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New Report Says USA Gymnastics Did Not Talk to Simone Biles About the Larry Nassar Investigation for Years


It’s been almost two years since Larry Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 125 years in prison by a Eaton County, Michigan court on criminal sexual conduct charges, but we are still learning more details about how he was able to continue as the team doctor for USA Gymnastics for so long. (Nassar also received a 40- to 175-year sentence in Ingham County, Michigan, as well as a 60-year sentence in federal court on child pornography charges.)

A new report from the Wall Street Journal says that even though USA Gymnastics was conducting an investigation into Nassar—they didn’t tell Simone Biles until after the Rio Olympics in 2016. Per the WSJ, Biles was one of three gymnasts (along with Aly Raisman and Maggie Nichols) who had expressed discomfort about Nassar in 2015, but they say she was not interviewed by the body’s own investigator before the Nassar story went public in 2016.

Rhonda Faehn, the former director of the women’s program for USA Gymnastics, said in testimony before Congress that she was notified in June 2015 that Biles, Maggie Nichols and Aly Raisman had “concerns” about the doctor’s treatment methods. She claims that she passed that information to Steve Penny, then-President of USA Gymnastics, which he disputes. Though, per USA Today, he does admit to knowing Biles was someone they “might want to talk to about Nassar.” But that never happened and Biles then met with the FBI on the matter in the fall of 2016.

In January 2018, Biles publicly announced that she had been abused by Nassar. “I, too, am one of the many survivors that was sexually abused by Larry Nassar,” she said at the time. “There are many reasons that I have been reluctant to share my story, but I know now that it is not my fault.”

The most decorated gymnast of all-time declined to be interviewed for the WSJ story, but her parents gave the paper this statement: “We continue to struggle with how and why this happened, and every time we hear something new like this, it feels like the harshest of betrayals and it is just too painful for our family to talk about openly.”

Biles is not staying silent, however, tweeting about the story herself. “Can’t tell you how hard this is to read and process. The pain is real and doesn’t just go away…especially when new facts are still coming out,” she wrote. “What’s it going to take for a complete and independent investigation of both USOPC and USAG???” She followed it up with, “Numb is becoming a normal feeling.”

Biles also recently spoke out against a distasteful banner hanging at a University of Michigan fraternity house ahead of a football game with rival Michigan State University, where Nassar worked. “You can’t touch us @LarryNassar,” it read. Biles responded, “unbelievable….. this is the type of stuff that makes me sick to my stomach. I hope the school is taking the proper measurements in investigating this…”

The school announced it “will be pursuing corrective action with those responsible for hanging the banners and those who failed to intervene.”



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Kristin Davis's Netflix Movie Holiday in the Wild Was Four Years in the Making


What do you think makes Holiday in the Wild stand out from all the other holiday movies coming out this year?

Kristin: The fact that it’s shot in Africa, number one. Even if we leave out the animal part, it’s just in a different setting. It’s more of a travel-adventure movie, in a way; it just happens to be a Christmas movie, but we’re having Christmas in a different place—which is nice. It makes you think about your own Christmas traditions, and then you look at other people’s Christmas traditions and think about them in a new way. Rob [Lowe] brings so much wry humor, which I don’t think you always get in a Christmas movie.

It does feel like the holiday movie genre is having a bit of a renaissance. Why do you think it’s so popular?

Kristin: I think people are very stressed. The world is a stressful place, and the holidays are a time when hopefully we get a little break from that stress. People want entertainment that gives them a good feeling. It’s a nice break. People want to be together; they want to watch things they can watch with the whole family. It’s a time that’s become more important because of the continual 24-hour news cycle and all the things going on in the world. All the difficulties.

Would you be open to doing another holiday movie?

Kristin: Of course! Holiday in the Wild sets the bar pretty high. I think now I’m just going to have to only do holiday movies with animals!

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Like a sequel?

Kristin: A sequel would be amazing. I don’t know exactly what we would do or what would happen. For me, shooting in South Africa and Zambia and being able to be around elephants, which is one of my big loves of my life, and getting to write a love letter in the script to the people who take care of them, it really is a dream come true. I never really actually thought the film would get made, so it would be hard to live up to this one.

What did you most relate to with your character, Kate? She sends her son off to college and within seconds her husband leaves her. She goes through a lot just in the first 10 minutes of this movie.

Kristin: I responded to her having her eyes open on this trip she ends up taking by herself to a whole other world and a whole other way people are living and to this crisis of elephant poaching that she had no idea about. I responded to that because that’s very much like my own life.

Rob Lowe and Kristin Davis in Holiday in the Wild.

Netflix

When it comes to your own holiday pop-culture consumption, what are you looking for?

Kristin: I’m looking for something that I can watch with my daughter [Gemma Rose]. She loves Christmas, and when you have kids it’s all about their enjoyment.

How do you think Charlotte York from Sex and the City would take to Kate’s situation in Holiday in the Wild?

Kristin: I think she would be exactly like me! If for some horrible reason Harry left her—which I don’t think he would—and she was going on a single trip to Zambia and found an orphan elephant, I think she’d respond exactly the way that Kate does or that I did.

Holiday in the Wild is now streaming on Netflix.

Christopher Rosa is the staff entertainment writer at Glamour. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrosa92.





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I Threw a Blood Party to Celebrate Getting My Period for the First Time in Seven Years


My dad cried and said “I’m so happy for you” as if I had actually accomplished something.

My mom was also so happy for me for thirty seconds, before panicking that my period might disappear again.

I texted my ex-boyfriend who lives in a different city and he responded with three popping champagne bottles, which to my knowledge is the first time he’s ever used an emoji.

My 77-year-old boss clutched his chest with joy, and, eager to convey how deeply comfortable the conversation was for him, added some thoughtful follow-up questions about cramps.

The stranger my friend tried to set me up with at his birthday bought me a celebratory drink and insisted: “It’s 2019, only lame men are grossed out by periods.” (I experienced newfound hope in woke masculinity.)

Another guy I went on a blind date with that week listened to the whole triumphant story compassionately, even offering some related experience of a health mystery solved through diet. We’re all just souls trapped in these weird malfunctioning vessels, I thought.

A third date got squirmy and asked if I was telling everyone about this. I decided to take a break from dating but that was okay because my social calendar was already full: I was planning a blood party.

A blood party is the party you have to celebrate getting your period for the first time in seven years. At least, it’s the party I throw to celebrate getting my period for the first time in seven years. I had been fantasizing about this day for a long time, so I already knew the essential elements: Bloody Mary’s, blood orange bellinis, some sort of fertility ritual. I also wanted it to involve dancing naked around a campfire deep in the wilderness under the aurora borealis, but I live in Los Angeles and don’t own a car so I settled for Elysian Park at dusk with some streamers.

I invited many people, all of whom had experience with menstruation. I encouraged friends to fly in from distant cities, threatening that I may never get married or have a child and so this may be their only chance to prove their love by celebrating a significant life milestone with me.

The response was overwhelming. Everyone wanted to toast to my bleeding. They had lots to say about periods in general and their place in society. They were eager to inaugurate a ceremony that honored womanhood. Someone asked my underwear size. Someone offered to bake me a red velvet cake. Some people actually did travel from distant cities to come to my blood party.

The ceremony was beautiful. Partially inspired by a friend’s transcendent Passover Seder, we blessed objects from a centerpiece representing each of the organs in the reproductive system: a pea for the pituitary gland, a candle for the hypothalamus, two Twizzlers for the fallopian tubes, frozen perogies for ovaries, an egg for eggs, a cozy sweat sock for the uterus, and of course, beet juice for blood.

Then we said some affirmations:

“As the hair follicles rise on the surface of the ovary, so I rise to meet the challenges and joys of the days ahead.”

“As the uterine lining thickens and builds, so I thicken and build in experience and understanding.”

“As the egg enters the fallopian tubes, so I willingly enter the dark tunnel of the unknown where I can’t see anything and fear is my only companion, because I know this tunnel is the only path to a new freedom.”

My beet juice altar.

Courtesy of author



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I Was Widowed at 31—Five Years Later, I Still Won’t Let Go


Things with my first husband, Aaron, ended the old-fashioned way. He died.

In 2011, Aaron was diagnosed with brain cancer, and three years later he died, leaving me a 31-year-old widowed mother to our toddler, Ralphie. It really was “til death do us part,” but the parting was unlike any other heartbreak I’d ever known, even the ones where I’d also prayed and begged for a different outcome than the one I got. There was no erasing Aaron—but really, I didn’t want to. It was the opposite, actually. I tattooed his doodles on my skin and spent nights pouring over his old notebooks trying to soak up everything I could from him.

Aaron was a collector. He left me boxes of stickers and buttons and, I’m not exaggerating, a stack of every business card he’d ever received. He left giant boxes of CDs and unopened action figures. He left bookcases filled with old comic books and dressers full of ironic thrift store t-shirts for tee-ball teams he’d never been on. I still wear the Nike slides he once used as house shoes, even though my feet slip out of them when I walk too quickly. In the winter, I slide my hands into his old gloves.

Aaron’s gone, and I know these things are not him, but I can’t let them go. I can’t let him go.

I remember, back in my 20s, I’d try to convince myself that none of the men I’d been with had ever truly mattered. I’d had two or three “serious” boyfriends (depending on your definition of serious), but the moment the relationship ended, I’d begin the process of wiping them from my life—not in the emotionally-healthy, boundary-setting sort of way where I’d wish them well and release them back into the wild to go find their “person.” Instead, I’d erase them from my memory entirely, like I was clearing my Internet cache. I deleted photos from Facebook and tossed cards into the trash. Doing that somehow seemed essential—as though any terminated relationship should immediately be stricken from the record. I’d tell myself that the breakup was no big deal. It was never that serious, I’d say. It was never going to work. And while some of these dalliances were nothing—or, at least, nothing much—some of those relationships were formative. They were my first orgasms; my first heartbreaks.

For whatever reason, romantic pain and the memories of romances past is just not something we make space for in our lives. We’re supposed to wash that man right out of our hair—or, for a more updated reference, let him know that everything he owns is in a box to the left. We’re supposed to become the emotional version of a tabula rasa everytime a romance ends, a blank canvas for our next relationship. And that strategy worked well enough for me for a while—until my marriage with Aaron ended.

About a year after Aaron died, I met Matthew through a mutual friend when she invited us both over on a cold November night to burn stuff—which is a very normal way to spend a Saturday night in Minnesota. Matthew came with two children and a brutal divorce. Since our courtship began alongside all of the traumatic anniversaries of Aaron’s death, I cried with him as often as I laughed with him. I loved him, but I often felt a resurgence of those instincts I’d felt in my twenties—that it was somehow wrong to hold onto my memories of Aaron. At the same time, I felt like my blossoming love with Matthew was a betrayal to Aaron. Was I replacing him? Was my love for Matthew at odds with my love for Aaron?



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Willie and Christina Geist Met in Sixth Grade. 33 Years Later, Here's How They Make It Work


Who did you have a crush on in sixth grade? Maybe it was a back-row kid from homeroom or a spelling bee champ. When’s the last time that person crossed your mind—or even your newsfeed? For Sunday Today Show host Willie Geist, and his wife, New York Times bestselling children’s book author, Christina, it was, oh, four seconds ago.

The pair met in the middle school and while life took them in different directions, the universe nudged them back together. The Geists have now been married since 2003 and have two children, George, 10, and Lucie, 12. Between them, the duo also has two demanding careers. Christina, 44, is the author of Sorry Grown-Ups, You Can’t Go To School!, which drew on a clever hack she invented to get her daughter excited to start school, framing it as a special thing only she gets to do.

And Willie, 44, who’s been a longtime co-host on Morning Joe, is settling into is groove on Sunday Today—where he trades high-drama politics for actual dramatists. So far, he’s interviewed the likes of Bill Murray, Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, and Tiffany Haddish.

While their schedules require a lot of coordination, and their lives have countless moving parts, their partnership is stronger than ever. Here, the Geists fill us in on how they’ve been making it work from middle school to (per their own characterization!) middle age.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover

WILLIE GEIST: We both went to George Washington Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey. On the first day, Christina had a bunch of friends from elementary school, whereas I was the new kid from the other side of town, standing alone and scanning the room. And I know it sounds like revisionist history, but this is true. I really remember thinking in my little 11-year-old brain, “Oh, she seems cute and cool.” And it turns out I was right—because that was 33 years ago, and we’re married with kids.

CHRISTINA GEIST: I remember it, too. It’s crazy but I feel like Willie always stood out. He’s a presence in any room he walks in, both because he tends to be taller than 95% of the people, but also because he’s just the type of person that the attention naturally shifts towards him.

Trust your gut

WG: We dated briefly during freshman year of high school. I played on the football team and I had a little towel that hung out of my pants and I wanted to write Christina’s name on it—but I made the first letters too big, so it basically said “Christ” and then had a little “ina” in the corner, because I ran out of space. It ended up looking like a tribute to Jesus rather than my 14-year-old girlfriend. So she was the one who broke up with me, because once you see guys with cars, you’re like, “Oh, you’re just a pimply 14-year-old with ‘Christ’ on his towel.”

We got back together junior year, then went to Vanderbilt together. But after college I got a job in Atlanta and she went to Boston. We felt like, “If we’re going to break up and see what the world’s like outside of this, it seems like this is the time to do it.” So we did for a couple of years and I remember hearing things through the grapevine that she was dating someone else. And I had to be ok with that, because that was the point of the whole thing. But after a certain period of time I thought, “I know in my heart that this is the person I want to be with. If we just went through this exercise of breaking up for the sake of breaking up, and I’m going to lose her over that, that doesn’t make any sense.” I found myself trying to reel her back in and make sure she didn’t slip away.



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Gender Equality Is 208 Years Away. Melinda Gates Wants to Change That.


It can be hard to find the words to describe just how frustrating it is that gender inequality is still so pervasive, even in the wealthiest nation on the planet. From compensation to representation, women lag so far behind men that the World Economic Forum estimates it will take more than two centuries to achieve gender equality in the United States.

Disparities between men and women have been discussed ad nauseam; it can feel like we’re out of points to make and tactics to use. But comedian Sarah Silverman is creative. Thanks to Melinda Gates and a new (hilarious) PSA, Silverman summed up her exasperation like so: “How is it that I can order a bag of dick-shaped gummy bears with same-day delivery, but I have to wait 208 years for gender equality?”

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It’s a good question, and one that Gates has tried to solve (in, uh, different words) for decades. Earlier this summer, she addressed the issue in an op-ed and wrote an entire book, titled The Moment of Lift, to discuss in detail some of the solutions she believes can help women get ahead. But ever the realist, Gates knows that even the most well-intentioned articles and books have a limited reach. So to inch the needle forward, she’s decided to take the fight to social media.

The Equality Can’t Wait campaign aims to accelerate progress when it comes to gender issues in America, building on the framework that Gates outlined in her recent book and inviting both men and women to share their stories about how crucial it is to close the gender gap. To kick it off, Gates didn’t want to release another mournful PSA. Instead, she tapped actor and director Natasha Lyonne to corral over a dozen comedians to, well, roast the problem.

In under five minutes, Silverman, with Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson, Uzo Aduba, Maya Rudolph, Fred Armisen, John Mulaney, Margaret Cho, Natasha Rothwell, and more, crack jokes about how absurd it is that genuine gender balance is still several lifetimes into the future.

As Mulaney puts it, “That’s the most specific bad news I’ve ever heard!” Or as Aduba fumes, “That’s 1,456 dog years. I’m telling you, bitches never get a break.“

Towards the end of the video, conversation does turn serious and it becomes clear that the reason it’s so hard to talk about sexism is because the issue is so, so vast. It’s not just unequal wages or discrimination or harassment or bias. It’s all of that. And then some. When the music turns somber, Aduba explains that two more centuries of the status quo means not a single woman alive now will ever experience a fairer, more equal world. Glazer recounts sexual harassment. Silverman reminds viewers that some elected leaders have in fact tried to turn the clock back, weaponizing their power to strip women of the rights we do have.



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