Whitney Port has a YouTube channel and in a recent episode (is that the word?) she said she was “mom bullied” at an event earlier this week. (It must have been a private brand or charity event because I checked for photos and couldn’t find the event.) What I want to point out here is the way we talk out of both sides of our mouths when it comes to women with children: there’s the “mean mommies” cliché and then there’s an expectation that moms should be warm and friendly to everyone because they have children. This works against women in two ways, doesn’t it? First, the idea that if you get two or more moms together it turns into Big Little Lies, with lots of shaming and backstabbing, plays into the idea that women are always catty with one another. But then there’s also the expectation that if a woman has children, she has to be BFF with any other mom in a 10-foot vicinity (definitely not an expectation, or something we even think about, with fathers). Whitney also notes that she might have been blown off because of her association with a The Hills (which seems much more plausible); she was basically brushed off by two people who were scanning the room to look for someone better to talk to, which is of course rude, but it isn’t related to anyone being a mom. Maybe the other people are just your run-of the-mill assholes. Speaking of bullying in the celebrity realm, Emily Yahr wrote a piece about it for The Washington Post which explains how everyone from famous athletes to Taylor Swift have co-opted the term and what that means not just for them, but society as a whole.
Kate Hudson has launched a clothing line Happy x Nature – of course she was going to include the word happy, she’s been working that for years. I’m going to wait until the clothing/pricing is made available because right now it’s just a teaser, but first impression is that it’s Western/desert/boho in its aesthetic. The boho part I get, because Kate has always had the happy hippie thing (even though she grew up incredibly wealthy and privileged, it’s something she’s always managed to pull off), but I don’t really get the Western vibes, like the cowboy boots and the vintage Mustang and the giant silver earrings. The opening images look a little hokey.
Great News didn’t get a fair shake – maybe it would have done better on a streaming service? But Nicole Richie was a standout as a party-girl news anchor addicted to social media. She’s having another go with Richard Lovely, a pilot. Nicole’s trajectory as an actress is interesting because while actresses start in TV/film and move to lifestyle, Nicole started in lifestyle/fashion and has moved to TV.
The closest example to Nicole of the actress-to-lifestyle career change is in her own family, Cameron Diaz. But today PEOPLE had a small story that Cameron isn’t interested in doing back-to-back movies, but would take a role. We know PEOPLE has a direct line to celebs so this isn’t coming out of nowhere – an announcement soon?
House of Drew, Justin Bieber’s clothing line, has a pop-up shop in Hong Kong, a lucrative fashion market. Justin didn’t show up for the opening and hasn’t posted about it, but I don’t know if that’s by design. He co-founded the line with his former stylist Ryan Good, who talked to GQ how the partnership came about; it seems like Ryan is the de facto press person. It’s Justin’s job to wear the clothes and I wonder how his current stylist, the very sought-after Karla Welch, feels about incorporating House of Drew into Bieb’s wardrobe. It’s a lot of yellow.
The people who surround celebrities are often as (or more) interesting than the celebs themselves. Take for instance Cassandra Grey, widow of Brad Grey, founder of influential beauty site Violet Grey, and current girlfriend of Samantha Ronson. She is influential and beloved in celebrities circles, and this profile of her (by Molly Lambert in Elle) is definitely worth a read.