It’s been a month for Angelica Ross, and it’s not even over. A non-exhaustive list of things the actor, entrepreneur, and transgender rights activist has done so far in September: star as Nurse Rita in FX’s American Horror Story: 1984, host the 2020 Presidential Candidate Forum on LGBTQ Issues, deal with online harassment from a group of angry Bernie bros, and attend the Emmys for her breakout role as Candy on Pose. (The show was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series.)
Despite all this, Ross says she wasn’t stressed at all leading up to the award show on Sunday, September 22. “I’m very fortunate to have an amazing team, so I could focus on filming American Horror Story 1984 and hosting the LGBTQ Presidential Forum,” she says. Also: “Regardless of the Emmys outcome [for Pose], I knew we were already walking in as winners, because we have truly changed the culture.”
Here, Ross—in her own words—takes us through her getting-ready process for the Emmys. “I cannot lie,” she tells Glamour. “I love a red carpet, a purple carpet, a glitter carpet. However you color the runway, I aim to slay.”
“When we first started talking Emmys, there was only one name that immediately came to mind: Michael Costello. He supported my career even before I blew up on the scene. He’s dressed me for several red carpets, including the major milestone of accepting the GLAAD Media Award for my interview with Trevor Noah. I just knew that Michael would create a show-stopping moment.”
“I’m wearing Martin Katz diamond earrings. The diamonds were truly spectacular. The Brilliant Bezel earrings are set in Platinum, accented with two round diamonds and set with 110 diamonds. They’re valued at $87,500.”
As an angsty, unstable, totally depressed 19-year-old, few things caught my attention, but one day, walking into my kitchen, I was grabbed by the title of a book my mom had left out on the counter: Get Me Out Of Here: My Recovery From Borderline Personality Disorder, a memoir by Rachel Reiland. Cautiously, I picked it up. I did want to get out of here. Get out of my mind, get out of my life, get out of the skin I felt increasingly desperate to claw my way out of.
Reading the first few pages, I felt seen. Reiland nailed the uncontrollable sadness, the crying, the knowledge that these reactions weren’t proportionate responses to whatever situation was at hand. Every emotional response felt too big for its surroundings, she described, but grasping how to turn down the volume was always a bit out of reach.
I immediately googled this mysterious mental illness, and the picture that emerged of someone with borderline personality disorder (BPD) sounded exactly like me: fear of abandonment, unstable relationships, suicidal tendencies, chronic emptiness, emotional regulation issues, significant depression, explosive anger, self-harm…the list went on.
At first I felt relieved. I had almost every symptom—after years of misdiagnoses, I finally had an answer. But then the fear set in. I didn’t want BPD or the rigid stigma associated with it. That would mean I was really crazy.
So I stayed silent. It would be another five years before I brought up the suspicion that I had borderline personality disorder to my therapists.
A Misdiagnosis
According to the doctors that my parents desperately took me to see throughout my adolescence, I didn’t fall neatly into any category. Despite that, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It wasn’t a perfect fit—I had the mood swings by not the mania characteristic of the condition—but it was clear I needed mental health treatment, and a bipolar diagnosis was an adequate way to get it.
A diagnosis is not an indictment; it is a path to treatment. It is a way to separate yourself from your disorder, a way to say, “Oh, that’s why I behave in this way.” It’s a means of getting the help you need. Of course, when a diagnosis is incorrectly applied, treatment is pretty ineffective. It’s not uncommon for people with BPD to be misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder since there are many symptoms that overlap. It’s like wearing a pair of shoes two sizes too small—they don’t quite work, but hey, at least you have shoes.
I was put on medication to help level out my mood swings. But despite the drugs and the therapists, the emotional dysregulation raged on. I was miserable and continually suicidal; I constantly felt there was something wrong with me. I felt as though my life—and my mind—weren’t mine. Everything felt completely and utterly out of control.
Living With BPD
At 24, I was sitting in my therapist’s office, shaky, exhausted, and at the end of my rope. I was having trouble in my familial relationships, in my friendships, at work. I could barely get out of bed. I was drinking a lot, exhibiting disordered eating patterns, and self-harming. I was not even close to taking care of myself, but these coping mechanisms were the only way I knew how to survive. They were the only tools I had.
It wasn’t working. Ever since I’d found the book my mom had left out on the kitchen counter, BPD had been lurking in the back of my mind, hopeful and terrifying at the same time. Finally, I brought it up to my therapist. In time, she agreed that this was indeed what she believed I was dealing with. When the words came out of her mouth, I no longer felt resistance or fear. I just feel understood. With a diagnosis, I realized, there I was a path to healing.
I generally feel about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) the way I feel about gender reveal parties: I get why people are into it, I’ll go if I’m invited, and I always root for a girl. So after I saw on Twitter there’s a “women got this” moment in the climactic battle of Avengers: Endgame, I decided I’d do my cultural duty and see this much-hyped project for myself.
Twenty dollars and three hours later, I can attest that, yes, the female superheroes do kick butt. Moreover, Endgame reveals a franchise—and perhaps an audience—caught between nostalgia for the status quo that built it and the interesting, diverse possibilities ahead. But before we get into that, be warned: Major spoilers for Endgame ahead.
Endgame picks up where Infinity War left off: Half of the universe’s population has turned to dust, though the original six conveniently survived (Iron Man, Black Widow, Hulk, Hawkeye, Thor, and Captain America). War Machine, Nebula, and Rocket Raccoon are also around to help, along with new recruit Captain Marvel, who saved Iron Man’s life on her way to Earth because Carol Danvers is good like that. Right away, Captain Marvel is confident that, with her help, they can all do their avenging and finally kill Thanos—and they do. The only problem: He destroyed the Infinity Stones, which means they can’t reverse his actions from Infinity War.
For five years, everyone mourns their lost loved ones. Captain America leads a support group that features the movie’s one and only openly gay character. Captain Marvel peaces out to fight crime on other planets, even though Nick Fury used his dying breath to summon her to earth. But don’t worry, because here comes…Ant-Man! Yes, they let the most powerful woman in the galaxy skip town, but good ol’ Ant-Man is crucial to the first half of the movie.
That’s not to say the first half of the movie isn’t really fun, by the way. The Avengers go back in time to collect the Infinity Stones, allowing Thor to see his mom, Iron Man to see his dad, and Captain America to fight himself. There’s a lot of sneaking around and even more anti-aging CGI. It all leans hard into the audience’s nostalgia for the earlier movies in the franchise, and that’s what we signed up for, isn’t it?
Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), War Machine/James Rhodey (Don Cheadle), Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) in Avengers: Endgame.
Marvel Studios
The only thing is, if you haven’t seen the original Avengers since it came out and have instead been watching Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and the MCU’s other more inclusive efforts, you might have forgotten that it’s a real White Guy-Palooza. Iron Man and Captain America are going ego-to-ego, Hulk is doing his best to rein in his testosterone, and Thor still has his phallic attachment to his hammer. The only girl in the group is Black Widow…except she—spoiler—sacrifices herself so Hawkeye can get the Soul Stone and dies. After that, the only women left to save the world are Nebula and Gamora (who, yes, died in Infinity Wars but has joined with her sister in the past and traveled to the present day). But they interact with the main group pretty much never.
After some twists and turns, though, Hulk is able to un-dust all the people Thanos previously dusted—right as a now-alive Thanos (who time-traveled his way from the past) arrives with his entire army. But good news: The heroes who turned to dust have returned, too. If the first half of Endgame was a long and loving tribute to the original batch of Avengers movies, the second is a rapid-fire reminder of all the characters Marvel introduced in the past five years. On your left is Doctor Strange! On your right is Spider-Man and the Scarlet Witch! Directly in front of you…Wakandans! And arriving via the sky are Valkyrie and Captain Marvel (taking down a whole ship by herself in the process, by the way). Except, wait, those last two never got the dust treatment. They could have been here helping the whole time.
Monster. Mother. Soldier. There isn’t a role Charlize Theron can’t nail. That extends to beauty idol too: The South African native, 43, has been the face of Dior J’adore perfume for 13 years and counting. Compared to her Oscar-winning performances, being the face of a long-running perfume campaign might seem trivial—trite even—to some, but Theron sees the role as another way to use her platform to explore “what it means to be a woman in this day and age,” as well as foster conversations about femininity and representation on-screen.
For our December 2018 issue, we caught up with the star to talk everything from her magic brow product to how the beauty industry is finally making some much needed change. Pull up a seat.
Tell us about your first scent memory.
Watching my mom apply fragrance in that very specific way women did in the seventies: behind her ears. There was something in the way she moved that made me think, One day, when I do that, I’ll be a woman.
You’ve said the idea of what it means to “be a woman” has been an important message of your campaigns with J’adore through the years. What do you think it means to be a woman today?
I think it’s as complex as it was in 2004. But solidarity is really important right now. We’re at the precipice of something really big happening, for us and for future generations. And I really believe that women are in solidarity with each other all over the world. [Why is why I think] it’s an incredible moment in time to be alive and to be a woman.
How have beauty conversations changed throughout your career?
There’s now a demand from the public [for more representation]. It’s made brands realize they don’t have a choice in the matter. But once they went there, [many found it] was actually incredibly lucrative. Once you widen the small idea of what [beauty traditionally meant], you reach a much wider audience. And those are the women who are really living in this world.
Honestly, I’m surprised that this hadn’t been done centuries ago. Why did it take us so long to say, “This is our value—take it or leave it”? Sometimes it feels like we’re still talking about caveman stuff.
Speaking of transformations, you’ve made a lot of them onscreen. Is there one that stands out?
Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. She wears only one thing the whole movie, and we didn’t want people watching to get bored. I didn’t want to get bored of it. But that whole look became part of my skin by the end of the shoot. It felt like the harness was a part of my body. I was also a new mom then and the shaved head was so easy. I was living in the desert with my new baby, and I could just take a shower, walk out, and it was great. I loved it.
As a busy mom, how do you prioritize self-care?
I really enjoy a facial every two or three weeks. I go to Mila Moursi in L.A. There’s also a Korean hot springs that I’ve been going to for probably 25 years. I steam, I sit in the water, I get a body scrub. It’s not fussy or fancy. Sometimes, if one of my kid’s aunts want to hang out with them or take them to a movie, I’ll be like, oh, I’m going to go to the hot springs right now.
What’s the rest of your skin care routine like?
My skin always comes alive after exfoliating and moisturizing. I’m one of those people who are open to whatever friends are loving, but I always go back to Dior’s Prestige line, especially its hydrating serum.
What look makes you feel best?
Jeans, T-shirt, and a blazer. And for beauty, my go-to—when I feel my prettiest and most authentic—is usually just a nice brow, a good lash, a little bit of bronzer, and a lip balm. I love Creme De La Mer’s balm. That’s kind of all I do. I’m not a big eyeliner or eyeshadow person, but I like taking care of my brows.
What are your best brow tricks?
Listen, I’m from the nineties! We did that thin-eyebrow thing for a really long time there, so I’ve been on a journey trying to replace those brows for a long time. Castor oil has been unbelievable at helping to bring them back. You can just pick it up from a pharmacy. I use it on my brows, my scalp, and my lashes. It’s changed my life.
Just over a year-and-a-half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Ivanka Trump announced that she’s shuttering her namesake fashion line.
In many ways, it’s been a long time coming. Marketed as a purveyor of affordable basics for working women since it launched in 2007, with its face being Trump herself, the brand—once valued at $100 million—has experienced a considerable decline since its founder left to join her father’s administration in January 2017. Ivanka Trump, the brand, has taken one hit after the next as many shoppers and retailers have distanced themselves from its products, with pieces increasingly popping up on the resale market post-election.
Then, there were the boycotts.
Grab Your Wallet and similar campaigns against Trump’s products, which have gained steam thanks to the power of social media, have contributed in part. Their goal is to be “a centralized resource for the flexing of consumer power,” specifically as it pertains to Trump-affiliated companies. Shannon Coulter, a San Francisco-based digital marketing expert, is at the center of Grab Your Wallet—as the initiative’s co-founder, she and Sue Atencio helped launch this movement in 2016, encouraging people to use their spending to protest then-candidate Trump following the release of that now-infamous Access Hollywood tape (hence the name). The hashtag quickly went viral, and the Grab Your Wallet website was launched as a resource for customers to check whether the places they shopped had a relationship with the Trump family, as well as to provide tips for people who wanted to call companies with ties to them. When the first Women’s March took place in 2017, 350,000 people visited the site during a 24-hour period, according to the New York Times.
A year-and-a half later, Coulter and Grab Your Wallet have what she described on Twitter as “a win.”
PHOTO: The Washington Post via Getty Images
Shannon Coulter, co-founder of Grab Your Wallet.
“All over the world, women have so much consumer power and influence and their awareness of that influence is growing,” Coulter tells Glamour. “I’ve watched so many individual women successfully get companies to make significant, positive changes over the last twenty months simply by communicating with them. It’s been dazzling to behold and it makes me believe we could use that power to help remake the world into one that puts a premium on equity, peace, education, and care. I think that’s only a dream for as long as we fail to roll up our sleeves and do it.”
Coulter, for one, doesn’t believe Ivanka Trump, the person, when she says the decision to close Ivanka Trump, the brand, had nothing to do with sales. “I don’t think any Trump would willingly shut down a profitable company with a bright future,” she argues. “I’ve seen several indications that Ivanka Trump’s line has probably been performing poorly for some time on several measures, especially brand. I think Ivanka likely wanted to avoid the embarrassment of more retailers dropping her line in the future. At the consumer level, the Trump brand has become permanently politicized and she knows it.”
In 2015, the Ivanka Trump line was reportedly raking in $100 million annually, per public statements from G-III, the company that made its clothing. Then, the election happened: Ivanka joined her father in Washington, and formally stepped away from the company’s day-to-day operations—though, she never divested her ownership, and still made $5 million from the company in 2017, according to financial disclosure documents.
That’s when things started to take a turn, as consumers increasingly found it difficult to separate Ivanka Trump, the product, from Ivanka Trump, the political operative.
PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN
Ivanka Trump.
In an interview with Refinery 29 from early 2017, Abigail Klem, president of Ivanka Trump, claimed the brand had its best-performing weeks in its history following President Trump’s inauguration. According to the e-commerce search platform Lyst, sales of the brand spiked by more than 700 percent in February 2017, compared to February 2016.
Around that same time, the backlash began to strike Ivanka Trump’s stockists. Nordstrom became the first major U.S. retailer to announce it would no longer carry the brand, in February 2017, citing poor sales: “We’ve said all along we make buying decisions based on performance,” a spokesperson told Racked at the time. According to an e-mail sent to employees that week, though, Nordstrom executives reportedly did express disagreement with President Trump’s policies—his executive order restricting travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, in particular, writing: “We currently employ more than 76,000 people who comprise different races, ethnicities, and genders. It’s important that we reiterate our values to all of you and make it clear that we support each of our employees.”
PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN
Trump, wearing an Ivanka Trump dress.
“By then, a dozen companies had already announced they had severed ties with the Trump brand, but when Nordstrom announced it was dropping Ivanka, I knew the movement had achieved real momentum,” Coulter says, noting how a New York Times news item quoted an anonymous source from a third-party consumer data company who said that Grab Your Wallet kept coming up in Nordstrom customer feedback.
Other retailers were feeling the heat, too. A source at TJ Maxx tells Glamour that the retailer received hundreds of angry letters and phone calls in 2017 because it sold Ivanka Trump products; the retailer instructed its employees via a note to throw out signs promoting the label in stores. And for those stockists that continued to carry Ivanka Trump in the post-#GrabYourWallet landscape, the pressure never really eased up: Just this month, Canada-based Hudson’s Bay announced it was dropping the brand—in a statement, it offered: “As part of our regular course of business, we review our merchandise offerings and make appropriate changes.” Coulter says that Hudson’s Bay was the 40th company to be removed from Grab Your Wallet’s master list.
While a statement from the Ivanka Trump brand insisted on strong sales through 2018, when the company launched its own e-commerce, the numbers publicly available—the company is privately held, so not many are—suggest a different story.
PHOTO: Spencer Platt
Ivanka Trump shoes, available for purchase.
Following the reported surge that followed the Inauguration, Lyst reported that order growth for Ivanka Trump dropped to 288 percent in March 2017, then to 114 percent in May 2017, and then to 6 percent in July 2017; in August 2017, order volume was down negative one percent compared to August 2016. This downward spiral continued into 2018, as sales for Ivanka Trump products online at Amazon, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Zappos fell almost 45% in June 2018, compared to June 2017, according to data from Rakuten Intelligence reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Simultaneously, Trump couldn’t distance herself from allegations that she was using her new political capital to profit unethically from her White House role. For instance, she wore a $10,800 bracelet from her fine jewelry collection for an appearance on “60 Minutes” in 2016 promoting her father’s presidential win—and the Ivanka Trump brand sent out a press release for it, presumably to drum up sales. Then, when news broke that Nordstrom was dropping the label, President Trump sent out a Tweet blasting the retailer for the decision on his person account, which was then retweeted by the official @POTUS Twitter handle. As recently as May 2018, there were reports that the First Daughter had won new trademarks from China—13 in three months—which set in motion a firestorm from ethics experts questioning whether Trump was using her influence with foreign governments for personal gain. Meanwhile, the brand contended with controversies of its own unrelated to its founder’s political affiliations: In the spring of 2017, news broke that the factories in China where Ivanka Trump products were being produced were facing labor violations.
PHOTO: Bloomberg
Trump, wearing Ivanka Trump shoes.
To be sure, the Ivanka Trump brand is far from the first company to be at the receiving end of negative attention—Uber, United, and Chick-fil-A are but a handful of examples—but not all consumer-driven boycotts have had nearly as big impact on a company.
“Social media provides a platform for people to have these conversations that didn’t exist 10 years ago,” Barbara E. Kahn, a professor of marketing at the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at The Wharton School, says. Still, negative attention doesn’t necessarily mean the death knell for a brand: “There could be lot of negative activity on social media, and that doesn’t necessarily translate into changes in purchase behavior or sales.”
Think of how Chick-fil-A enraged many after it publicized its anti-gay marriage position in 2012—the company barely registered a hit, beyond some bad PR. Many fashion brands and retailers have faced accusations of sweatshop labor that have resulted in boycotts, but it hasn’t truly affected their bottom lines much.
“Boycotts are not created equal,” Bruce Hicks of The Alliant Group/Houston, a longtime public relations and crisis management consultant, explains. “What comes into play is how important the product is to people lives. Is it a crucial product? Is it an important brand to people? With Ivanka Trump you have a brand that is insignificant, it’s not a commodity product. People don’t need to buy her shoes, there are a lot of choices out there. Mix that up with emotion over President Trump, and it’s easy for people to make the decision to spend their dollars elsewhere.”
PHOTO: Chip Somodevilla
Trump, wearing an Ivanka Trump dress.
With the Ivanka Trump brand closing its doors, the Grab Your Wallet campaign strikes off one of its main targets. What comes next? According to Coulter, the fight isn’t over—not even close.
“The Grab Your Wallet community seems really excited to continue doing this,” she says. “Our goal now is to develop a more comprehensive, sophisticated knowledge base about the moral and ethical dimensions of consumer brands and then disseminate that information in highly impactful ways. We’re also looking at the possibility of partnering with organizations that advocate for fair wages, labor rights, and equity in hiring in order to continue making an impact.”
The retailers that remained on the Grab Your Wallet boycott list for continuing to carry Ivanka Trump through its final season will be removed, per Coulter, “although we will be making a note that they failed to divest from the Trump brand prior to Ivanka’s company being shut down.”
From the moment then-candidate Donald Trump said that women would deserve “some form of punishment” if abortion were to become illegal, we have been preparing for dire threats to the constitutional right to abortion.
On Wednesday, Justice Anthony Kennedy—the deciding vote on the Supreme Court when it came to protecting the core of the constitutional right to abortion—announced his retirement, creating a vacant seat that President Trump has promised to fill with an anti-abortion justice who will overturnRoe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that established the right to abortion.
Because he has attacked access to reproductive health care at every opportunity, we believe he’ll make good on that threat.
The right of women to make their own decisions about their bodies and their futures will be determined by who fills Justice Kennedy’s seat. So now the balance of the most powerful court is a tug of war between Trump and the 70 percent of Americans who support safe legal abortion.
Of course, this isn’t the first time we have had to fight to save our access to reproductive health.
When Trump promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act and block patients from coming to Planned Parenthood, people from across the country flooded Twitter, the U.S. Capitol, town halls, and congressional inboxes. And we stopped him.
Any justice Trump nominates must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, so Planned Parenthood and our 11 million supporters will do everything we can to make sure that the Senate only confirms justices who explicitly state they will uphold Roe v. Wade and women’s rights to safe, legal abortion.
Because what happens on the Supreme Court could alter the course of women’s lives for generations.
The stakes are high. At least 20 states would be at high risk of banning abortion outright if Roe is overturned, either because of laws already in place or because they have legislatures and governors so hostile to women’s health that they will jump at the chance to take away our rights. Four of those states already have laws in place that would ban abortion as soon as the court allows.
One of them is my home state of Louisiana, where in 1983, as a freshman at LSU, I became pregnant. I didn’t want to be. Like so many people who find themselves in the same predicament, I was near broke and only beginning to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. But I knew, without a doubt, that I was not ready to be a mother. I borrowed money and had an abortion at the health center in town.
If it had been illegal in Louisiana, I’m certain I would have found a way to get an abortion in another state. Many women don’t have that option. They have children to feed, bills to pay and jobs that don’t give paid time off. Others don’t have insurance or a car or the savings to pay for their travel and care. Even now, when Roe is the law of the land, too many women must contend with extreme barriers to care, because Louisiana state politicians have spent years chipping away at the constitutional right to abortion and made it as difficult and as burdensome as possible.
Today, I am the proud mother of triplet teenage daughters, daughters I am sure I would not have without that abortion in 1983. When I feel worn out by the news and the work ahead, I think of them. And I think of the 1 in 5 women who come to Planned Parenthood, and how we have changed their lives by helping them to own their own bodies through access to birth control, education, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and abortion.
So much has changed since 1973. Half of American families today have a female breadwinner. We work at every level in every industry. We are CEOs and computer scientists and increasingly members of Congress. Women are more than half of college students. More women are running for office this year than ever before.
When my daughters were growing up, I told them they could be anything they wanted to be. And I believed that. I still believe it.
But I also know, from decades of fighting for women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights and racial justice, that the world doesn’t become more fair and just on its own.
Those in power don’t simply give us our rights. We have to demand them, and protect them. And sometimes, fight to get them back.
Dawn Laguens is the Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America
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