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With Miss Universe's Win, Black Women Hold Every Major Pageant Title in the World Right Now


Pageants often get a bad rap for being regressive leftovers from a different time. While some of that criticism is fair, the organizations that run them have made changes in recent years to become more modern. (Case and point: the elimination of the swimsuit competition at Miss America.) And there’s no question that their reach is still enormous, with competitions running in all 50 states and in countries around the world.

Now, for the first time ever, all four major pageant titles—Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss Universe—are held by black women. Last night, the newly-crowned Miss Universe, Zozibini Tunzi of South Africa, joined Miss America Nia Franklin, Miss USA Cheslie Kryst, and Miss Teen USA Kaliegh Garris to become the fourth black woman to currently wear a major pageant crown.

“I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me, with my kind of skin and my kind of hair, was never considered to be beautiful,” Tunzi said, according to the BBC. “I think that it is time that that stops today.”

“It is important to little brown and black girls to see three strong figures, three strong women, African-American women that are doing so much great work,” Ms. Franklin told the New York Times in May. “People will argue that race doesn’t matter. But race does matter in America, because of the history, because of slavery.”

“Nia, Cheslie, and Kaliegh: you are trailblazers, creating your own path on your own terms. Congratulations,” Senator Kamala Harris tweeted in May. Now, Tunzi joins the group (defeating Kryst).

None of the women are the first black woman to wear their particular crown. Vanessa Williams was the first black Miss America in 1984; Carole Gist won Miss USA in 1990; Janel Bishop won Miss Teen USA in 1991; and Janelle Commissiong was crowned Miss Universe in 1977. But on social media, enthusiasm for this particular clean sweep was undeniable.

Even Oprah weighed in, tweeting, “Congratulations Miss South Africa, the new Miss Universe @zozitunzi! Agree with you…leadership is the most powerful thing we should be teaching young women today. We welcome your visit to #OWLAG, our Leadership Academy for Girls ??????.”

The significance of all four women wearing the crowns at the same time was also a much-discussed topic.

This is yet another example of how much representation matters—in the world of pageants and beyond.



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Planned Parenthood Withdraws From Title X Federal Funds. Here’s What That Means


Planned Parenthood has announced that it will withdraw from Title X, a federal program that helps make birth control, pregnancy tests, and screenings for sexually transmitted diseases accessible and affordable. The decision is due to the Trump administration’s new “gag rule,” which restricts what health providers can tell patients about abortion. Under this rule, if Planned Parenthood wanted to continue to receive funds through the program, it would no longer be able to offer abortion referrals or even suggest where a patient could get an abortion.

The Trump administration first introduced the new Title X rules in May, but it wasn’t until last week, when a federal court failed to halt them, that Planned Parenthood decided to pull out of the program.

Planned Parenthood has received Title X funds since the 1970s, but these federal dollars have never been used to fund abortions. And according to the New York Times, “Planned Parenthood receives about $60 million of the $286 million given annually by Title X to about 4,000 health centers providing reproductive health care, as well as screenings for breast cancer and cervical cancer, to about 4 million patients.” Without these resources, more than 1.5 million low-income women who rely on Planned Parenthood for pregnancy tests, birth control, STI screenings, and other services through Title X support could be affected. The organization has shared that one of their programs, a mobile health center in Cleveland, will have to close and that other clinics will feel similar pressure from the cuts.

“By forcing Planned Parenthood out of the Title X program, Trump is fulfilling his debt to the anti-choice movement—a vocal, extreme minority in this country—for their work to put him in the White House,” NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue shared in a statement. “Millions of women and families who rely on Planned Parenthood for a full range of reproductive health care will be forced to pay the price for political payback by the Trump administration and their reckless Title X gag rule. The decision about when and with whom to have a family is one of the most personal and important decisions a person will ever make, and it’s definitely one that should be free from political interference.”

Christina Reynolds, vice president of communications at Emily’s List, echoed Hogue’s sentiments. “Since day one, Trump and his Republican cronies have tried to defund Planned Parenthood and strip valuable reproductive care from millions of women. Today, those efforts have real and dangerous consequences for too many women in America. The Trump administration is using one of the largest and most valuable programs for providing affordable birth control and reproductive health care to bully providers, like Planned Parenthood, into withholding information on abortion. As the gag rule takes effect, millions of women will be left with nowhere to turn for essential health care like affordable birth control, cancer screenings, maternal care, and more,” she wrote in a statement.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood have also taken to Twitter to share their outrage. Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke wrote, “Trump is taking tens of millions of dollars away from Planned Parenthood—jeopardizing the health of more than a million people across our country. Please donate to @PPFA today, so Trump can’t stop patients from receiving the care they need.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar tweeted, “Trump’s gag rule is forcing Planned Parenthood to withdraw from Title X. Last year alone 53,000 Minnesotans relied on Title X-funded clinics for cancer screenings, well person visits, birth control, and more. Losing access to this care puts lives at risk. Period.”





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The USWNT World Cup Team is Ready to Win Their Fourth Title


Adds defender Kelley O’Hara, 30, who’s making her third World Cup appearance this summer: “At the end of the day, we’re all playing soccer because we love it and we’re good at it and it’s something that we’re passionate about. But I do think that it’s important to understand that we have a responsibility. We are in a place where we can impact the game and impact society—this team has always done a great job of balancing those two things.”

The balance isn’t always easy. In March 2016, five of the team’s most recognizable players—Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Megan Rapinoe—filed an official complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission alleging that the U.S. Soccer Federation paid women “substantially less” than men in the sport. Fresh off their World Cup win, they found support: Two months later the U.S. Senate came together to unanimously pass a bipartisan resolution supporting the women and asking the Federation to grant the players equal pay. The resolution was nonbinding, but the players got one step closer to victory regardless. In Feb 2019 the EEOC sent a “right to sue” letter to the team, so this March—on International Women’s Day—that’s exactly what they did. The entire team sued the U.S. Soccer Federation for gender discrimination.

It’s easy to see why they’re frustrated. The women’s team handily outperforms the men’s: They’re ranked significantly higher, hold more World Cup titles and Olympic medals (four golds), draw bigger TV audiences, and since their 2015 win, have generated more money for U.S. Soccer. (Meanwhile the U.S. men’s team failed to even qualify for the 2018 World Cup.) Still, they’re paid significantly less—some players make just 38 percent of what their male counterparts make, according to the lawsuit. “Right now the structure is set up so that our counterparts on the men’s national team have the opportunity to make so much more money,” says Press. When the men’s team qualified for the 1990 World Cup, each player got a $10,000 bonus; when the women’s team earned the same honor a year later, they reportedly got a T-shirt.

Things haven’t improved much. For the last Women’s World Cup in 2015, FIFA, the international governing body of the sport, offered the winning team $2 million in prize money. The winning men’s team had been paid $35 million—17.5 times more—in the men’s World Cup a year earlier. (The Federation maintains that it hasn’t discriminated against the women’s team, and that the men and women players have fundamentally different jobs, team organizations, and compensation setups.)

Some critics point out the USWNT is among the most well-funded women’s sports programs in the world. But being the highest paid woman at your company who’s still making less than men at your level isn’t equality. “We’re very grateful for what we have, but we’re definitely demanding what we deserve,” says forward Alex Morgan, 29. “My hope is that the next generation will be able to have [total equality]—it will just be a given.” (To help make it a reality, Secret recruited Morgan to launch the brand’s Equal Pay for All campaign, pledging $100,000 to Girls Leading Girls.)

Pissing off the powers that be when they are in some of the most crucial months of their careers is risky for these players—but they aren’t backing down. “It’s part of our job to do this,” says Lloyd. “It’s not something that is comfortable, but in order to get what you deserve, you have to be a little uncomfortable.”



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Taylor Swift Just Dropped Another Huge Hint About Her New Album Title


Fans who missed seeing Taylor Swift during her reclusive reputation era have a lot to celebrate in the time of her upcoming album, presently known as TS7. It seems like since dropping her glitter bomb single “ME!”, she’s given Swifties more juicy information to chew on—particularly, via interviews with “human journalists” filled with Easter Eggs about her release.

A soundbite from a Q&A earlier this week may have eliminated one giant question mark from the outstanding questions fans still have about TS7—and that’s what, exactly, she’s dubbing her new era. In an interview with The Independent, Swift hinted that the title of her new album has been hiding in plain sight in the lyrics and music video imagery for “ME!”.

The Independent asked Swift the question we all were wondering: “How many clues are there to the album title in the music video?” She responded: “I think you see it once and you hear it twice.”

Those two numbers were all fans needed to track down the potential title—and they didn’t have to reach that hard to find it after Swift’s quote hit the Internet. It seems that Swift was referring to the word “lover.”

The word immediately caught fans’ eyes (and Glamour‘s Christopher Rosa). In the music video, it’s seen after the second verse, written in cursive on a neon sign in the background.

A neon song spelling out “lover” had fans talking when “ME!” debuted. It may be the title of Swift’s album after all.

Then, there’s the pre-chorus to the song, where the word appears twice. After both verses, Swift sings: “Baby doll when it comes to a lover/I promise that you’ll never find another like me.”

All signs point to “Lover” as the title of Swift’s seventh album, but it’s been part of her lexicon for several album cycles. She used to reference ill-fated paramours in 1989‘s “Blank Space:” “Got a long list of ex-lovers/They’ll tell you I’m insane.” It also appeared in songs about her boyfriend Joe Alwyn on reputation, including “Call It What You Want” and “…Ready For It?”

The title meshes with Swift’s apparent rose-colored outlook in TS7—and her habit for leaving clues for fans everywhere she can. In her cover story for Entertainment Weekly, where she confirmed that her next album is complete, she said she enjoys letting her fans play detective. “I love that they like the cryptic hint-dropping,” she said. “Because as long as they like it, I’ll keep doing it. It’s fun. It feels mischievous and playful.”

The clues are adding up: Reputation was all about warding off her haters, but in TS7, it seems like Swift’s only focused on her “Lover.”

Halie LeSavage is a contributing writer at Glamour. Follow her @halielesavage.





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Taylor Swift Says She Hid the Title of Her New Album in Her 'ME!' Video


Taylor Swift drowned the Internet in a wave of butterflies and rainbows when she dropped her new video for”ME!,” featuring Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco. The second it dropped, fans started analyzing every frame for potential clues about her upcoming music, and Swift just added fuel to the fire: She shared on Twitter that the video is actually hiding the name of her seventh album.

“So… the new album title is actually revealed somewhere in the video AND so is the title of the second single, but I haven’t seen people finding them yet…,” she wrote on Friday just hours after “ME!” dropped online. Swifties almost immediately started putting forth their theories, but she hasn’t confirmed any of them yet.

Lots of people have latched onto the word “Lover,” which appears in neon letters in the background of one scene. Some think the clue is too easy to be the album title and have instead hypothesized that “Lover” is the name of her next single. Others really dived into detective work and found a pair of teeny-tiny white letters at the bottom of a different scene; super-tight zooming suggests that they spell out the phrase “pattern design.”

“Taylor really had me working all my ocular muscles and almost ruining my retinas just so i can read ‘pattern design” im tired,’ one fan joked on Twitter.

But quite a few of the Swifities seem to think that the album name has more to do with the video’s over-the-top, Lisa Frank-esque swirl of colors, which sometimes look like they’re blending together kaleidoscope-style. There’s a part in the video where the lens turns into a heart-shaped kaleidoscope, and extra-diligent fans noted that the word “kaleidoscope” is also a term for a pack of butterflies (the more you know). Swift has been leaning on the butterfly theme pretty heavily, too: They’re all over this video, and she posed in front of a butterfly mural just before the song came out.

Everyone will have to wait to see if they were right, but there is one theory that Swift did confirm: Many believed that the video was a chance for her to introduce a new addition to her family. In one scene, Urie hands her a kitten.

Swift went on Instagram Friday and shared that she actually did get a new cat. “And then there were three…” she captioned a photo. This, at least, is proof that the theories Swifties come up with are sometimes exactly right.



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The Archaic Reason Why Meghan Markle's Daughters Wouldn't Inherit Her Title


Meghan Markle was bestowed the title Duchess of Sussex by Queen Elizabeth II on her wedding day to Prince Harry. She’s the first woman to ever hold that title, and according to People, she’ll be the last—unless some major change happens ASAP.

The magazine reports that if Markle and Prince Harry have any daughters together, they won’t be able to call themselves Duchesses of Sussex (say that five times fast), nor will they get to carry on Markle’s Scottish title of Countess of Dumbarton or her Northern Irish moniker, Baroness Kilkeel. Any sons they have together, however, will be able to inherit their father’s titles of Duke of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton, and Baron Kilkeel. The reason why, you ask? An ancient (and archaic) peerage law that says only male children can inherit titles. The British news site Express confirms this, as well.

The ancient peerage laws governing family inheritances have been changed before, however. Most recently, Queen Elizabeth introduced the Succession to the Crown Act in 2013, which rules that the next king or queen of the U.K. will be decided by birth order only, rather than biological sex. As a result, Princess Charlotte is able to retain her position as fourth in line to the throne, rather than dropping down to fifth upon the birth of her younger brother, Prince Louis.

Unfortunately, the 2013 ordinance applies only to the direct line to the throne, so it would take yet another law change to allow Prince Harry and Markle’s daughters to automatically inherit their titles. Unless the monarch at that point assigns them any additional honorary titles, their children will be called Lords and Ladies of Mountbatten-Windsor, according to The Independent. Meanwhile, because Prince William is the oldest son of the Prince of Wales, his children will all be titled Princes and Princesses, due to yet another recent rule tweak by Queen Elizabeth.

These peerage laws, which give boys priority over their sisters no matter their birth order, have been around since the 17th century, and apply to U.K. citizens well beyond the royal family. Just last year, for example, the eldest daughter of a baron was denied her claim to her late father’s title and 6,000 acres of land. According to The Telegraph, since Robin Neville, the 10th Baron Braybrooke, had seven daughters and no sons, his title went instead to a distant male cousin.

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