Ariana Grande is recognized for her gravity-defying ponytail almost as often as her Grammy-winning bops and cloud-colored Instagram. So when she decides to take her hair down from its usual pedestal, we notice.
Well, it looks like the singer is making a concerted effort to let her hair down more often this summer. On the Sweetener World Tour, Grande has ditched her signature high ponytail for pin-straight, loose hair several nights in a row. It’s the first time she’s been seen with this hairstyle since 2018, when she wore it down for the MTV VMAs. Naturally, fans have a lot to say about it.
The new-old look kicked off on the Chicago stop of her tour on Friday night (June 7). There, she posted a backstage snapshot from the tour on Instagram, where she’s seen in a plaid tour costume and waist-length, straight hair. The caption was about her pre-show snack of choice (blueberries, FYI), but the comments largely focused on her surprising hairstyle. “This hair is EVERYTHING,” user ponyy_boyy wrote.
Next, ahead of her performance in Nashville, Grande shared another snap with her hair down. This time, she wrote about fellow singer Miley Cyrus‘ performance on Black Mirror season 5 before acknowledging her out-of-the-ordinary hairstyle. “also my hair is down again,” she said.
And she’s not putting it back up anytime soon: On Saturday night’s stop in Atlanta, Grande’s ponytail was nowhere to be found.
With such a large spotlight trained on her hair—a silhouette of her ponytail has its own Givenchy campaign, for goodness’ sake—fans couldn’t contain their excitement at seeing Grande try something different.
Demi Lovato is celebrating six months of sobriety today, and her posts on Instagram to commemorate her milestone show that she has a supportive team behind her. In two back-to-back stories, Lovato published an image of a cake with a card, and then a photo of her six-month sobriety coin.
“Happy 6 mo. We are so fucking proud of you! Love, Team DL,” the card says.
The milestone comes after Lovato was hospitalized after a highly publicized overdose in July. She remained in the hospital for about three weeks before going into treatment, and she’s kept a relatively low profile ever since. Still, she’s broken her silence a few times and opened up to fans about her sobriety.
Lovato also released a statement in August, writing, “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.”
In December, Lovato got candid again on Twitter, this time using her platform to blast tabloids that have spread mistruths about her addiction. She took agency and promised that “someday I’ll tell the world what exactly happened, why it happened and what my life is like today…but until I’m ready to share that with people please stop prying and making up shit that you know nothing about. I still need space and time to heal.”
Lovato has always been honest about her struggles with addiction, and her candid approach to discussing these issues has helped change how the entertainment industry addresses the topic. Throughout the recovery process, Lovato has had a legion of fans and celebrities rallying behind her and voicing their love and encouragement.
The six-month posts shows that Lovato is still surrounded by people who care and are committed to helping her throughout the recovery process—and it’s a testament of her own strength and resilience.
Ask any Outlander fan what they love about the show, and the sex scenes between Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) will inevitably come up. Of course, those romantic moments aren’t the only thing we love about the time-traveling series, but…yeah, they’re high on the list.
Here’s the thing, though: Claire and Jamie don’t get that many opportunities to, uh, get down. They’ve spent the past three seasons constantly being separated by dramatic circumstances—a battle, a wayward horse, typhoid fever, to name just a few. And when they are together, they’re usually around smelly sailors, smelly soldiers, or smelly Rollo. Not sexy.
Considering all of that, it’s incredible they’ve found any moment alone—even Heughan agrees. “It’s amazing how their love lasts,” he told Glamourearlier this year. “They haven’t lost anything in their passion for each other, even though they seem to get very little time together. There’s always something going on.”
This season, however, Claire and Jamie have settled down to build their first home together. And naturally, Outlander fans hope this means more sexy times are on the horizon. Heughan promises that’s the case: “That’s one of the great joys of this season: They finally get to be together, somewhere safe and theirs to call their own.”
Claire and Jamie might be nesting, but that doesn’t mean they still don’t get the occasional interruption. Watch this exclusive sneak peek from this week’s upcoming episode—titled “Blood of My Blood”—and you’ll see what I mean:
“With all the sex scenes, or anything like that, we always try to approach them from a place of empowerment—not only the characters, but of the actors and the audience,” Balfe told Glamour about the show’s steamier scenes.
Some people have a signature look. I, however, have never been one of them. Throughout my most formative years, adults would constantly tell me to not to touch my long, brown ringlets, which only spurred a burning desire to mess with them. Where friends of mine carefully maintain their hair with cautious, occasional trims, I’ve relished in the rebellion of taking a less prudent approach. I’ve had blond hair, black hair, many iterations of ombré highlights, and more rounds of bangs than I can count on one hand. Some of my impulses have been less successful than others (see: helmet bangs and Crayola yellow hair), but I’ve always found that the combined elements of spontaneity and risk add to the fun—or at least they did, until I got engaged last year.
My fiancé and I decided to plan the wedding ourselves, which is probably why it should come as a surprise to no one that after just a few short months of planning, I felt the familiar urge bubbling up to sprint to the nearest salon and go wild. I was in dire need of some stress relief, and for me, a quick hair change has always been a reliable way to get it.
Truth be told, I had only ever imagined myself getting married in a courthouse wedding, wearing a white pantsuit. With a venue booked and that scenario now out of the picture, I was in over my head. What did turning myself into a “real” bride look like? I knew there was no singular way to fulfill that role, but it felt like an uncomfortably performative one nonetheless.
Being a bride meant being subjected to unsolicited commentary on nearly every aspect of my life.
Every bridal decision felt like a thinly veiled barometer of who I was as a person—my tastes, my style, my character. I just wanted to do it right, and it was exhausting. I was supposed to look like a “princess” but maintain my feminist identity; deal with the stress of event planning but maintain a chill composure at all times. I thought I would be prepared to greet the seriously messed-up pressures with two emphatic middle fingers, but it was…a lot. I felt like I was just a person who wanted to get married to my partner, not a bride.
Being a bride meant being subjected to unsolicited commentary on nearly every aspect of my life. When an acquaintance asked how “sweating for the wedding” was coming along after spotting me mid-bagel one morning, I was sure my angry pulse was visibly throbbing through my forehead. And when people I didn’t know particularly well suddenly felt comfortable asking personal questions about my plans for changing my last name, I had to force myself to hold back my tongue.
My thoroughly shot nerves made a cathartic and—the operative word here—dramatic hair change sound all the more appealing. Feeling a smidge lighter at the prospect of a transformation I could control, I happily alternated between saving photos of wedding tablescapes and snaps of Jenna Dewan’s piecey, chin-length cut on Instagram. I was already halfway through booking an appointment to get my bob-length chop when five words I’d never really considered (at least, where my hair is concerned) stopped me in my tracks: Is this a bad idea?
My limited knowledge of wedding prep told me that women usually grew out their hair ahead of the big day, not the other way around. I racked my brain trying to think of any iconic bride who’d walked down the aisle with a blunt bob and came up empty. Long, flowing hair or cascading updos seemed like the de facto move. Would I be ruining most of my hairstyle options if I chopped it all off?
Never mind that it had already been gently pointed out to me that short hair can be really versatile, my momentum was quashed. Operating on my last nerve, I didn’t feel like I had it in me to add another potential opening for unwanted commentary onto my plate. Ultimately, I decided this wasn’t the time to follow my risky hair impulses. I put down the phone and made a contract with myself to keep growing out my hair.
It seems almost unbelievable that I let that pressure and anxiety to “not mess up” get so far under my skin.
What followed was nine long months spent cursing the lion’s mane growing on top of my head. I’d stare longingly at women with short haircuts as they passed me by on the sidewalk. When masses of damp hair clung to my back in muggy subway tunnels, I imagined having the sweet, ventilated freedom of a bob. And each time I had the distinct privilege of fishing gigantic knots of long hair out of the clogged shower drain, I silently counted the number of days I had left living under the rule of a thick mop—probably not the sort of countdown I should’ve been tracking with excitement just days ahead of the wedding.
Eventually our wedding day finally rolled around, and I didn’t spend it pining for different hair or worrying about my scoring on some sort of unofficial bridal report card. The high of being surrounded by everyone we loved in one room was something everyone should get to experience at least once.
PHOTO: ELIZABETH TSUNG PHOTOGRAPHY
My talented glam team made me feel beautiful, and I informed my husband (who, by the way, had patiently listened to me vent about my hair for months like the saint that he is) that I want to be buried in the pearl hairpiece I wore down the aisle. But even though the rational part of my brain gets that my bridal hair lands below the very bottom of the totem pole in terms of the most important things to happen on our wedding day, I can’t help it: I look back and wish that I had just gone for the damn bob all those months ago.
In the end, the best parts of our day were the laughing, dancing, being surrounded by loved ones, and getting married bits. It seems almost unbelievable that I let that pressure and anxiety to “not mess up” get so far under my skin. All of those overwhelmingly wonderful aspects would have been there just the same, regardless of how many bagels I ate, what I chose to do about my last name, or even whether I said “I do” sporting the typical princess-length hair or the world’s most unfortunate, triangular-shaped bob.
A whole 72 hours after my wedding, I was back in the salon. A sigh of relief I didn’t even realize I’d been holding back came out when I plopped down into the familiar arms of the hairstylist’s chair. Once my thick mane was finally just a heap on the ground, it occurred to me that I really had been onto something with my carefree approach to hair all these years. I just lost sight of it for a little while.
The author with her (now slightly more grown-out) haircut.
It’s been less than two weeks since Khloé Kardashianconfirmed her much-hyped pregnancy. Since then, we have been treated to not one, not two, but three baby-bump posts on Instagram. The first, a beautiful black-and-white tribute to The Bump being lovingly caressed by its mother and father, was the pregnancy announcement itself. The second was a Christmas post featuring Kardashian in a silver-tasseled jumpsuit. The third was posted today, and it contains an important baby update.
Not only does the post have Kardashian proudly showing off the child-to-be in a very glam outfit, but it also announces that, as of Tuesday, she is officially six months pregnant. That’s right—KoKo has been going to great lengths to keep the media and reality-TV aficionados on their toes about this pregnancy for just under half a year.
All these celebratory posts are so adorable that there’s no way we can be mad about the wait. (Not to mention it’s a huge privilege—not a right—for us to be privy to Kardashian’s pregnancy in the first place.) In the first photo uploaded on Tuesday, Kardashian captioned the photo, “Officially 6 months.” In the second, with the caption “Mom and Dad,” she is seen planting a kiss on longtime boyfriend (and the father of her baby-to-be) Tristan Thompson.
According to People, Thompson celebrated the six-month mark with a post of his own. On Sunday the father-to-be uploaded a Snapchat video of him and Kardashian celebrating New Year’s Eve. “For six months, you a fine six months, baby. I’ll tell you that,” he said to her on camera. With around three months of baby bump content to go, we’re not sure how they could get any cuter.
Most of us had a pretty bleh 2017, but Serena Williams, champion in every sense of the word, managed to have a pretty spectacular year. She got married and had a baby and is still considered the best tennis player on the planet. So does it matter that she lost her final match of 2017 and her first since giving birth? Not one bit.
“I don’t think I am going to rate my performance,” she told the AP, per Vanity Fair. “I have plenty of comebacks, from injuries, from surgeries, but I’ve never had a comeback after actually giving birth to a human being. So, in my eyes, I feel it was a wonderful, wonderful match for me.”
The match in question was an exhibition game at the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, and the winner was French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko. Williams said of her return to the game overall, “I don’t know if I am totally ready to come back on the tour yet …I know that when I come back I definitely want to be competing for championships. I am definitely looking forward to getting back out there. I am taking it one day at a time. I am going to assess everything with my team before deciding.” Fair enough.
“I don’t think I have anything more left to prove,” said Williams, referencing her dozens of grand slam titles and trove of gold medals. But she’s not done with tennis yet, and the first step was just getting back on the court. “In the beginning, it felt a little tough. But as the match moved on, I was less afraid. I knew I was not going to fall over and break,” she said.
It’s not like she was gone for too long, actually. Williams’ break from the game started in January, when she was already several weeks pregnant with her daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., so she’s beginning and ending 2017 as a tennis player. And she managed to squeeze in a wedding to the Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit.
She even achieved the most rare and elusive award of all: an Instagram shout-out from her close friend Beyoncé.
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