In tough times, you know what never fails to lighten the mood? Baby updates—and baby Archie updates, in particular.
Presumably, the little guy is hunkered down with his parents, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, in Canada as the world waits out the coronavirus pandemic. (Harry announced on March 19 that the Invictus Games scheduled for May at The Hague have been postponed until 2021).
Hopefully, he’s still getting lots of outdoor time, as a source tells Us Weekly that’s one of his favorite things. He “loves being outside in nature,” the source said, adding, “Harry’s happy he’s getting to spend quality time with his family.”
“Meghan takes a walk with Archie every single day through the woods,” their source previously told the magazine. “She either pushes him in a stroller through the paved trails through the public woods by their home or straps him on and walks the more rustic routes. The walks usually last around an hour or two, but she takes them daily.”
Honestly, that sounds lovely—it’s no wonder little Archie’s a fan.
The Sussexes have been living in Vancouver Island, Canada since the holidays where they were spotted on a hike by another couple. Markle even took a photo of the pair. “We noticed a group was standing nearby and they had two dogs, one of which was approaching us,” Asymina Kantorowicz said of the royal encounter. “She starts asking if we want her to take a photo for us. We said sure. I didn’t see who she was at that time.” When she realized who it was, she said she froze. “I actually couldn’t believe who it was. Then I looked over to the side, and that’s when I realized Prince Harry was standing there,” she said. “I kept looking back and forth like, ‘Is this actually happening?’”
Patty Holliday, who’s attended three D23 Expos now, says her first visit to Walt Disney World was on her honeymoon—but after the loss of her son, Jacob, in 2005, the resort took on a deeper meaning. For her, visits to Orlando help keep his spirit alive. “It’s the last place that my entire family can be together, in a sense,” she explains. “I cherish the park visits with the kids because of those early visits with Jacob.” Now a full-time Disney blogger, Holliday is particularly passionate about the seasonal RunDisney events through Walt Disney World. She’s completed nearly two dozen and credits running through Cinderella Castle as her motivation. “Disney means pretty much everything to me,” she says. “It’s where the stories are told, the memories are made, and my bravery was found.”
When I talked with Lisa Basilio, she was wrapped in swaths of sea foam green tulle in homage to Moana’s Te Fiti. It was so elaborate I found it hard to believe she’s never done this before; Basilio has always been a fan—she even got married at Disneyland—but D23 Expo 2019 was her first foray into wearing intricate costumes in public. “It’s such an amazing place where people feel safe,” she says of Disneyland. “They let go of their stress from the real world and adults become kids again. It’s an amazing transformation, and I love to be a part of that.”
For these women, and most people at D23 Expo for that matter, being a Disney fan is more about friendship, community, and sisterhood than any love of the mouse. Below, we talk with more women at the fan convention who break down why Disney is so important to them. Turns out it’s not such a small world after all.
Sarah Sterling and Tiff Mink
Best friends and fixtures of the Disney community, Sarah Sterling and Tiff Mink are an example of how Mickey and co. have helped women discover their creative outlets as well as a chosen family. Shortly after they met five years ago, the two collaborated on a YouTube channel called ThingamaVlogs—a play on The Little Mermaid’s underwater trinket collection—which featured a mix of planning tips, comedy videos, and travel vlogs that clocked over 70,000 subscribers. ThingamaVlogs is no longer active, but the women now have their own individual YouTube channels devoted to all things Disney.
The two are like anthropologists of post-’90s Mickey Mouse culture, and they do so flawlessly. “Instagram truly changed everything for the Disney community,” Sterling says, crediting the platform’s explosive growth and easily accessible format for making Disney cooler than ever before. “Park culture,” as she calls it, has snowballed in turn, yielding its own trends, styles, and subcultures. The more the merrier, Sterling says. “All I ever wanted in middle school were people to talk to about Disney Parks, and now there’s hundreds of thousands of people,” she adds. A life-long goal was finally realized earlier this year when she began working for Walt Disney Imagineering on the Star Wars global portfolio.
Mink, a content creator, says she didn’t visit the theme parks frequently growing up but held a prevailing passion for all things Disney, including an obsession with Disney Channel films that extended through college. As self-described “ride-or-die Disney fans,” as Mink puts it, these friends say they love every aspect of Disney: the history, lore, design, animation, all of it. At D23 Expo, Mink even served as something of a litmus test for in-the-know fans. She dressed as legendary Imagineer Tony Baxter, complete with rolled-up ride blueprints in a leather satchel. While we talked, several stopped her to rave about her appliquéd mustache and Imagineering hard hat. Others strolled past without a word.
Tiff Mink is wearing a costume inspired by legendary Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter.
Courtesy of Carlye Wisel
But though it’s not exactly niche to be an adult who’s into Disney anymore, Mink and Sterling still feel some judgment come their way. “People just think it’s weird because they have this idea that Disney is for children,” Mink says. But for her, it’s no different than a football fan traveling to see the Super Bowl in person. “Just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s weird.”
Last night CNN and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) hosted an Equality Town Hall with 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to discuss LGBTQ+ issues. A wide range of important topics were discussed, including banning conversion therapy and lifting restrictions on gay men donating blood. But there was one standout moment that made the internet go wild, and it came from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass).
At one point HRC chairman Morgan Cox posed a question to Warren: “Someone approaches you and says ‘Senator, I’m old-fashioned, and my faith teaches me that marriage is between one man and one woman’—what is your response?”
Warren, arms folded, grin wicked, didn’t miss a beat. “Well, I’m gonna assume it’s a guy who said that,” she said as the audience started to laugh. “And I’m gonna say, ‘Well, then just marry one woman. I’m cool with that!’”
After a pause so impeccable Lorne Michaels should recruit her to play herself on SNL, Warren added: “Assuming you can find one!” The crowd went nuts—and so did Twitter.
Watch the moment for yourself below.
“@SenWarren this was ? ???,” USWNT star Megan Rapinoe tweeted.
“The TIMING. The DELIVERY. The TWINKLE IN HER EYE. I can’t wait to see Elizabeth Warren wipe the debate stage with Donald Trump’s haystack of a toupee,” Sam Stryker wrote.
“This is a perfect response to homophobic religious bigots. Elizabeth Warren is a legend. #EqualityTownHall,” another person wrote on Twitter.
Seriously, the social media responses were almost as good as Warren’s own answer. “Elizabeth Warren just ended homophobia,” one user wrote. “Willing to vote for @SenWarren based on her comedic timing alone at this point,” another said.
Earlier in the day, singer Melissa Etheridge publicly endorsed Warren for president and noted her support of the LGBTQ community. “Elizabeth Warren understands the LGBTQ community and the needs we have,” she said. “On this National Coming Out Day I am officially pledging my support for her candidacy for president. Let’s move forward with the woman that has a plan for our future.”
To say Hilary Duff has a lot on her plate would be an understatement. The 31-year-old just wrapped the sixth season of Younger on TV Land (and a seventh is already in the works); she’s starring in the upcoming Lizzie McGuire reboot; and, oh yeah, she’s a mom to two young kids. Duff has opened up in the past about how motherhood has changed her life. She told Today a few years back that she’s now “always worrying.”
One of her growing concerns? Like many, Duff is making it her personal mission to be more green. Because of the very real issues regarding climate change, yes, but also because of her children, Banks and Luca. “We owe it to our kids [to recycle] because this planet is going to be their future and their home,” Duff tells Glamour. “Our impact is going to make a difference for their future.”
Duff’s passion for recycling is why she recently partnered with Walmart and Unilever, the parent company to brands including Dove and Love Beauty And Planet, to launch “Bring It to the Bin.” The aim of the program, Duff says, is to make recycling easy and accessible, especially for busy moms who are being pulled in a million directions, which she knows from experience.
Everything she does these days is on a tight schedule, including her beauty regimen. “My routine has gotten so short, I can literally do my hair and makeup in 10 minutes,” she says. The same goes for answering our Big Beauty Questions. We caught up with the actress to have her run through our rapid-fire questionnaire and talk more about how she’s cleaning up her routine.
Glamour: What’s one beauty trend you love but would never try?
Hilary Duff: Colored lipsticks. A really different-colored lipstick, like a blue. You see it in the magazines, and I feel like it’s very runway or great for editorial, but maybe you couldn’t pull it off in real life. But I think it would be really fun.
Do you have any beauty regrets?
I went through a phase where I basically had jet-black eyebrows—and still as a blond. Jet-black eyebrows! I love a big brow. I live for a big brow, but now the tone of my brows is a little more toward my hair color.
The internet has a new favorite meme—at least for the moment—and it’s called Drunk Taylor.
It all started with a few videos that popped up online from a party Taylor Swift threw at Beauty & Essex in Los Angeles to celebrate “her recent music success,” according to E!. She invited the collaborators and stars of her “You Need to Calm Down” video, including Laverne Cox, Hayley Kiyoko, the Haim sisters, and RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant A’keria Davenport, to the event.
And in a few behind-the-scenes videos from the party, Swift is seen dancing around to her own music as well as Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own.” She’s also overheard saying, “I fckking love Cardi B” in one video—which makes us long for a collaboration project.
Now, it’s not clear if Swift is actually intoxicated, but you know how the internet is. People took in her mussed hair and carefree dance moves and the Drunk Taylor meme was born.
Naturally, the Swifties were very into this version of their favorite singer. “The hair flip is a MOOD ?????????? #drunktaylor is the cutest and makes her even more relatable which I didn’t even know was possible but apparently it is,” one person wrote. “Taylor Swift drunk shimmying is my new aesthetic,” another tweeted. Others just took the footage and ran with it in all sorts of directions.
But lest you think any of this bothered Swift, she embraced the trending topic in her own social media posts. “Threw a party to celebrate with the people who made the ME! & YNTCD videos with me- and we had so much fun that ‘Drunk Taylor’ is trending on Twitter. CHEERS. ????,” she wrote.
Swift’s next album, Lover, arrives on August 23. But at least we have all these amazing dance moves to tide us over until then.
As much as I admittedly love looking into reflective surfaces, I’ve always thought they’re all the same. I can do my makeup just fine using the two large mirrors currently taking up real estate in my room, the selfie camera on my phone, or even the shiny windows I walk past on a daily basis (although the owner and patrons of my neighborhood café might beg to differ on that one). It could be argued that the last thing I need is a mirror that ups the extra factor by framing my face in a rectangle of twinkling lights. But having finally caved and tried it out, I now realize that I was wrong. Goodbye to that aforementioned list because I have something way better now.
In the world of makeup mirrors with lights, options abound. You can get versions that switch between different types of lighting, from fluorescent to evening. You can go for tiny handheld options or ones that stretch from floor to ceiling, if you’re Kylie Jenner. For more practical purposes, I gravitated to the one that repeatedly showed up on my Instagram feed: the Riki Loves Riki Skinny Lighted Mini Vanity Mirror. Fans include celebrity makeup artists and YouTubers alike—and I can easily get on board with anything both Huda Kattan and Jennifer Lopez use.
According to cofounder Wanchen Kaiser, Riki Loves Riki’s range of mirrors were inspired by sister brand Glamcor, which specializes in pro-grade lighting. These aren’t the lamps you buy for your bedside table, more like the ones you’ll spot in the kits of makeup artists, tattoo artists, and estheticians. (Naturally, YouTubers are also fans.)
“We started working on the concept of this super-bright portable mirror by using Glamcor lighting technology,” says Kaiser. “It took us four years to finally make it perfect.” Kaiser says her company sources the best LED lights on the market to duplicate a color that is closest to daylight. This is crucial because daylight is usually the most accurate representation of what your makeup application actually looks like. I doubt I am the only one who has experienced the indignity of a smoky eye that looks pretty good in a dim bathroom, but morphs into a toddler’s finger painting attempts two steps out the door.
After extensive testing, I can confirm that if your makeup appears excellent in the glow of the Riki Skinny, it will appear equally (or even more) excellent in any other setting. It’s especially handy for things that are sometimes only revealed by photos—foundation shade mismatches, setting powder flashback, or eyeshadow that’s not adequately blended. Portability is also a big selling point for this model; it’s slimmer than a MacBook and comes with a folding stand and rechargeable battery.
That’s the practical aspect of the mirror. You may notice that it comes with buttons and attachments that far outnumber a single on/off switch. There are five stages of dimming you can cycle through, although I find that the lowest level is bright enough for my purposes—illuminating every detail of my face without being too harsh. There’s a separate 3x magnifying mirror you can clip on, a little intense for everyday purposes, but perfect for close-up tasks like applying lashes or performing extractions.
And—I’m not making this up, I promise—it has Bluetooth. Why? So you can place your phone in the included clip, mount it and turn the entire mirror into a giant, light-up selfie station. (There’s a camera button on the mirror for this express purpose.) For content creators, I’m guessing this makes a genius filming system, allowing them to house a phone tripod, lighting setup, and reference mirror in a single device. For me, it’s an excuse to take even more gratuitous photos of myself.
