Last week, Carrie Underwood fans in the U.K. found themselves wishing her a speedy recovery after she canceled two performances due to an unspecified “illness.” According to People, Underwood’s record label made the announcement on Facebook, revealing that the singer would no longer be performing at the Long Road Festival or Radio 2 Live at Hyde Park over the weekend.
This week, Underwood shed some light on the health condition that led to her last-minute cancellations. “I don’t cancel shows. Like, I will drag myself on the stage and perform if I have the flu, or whatever,” she told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show Thursday night (September 13). “In the U.K., we had to cancel a couple shows. Basically, I got, like, a viral thing, and I woke up, I had vertigo, and I could not stand up, and it was crazy.”
“I ended up in a German hospital for three days,” she added. “They were so sweet and so nice. And we were, like, in our rooms, like, trying to learn German and trying to communicate with the people….I learned one phrase. ‘Kein fleisch, bitte’—’No meat, please.’ I don’t eat meat, so they would come in—that’s all I learned. That’s all I got.”
Watch Underwood explain this for yourself, below:
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A few months ago, Underwood revealed she had seriously injured herself in a fall last November, requiring 40 to 50 facial stitches and metal screws in her broken wrist.. “I honestly don’t know how things are going to end up but I do know this: I am grateful. I am grateful that it wasn’t much, much worse,” she wrote in a blog post at the time. “And I am grateful for the people in my life that have been there every step of the way…. It’s crazy how a freak random accident can change your life.”
After spending several months in recovery, Underwood returned to the stage in April with a triumphant performance of her new song “Cry Pretty” at the Academy of Country Music Awards, receiving a long standing ovation and later winning Vocal Event of the Year with Keith Urban.
As a young adult, my grandmother told me horror stories about what life was like for black women before Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that made abortion legal in the U.S. If you had money, you had access to the services you needed. But for many of our grandmothers, aunts, and mothers, that was not their reality. These women were forced to back alleys and shady doctors to receive the care they so desperately needed. They could not afford much else.
From 1972 to 1974, the mortality rate for women of color due to illegal abortion was 12 times that of white women in New York City alone. The coat hanger was our gory reality, the DIY spirit of which lives on today for many women facing financial hardships.
Things are slightly better today, but we are still in a crisis. As a black woman in 2018’s America, getting pregnant could literally kill me: Numerous studies point to a reproductive health crisis for black women. We’re dying during pregnancy and birth at higher rates than anyone else in America—numbers that mirror mortality rates in developing countries around the world.
Now, with the prospect that Brett Kavanaugh could be confirmed to the Supreme Court, it is possible that Roe v. Wade could be overturned, abortion could be outlawed, and life could become much, much worse for black women. Simply put: Black women have the most to lose if Kavanaugh is confirmed, and we will pay with our health and our lives.
As reported by Linda Villarosa in the New York Times, Zoë Carpenter in The Nation, and Renee Montagne at NPR, experts believe pregnancy is more dangerous for black women because of the stress of enduring racism in America. Other factors include having less access to resources because of that racism, as well as healthcare providers that take our symptoms and pain less seriously because of their unconscious bias against black women.
Regardless of why pregnancy is more dangerous for black women, the facts remain that it is more dangerous. Forcing us to bear pregnancies we don’t want—as would happen if Kavanaugh is confirmed—would likely exacerbate what has become a life or death situation for us.
In this way, exceptional wealth means nothing. Even billionaire Beyoncé recently shared a story about her difficulties during childbirth, following a similar story from rockstar athlete Serena Williams. Black women, no matter what their income level, are struggling to get access to high-quality care under our current system.
The Supreme Court is expected to function as a way to ensure and preserve justice for all Americans, but black women have never been able to count on our nation’s highest judges to defend and protect us. Brett Kavanaugh would shamefully worsen this problem. (Donald Trump vowed to tap only pro-life judges to the Supreme Court.) Our society still fails to recognize the abuse of black and brown bodies on which this nation was founded—and even more so, the violent control and degradation of black women’s bodies and lives. Throughout the 20th century, government agencies were targeting women of color for sterilization. From 1929 to 1974, North Carolina’s eugenics program aimed to stop poor people or people with mental illness from reproducing, but a disproportionate amount of the women ultimately targeted were black women.
For generations, the women who came before us have fought back and resisted this anti-black and anti-woman state violence in any way they could. We owe it to them—and to the women who will come after us—to do the same.
Collective liberation requires reproductive justice, defined by the National Black Women’s Reproductive Agenda as the human right to control our bodies, our sexuality, our gender, our work, and our reproduction—something we’ve historically been denied. Attaining these rights involve real access to preventative services, cultural competency training for health providers to address the bias that is killing black women, and allowing all women, especially women of color, to have a voice on policies that affect our ability to thrive.
It’s time for a reset. My organization, Women’s March, spent all of August calling on women to show up at their senators’ offices in their home states and remind them who voted them into office. We’ve continued to collect signatures and hand-deliver wire hangers to senators as a reminder of what women have been forced to do when denied the right to choose, and what women who never had any choice because of their race and economic status are still forced to do. On August 26, Women’s Equality Day, we worked with a coalition of progressive groups to organize rallies across the nation where women could echo our shared demand that the Senate keep this anti-woman candidate off our nation’s highest court.
On September 4, when SCOTUS confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh begin, a coalition of 20 women’s organizations will take this resistance from district offices to Washington, D.C. We will look our senators in the eyes as they prepare to vote and leave them with no doubt that women across America are watching. We’re taking action to #CancelKavanaugh, because we can’t afford to roll back rights women have worked for a generation to secure.
If the Senate puts Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, they’re giving him free rein to gut Roe v. Wade, criminalize abortion, and punish women for making choices about our own bodies. And they’re leaving us with no other choice than to disobey.
Black women have never shied away from taking action when our lives and those of our loved ones are on the line. We show up for everyone, and now we need members of the Senate—and women everywhere—to show up for us. Whether you feel you’ll be personally affected or not, it’s time to raise our voices until it is a rousing cry echoing in every corner, every neighborhood, every city in our nation.
Tamika D. Mallory is a nationally recognized activist well known as one of four co-chairs for the 2017 Women’s March on Washington and currently serves as co-President of the Women’s March organization. President of Mallory Consulting, a strategic planning firm, and board member of The Gathering for Justice, Tamika has landed on the 2017 Time 100 Pioneers list and Fortune’s 2017 list of the World’s Greatest Leaders.
When Lisa Borders, the president of the Women’s National Basketball Association, looks ahead to the coming season, she sees far more than just a game: She sees a moment. Right now, “The cultural, political and social zeitgeist, or winds, if you will, are all blowing to the benefit of women,” she says—and the WNBA is ready to make that count.
To that end, the league is launching the “Take A Seat, Take A Stand” program. The initiative directs a portion of WNBA ticket sales to spectators’ choice of national non-profits that champion causes ranging from sexual assault prevention to women’s health.
In interviews with Glamour ahead of the 2018 season tip-off, women of the WNBA said the “Take A Stand” drive may be new to the league, but social and political engagement are decidedly not. Instead, Borders said, “This is very much encoded, I think, in the DNA of the WNBA,” and the fundraising partnerships formalize that aspect of the league’s identity.
An anthemic promo video crystallizes the message, coupling footage of WNBA players and pink-hatted marchers on the move: “This season, your ticket supports more than women’s basketball,” says the clip’s closing title.
“It supports women.”
Ask someone about activism in pro sports, and it’s a fair bet they’ll highlight someone like the NFL’s Colin Kaepernick, whose “take a knee” protests captured the attention of the country (and the personal condemnation of President Donald Trump). But WNBA players were actually ahead of Kaepernick in using their platform to make their views known.
PHOTO: Dia Dipasupil/Getty
WNBA president Lisa Borders
“You might recall in 2016, when there were some unfortunate incidences in communities of color with police, many of our athletes took a stand,” Border said. That summer, players from the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx put on shirts that said “Change Starts With Us: Justice & Accountability” and spoke out on the police shootings of two black men, Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota.
Next, members of the WNBA’s New York Liberty warmed up for a game in shirts emblazoned with the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #Dallas5. Demonstrations continued within the league — as did objections to fines imposed on players for flouting uniform rules. (The penalties were later withdrawn, with Borders saying the WNBA understood players’ “desire to use their platform to address important societal issues” and would work with their union to facilitate that.)
“‘Take A Seat, Take A Stand’ is the next iteration of that desire to use the sports platform as [one] that will draw in folks who believe, as we believe, that we should all be equal, that we should all have opportunity, that we should all stand together,” Borders told Glamour.
Here’s how “Take A Stand” works: Ticket buyers head to the WNBA’s website, pick a team and select an “empowering organization” to support. The chosen non-profit gets a $5 donation — up to $25,000 per group — and a ticket to send a girl to the watch the game.
Six national organizations are working with the WNBA on the drive. These include Bright Pink, which focuses on prevention and early detection of breast and ovarian cancer; GLSEN, which promotes safe, supportive K-12 education for LGBTQ youth; It’s On Us, which combats sexual assault; MENTOR, The National Mentoring Partnership; Planned Parenthood; and The United State of Women, an umbrella group encompassing human rights, economic empowerment and leadership programs.
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Participation isn’t mandatory; plans are also in the works to add options to support local organizations keyed to each team’s home city.
For players like Elena Delle Donne of the Washington Mystics, the activism has a personal dimension: “We’ve been a part of an inclusion movement for so long now, and finally society is following along,” said the 28-year-old Olympic gold medalist and author, whose November wedding to Amanda Clifton attracted thousands of viewers via a livestream on bridal website The Knot’s Facebook page.
In her younger days, Delle Donne said she had to overcome feeling different — and not just because she was tall — and now she’d like to help ease the way for others: “Growing up, I wasn’t able to see very many role models to look to, and I feel like if they can relate to me — [it] took me a little bit to finally come out and be ok with being myself — [then] I want people to figure that out sooner in life and just be confident in who they are, no matter what that may be.”
If WNBA membership helps players [get] heard, she said, “I think it’s important for us to use our voices and speak out when you feel something isn’t right, or you want to see some change.”
PHOTO: Ned Dishman
Elena Della Donne
One change she’d definitely like to see: Higher visibility for women in basketball, who endlessly battle for the kind of exposure lavished on the guys.
The WNBA, of course, is far younger than its male counterpart: The women’s league is entering its 22nd season; the NBA has been around for more than seven decades. But the differences go far past age.
In the regular 2017 season, for example, WNBA game attendance hit a six-year high of more than 1.57 million — but attendance at NBA games topped 22 million. And compensation rates for the leagues barely fit on the same graph: The top-paid NBA player, LeBron James, raked in nearly $31 million in the 2016-17 season, per ESPN stats. The maximum WNBA salary in 2016? About $111,550 — and the average player made around $75,000.
Loyal fans of men’s and women’s pro hoops are also worlds apart on the price of admission — even in the same city. Both the NBA’s Clippers and the WNBA’s Sparks call the Staples Center in Los Angeles home court, but MVP pricing for the Clippers runs as high as $12,155, while a courtside deal for the Sparks goes for under $4,000 for the 2018 season.
Given the disparities, a cautious type might suggest mixing hot-button politics with athletics could be bad business for the WNBA.
But playing it safe just isn’t WNBA style, says the head of the league.
“I have not asked every one of our athletes, but based on their actions, I think they believe in the First Amendment … I believe that they are faithful that what they’re doing is right for them and for their team and for their communities, and so they do it with conviction,” Borders said. “I’m not saying that no one is ever afraid that something might happen. I think they’re speaking up in spite of that … They’re going to do what they think is right. Period. Full stop.”
What’s more, Borders — herself no stranger to politics as a former president of the Atlanta City Council — argues athletes who comprise the WNBA’s 12 teams may be uniquely inclined to embrace civic activism.
Notably, they’re an educated set: Women are not eligible for draft without four years of post-high school education, she said. And they’re globetrotters: The vast majority of members — Borders estimates as many as 80 percent — play internationally during the WNBA’s off season.
“These are folks who have a worldview that most people do not have — not most women, most people,” she said. “They are very much sensitized to what’s going on in the U.S., but also what’s going on globally, and they have very strong opinions about equity and parity and social justice by virtue of their experience, their education, and their exposure.”
Case in point: Elizabeth Williams of the Atlanta Dream. The British-born daughter of parents from Nigeria, Williams, now 24, came to the United States as a child. She took pre-med courses at Duke, recently completed a Harvard Business School program for pro athletes, and can see herself becoming a doctor one day.
PHOTO: Leon Bennett
Elizabeth Williams plays for the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream. Image: AP
Coming from a family that emphasized education, Williams says she’s especially glad to work with MENTOR: When it comes to long-term success, “I like being able to talk to young kids and tell them about how important school is, and how important it is to realize that sports aren’t really the only way,” Williams told Glamour.
While “initially the league wasn’t huge” on players being vocal on the job about causes such as Black Lives Matter, she said, “Take A Stand” suggests WNBA leadership is getting behind civic engagement.
“We’re able to positively influence young girls and show them [how] to be strong and to be fearless, [and] we’re able to do that through sport,” Williams said. “I think that’s really important: As they grow up [and] whatever they decide to do, they realize that there [are] these young women that have paved the way.”
On the heels of Catt Sadler’s sudden—and for some, shocking—departure from E! News Wednesday, many female celebrities have taken to social media to commend Sadler on her statement-making exit, applauding her for shining a much-needed light on wage inequity and gender biases in Hollywood.
Earlier this week, the TV host left the entertainment news program—on which she’s been a fixture for more than a decade—citing a “massive disparity in pay” with cohost Jason Kennedy and noting that her aforementioned male colleague made nearly double her own salary.
Since then, stars from Jennifer Lawrence to Olivia Munn have voiced their support for the former E! News host. On Wednesday, Lawrence posted an article from Sadler’s blog in which the former E! star penned about her departure; alongside the article, Lawrence writes words of encouragement for Sadler, applauding her candor. See for yourself, below:
Actress Jessica Chastain also chimed in on Twitter, voicing her dismay for this blatant injustice and calling on companies to do better:
“It’s so disappointing to find out that @enews—a network that depends on female viewers—felt your value was worth only half of your male counterpart,” Olivia Munn wrote in a Tweet on Wednesday. She followed up with: “It’s not easy to do what you did. I’m so proud of you for it.”
It seems Sadler’s powerful and poignant departure has not gone unnoticed, or more importantly, unvalued—especially among women in Hollywood, who for so long have felt the brunt of the wage gap’s villainy. “Our actions must be in alignment with our beliefs,” Sadler responded to the outpouring of support she received on social media. “As painful as it was to leave, I have been empowered by so many other courageous women. It made doing the right thing my only choice.”
