare and student debt, makes me feel warm inside! I can’t help it. I feel…almost optimistic.
This election will take place 13 or so months and several million news alerts from now. And I am not blind to the realities of our current moment. Abortion is on the chopping block. Immigrants rights’ have been trampled. Our president just asked China to interfere in our elections from the White House lawn. I’m not delusional, but I am hopeful. Because for the first time in a long time, some determined part of me feels like we’re at the beginning of something.
Molly Jong-Fast is the author of three novels. Follow her on Twitter @mollyjongfast.
At Glamour’s 2018 Women of the Year Summit, Pamela Adlon, star and creator of FX’s Better Things, opened up about the art of self-acceptance. Her full speech, below.
Hi. I’m Pamela, and I have a show on FX called Better Things. One of the reasons I wanted to make a show for myself—besides wanting to have a show and making work for myself, which are both unbelievable gifts—is that I had never seen someone like me represented on television. Like…a kind of person like me. Not a pretty shiny piece of candy. Not a character out of a Kerouac novel. Just somebody like me. And my friends. The way we are. We’re a little worn in and slightly damaged.
I have always lived my life in an observational way. Make no mistake, I’m fully engaged in everything I do. I just have a tendency to stand back and look at my life with a separate lens—like an inside outsider. I’m observing. When I was younger, I used to take things very personally. I would let any kind of perceived adversity affect me in a negative way. As a kid and a teenager. As a student, school was tough for me. Jesus. I hated school. I didn’t know how to make it work for myself. As a young adult, as an actor, I tried to look a certain way—I thought about changing my name (and changing other things about myself). I worked my ass off when they would let me or when I wasn’t being fired for some of those things I just mentioned (not cute enough…no tits…).
I stopped comparing myself with others—and relaxed.
And then boom. As a mom. I would see—no, I would actually look—for the disapproving eyes or clucks of people who looked at me like, “What is that?” I was always trying to measure up as a mom. To other moms—the “robot moms,” I call them. It’s so crazy because, in my life, I was always the youngest. Which frustrated me to no end. I was the youngest and I looked so young! I couldn’t get into the clubs….And then all of a sudden, I was the oldest. I am the oldest right now. I think I’m oldest. I lied about my age to myself for so long that when I turned 50, I really didn’t know it. Until the Internet told me. (Thanks for that, by the way.)
Then something happened, which was really something quite amazing. I stopped comparing myself with others—and relaxed. Knowing that I was doing my best, as a person, as a mom, as a professional, as someone still trying to learn and educate myself. I gained muscles I never knew I could have. Never knew were in me. And when that happened, everything changed. In one word: confidence. I know that sounds like a cliche.
Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t have fear. Fear is something I never had as a younger person—well, except ultimate death. Otherwise, I was completely fearless. I was an “I don’t give a fuck” kind of no-fear person. But later…life happens. And stakes get high. And your dad dies. And babies get born. And you think, You know what? I’m not so much anymore into heights…or skiing…or roller coasters…or relationships.
PHOTO: FX Networks
Pamela Adlon on ‘Better Things’
So, boom, after years of being marginalized, well, marginalizing myself. Fired. Insecure. Being involved with a string of spectacular narcissists. Getting my body waxed.Why did I do that? Losing. Being bullied. Compartmentalized. Manipulated. Did I say fired? I found myself in a place where I had no choice but to make hard decisions. And I started to gain confidence.
It has come to my attention that people feel good and thrive when the person in charge has the ability to make decisions. And the bravery of that made the fear and paranoia go away.
Do you need a body man in life? Yes. Maybe…that would be nice. But, you really don’t. You can find that in your friends and your family and your trusted coworkers. (I mean, the ones you trust—not the ones who suck.) You ‘gotta Keep passionate and stay focused. If it feels like hard work, keep going. You’re on the right track.
When my daughters had a problem at school or in life. I taught them to advocate for themselves. Other than that, I don’t have a limit for my daughters. Except Nazi porn. That’s my one line. Also, they know they need to make their own paper. Make their own futures. Pave their own way. They want to. They’re driven to do it. I say yes to my kids. I say yes to their friends. And it’s the best, because they all want to be home. At our house. I used to fantasize about getting away from my kids and having time on my own. Now that they are all almost grown, I just look for any opportunity I can to be with them and make myself available to them.
All of us have some huge childhood burden bag of shit that we carry around. So…OK. Good. You can acknowledge it and you don’t have to be defined by it or where you came from. Or what happened to you. That shapes you, but you’re in charge of who you are. It’s called damage control. If you sit in a dark box and wait for the phone to ring, you’re waiting for your future to come to you. It doesn’t work that way anymore. You have to look for windows of opportunity and understand they are precious. And few and far between.
Get out of your comfort zone and you will grow and get stronger. The journey is the reward.
Feeling like nobody is gonna care about your story—that held me back for a while. And then I finally started to write it all down. And all of the things that plagued me my whole life got woven into my show. And I thought, ‘Well, this is my story, and people can watch and say, “I wanna see how she does it. I want to see her color and hear her sound.”
Fear and doubt will break you. If you bear down and get the hard work down you neck, it’s gonna pay off. Every single path will lead you to the place you were meant to be and, hopefully, want to be.
My dad used to say, “Shake the cocktail.” He meant it as it applied to his writing. It applies to everything. Even if it feels too hard to get out, make a shift. Change feet, shake the cocktail—it’s always worth it. Get out of your comfort zone and you will grow and get stronger. The journey is the reward. And don’t ever think that once you’ve made it, you can rest on your laurels.
There are no laurels.
My name is Pamela. I have my period, I’m going through menopause, and I have a beard. And I approve this message.
Find out more about Glamour‘s 2018 Women of the Year here.
With holiday movie releases and awards season looming, it should come as no surprise that there are going to be a lot of questions asked in interviews and on red carpets about the Weinstein scandal and all that has come in its wake. It’s also no surprise that we’ll be hearing a lot of canned replies that have “my publicist approved this message” written all over them—though not from you, Uma Thurman! And calls for change. So many calls for change.
Here are just a few of the stars with projects coming out over the next few months to keep an eye on: Matt Damon (“Downsizing”), Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”), the entire cast of “Murder On the Orient Express” including (ahem) Johnny Depp, Woody Harrelson (“LBJ”), Julia Roberts (“Wonder”), Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”), and Anna Kendrick (“Pitch Perfect 3”). And that’s just the beginning.
Yesterday, it was Ben Affleck’s turn as he was out promoting his latest film, “Justice League”. He had a few words to say about the current climate in Hollywood telling the Associated Press that he’s “looking at my own behavior and addressing that and making sure I’m part of the solution.”
It’s probably a good idea that the actor does some self-reflection given the accusations that he groped Hilarie Burton and makeup artist Annamarie Tendler. (He has already apologized for acting inappropriately toward Burton.) And then there’s this video interview from 2004 that recently resurfaced. It’s, frankly, hard to watch.
So, yes, it’s great that Affleck says he wants to be better. (Though it’s more than a little bit distressing that at age 45, he’s just seeing the error of his ways.) That he wants to see “more women need to be pushed to power.” And that sexual harassment also has to be a “men’s issue.” We’re sure to hear many more echo his sentiments.
