Your DIY face masks could use a pretty easy upgrade. A new study revealed there’s a way to make your cloth masks significantly more effective—and you probably have multiple sitting in your sock drawer or hanging in your closet.
In recent weeks, CDC guidelines have advised all Americans to wear a face mask outside of the house, especially those in densely populated cities like New York City, in an effort to reduce the spread of coronavirus amid the ongoing pandemic. But due to nationwide shortages, many people are making their own. (Also, medical-grade masks, like the N95 respirator, are being used primarily by front-line health care professionals who are putting their lives at risk.)
It turns out, there’s an easy way to upgrade your masks so you’re even better protected from COVID-19. According to NPR, research conducted at Northeastern University found that adding an outer layer of nylon pantyhose to DIY face masks (or ones you’ve purchased online) improves protection and, in some cases, matched or exceeded the efficacy of surgical masks, especially because the additional fabric keeps the mask tight to your face.
Loretta Fernandez, one of the scientists who conducted the research, noted that while the material is highly effective for filtering, it’s how well it seals to the face that helps “avoid air making it around the mask into our breathing zone.” Similar to seal on the N95 respirator, the added layer reduces how much air can get through and reportedly boosted the masks’ performance by up to 50%.
“It really improved the performance of all of the masks, and it brought several of them up and over the baseline mask we were using, which was a 3M surgical-type mask,” Fernandez said, also recommending the use of a queen-sized pair of nylons to make breathing easier. (The study also noted that leggings could work as well, but they would need to offer a snug fit.)
Though the research has not yet been peer-reviewed, the findings could help doctors and nurses whose protective gear has bruised their faces after long and harrowing shifts treating coronavirus patients.
As news about the novel coronavirus pandemic rapidly evolves, Glamour is committed to bringing our readers accurate and up-to-date information. As a result, information in this story and others like it may be updated. For the most recent news about COVID-19, please visit the CDC, WHO, and your state’s Department of Health.
If you’re one of those Grey’s Anatomy fans who flip-flopped from fearing the writers would kill off Dr. Alex Karev (Justin Chambers) to wishing they had after finding out his fate, listen up.
According to a source that spoke with Us Weekly, there’s a very simple reason the Grey’s Anatomy writers sent Evil Spawn off to live on a farm with Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) and their two kids after Justin Chambers announced his exit in the middle of season 16.
“The reason he wasn’t killed off is because Shonda Rhimes is leaving the door open for a return, in any capacity, if he wants to come back,” an alleged insider told the publication. (If you’re wondering why they mention Rhimes, who is no longer the showrunner of the long-running series, it’s because she still has approval privileges as the executive producer.)
Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo
Though Chambers announced in his statement from January that Grey’s had already aired his final scenes, they were ultimately able to get him to loan his voice-over to the farewell episode.
Showrunner Krista Vernoff expressed her appreciation for the actor and character in a recent statement. “We have loved writing Alex. And we have loved watching Justin Chambers’ nuanced portrayal of him,” she tweeted. “For 16 seasons, 16 years, we have grown up alongside Alex Karev. We have been frustrated by his limitations and we have been inspired by his growth and we have come to love him deeply and to think of him as one of our very best friends. We will miss him terribly. And we will always be grateful for his impact, on our show, on our hearts, on our fans, on the world.”
Though Camilla Luddington, who plays Karev’s soon-to-be-ex-wife Jo on the series, has yet to release an official statement, costar Ellen Pompeo (the titular Meredith Grey) called the exit the “best possible storyline” before reuniting with former castmate T.R. Knight.
Whether or not the doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital (or the fans) would be happy to see Karev again after all this remains to be seen….
In 2003, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie blessed us with The Simple Life, a gloriously bonkers reality show in which the two socialites “roughed it” in blue-collar America. They traded in their designer clothes and penthouse apartments for bunkbeds and evening shifts at fast food restaurants. Was it problematic? Sure, but undeniably funny at times—and a formative piece of 2000s pop culture.
So it’s no surprise fans are begging for it to come back. (We are in the era of reboots, after all.) But Hilton has said time and time again that nothing is on the books. “They actually approached me to redo it again, but my schedule was so insane that I didn’t have time to do it, so I said no, but it would be pretty epic,” she told the Gay Times last fall.
Maybe her schedule is a bit more flexible now, though. There’s a theory floating around the internet that a Simple Life reboot is happening, and it will star Paris Hilton and—wait for it—Lindsay Lohan.
The only evidence comes from The Simple Life‘s “official” Twitter account (which isn’t verified). On Tuesday, June 25, whoever runs the page tweeted out a classic image of Hilton and Richie and wrote, “#SimpleLife6” alongside an eye emoji.
They then followed this up with two female emojis: one blond and one redhead. It didn’t take long for people to put two and two together. When one fan inquired if this meant the reboot would star Hilton and Lohan, the account responded with a “shhh” emoji. Interesting….
Then the account basically confirmed the suspicions by posting a photo of Lohan and Hilton from 2005 and captioning it, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
Enemies isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe Hilton and Lohan—I’d venture to say they’re “frenemies.” The two were close at one point during the early aughts, but their relationship has since fizzled. Hilton’s made several shady comments about Lohan but confirmed they don’t get along this year on Watch What Happens Live. When host Andy Cohen asked Hilton to say three nice things about the Mean Girls star, she responded with “beyond, lame, and embarrassing.”
Caution: This post contains major spoilers for A Simple Favor. Seriously, do not continue if you don’t want the ending spoiled!
It’s impossible to overstate how perfectly cast Blake Lively is as Emily, the mysterious, gin-martini-swilling PR exec in A Simple Favor (in theaters now). She delivers her lines—most of which are delightfully over-the-top—with ease and authority, and walks with a cane as if the sheer weight of her swagger might pull her down otherwise.
The movie begins with Emily befriending mommy vlogger Stephanie (played by the pitch perfect, pun intended, Anna Kendrick). They drink together and share secrets, have play dates and drink some more. But then Emily suddenly disappears—and Stephanie is left to figure out what really happened to her new BFF. Did Emily’s husband (the handsome Henry Golding) kill his wife for her $4 million life insurance policy? Or is Emily, in fact, still alive? Whatever the case, Emily is not exactly your typical suburban mom.
Here, 17 of the wildest things she says and does over the course of the movie.
1. “I let you tear my labia as you exited my body.” Emily says this to her son, Nicky, when she picks him up from school and he complains that she never lets him do anything fun. He’s in first grade.
2. She has a giant painting of her vagina hanging in her living room. It’s technically more of a full-body portrait, but because it’s painted from the perspective of someone looking up from Emily’s thighs, her vagina appears disproportionately large. Every art collection needs a conversation piece, right?
3. She wears a dickey. Emily’s style is a significant part of her allure, so when she casually removes her collared shirt as if it’s a clip-on tie, it begs the question: Are false shirt-fronts the new lingerie?
4. She strolls through the park in a tuxedo. Paired with magenta gloves. As you do.
5. And wears a tie with no shirt. Because who needs a collar when you can complete your look with side-boob and a cane?
6. “Erase it or I slap a fucking injunction on your yearbook.” This is how Emily responds when Stephanie takes a candid picture of her. (Remember those words next time your friend posts an unflattering pic of you on Insta.)
PHOTO: Peter Iovino
7. “Prudes are people too.” She’s not wrong.
8. She claims to have had a threesome with her husband, Sean, a novelist turned professor, and his T.A. Stephanie drunkenly one-ups her by admitting she had sex with her half-brother after meeting him at their father’s funeral. This earns her the nickname “brother fucker,” which Emily says not once, not twice, but four times.
9. She shamelessly admits to Sean that she stole his mother’s most valuable and sentimental ring. Her confession is seen in a flashback that ends with Sean and her conceiving Nicky in an airplane bathroom.
10. She fakes her death for a $4 million life insurance settlement. Here’s where things get really bananas…
11. She lies about being a twin. Scratch that: She lies about being a triplet. She was raised as Hope McLendon along with her sister Faith, and they ate their triplet, Charity, in the womb.
12. They also killed their dad in fire. This is why they both have a flame tattoo on their wrist. It’s also why they’ve been estranged for 14 years.
13. She drowns her sister. After seeing a pic of Emily (a.k.a. Hope) on Facebook, Faith asks her sister to meet at their old camp in Michigan and attempts to extort her for a million dollars. (This is why Emily doesn’t let anyone take her photo.) Instead, Emily drowns Faith, who is now a heroin addict, and decides to fake her own death for the aforementioned insurance policy.
14. She throws a wrench in the air and lets it fall on her face. Once she knows Stephanie has figured out the truth—Stephanie has been giving her hints via her vlog—Emily decides to frame Sean as an abuser. At this point, Emily thinks she’s gotten Stephanie on her side by pitting her against Sean. (Oh yeah: Stephanie and Sean had moved in together when they still thought Emily was dead.)
15. “That’s how you grieve? Balls deep in my best friend?” Emily says this to Sean. She was not happy to see him move on with Stephanie.
16. Emily shoots Sean. Stephanie shows up to Sean’s house with a gun, pretending to have snapped so that Emily might confess the whole truth—only Emily had, in fact, cut their planted microphones. But double (triple? quadruple?) twist: Stephanie was wearing a tiny nanny cam on her button the whole time, and she live-streamed the confrontation on her vlog.
17. Emily tries to shoot Stephanie. Figuring she was about to go to jail anyway, she aims to shoot Stephanie—only to get mowed down by another parent (Andrew Rannells) at their kids’ school. “You fuck with one of the moms,” he says. “You fuck with all of us.”
Anna Kendrick is just like the rest of us when it comes to meeting our idols. While making an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote her new movie A Simple Favor, Kendrick explained just how nerve-wracking it was to meet former President Barack Obama. In fact, she was so nervous she accidentally called him an “asshole” to his face.
As Kendrick explained to Colbert, back in 2012, “I got an email saying, ‘Hey do you want to meet the President?’ Naturally, I said, ‘Of what?'”
It took her more than a few moments to realize the person on the other end of the email meant the President of the United States. “I was very excited to have the opportunity to go to an event and meet him. I showed up, and I was the first person there.”
While standing around waiting for others to arrive, Kendrick explained how she began chatting with one of Obama’s secret service agents. The two soon realized they were both from Maine—a point Kendrick noted would be important to the story later.
Next, she said, Obama got up to make a small speech and was “doing that thing of making eye contact with everybody but not really. But then he’s actually looking right at me, which is very different.” Obama then pointed to her and said, “Actually, Anna, was in one of my favorite movies, Up in the Air, which talked about the economy and the recession.”
Following the speech, Kendrick was allowed to take a photo with Obama and shake his hand. The President then said to her. “I hope I didn’t embarrass you earlier?” The actress quickly replied in a sarcastic tone, “Yeah, you’re such an asshole.”
Kendrick then continue the awkwardness when Obama asked her “Oh, and you’re from Maine aren’t you?” Thinking back on her earlier conversation with the secret service agent she explained how she was the first one to arrive and chatted with her fellow Mainer, the agent. “Are people from Maine really punctual?” Obama asked, to which Kendrick replied, “You don’t know that? You’re the president.”
And that, she said, is how she made Obama go into a complete laughing fit. Which thankfully was captured on camera.
It’s good to know Barry still has the best sense of humor in politics. Watch Kendrick’s full confession here:
The trailer for A Simple Favor is the best that martinis have looked since Mad Men. Starring Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick, the movie revolves around the very mysterious Emily (Lively), her unlikely friendship with Stephanie (Kendrick), and, going by the trailer, Emily’s deep devotion to drinking martinis and looking stylish. It seems like there’s a Gone Girl–type plot in there too, but from the movie’s promo materials, the martinis play a pretty significant role. And ever the supportive costar (and lover of a clever, hidden message ), Lively just showed up to New York’s A Simple Favor premiere with a tiny Swarovski crystal martini on her nails.
To create the miniature martini, Lively’s manicurist, celebrity nail artist Elle, says that she started by painting on two coats of LeChat Dare to Wear nail polish in Black Velvet ($6). She then topped the flat black color with a selection of Swarovski crystals (it wasn’t quite a J.Lo $100 mani situation, though—the jewels cost only $10). Elle says she was literally going to use magnifying glasses to help her create the martini, but they were lost at the last second, so she placed the crystals in three minutes with her naked eyes.
As for her inspiration, Elle says that after she saw martinis constantly popping up in the film’s press shots, she went for it. What’s more, “It doesn’t hurt that Ryan [Reynolds] just bought a gin company, which also plays a big part in the movie,” Elle says.
A tiny martini glass rendered in jewels may not be your definition of a subtle clue, but Elle says that there was actually more to the mani’s hidden message. She stuck to one martini accent nail on purpose: “This was all about her one special glass, which made it more symbolic of the movie. I won’t say too much more, or I’ll spoil the plot.” Interesting.
For the rest of her nails, Lively chose the gunmetal color of LeChat Dare to Wear polish in Rock the Mic ($7), since it uncannily matched the sheer, glittery black shirt she wore to the New York premiere. Elle says, “She’s been wearing suits as a nod to her character in the movie and for female empowerment as well. She’s standing up for there not being a difference for men and women—her suit was actually worn on the runway by a man.”
