For the most part my skin behaves. It doesn’t break out that frequently and it isn’t oily. But when winter comes around, it dries out faster than wet boots in front of a radiator, which is to say my more or less slapdash evening skin-care routine suddenly becomes a thing lest my face cracks off.
I’m typically not someone big on moisturizing. Much to my friends’ dismay, I usually end my night with a face wipe and call it a day. But I am someone who can be easily persuaded to buy things if they’re pretty, and nothing completes a top shelf like Tatcha. So last winter, when a particularly frigid week was wreaking havoc on my skin, I went down a Sephora rabbit hole and came up with the brand’s Water Cream.
Not only is it one of Tatcha’s best-selling products, it sold out twice over when it first launched, making it one of Sephora’s top-selling moisturizers. When you read the reviews—and better yet, what’s in the formula—you immediately get why.
For one, the cream is described as providing a “water-burst,” which is just as incredible as it sounds. Putting it on feels like hydrating your face with magic. Victoria Tsai, the founder of Tatcha, describes the cream as a “sprinkler for your skin.” The formula is made with Japanese wild rose, which is known to help even out skin texture, and Japanese leopard lily, to control any excess oil in order to prevent breakouts. But it isn’t just packed with botanicals; it’s also filled with powerful Japanese superfoods like green tea, rice, and algae that help restore radiance. To top it all off, the cream has 23-karat gold infused in it to give your skin subtle (but not shimmery) glow. And really, what’s more luxurious than that? Hm, maybe the tiny golden spoon it comes with?
Don’t be fooled by its size or the amount of moisturizer it scoops out, though. A little goes a long way. Just a pearl-sized amount (or one scoop) is enough to drench my face, which my skin promptly drinks up and repays me with a lack of dry, flaky patches—even in the dead of winter. The refreshing effect gives my face the appearance equivalent of a full eight hours of sleep—dewy and so incredibly bright.
You’ve read the headlines about how polluting fashion is, how brands have been guilty of greenwashing products in their marketing, and how shoppers are demanding sustainability more than ever. It’s not just newcomers building conscious businesses, being vocal, and advocating for change in the industry. More and more, we’re seeing heritage brands course-correct, investing their resources and know-how into real innovation. The latest contribution comes from one of the most well-known American denim companies, and it’s addressing one of the most contaminating steps that goes into making a pair of jeans.
Wrangler decided to tackle indigo dyeing—“because it has the most significant visual and ecological impact on the planet,” Roian Atwood, the brand’s Senior Director of Sustainability, tells Glamour in Valencia, Spain, during a visit to the factories that are producing its new collection. (Disclosure: Wrangler paid for my travel and accommodations for the purpose of reporting this story.) “When you see a blue river ecosystem, there’s no way morally, ethically, and from a good corporate citizenship standpoint that that is okay.” Documentaries like 2016’s RiverBlue and 2018’s Fashion’s Dirty Secrets have brought attention to the issue of water waste and contamination as a direct result of clothing manufacturing at a global level. Still, when something as popular and enduring as denim requires thousands of gallons of water just to dye it its signature blue, you need more than awareness to address the problem.
“The reality is that, if we can cut it off at the source, if we can create a technology that has no waste water and that minimizes the water consumption, we’ve solved for a really big industry issue,” Atwood says. That’s what two years of research, testing, and collaboration between the iconic Americana brand, Texas Tech University, Gaston Systems, and the Spain-based fabric manufacturer Tejidos Royo hopes to be bringing to the table.
Wrangler is introducing Indigood, which it bills as its most sustainable denim to date and the first ever to use a foam dyeing technology. According to the brand, it uses 90 percent less chemicals and 60 percent less energy than the traditional dyeing method, and it creates zero water waste.
To learn more about how the water crisis is impacting women in Peru, I traveled to Lima with Water.org and Stella Artois as part of their #PourItForward campaign. After visiting women in the suburbs, I learned that the water crisis doesn’t always look the way you might think.
Imagine living in the suburbs of a major metropolitan city: You have a nice two bedroom house on a tree-lined street, just up the hill from a lush green park with views of the ocean. You have a sunny, covered courtyard—the kind of place you might have a barbecue, filled with a few potted plants and a spacious picnic table. You have a cozy kitchen with bright blue cabinets stacked high with sparkling dishes. You have all this, but you’re missing one vital thing: running water.
When we talk about the water crisis, it’s often in the context of polluted rivers or remote villages that force women to walk for hours each day just to find clean water. Those are major issues but the full picture of the water crisis is a lot slipperier. In the suburbs of developing countries like Peru, the problem isn’t as simple as digging wells or installing water filters. Here, the water crisis has more to do with money and infrastructure—the actual pipes that bring clean water from the city’s water source into showers and sinks throughout the area—and money.
Lima’s water infrastructure is so overburdened that you can’t flush toilet paper—a fact I learned when faced with this sign in the airport bathroom.
“The water system is here but the challenge is that it’s tilted towards the affluent and middle class,” says Gary White, co-founder and CEO of Water.org, a social good organization that pioneers financial solutions to the global water crisis. That means residents in towns outside of the city limits often don’t have access to running water in their homes, either because they can’t afford to install a sink or toilet, or because the water pipes simply aren’t there. (Or both.)
In the peri-urban areas of Peru, three million people lack access to clean water and five million lack access to sanitation like a bathroom in their home. These are the suburbs we’re talking about—imagine driving to a neighborhood two hours outside of New York City and finding that hand-dug toilets and bucket showers are the norm. Even in the most low-income neighborhoods, that would be unfathomable but in developing nations, it’s not uncommon.
Women often face the biggest burden of the water crisis. Globally, women and girls spend 200 million hours every day collecting water and another 266 million hours finding a place to go to the bathroom, according to Water.org. In areas like the neighborhoods outside of Lima, they might live on a nice block with a park around the corner and still not have access to a bathroom in their home. “It doesn’t always have the face of total desperation you’ll see in rural areas where people are walking six hours [to find clean water] or drinking out of a hand dug well,” says Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org. “It’s the day-to-day grind and what that does in people’s lives.”
Without running water, women often have to haul heavy buckets from large communal water tanks (which can cost 10-15 times more to fill than it would cost for direct water access from a water utility) and find safe places to use the bathroom. Sanitation is a major issue. “The lives of girls are totally changed because they’re spending their time in this daily grind. It completely robs them of their potential,” Damon says. And it’s not just time-consuming, it’s often a safety issue: Imagine having to walk around your neighborhood alone in the middle of the night trying to find a place to pee, or having to bathe without any privacy.
Even in nicer suburbs with tree-lined streets and green parks, access to running water is still out of reach for many families outside of Lima.
Giovanna, 47, and her family live in a nice house. But until they were able to get financing for a proper bathroom, they had to use an open hole out back—a safety and sanitation risk.
A loan through the WaterCredit program helped Giovanna and her family put in two bathrooms, an improvement that’s helped make their home safer and cleaner—and afforded Giovanna the opportunity to grow her business selling cosmetics.
The solution isn’t about digging wells or trucking in more clean water. To truly fix the problem and remove that chronic daily grind from the shoulders of women, Water.org argues financial empowerment is the key. In 2013, they launched the WaterCredit program, which works with banks in places like Lima to help women and their families get micro loans—the average size of which are just $1,200—to make home improvements. In areas that do have access to water pipes, it’s as simple as getting the few hundred dollars it takes to tap into the main line and install a faucet or toilet in their home. In more rural areas, a loan can help women pay for a water tank that will provide running water for luxuries like showers and toilets.
What the Water Crisis Looks Like
If you stand directly in front of Grecia’s house, it looks like the kind of cute starter bungalow you might find outside of San Francisco: the angular facade looks like it’s been freshly painted and the sunny front porch has a verdant shade tree. Grecia, 26, lives in the airy white house with her husband and their two-year-old son and one day, she hopes to run a pharmacy for the neighborhood out of her home.
Grecia’s home outside of Lima.
Turn to the left, and it’s clear Grecia’s home is the outlier on the block. The streets in her neighborhood aren’t paved and the majority of the homes on the block have tin roofs and wooden slats for siding. Everything surrounding Grecia’s house is brown and lopsided. Until recently, she didn’t have so much as a water tap let alone a shower or toilet.
At this year’s Golden Globes, the biggest story wasn’t who was snubbed or which celebrities were dressed the best. (Although we do have thoughts on that.) No, the night was all about Kelleth Cuthbert, the 30-something woman caught photobombing several celebrities on the red carpet while holding a tray of Fiji Water. If you’ve looked at any red carpet photos from the 2019 Golden Globes, you’ve definitely seen her:
PHOTO: Stefanie Keenan
Dubbed “Fiji Water Girl,” the memes quickly came flooding in about the mysterious woman with the excellent photobombing skills. “If Bradley Cooper doesn’t bring the Fiji girl out on stage to perform ‘Shallow’ with him I’m turning this show off,” one new fan wrote on Twitter. “FYI: I have already written 200 pages of the Fiji Water girl’s inner monologue tonight,” said another. A star truly was born.
The memes were fun, but we had questions. Mainly, how did this all come together? And what’s Cuthbert’s story? What does it feel like to reach sudden Internet fame just for standing there?
We were able to track down Cuthbert after the red carpet, once she was off the clock and had changed out of her signature blue dress (to match Fiji Water’s bottle cap color, of course) and into jeans. Turns out, she’s a model and actress in her early thirties, married, and from Toronto but currently living in Los Angeles. Cuthbert used to be a social worker in Canada, specializing in mental health and addictions counseling, while modeling on the side. She was going to apply for grad school, but the modeling work was going so well she decided to take a year off and fully commit to it. She never went back.
In the years since, she’s done commercials, PSAs, short films, and worked modeling gigs at other award shows, but this is by far the biggest exposure. Cuthbert tells Glamour she’s confused and overwhelmed by all the attention, though she thinks it’s hilarious. “I do love a good meme, so I think it’s incredibly ironic and funny that I’m one now,” she says. “The first meme of 2019, apparently! My husband is laughing very hard about all of this.”
“This is something I would go viral for,” she jokes. “I feel like I’ve been photobombing people since I was a kid.”
Cuthbert says it took a while for her to realize something was happening. “A couple people came up to me and were like, ‘FIJI’s going viral,’” she says, but she assumed it was about all of the women there for Fiji. “I thought maybe I’m in the background of a couple shots.”
But more and more strangers started coming up to her to tell her she had become A Thing. Others asked for selfies (no celebrities though, womp). Hours later, when she finally went on break, she looked at her phone and saw hundreds of texts and DMs from people. Her Instagram following the morning of the Globes was 53,000; now, it’s at 76,300 at press time. “One of my print agents tagged me in a meme of myself,” she says, with a laugh. “I called my mom on my break, and she was already laughing when she picked up the phone. My parents are not very hip to things going on, so the fact that they had already received this information says a lot about how viral it already went.”
When Cuthbert woke up that morning, she certainly didn’t expect Internet stardom. This was just a side gig in between modeling and acting. She did her own hair and makeup before the event, though, “I wish now that I hadn’t chosen to sleep in a little longer. I thought, ‘I don’t need to put that much effort into myself…no one’s really going to see me.'” Yeahhh, that didn’t happen.
Cuthbert says that the report her moves were calculated isn’t true. “I never said that. I just stand where I’m told, wherever there is an opening.” Cuthbert tells us she simply moved from spot to spot and passed out water as she tried to keep a neutral-but-pleasant face. “Everyone has their work or event persona,” she explains. “You try to look at least somewhat pleasant and not have too much resting bitch face. You have to look somewhat friendly and happy to be engaging with people.” She wasn’t trying to photobomb everyone, she says: “Sometimes you’re caught between a lot of cameras, so there’s a lot of photographers at different angles. You’re just kind of trapped sometimes. See that’s the thing: I feel like I was looking away, but sometimes I was looking so I could move out of the way.”
PHOTO: Stefanie Keenan
So what’s next for Cuthbert now that she’s a star? First up, processing it all. “I haven’t even had the time to sit down and think about what could come from this, but truly anything would be exciting. I would love to get an acting role. That would be amazing.” Before all of this happened, her goals were to get a theatrical agent to shift away from modeling. More doors might be open now, but Cuthbert is taking it in stride. “I definitely think I’m ready for [the fame], but such is the nature of the Internet that these things just go by in a flash,” she says. “No one will find this funny in a week. We’ll see! I think all of this stuff is very fleeting. I enjoy the craft of acting, but all the other stuff around it is just noise. It’s light and fun, and I think it’s meant to be taken that way. Not too seriously.”
That said, “I saw a good [meme] of me that said, ‘Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.'”
Not all heroes wear capes: some of them carry trays of Fiji Water. Such is the case for a mysterious brunette woman at the 2019 Golden Globes, who it seems was hired by Fiji Water for the event but ended up photobombing several celebrities’ photos instead, including Julianne Moore, Alyssa Milano, and Jeff Bridges.
The Internet quickly took to this woman and dubbed her “Fiji Water Girl.” Everything about her is iconic—from the way she’s holding that tray of water to her stare, which is clearly saying, “My blood type is Fiji Water and yours should be, too.”
Take a look at just a few photos of Fiji Water Girl in action, below:
Let’s start with this photo of Jeff Bridges. In the background is Fiji Water Girl, who, in my mind, is thinking, “I think those celebs over there are dehydrated! Don’t worry, I’m on my way!”
PHOTO: Getty Images
Fiji Water Girl is behind Julianne Moore in this pic, but she isn’t starstruck. She has a mission to quench as many thirsts as possible, and nothing will get in her way. Not even the woman who played Alma Coin in The Hunger Games!
PHOTO: Getty Images
Alyssa Milano might be in the forefront, but Fiji Water Girl has her eyes peeled on the person who just ate a bag of pretzels and is in desperate need of a refreshment. She is a light in this dark, dark world.
PHOTO: Getty Images
“FYI: I have already written 200 pages of the Fiji Water Girl’s inner monologue tonight,” one person wrote on Twitter about 2019’s reigning queen. Check out some more reactions, below:
Pregnancy requires expectant mothers to make tons of adjustments to their everyday lives—some tiny, some huge. But, as mom-to-be Meghan Markle is finding out, Prince Harry will be there for her every step of the way. The twosome are currently in Fiji, where they attended a black tie dinner hosted by the Fijian prime minister on Tuesday (October 23). It was at this formal event that Prince Harry made one of those small yet meaningful adjustments to show solidarity with his pregnant wife.
When it came time to toast at the dinner, Markle did so with water instead of alcohol, and Prince Harry followed suit. We may never know if these two have made a water-only pact for all of Markle’s pregnancy, or if Prince Harry made the decision himself to abstain from drinking alcohol. Either way, we’re here for the Duke of Sussex’s sweet and supportive gesture.
Folks on Twitter are commending Prince Harry for supporting Markle in this way:
Prince Harry has spent much of his and Markle’s royal tour of Australia, Fiji, and other nearby Commonwealth countries proving just how excited he is about Markle’s pregnancy and about becoming a father. Over the weekend, Prince Harry was caught on video agreeing with some well-wishers when they said that they’re hoping Markle gives birth to a girl.
Unfortunately, we may not find out the baby’s sex until after the birth. As we learned after the recent births of Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, it’s royal tradition that the family doesn’t learn the sex of the child in advance. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Prince Harry and Markle could break with typical royal protocol, as they continue to do on a regular basis—see: all that adorable PDA. We’ll keep our ears to the streets and our water glasses full until then.
