Lindsay Lohan has been making media rounds this summer to promote her resort Lohan Beach House in Mykonos, but a new interview is getting attention not for her foray into the hospitality world, but for what she said about women in the #MeToo era.
Speaking to British newspaper The Times, Lohan chose to call out women who come forward with accusations of sexual misconduct and harassment, saying they are “attention-seekers” and “weak.”
“If it happens at that moment, you discuss it at that moment,” she says. “You make it a real thing by making it a police report. I’m going to really hate myself for saying this, but I think by women speaking against all these things, it makes them look weak when they are very strong women. You have these girls who come out, who don’t even know who they are, who do it for the attention. That is taking away from the fact that it happened.”
She didn’t stop there. Lohan says that she has never had any negative experiences of the Me Too variety during her film career, which began when she was just a kid. “So, I don’t really have anything to say. I can’t speak on something I didn’t live, right? Look, I am very supportive of women,” she told The Times. “Everyone goes through their own experiences in their own ways.”
Well, that’s a take, for sure. And she concludes the interview by referencing the very public fight she had with her ex-fiancé Egor Tarabasov. “I had a fight with my ex on this very beach. What did I do? Nothing,” Lohan replies. “I just took over the beach. The best revenge is success, right?” In 2016, Lohan accused Tarabasov of domestic violence while they were dating. It’s unclear if she was touting the incident as an example of how women should handle violence or misconduct, but eyebrows are raised.
This isn’t the first time the actress has found herself in hot water during the #MeToo era. In now-deleted posts on Instagram, Lohan initially defended Harvey Weinstein as allegations about the producer surfaced in the New York Times and the New Yorker last October.
“I feel very bad for Harvey Weinstein right now,” she says in them. “I don’t think it’s right what’s going on. I think Georgina needs to take a stand and be there for her husband. He’s never wronged me or done anything to me, and we’ve done several movies together. I think everyone needs to stop. It’s wrong, so stand up.”
She then attempted to clarify the comments, telling the Daily Mail. “I am saddened to hear about the allegations against my former colleague Harvey Weinstein,” she said. “As someone who has lived their life in the public eye, I feel that allegations should always be made to the authorities and not played out in the media.”
No word yet if she has clarifications on her latest remarks.
Amber Tamblyn is among the many women in Hollywood leading the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements that are changing the cultural conversation around sexual harassment and assault. But she’s also putting in the work at home: In a new interview with NPR, she explained that she’s been having educational conversations with men in her life, including husband David Cross.
Cross, ICYMI, has come under quite a bit of flak in past months for allegedly making racist comments to comedian Charlyne Yi—and with that, Tamblyn was dragged into the fray as well, leading her to eventually reply, “He said he was sorry, publicly, several times. Please don’t @ me in conversations dragging my husband. Thanks.”
In May, Cross again came under fire for talking over Arrested Development star Jessica Walters during a cast panel, seemingly downplaying her when she talked about how Jeffrey Tambor had lashed out at her. “You know, one thing that Jeffrey has said a number of times that I think is important, that you don’t often hear from somebody in his position, is that he learned from the experience and he’s listening and learning and growing. That’s important to remember,” Cross said at the time.
Tamblyn, in her response, made it clear she was handing the situation at home. “I corresponded with Jessica. Just because I’m publicly silent on shit doesn’t mean I’m not privately handling shit. Now that you’re updated on what I do behind the scenes, Twitter, keep my fucking name out of your @. Feel me? Have a great Memorial Day,” she tweeted.
In the interview with NPR, she revealed a little bit about how her work leading the movement has impacted their relationship—and his behavior.
“Believe me, his eyes are open to that now, if they weren’t before,” Tamblyn said. “And this is what it took to have that change. Some men don’t change. The thing I can say about David, that I love so much about him, is that he changes. And part of his introspection and his sensitivity is that he’s aware of that… it’s just a continual sense of getting them to open their eyes and getting them to see either how they’re helping or they’re not helping.”
“I helped him to see,” she continued. “That’s the best thing that you could do. And you know that was really difficult for our family. We got death threats. … And women were coming after me and telling me ‘Oh you can’t be the head of a movement and not speak to this.'”
Tamblyn also reaffirmed her right to have a private life with her husband out of the public eye (and Twitter), before saying that she realizes that the conversations she’s having with Cross are ones many other women in America are navigating with their partners.
“I really hold a strong boundary with this and believe I’ve earned the right to privacy,” she said. “And if you care about my voice and what I have to say at all … and you think you know me, then you better assume that I’m having really difficult conversations with my husband about it. Just like all women are.”
Expect more of these convos from Tamblyn: Her new novel, Any Man, is about a woman who’s a serial rapist—and it’s already spurring discussions about how society looks at sexual assault.
Our favorite ladies in leotards returned to Netflix on Friday with the second-season premiere of GLOW, and, as predicted, there’s a ton the characters need to untangle as they duke it out in the wrestling ring. In a candid interview with Mashable, show star Alison Brie went into some of the issues that the new episodes are tackling (no pun intended) and shared that #MeToo figures into one of the storylines—an experience that made her confront her own attitudes about misconduct in Hollywood.
Without spoiling too much, there’s an episode where Brie’s character, Ruth, has a gross encounter with the head of a TV network. The executive seems interested in talking about Ruth’s career ambitions and invites her to his hotel, where an upsetting incident unfolds. The scenes mirrors the many casting couch stories women have come forward with amid the #MeToo movement, and Brie says they made her do some personal reflecting.
“Shooting those scenes did bring up some personal feelings for me—which I sort of didn’t expect,” Brie told Mashable. “Honestly, when I first read it I was like, ‘Is this scene bad enough? Is he really doing anything bad?’ And then I had to stop and realize, ‘Oh, wow, I’ve been in a lot of bad situations. And I’ve really normalized that kind behavior, even for myself.'”
Brie also shared that the exchange was actually written before #MeToo really took over the cultural conversation, but she added that “it was not written before sexism.” The episode introduces several complicated perspectives as the characters reckon with what happens, but as Mashable notes, the writers resist the urge to “Send A Message or make these women characters examples.” That complexity is one of the reasons we were such huge fans of the show’s last season.
Brie also went on to say that she has noticed a shift in the current zeitgeist.
“It doesn’t ever change,” she told Mashable. “But I feel like we are living in a moment of change. Like, if it’s going to change, this will be the moment where see actual change, actual consequence, actual awareness registering within our industry. Which is something that we haven’t seen before.”
There are a lot of awful men in Sex and the City. There was Greg, the 27-year-old Charlotte met in the Hamptons who gave her crabs; Harvey, a wealthy conquest of Samantha’s who had a literal servant; and let’s not forget Ethan, who could only have sex with Miranda with porn blaring in the background. (There was Aidan, too, who I personally think was the ultimate fake, but that’s another story—don’t @ me.) But all 107 men Carrie and the girls dated and slept with pale in comparison to the biggest creep of them all: Julian Fisher. You remember Julian: he was briefly Carrie’s editor at Vogue in season 4’s “A Vogue Idea” after her first editor, Enid, was made to appear like a critical ice-queen for having high standards and deigning to tell Carrie her article was too self-involved, meandering, and not up to the magazine’s ideals. Carrie whined, and poof—a menschy male editor appeared.
From the start, we understand Julian won’t be tough on “Cookie”—his inexplicable pet name for Carrie. He’s the fun one who drinks during the day, plays retro jazz in the office, and tells Carrie she belongs at Vogue—but not before taking credit for her being there. The episode famously culminates in a sexualized cat-and-mouse scene that’s played for laughs: Once Carrie hits save on the final draft of her story—late at night in Julian’s office—he rewards her with a trip to her personal Mecca: the Vogue accessories closet. Inside, while Carrie covets a pair of mythical Manolo Blahnik Mary Jane’s, Julian pulls down his pants and stands with his hands on hips—wearing nothing but a pair of black Versace underwear.
When Carrie notices, she bellows, “what are you doing?!” To which Julian says “Just showing you these briefs!” He goes on to snap the band of his Versace’s while Carrie hides and pratfalls over her own feet, blushing behind a rack of handbags. He doesn’t touch her, or force anything on her, and after a few awkward moments Julian eventually puts his pants back on, leading the viewer to possibly conclude that he’s just a quirky guy. A real kook. This was just a page from a cringe-y, old-man-flirts-with-younger woman playbook—nothing more. Or so I thought in 2001, when this episode aired.
Watching the episode this time around, I had a hard time shaking the vision of Carrie getting so drunk before noon that Julian literally has to hold her up, rag-doll style, while she walks out of the office.
But now, framed against the backdrop of #MeToo and the constant conversations we’re having about powerful men abusing their influence, I see Julian wasn’t just a kook—this was textbook sexual harassment. So much so, that he certainly would have earned himself a spot on the “shitty media men” list if such a thing existed in the early aughts.
And let me tell you—watching the episode again, which I did a few days ago, was horrific. From their first scene together, Julian appears to start using grooming tactics on a clearly vulnerable Carrie—he gently touches her chin, he grandly compliments her work and her “vision,” and he plies her with dry martinis in the morning—office door visibly shut—after she’s feeling rejected by Enid. Sure, you could say he was just trying to be nice—and the show was tapping into a glossy media stereotype—but this time around, I had a hard time shaking the vision of Carrie getting so drunk before noon that Julian literally has to hold her up, rag-doll style, while she walks out of the office.
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After that, he takes her to dinner at a Japanese restaurant and while, at first glance, it seemed like they had a meaningful conversation, I see now that Julian deftly extracted sensitive, personal information from Carrie and ultimately used it against her.
During the meal Carrie admits she’s thinking about quitting Vogue, and Julian asks, “what would your father say about your quitting?” to which she replies, “he wouldn’t have a whole lot to say about me quitting, he quit my mother and me when I was little.” This is actually the only time in the entire series Carrie talks about her father—and it’s because a powerful man brought it up. He then goes on to muse, “it’s interesting, your father leaves without any answers, and you spend your life asking questions about men.” Later, when Carrie rejects the half-nude Julian in the accessories closet, Julian uses Carrie’s “daddy issues,” to try to persuade her into sex. He tells her, “Cookie, as someone who really cares about you, I think you have some serious issues with men… an older man can help you work through some of issues, Cookie.” Oh my god.
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Yet Julian’s behavior wasn’t the only trope familiar to me in this story. How Carrie presumably reacted was also part of a too-common narrative. After the incident, she ended up working with Enid—who we were made to dislike at the outset—and never reported Julian. She just shook it off. And since these incidents never happen in isolation, and typically indicate a larger pattern of abuse, it’s safe to assume Julian went on to harass more junior fashion editors and fledgling writers.
However, what struck me the most, is that despite having access to Carrie’s internal narrative—we never get to hear how she truly feels about the incident. She doesn’t tells the girls about it over brunch, and the episode’s final monologue is a speech about how you’ll never have the perfect boss, or parent. There’s no mention of the Versaces, not a Cookie pun, or even a reference to whether or not she got to keep the mary janes. Because for Carrie, and for women for far too long, workplace harassment wasn’t something you could talk about. It was a dirty secret, something you had to grin and bare to get ahead. Think about it. Carrie chose to have a long and fruitful relationship with Vogue—even appearing in bridal couture in the mag’s pages during the Sex and the City movie. Would she have continued to work with the magazine if she had reported Julian? We’ll never know.
But now, 20 years after the premiere of Sex and the City, and nearly a year into the #MeToo movement, I’m reporting it for her.
Former President Bill Clinton is raising eyebrows after a Monday appearance on the Today show in which, during a segment to promote his new book, The President Is Missing (cowritten with James Patterson), he maintained that his decision to fight impeachment after the Monica Lewinsky scandal was the right thing to do.
But there was one quote in particular that says a lot about how he views the #MeToo movement, which was referenced in a segment of the conversation when NBC News’ Craig Melvin asked whether Clinton would have done anything differently had that scandal happened during the #MeToo era. In one swoop Clinton managed to praise the movement while simultaneously casting doubt with his own concerns.
“I like the Me Too movement, it’s way overdue,” he told Melvin. “I think the…it doesn’t mean I agree with everything. I still have some questions about some of the decisions that have been made.”
In the 20 years since the Ken Starr investigation that turned her into a household name, Lewinsky appears to have done a lot of thinking and analysis about her role in the scandal, as evidenced by her February essay for Vanity Fair. In the wake of the #MeToo movement that is changing cultural views about sexual harassment, Lewinsky opened up about being able to look at the situation differently, while still accepting responsibility for her own decisions. “Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote. “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances—and the ability to abuse them—do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)”
“He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet. He was 27 years my senior, with enough life experience to know better,” she said. “He was, at the time, at the pinnacle of his career, while I was in my first job out of college.”
Clinton, however, is still making it about him.
“One of the things that this Me Too era has done is that it’s forced a lot of women to speak out. One of those women is Monica Lewinsky,” interviewer Craig Melvin says. “She wrote in an op-ed that the Me Too movement changed her view of sexual harassment….Looking back on what happened and through the lens of Me Too now, do you think differently or feel more responsibility?”
“I felt terrible then. And I came to grips with it,” Clinton said. When asked if he’s ever apologized, Clinton said that he hasn’t talked to Lewinsky personally, but has apologized “to everyone in the world.”
“Nobody believes that I got out of that for free. I left the White House $16 million in debt,” he says. “But you typically have ignored gaping facts in describing this. And I bet you don’t even know that. This was litigated 20 years ago, and two thirds of the American people sided with me.”
The conversation was an uncomfortable watch, albeit an important one. Two decades have passed, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look back and reflect on what happened in hopes of learning from the situation. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be Clinton’s point of view.
Yes, it’s great that he has supported women in many ways during his political career, but that doesn’t absolve him from bad behavior, especially as it relates to Lewinsky. Doing good work and behaving inappropriately are two things that can be true at the same time. But the defensive and smug tone of his responses indicates to me that Clinton is unchanged in looking at the role he played in the situation.
And that’s incredibly disheartening.
As women, we can continue to tell our stories, to speak our truth, to call out bad behavior that has been tolerated for far too long. But when men, especially leaders, refuse to acknowledge their own roles in the culture of harassment, progress will come much more slowly.
Meghan Trainor is in love. In fact, she’s so in love with her fiancé, Daryl Sabara—yes, of Spy Kids fame—that the relationship has informed much of her new music era, which so far includes three bouncy, buoyant bops (“No Excuses,” “Can’t Dance,” and “Let You Be Right”). “I’m very in love, so you’ll hear these beautiful love songs, happy songs, and honest songs. It’s fun—and a lot of dancing,” Trainor tells us when asked about her upcoming third album. (A release date hasn’t been announced yet.)
Because Sabara is a major inspiration behind Trainor’s new music, she has no problem talking—gushing, even—about him. “I’m so confident about [our relationship],” she says. “I’m so in love, and I want to tell the world. I feel like it’s almost unfair how lucky I am, you know? Every moment of every day we always look at each other like, ‘How did I get you?’ I always say it’s better than the movies. They don’t talk about this kind of love in the movies. I love talking to people about it. I love bragging about it.”
One Trainor song in which Sabara is up front and center is “Let You Be Right,” a pulsating dance track with a slick, retro vibe. The title sums up the song’s message: Trainor typically comes out on top in an argument, but she’s willing to give Sabara a win—for just one night, of course. “I wanted to talk about my relationship with Daryl [in the song] and a cute thing we do,” Trainor says. “What I taught him early on was, you know, I’m always right. I really am. Daryl learned that early on, so any little fight we have he knows it ends with me being right. I wanted to put that in a song.”
The video for “Let You Be Right” just dropped today, and it’s a fun kaleidoscope of neon lights, choreography, and roller rink shenanigans. “I’m obsessed with lights—a lot of lights,” Trainor says of the video’s inspiration. “So I told [the video directors and producers], ‘I want lasers, and I want it to look cool.’ I wanted cool effects. I wanted it to look like we spent a lot of money, you know? I wanted to dance and show my body, and I did it. I looked bomb.”
Yes, she does. Check out the video for yourself, below:
Lyrically, “Let You Be Right” is more relaxed than Trainor’s recent single “No Excuses,” which feels particularly resonant in light of #MeToo. (The song is about Trainor checking a man for his behavior. In a previous interview, she says it came after an incident of mansplaining.) “I didn’t write ‘No Excuses’ because I was inspired by anything except a personal experience I went through,” she says. “I was really proud and really pushing this song to be first [single] because of everything going on in the world. I was like, ‘This is what everyone needs right now.’ Everyone will relate to this.”
“I had a personal experience with men in the industry and had to write about it,” she continues. “It was one of those—like, I have write this song or I’m going to freak out. As soon as I wrote it, I played the demo for the label and they were like, ‘Whoa, that’s powerful.'”
Trainor says #MeToo has caused her to reevaluate some of her previous experiences. “As a girl, I feel like you’re raised to just put your head down and be like ‘OK, yup. That happened. That’s normal.’ But when I look back, I’m like, ‘No, that was pretty messed up.’ I didn’t even think like that until everyone started speaking out and telling their truth,” she says. “It makes me feel so much better knowing you’re not alone. Everyone else feels this way too, and it’s not right.”
Though we still have a long way to go, Trainor does think the music industry is making progress. Above all, she just wants people in Hollywood to be kinder to each other. “I hope [the industry] changes, and I hope the younger generation comes up and comes in with kinder hearts and spreads the love more.”
