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What Bellamy Young Learned About the Power of Sisterhood from Shonda Rhimes


To celebrate International Women’s Day 2020, we asked women like Jackie Aina, Cecile Richards, Andrea Mitchell, Bellamy Young, and more to reflect on how other women have lifted them up—mentored them, advised them, represented them, and above all showed them what was possible. We’ll be sharing their stories here all week.

Unlike most people in the world, I have lived in a matriarchal society. I highly recommend it.

The women who lived there with me—we found our power, we found our voices and were encouraged to lift them up. And once we stepped into that light, we never turned around and said, “Oh, darkness, I missed that.” The experience changed us forever.

Let me explain: For a beautiful period of time, I had dual citizenship in two countries—the United States of America…and Shondaland.

In 2011, Shonda Rhimes cast me as Mellie Grant on Scandal. I knew that the role was a huge break, especially for a woman in her 40s. At that point, knowing what I knew about television and this business, I had just given up hope on certain kinds of opportunities. It had taken a toll on me. It’s like, “Well, I won’t be cast as that kind of character.” Or, “OK, I won’t get that kind of part.” As soon as someone posts your age online, you just know your options are narrowing.

With Scandal, I was going in to read for this tiny part. I had, I think, two lines. But Shonda Rhimes doesn’t write characters. She writes souls, and then over time, through casting, those souls reveal themselves to her. All of those details—gender, sexuality, race—come into clearer focus, which is how that small part became something so much bigger. I remember standing there, thinking how fortunate I was just to be in that room. But then I got in front of Shonda, and there’s something in how she sees you. It’s profound. It’s not overt and it’s not strange. It’s so safe and curious and accepting. She looks at you, and she doesn’t see your outfit or your hair. She sees who you are.

I got the part, obviously. And then I did seven episodes and became a series regular the next year. It was an acting job, of course. It was work. But it was also transformational for me, as a person. I got to be a different kind of woman. And I have said that to Shonda, too. I’ve told her: “I don’t know how you chose me, but I am grateful for Mellie. I am grateful that I got to be her. I am grateful that people got to know her.”

She’s a fictional character, but she—and Shonda—showed me something different was possible. When I was growing up in America in the 1980s, we were told, “You can have it all and you better pretend that it’s working.” There was no wiggle room. We weren’t supposed to show the cracks. It was a “succeed at any price, move forward, and leave everyone else in the dust” mindset. I think that’s starting to change.

But it’s still hard to be a woman in a position of power. There’s this sense that if we make one wrong move, we’re out. It wasn’t like that with Scandal or with Shonda, who taught us all to work and stretch and fall and stand and laugh and fail and sob and just be honest about what we were going through.

I hope that we passed a little of that on to the audience, to the women who saw Mellie Grant and Olivia Pope on screen and felt just a little braver in their own lives. These women were not perfect. So far from it. But when the time came, they knew how to stand up for themselves. They failed big time, but they stood their ground.



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Bellamy Young Auditioned for Scandal in Zara Pants and Nordstrom Pearls


The reason I was excited to talk to actress Bellamy Young wasn’t that I watched all seven seasons of Scandal but because I saw her on Broadway in 1997 playing a prostitute in The Life, a little-known Cy Coleman musical I was obsessed with as a teenager. Still, a great deal of our conversation revolved around the beloved ABC series she starred in. How could it not?

During her episode of “What I Wore When,” Bellamy explains what she wore to audition for Scandal—and how she had a precise vision for the way she wanted the character to look. I learned that, in its early stages, Mellie was written as a “tiny little part” and Bellamy was reading for the role the day before she’d be hired to work, but still wanted to nail it. All she knew was that she’d be playing opposite actor Tony Goldwyn who, she told me, directed her a few years earlier on an episode of “Dirty Sexy Money.” So going into the audition, she used him as a jumping-off point.

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“I just thought to myself, “Who is the partner for Tony Goldwyn? That’s sort of all I had to go on because [Mellie’s] language was so thin,” Bellamy said. As for the outfit: “I just had a very specific vision. I had a blue upscale work shirt, but I want clam diggers and I wanted a scarf and I wanted pearls … I wanted to do an updo, a french twist.” It sounded to me she was going for a take on the eternally classic Kennedys-on-Hyannis Port vibe, which she concurred.



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Beanie Feldstein, MJ Rodriguez, and Britney Young Are Redefining What It Means to Be Leading Ladies


Actors Beanie Feldstein, Britney Young, and MJ Rodriguez rocked the big and small screens this year in awe-inspiring ways. You probably recognize Feldstein best from the summer movie Booksmart. Meanwhile, Rodriguez brought tears to your eyes as Blanca on FX’s Pose. And Young has been killing it on GLOW for three seasons now.

These performances couldn’t be more different, but they’ve all had similar effects on viewers: We were captivated and transformed by them. Credit for that goes to Feldstein, Rodriguez, and Young, who have changed the landscape for women in Hollywood just by being themselves. They’ve each pushed the needle forward for representation in various ways—be it race, gender, sexual orientation, size. At Glamour’s Women of the Year Summit, these three women got together and talked about how they’re disrupting the system.

Growing up, Rodriguez, Feldstein, and Young didn’t really see themselves reflected on screen. “There wasn’t a lot of representation for young African American trans women,” Rodriguez told Vogue senior culture editor Estelle Tang, who was moderating their panel at the summit. “But I found comfort in watching shows like Will & Grace and Noah’s Arc. It made me feel included at a young age.”

Young, meanwhile, didn’t see good representation for either plus-size women or bi-racial people. “There were larger people on film and TV, but they were never shown in a positive light” she said. “They were always the bully, the prison guard. I never saw a nice plus-size girl who wasn’t being mean to people. [Bi-racial representation] was never shown in a positive light, as well.”

Feldstein had a similar experience growing up. People constantly told her she’d grow up to play Tracy Turnblad on Hairspray, but that role never interested in her. She wanted to be seen for all her complexities and nuances. , “[Tracy] is not who I am. I’m so many other things, let me show you all the other roles I can play,” she said. “Thank God things changed as I got older, and we have so much room for growth.”

We do have room for growth, but these three women are playing a huge part in moving things along. They’re using their positions of fame and power to impact the sets and projects they work on. Feldstein says she learned a lot from her Lady Bird co-star Saoirse Ronan on how to set the tone of a set. “Stepping into slightly bigger roles [like Monica Lewinsky in American Crime Story, her next project] at the center of a story, I think, ‘What would Saoirse do?’ To be the center of a story and hold that space is intimidating, but watching her do it was [inspirational].”

Beanie Feldstein, Britney Young, and MJ Rodriguez at Glamour‘s 2019 Women of the Year Summit.  

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Prince William Says Losing His Mother, Princess Diana, at a Young Age Was a 'Pain Like No Other'


When Princess Diana was tragically killed in a car accident in 1997, the world mourned. But her death had a profound effect on her two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, who were just 15 and 12, respectively, at the time.

In recent years, both the princes have opened up publicly about how they were affected by their mother’s death in their efforts to raise awareness about mental health. Now, in a preview clip for the BBC special A Royal Team Talk: Tackling Mental Health, which features a conversation with British soccer stars, William is more candid than ever. “I think when you are bereaved at a very young age, anytime really, but particularly at a young age—I can resonate closely to that—you feel a pain like no other pain,” he says.”And you know that in your life it’s going to be very difficult to come across something that is going to be an even worse pain than that.”

Prince William and Prince Harry during the funeral procession for Princess Diana.

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“It also brings you so close to all those other people out there who have been bereaved,” William continued. “So instantly, when you talk to someone else… You can almost see it in their eyes sometimes.” He wants people to feel more comfortable sharing their pain in hopes of being able to help one another. “There has to be a moment for that,” William says, referring to having that British “stiff upper lip.” “We’re not robots.”

Prince Harry also talked about feeling the loss of Diana after the birth of his first son, Archie, with Meghan Markle. “He said missing a mother is like missing some kind of security, how you need that as a son, and it falls away when you lose your mother,” Dennis van der Stroon said of his conversation with Harry during a recent Invictus Games event in the Netherlands. “He said he meets a lot of people in his work who have lost a mother, father, sister, brother, or relatives, and when he hears their story, as he heard my story, he said he doesn’t feel so alone.”

Diana Princess Of Wales Prince William Prince Harry Visit The 'Thorpe Park' Amusement Park
Julian Parker/Getty Images

While the circumstances are definitely sad, it really is wonderful to see the princes talk so openly about their grieving process as a way to encourage transparency and honest conversations around mental health—and directly affect the lives of others.



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Tiffany Young Had Such Good Reactions to Fans Covering Her Songs


You probably know Tiffany Young best from the K-pop band Girls’ Generation, which has been churning out bops since 2007. Seriously, you need to get into this group if you haven’t already. Their 2011 track”The Boys” is better than any pop song on the radio right now, and that’s just a fact.

You need to get into Young’s solo music, as well, which started in 2016 with her EP I Just Wanna Dance. Then, in February 2019, she released her second extended play, Lips on Lips. All of this is to say Tiffany Young has a lot of songs—and a lot of fans, as well.

So it’s no surprise there are so many covers of her music on YouTube. It’s incredible what Young’ fans have done with her songs: Some of the covers are stripped down, others are more upbeat. These renditions run the gamut in terms of style and execution.

And Young loves them all: We had her stop by Glamour‘s offices recently and check out some of the best covers of her songs from YouTube. Check out her reactions in the video, above.

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“It was a natural, organic, gradual pivot,” Young told Glamour magazine a few months ago about her decision not to renew her contract with SM Entertainment, which manages Girls’ Generation. “I had always gotten demos [for Girls’ Generation] in English, and I’d sing it in both languages all the time. It almost became so natural that even the fans, my bandmates, and my former label were like, ‘Tiffany needs to sing in English.’”

She’s now in America focusing on her solo career. “Once I was here, even when there was a lot of self-doubt, it was like, ‘Come on. You wanted this your whole life,'” she said, later adding, “I hope to be an artist for [my fans] who opens their hearts and their minds, makes them feel happy and understood.”



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Heart Attacks Are On the Rise in Young Women—Know the Signs of a Heart Attack In Women


These are classic early signs of a heart attack, Dr. Steinbaum says: tightness in the chest, pain, dizziness, nausea, a cold sweat. All of these symptoms are the body’s “desperate attempt” to help itself as the heart is slowly deprived of oxygen, she says.

3:30 p.m.: Schroeder didn’t know any of this at the time—she thought she might be having a panic attack—but she knew something was really wrong. So, she called her dad, a former EMT, who told her to have her roommates bring her to the hospital right away.

If you’re having a heart attack, time is of the essence, says Dr. Steinbaum. “In this case, you’d need to get to the ER as soon as possible—that decision could be lifesaving.”

3:45 p.m.: Several minutes later, Schroeder’s roommates walked her into a nearby Urgent Care clinic—by this time, she was in too much pain to stand upright, let alone walk on her own. Bewildered and in pain, she laid on the floor of the waiting room waiting to see a doctor.

When she got into an exam room, a nurse ran an electrocardiography (EKG) to check the electrical activity of her heart, Schroeder says. “I remember the nurse saying, ‘This is strange—it says you’re having a heart attack.’”

4 p.m.: Schroeder was rushed to the hospital but couldn’t fully process what was happening. While EMTs gave her nitroglycerin—which helps to widen blood vessels making it easier for the heart to pump blood during a heart attack—Schroeder asked her roommates to text her captain. “I was so concerned about missing soccer practice because if I missed practice, I likely wouldn’t be able to play in the upcoming weekend’s game,” she says. “I felt like I was in a daze.”

4:30 p.m.: During a heart attack, a blockage—typically plaque buildup in the arteries—prevents blood and oxygen from flowing to the heart muscles. But Schroeder, a young, healthy, athlete, didn’t fit the profile of a patient with blockages. At the hospital, her care team started running tests: another EKG, an echocardiogram (echo) to take pictures of her heart, and an MRI.

There was definitely a blockage. “I explained my mom’s cardiomyopathy and how I used to have a hole in my heart but it closed,” Schroeder says. This tipped doctors off to take a second look—scans revealed that the hole in Schroder’s heart was in fact still there.

Saturday, September 15, 2012 8:00 a.m.: The next morning, doctors finally figured out what had happened. During a cardiac catheterization, a procedure that involves inserting a catheter into your artery, doctors discovered a blood clot that had traveled through the hole in Schroder’s heart into one of her arteries, almost completely blocking it.

It turned out, the hole in her heart was only part of the issue—further testing revealed Schroeder also had a genetic blood clotting disorder. The two conditions explained the heart attack—and meant she’d have to give up soccer.

A month after her heart attack, Schroeder was trying to run again. She needed to spend three months in cardiac rehab and keep her heart rate under 170 beats per minute to avoid overexerting herself, but she was determined to find a way to stay active in a way that’s healthy for her heart. “I’m not working out just because I want to work out. I’m working out because I need to to keep my heart strong and my body healthy so hopefully this doesn’t happen again,” she says. Schroeder’s also on medication for her condition, pays attention to her blood pressure and cholesterol, and avoids sodium-rich foods.



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