In July Demi Lovato entered rehab after experiencing an overdose. At the time, she released a statement on Instagram that read, “I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction. What I’ve learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time.” She added, “I now need time to heal and focus on my sobriety and road to recovery. The love you have all shown me will never be forgotten, and I look forward to the day where I can say I came out on the other side.” Her candor about the experience has been credited with changing the conversation around addiction.
Lovato’s Instagram has been quiet since then, but today (November 6) she broke her silence to encourage people to vote.
“I am so grateful to be home in time to vote! One vote can make a difference, so make sure your voice is heard,” Lovato wrote in the caption. “Now go out and #VOTE!!!!”
Fans were quick to show their appreciation for the singer’s effort. Within 30 minutes of posting the photo, it had more than 1.5 million likes and thousands of comments.
If you haven’t voted yet but you’re feeling inspired by Lovato, there’s still time. Polls will remain open until at least 6:00 P.M. Find out when your local poll closes here, find your polling place.
If you or someone you know needs help with substance abuse issues, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
Kim Kardashian found herself in the middle of a social media controversy on Thursday (November 1) after using insensitive language in one of her Halloween Instagram Stories.
In the posts from her sister Kendall Jenner’s Halloween party, Kardashian is dressed in a Pamela Anderson costume with best friend Jonathan Cheban as Anderson’s ex-husband Tommy Lee. It’s a very famous, but super specific, look from the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards that apparently didn’t resonate with many of the younger partygoers. “Nobody knew who we were,” Kardashian says in a video post. “You are all too f***ing young. This is so sad.” Then, in a now-deleted Story, she told former assistant Stephanie Shepherd, “Nobody knows who I am” before dropping the R-word.
The backlash to the R-word—which is offensive to the special needs community—was pretty immediate, and Kardashian has now apologized via a statement to TMZ. “I want to apologize for what I said in a recent video post that is inappropriate and insensitive to the special needs community,” she said. “I try to learn from my mistakes and this is one of those times. Please know that my intention is always pure, and in this case, it was a mistake. I’m sorry.”
Social media users and fans were upset that Kardashian used that word. Some even posted photos of their special needs children to express their pain about hearing the R-word. Others compared its use to calling one of Kardashian and Kanye West’s children the N-word.
“Imagine someone calling your child the N word,” one person wrote. “That’s how It feels when you say [the R-word] like you are insulting my 2 children with special needs.”
Kim’s sister Khloe also had to apologize for using the R-word in July 2018. Hopefully both she and Kim have learned a lesson about how much pain that word gives people.
If you thought you’d seen the end of Taylor Swift’s highly charged political posts, think again: Political Taylor is back, and this time she’s taken to Instagram to double down on her ask that her fans vote in the midterm elections.
On Saturday (October 21), the singer uploaded a series of photos to her Instagram stories, all reposts of her fans mobilizing at the polls over the last few days. With 22 photos in total, Swift’s Instagram story sends a big message: The star is not backing down on using her social platforms to voice her political views, even if that means losing a few conservative male fans along the way.
Many of the photos that Swift uploaded to her to Instagram story this weekend feature first-time voters, which only further proves the star’s major social influence. Other posts show fans voting in the singer’s home state of Tennessee, and all include personalized notes from the star.
“I love reading your stories on why voting matters to you,” Swift wrote on one repost. “I’m so grateful to get to hear them.” Check out some of the singer’s Instagram story reposts, here below:
This weekend’s reposts come on the heels of the singer’s recent decision to speak out about voting in her home state of Tennessee. On October 7th, the star posted a lengthy Instagram message explaining why she’s been notoriously apolitical—until now.
“I’m writing this post about the upcoming midterm elections on November 6th, in which I’ll be voting in the state of Tennessee,” she wrote. “In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now.”
She then switched the focus to her fans—many of whom are now legally able to cast votes in their respective states—imploring them to educate themselves on the candidates running in their districts and asking that, no matter what their political views, they make their way to the polls this fall.
“Please, please educate yourself on the candidates running in your state and vote based on who most closely represents your values. For a lot of us, we may never find a candidate or party with whom we agree 100% on every issue, but we have to vote anyway,” Swift wrote. “So many intelligent, thoughtful, self-possessed people have turned 18 in the past two years and now have the right and privilege to make their vote count.”
While this decisively political statement was Swift’s first, it appears appears to have had a massive impact on her fanbase, with Vote.org noting a spike in voter registration (65,000, to be exact) in the 24 hours following Swift’s Instagram call-to-action. The star followed up this post with a second political statement at the AMAs, using her award acceptance speech as an opportunity to say: “I wanted to make a mention of the fact that this award and every single award given out tonight were voted on by the people. And you know what else is voted on by the people is the midterm elections on November 6. Get out and vote. I love you guys.”
After two children, two terms in the White House (and a whole lot of stuff in between), and two years of political retirement, former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama are celebrating their 26th wedding anniversary.
On Wednesday, Obama marked the impressive occasion with a loving tribute on Instagram. “Happy Anniversary, @MichelleObama. For 26 years, you’ve been an extraordinary partner, someone who can always make me laugh, and my favorite person to see the world with,” he wrote alongside an artistic photo of his wife staring out the window of an airplane.
Michelle took to Twitter to reply to the post, writing, “Thank you @barackobama for 26+ years of love, trust, and respect – for being a man who always lifts up and honors me and our wonderful girls. Each day I’m with you, I’m reminded of what a treasure you truly are to us all.”
Earlier this year, the former First Lady shared a never-before-seen photo from their 1992 wedding, giving fans some insight into what their big day was really like. “You can’t tell it from this photo, but Barack woke up on our wedding day in October, 1992 with a nasty head cold,” shared in the caption. “Somehow, by the time I met him at the altar, it had miraculously disappeared and we ended up dancing almost all night. Twenty five years later, we’re still having fun, while also doing the hard work to build our partnership and support each other as individuals. I can’t imagine going on this wild ride with anybody else.”
For his 57th birthday on August 4, she posted a photo similar to the one that Obama shared for their anniversary, which showed the former president staring off into a valley alongside the caption, “Happy birthday @BarackObama! The view is always better with you.”
And on this day, last year, she wrote, “Happy 25th anniversary @barackobama. A quarter of a century later, you’re still my best friend & the most extraordinary man I know. I ? you.”
After 26 years together, their love story is truly one for the books. The couple met in Chicago in 1989, and their first date was apparently a very, very good one. “We clicked right away…by the end of the date, it was over…I was sold,” Michelle said of the day-long outing, which included a picnic, long walk, tour of the Art Institute, Baskin-Robbins ice cream, and a movie. After two years, Barack proposed while they were out to dinner celebrating finishing the bar exam.
“And he got me into one of these discussions again, where, you know, he sort of just led me down there and got fired up and it’s like you’ve got blah blah blah blah, and then dessert comes out, the tray comes out, and there’s a ring!” Michelle told The New Yorker.
Any interest in a free, sparkly Prada dress that would be perfect for a fancy New Years Eve party, a black-tie wedding, or just feeling glamorous AF while you sit on the couch watching Netflix? Selena Gomez has you covered.
The singer took to Instagram stories this week to share that she’s giving away the dress she wore in her “Back to You” music video to a lucky fan. The dress is covered in silver sequins and decorated at the bottom with bright green feathers, and it looks fabulous in the video while Gomez goes to a party, steals a car, and falls in love. (As you do.) But it must have served its purpose for the singer, because she’s ready to pay it forward to her fans.
In the Instagram video, she gives viewers a glimpse into her closet. “This is my dress that I wore for the ‘Back to You’… music video, and I kind of want to give it away to someone,” she says at one point. “So, if you want this dress, let me know, and I will just send it along to you because it has no use being in my closet whatsoever.”
Gomez’s “Back to You” dress isn’t the only sparkly article of clothing she’s looking to purge from her wardrobe. In the same series of posts, she also shows off an old ice skating outfit from her short stint as an ice skater. “So the story behind this outfit, with a matching scrunchie, might I add, was that I decided I was going to be an ice skater for two days. That didn’t really work out,” she explains. “I’ll give that away too.”
Check out the video below to see the Prada dress in all its glittering glory, then shoot Selena a DM and hope for the best.
“You may think I’m exaggerating, but this is the story of how my town, Salem, lost its mother-fucking mind. I will warn you, though. It gets pretty graphic.”
This is how Assassination Nation‘s NSFW teaser trailer begins, spoken in perfect deadpan swagger by an 18-year-old named Lily (Odessa Young). It’s an in-your-face statement, one meant to grab your attention and maybe scare you a little too. What comes next are “a few” trigger warnings for the following: bullying, blood, abuse, classism, death, alcohol and drug use, sexual content, toxic masculinity, homophobia, transphobia, guns, nationalism, racism, kidnapping, murder, the male gaze, giant frogs, sexism, swearing, torture, violence, gore, weapons, and fragile male egos. “I promise you,” Lily adds at the end. “This is 100 percent a true story.”
When I first saw the trailer, I thought, Damn, that’s brilliant marketing. In just over a minute, the completely establishes the movie’s ethos: Come for a story that will take every buzzword happening in 2018 America—several of the above, plus Trumpism, the patriarchy, capitalism, social media, and Generation Z—and set them all on fire. It screams, “Everything is up for grabs, bitches! LOLZ.” But spoiler: This is how the movie actually begins.
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The intro is fitting, given that Assassination Nation overall feels like you’re watching a YouTube video drunk on Four Loko. Or like Heathers, The Purge, and The Crucible all merged into one Instagram Story about naked selfies. It sounds wild, and it is, because there’s nothing subtle about Assassination Nation. (I mean, the town is seriously called Salem.)
Fans of Heathers will be drawn to the social commentary and candy-coated darkness, while The Purge franchise comes through in the townspeople’s creepy masks and gleeful violence. But The Crucible is the most obvious reference here, given the plot is essentially about a witch hunt: After an anonymous hacker released the private photos and texts of nearly everyone in town, Lily and her three best friends, Bex (Hari Nef), Sarah (Suki Waterhouse), and Em (Abra) are blamed.
PHOTO: Courtesy of NEON
The reasons are hazy at best. Nude photos leak, sexy texts messages are revealed—but once a finger is pointed their way, the townspeople don’t hesitate. They simply accept: Of course these “loose” girls are to blame. They’re responsible for corrupting the men of Salem, which means they’re capable of anything, which means they must be punished. “Who sees a naked photo of a girl and their first thought is Yo, I gotta kill this bitch,” Lily asks as things come to a climax. A lot of people, I guess.
But in movie full of extremes, this fear of women’s sexuality is the most realistic thing about Assassination Nation. Need real-life proof? Try this: According to Indiewire, a scene that features a drawing of a nude woman “in pornographic poses” was deemed too explicit by the MPAA. And so it was cut to keep the R-rating from becoming NC-17. Assassination Nation has extensive gun violence, drug use, murder, gore—and yet it’s the discussion of a drawing made by a teen girl that’s too lurid. (You can see it in the NSFW—because of language—clip, below.)
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Ironically, Lily herself gives the most compelling argument against this. “All you’re looking at is the nudity,” she tells the school principal, who’s trying to reprimand her for the drawing. “But this isn’t about that…≥ This is about everything that goes into it. The pressure, the endless mind fuck, the ten thousand naked selfies you took before this one trying to get it just right. Trying to make sure the light hides your left nipple because it’s slightly inverted or it’s smaller. Or maybe your labia’s too big, but if you pull your pelvic bone up and bend to the left slightly in a low-light setting, then you’ll be beautiful. Hashtag flawless. Body confident.”
“But it’s all one big lie,” she continues. “You can never be, because nobody’s flawless, and all it takes is one fucking asshole to remind you of that. One guy to say, ‘LOL’ or ‘She’s nasty.’ And you’re right back at square one. So, OK, maybe it is explicit or extreme, but it sure as hell looks like life to me.”
