Prince Harry will be in Japan and Singapore this week, and I could be wrong, but I doubt we’ll see Prince William and Kate desperately try to steal some headlines from him. That’s basically the only way anyone can get William and Kate to work these days – to send them out as counterprogramming whenever the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are in the headlines. Which means that come September, during the Invictus Games in Dusseldorf, I’m positive that they’ll bribe Kate to cut her vacation short and actually step out for some photo-op at a baby bank or something. Don’t expect to see Kate before then – Wimbledon finals weekend usually marks her final events before a two-month vacation, and that’s what’s happening now. She hasn’t been seen since mid-July. Still, royal biographers are eager to burnish Kate’s keen-linchpin credentials. Don’t you know that Kate is the only one holding the Windsors together??

Kate is reportedly “working behind the scenes” to get Prince William and Harry on speaking terms, helping the King and other stressed family members who are tired of the fighting. A royal biographer has revealed that the Princess of Wales is doing all she can do to mend the broken relationship between the two feuding brothers. Alongside her attempts to help the siblings bury the hatchet, Kate has also been helping organise visits from the King to see his grandchildren.

Robert Jobson, the author of ‘Our King Charles III: The Man and the Monarch Revealed’, commented that she was “doing a brilliant job” at trying to mend the divides within the family. Jobson said: “I’m not sure how much dialogue there is with William and Harry, at the moment, I think the only person that is helping the situation is Catherine, who is doing a brilliant job. First of all when the king wants to see his grandchildren, for example, it’s important to say that a lot of it has been through Catherine. But William and Harry, it’s a difficult one. I think as brothers they are more likely to get on the phone and have a conversation.”

However, despite her efforts, there is still a “lack of trust” between the feuding family members.

“It’s quite possible that one of them might pick up the phone to have a rant, but who’s gonna pick up the phone on the other end? Because that’s not gonna achieve anything,” Mr Jobson said. “There’s also a lot of lack of trust. At the moment between all the members of the family and Harry about where this information is going, because a lot of stuff has appeared in print by him.”

Jobson added that Harry’s claims in court about Buckingham Palace have stirred up even more fury. He said: “I think that the Royal Family are going to have a period of calm, where they actually can start to build some form of trust. I don’t believe it’ll ever come back to what it was before.”

[From GB News]

Twelve-plus years of diligent promises to be keen, and all they’ve got is “Kate coordinates her children’s visits with the king” and “Kate swears that she’s working behind the scenes to make peace, all evidence to the contrary.” While it’s been clear for years that the main issue is between Harry and William, let’s also be clear: Kate was and is a major part in the campaign against Harry and Meghan. Kate is also jealous, short-sighted and mean, just like her husband. Kate isn’t cooing in William’s ear to encourage him to make peace. Please, she’s been exiled in Adelaide Cottage while William carries on like he’s already divorced, ready to mingle with all of the ladies.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Months ago, it felt like a new generation was suddenly exposed to Gwyneth Paltrow’s disordered eating habits. Those of us who are long-time Paltrow watchers know that Gwyneth basically started Goop as a way to rebrand her unhealthy relationship with food. The first years of the Goop newsletter were mostly focused on Gwyneth doing endless “cleanses” and trying whatever half-remembered fad diet she heard about at a party. Her disordered eating has taken on new dimensions over the years and basically, the youths understand that Gwyneth is an Almond Mom who is too rich to swallow vitamins.

Still, there is a bizarre fascination with Gwyneth and what she’s selling. I get sucked into it too, I’m only human. Which is how I came to watch Gwyneth’s “In My Fridge” video, which was posted on goop’s Instagram. As in, Goop’s IG, not Gwyneth’s personal IG. She used the video to shill for some skincare products and she claims to always put her skincare stuff in her refrigerator. I also think this is in her Hamptons house? It feels beachy. Anyway, my first thought was that the fridge seems very shallow? Or is that an optical illusion because she has everything pushed to the front? I’m watching it again… no, her fridge really is that shallow, it’s so weird!!

The actual products in her fridge… it’s mostly beverages, dressings, sauces and skincare products, honestly. There’s very little food beyond some very tiny containers of “leftovers” (zucchini fritters and butter chicken) and yogurt. It’s mostly just milks, juices, ice tea, bottles of Pelligrino, maybe some soda or spritzers or something. Olives and I saw some eggs too. Where are the takeout containers? Where is the FOOD?

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Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

I keep forgetting that Rupert Murdoch’s vast empire has tentacles everywhere. Murdoch’s NewsCorp owns HarperCollins, one of the biggest publishing houses in the world. Prince Harry’s Spare was published by Penguin Random House though, as was Carley Fortune’s Meet Me at the Lake. So while HarperCollins doesn’t have intimate knowledge of the deal, News Corp is such a major player in the publishing world, they get insider book and publishing tips, plus they have an ax to grind about deals they missed out on. All of which means that I sort of halfway figured out why The Sun and Page Six (both owned by News Corp) are writing so many exclusives about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “buying the rights” to Fortune’s bestseller. That’s what The Sun claimed over the weekend, that the Sussexes bought the rights for $3 million. But Page Six’s sources claim that Netflix purchased the rights to Meet Me at the Lake specifically for the Sussexes. Page Six also has some almost positive things to say about the Sussexes’ business?

The ‘Meet Me at the Lake’ deal: The deal was signed in the past few weeks — and despite initial reports, the Sussexes didn’t buy the rights to the book, believed to be worth around $3 million. Instead, Netflix purchased it for them to produce under their Archewell Productions arm, we’re told. The book is “right up their alley,” said an insider. Plus, said the insider, “They love love stories and rom-coms.”

Archwell restructuring: The couple have been restructuring their team amid the departure of top producer Ben Browning, who was the head of internal content at Archewell Productions and oversaw the documentary. Page Six can also reveal they have parted ways with their talented senior vice-president of scripted television, Nishika Kumble. She lasted less than two years in the role.

Missing Hollywood? Asked whether Markle — whose show “Suits” is currently topping the charts on Netflix — has missed Hollywood, a friend said: “I’m not sure you can miss Hollywood when you’re one of the most famous women in the world!” Another Hollywood insider told us, “If you make money in Hollywood, you’re taken seriously.”

What WME is doing: With Markle having signed with Ari Emanuel’s powerhouse talent agency WME in May, a source also told Page Six that she and Harry “have a lot of logs in the fire. Production is one piece of the pie. It’s not all entirely shaped by Ari — they’ve had the deal with Netflix for a while. Everyone has criticized them, but they now have the right team and vision in place and execution is happening,” continued the source. “Meghan’s not doing a Reese [Witherspoon] or making acquisitions for herself… She doesn’t want to direct or act.”

A little bit of Goop: Someone who knows the couple told Page Six that Markle wants to be like a combination of famous women: “A bit of Reese, a bit of Gwyneth [Paltrow, founder of Goop] a bit of Princess Kate, a bit of Gloria Steinem.”

[From Page Six]

I hope WME is putting together a lot of deals and that they have a magnificent autumn rollout, because there have been too many negative business-related headlines happening for months. They need some good news and prominent deals. I still believe that Meghan should get some brand-endorsement deals! As for Meghan wanting to be a combo of Gwyneth, Gwyneth, Kate and Gloria Steinem… eh. That rings false to me, mostly because of the inclusion of Kate? Like, one of these things is not like the other. Meghan is a content-creator now and a brand unto herself, so yeah… maybe a little bit of Reese and Gwyneth. I also find it entirely possible that Netflix purchased the rights for the Sussexes, rather than the Sussexes buying the rights themselves.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

Red, White and Royal Blue was a huge bestseller, and people have been looking forward to the film adaptation, which comes out on Amazon Prime this month. The book is one of the most popular LGBTQ romances in years, plus it peppers in the pop culture obsession with royalty, fake politics and the transatlantic culture clash. The core love story is about a British prince – named Prince Henry – falling in love with the son of the American president. As you can imagine, the British media is worked up about what this book and movie say about British royalty and how Americans see Britain and their royal family. Instead of just shrugging it off and saying “hey, it’s a charming work of fiction,” the usual suspects are lining up to make this about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and how America is laughing at Britain.

Fictional dramas that exploit a transatlantic obsession with the Royal family are a mini-industry in their own right, be it Channel 4’s Harry Enfield satirical soap opera The Windsors or E!’s primetime series The Royals, starring Elizabeth Hurley, which ran from 2015 to 2018. Not to mention, of course, Netflix’s ongoing juggernaut The Crown, which incurs more public wrath with each new season for its creative blurring of fact with fiction. There have been novels, too, mostly in the unashamedly commercial lowbrow romance genre, including Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan’s 2015 The Royal We – a giddy fairy tale about an American girl who finds love with a royal prince, and which McQuiston has cited as an influence on Red, White & Royal Blue. Forget the White House: evidently the real objective of the American dream is to gain entry to the British aristocracy.

Yet the novel’s success also raises ethical questions about the responsibility of fiction when it comes to playing fast and loose with the private life of a living person. Prince Harry is unlikely to complain about the novel’s gay storyline, not to mention its gushy depictions of Henry as extremely hot in bed. But he may admit to some private misgivings over the way the book exploits the very real loss of his mother, albeit in loosely fictionalised form: Henry – whose siblings are “Princess Beatrice” and “Prince Philip” – has been badly affected by the abrupt death of his father 14 months previously. What’s more, Harry’s publicly articulated real-life struggles with mental health and battles with duty, family and the paparazzi provide much of the novel’s fictional emotional capital. And forget accusations of unconscious racial bias: this Royal family are nakedly homophobic.

Of course, if Harry does have anxieties about his private unhappiness being cannibalised by novelists in the name of art, not to mention money, you could argue he has only himself to blame.

“The popularity of this book does seem to suggest what many in Britain have long feared, that the Royal family have become the Kardashians of popular culture,” says the veteran British royal correspondent Robert Jobson, who regularly contributes to NBC and who was a script editor on The Royals. “And that has partly come out of the whole Megxit affair and Netflix documentaries. Most of all, there was Harry’s book, Spare, which dealt with a lot of areas that wouldn’t normally come out in public. It’s interesting, because up to now, British publishers in particular haven’t been very interested in this sort of thing.”

Certainly, Red, White & Royal Blue wasn’t originally published in this country, although a new edition, tied to the film, was published last month. An industry insider, who didn’t want to be named, points out there are currently sponsored posts about the book on the UK Amazon site, which suggests the publisher is now putting serious money behind it. The book is also climbing up the Kindle and Apple charts.

“I do think the author has been very clever,” says Jobson. “It’s an LGBT project by a writer who knows the market and is utilising a genre to create a bestseller. If it had been written 20 years ago, there would have been more of an uproar about it. There’s a general apathy now among the younger generation, who don’t have the same connection to the monarchy. And I think certainly in America, among the general public, there is a greater frivolity in the way the monarchy is perceived.”

[From The Telegraph]

“The popularity of this book does seem to suggest what many in Britain have long feared, that the Royal family have become the Kardashians of popular culture…” In truth, the Windsors wish they were as exciting and popular as the Kardashians. At least the Kardashians have true soap opera storylines, whereas the Windsors just have old farts being racist, clueless and lazy. And why would Prince Harry worry about this book or movie in any way? It’s clear that some real-life stuff has been mined for this work of fiction, but that’s fine, and in fact, that’s probably contributed to the popularity of the story – there’s something familiar about it, but skewed for a LGBTQ romance. “It’s interesting, because up to now, British publishers in particular haven’t been very interested in this sort of thing…” Like… Jobson’s books never sell. Most of those royal biographies don’t sell. The only royal books, in recent years, to make a huge impact are Spare and Finding Freedom.

Posters courtesy of Amazon Prime.

As we discussed, both Australia and Canada have pulled out of hosting the Commonwealth Games. The games are for athletes from British commonwealth countries exclusively, and they’re meant to be a Commonwealth version of the Olympics, only much smaller. The thing is, even a smaller version of the Olympic games will still cost a sh-tload of money to host, which is why Canada and Australia both dropped their “winning bids” to host the Commonwealth Games in 2026 and 2030. While I used photos of Prince William and Kate in the previous post – they went to the games in Birmingham last year for one solitary day – it’s King Charles who is getting the blame for the lack of enthusiasm for anything related to the British Commonwealth.

The King cannot evoke the same enthusiasm for the Commonwealth Games as the late Queen, a former Australian diplomat has warned after a second potential host nation pulled out. Alexander Downer, who served as his country’s high commissioner to the UK, said the Canadian province of Alberta’s withdrawal plans for a 2030 Games bid was disastrous coming just weeks after Australian state Victoria withdrew as confirmed host for 2026.

He told The Telegraph: “The Commonwealth revolved very much around the [late] Queen and I used to argue that if it hadn’t been for [her], it’s hard to believe the Commonwealth would have held together. And it’s not that anybody has a problem with the King… but he doesn’t have the same aura that the [late] Queen had about her, yet.”

Mr Downer added that it has become “hard to generate any enthusiasm” for the Commonwealth Games after the “perfect storm” of factors, including the death of the late Queen last year and escalating costs of putting on the event.

“It’s an incredibly serious time for the Commonwealth,” Mr Downer told The Telegraph, adding that the Games, the most high-profile Commonwealth event, “has now entered a period where its future is uncertain”.

“It’s another huge blow, and the Games brand is taking a major hit to its reputation,” said the executive, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Immediate and radical action is needed from the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) at this point to save the event.” One of the solutions that has been suggested is a financial restructuring of the event to make it “much more modest” and “not on the lines of the Olympic Games”.

[From The Telegraph]

Maybe it’s because Americans can’t participate, but I’m left feeling like… why all the drama to save the games? Why not just take the L and say that the games have outlived their usefulness? Within the Telegraph’s report, various people suggest that the games should be reimagined so that they’re smaller and less expensive, and could perhaps be hosted by cities which already have existing infrastructure. All of which are good ideas, but will anyone follow through on it? Will they actually put people in charge who are willing to make deep cuts in the program and make smart decisions about the cost? Or will they just blame everything on King Charles? Like, I know there are a lot of factors and God knows, I think Charles is dogsh-t, but the Commonwealth Games have much bigger problems than “Charles is not popular in Commonwealth countries.” If that’s the excuse they want to use though, who am I to stand in their way.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

You guys, I totally forgot about Natalie Portman’s marriage drama. There’s just been so much marriage drama in the past four months!! Kevin Costner, Ariana Grande, Spongebob Sidepiece, Sofia Vergara, and on and on. I forgot (temporarily) that Natalie Portman’s husband Benjamin Millepied was outed as a big-time cheater. That happened in early June, when a French tabloid spilled all of the details about Millepied’s affair with 25-year-old Camille Etienne. The affair apparently lasted for months and Millepied was caught (by that French tabloid) in photos, going into some pied a terre for an assignation with Etienne.

Soon after the story broke (like, within hours), Natalie Portman went into damage-control mode and let it be known that the affair was over and she and Benjamin were working through it. Then Portman made a point of being photographed solo – but wearing her wedding ring – at a football game and a tennis match in Paris, and then the story just died for two months. Died… like Natalie and Benjamin’s marriage. According to Us Weekly, they’ve separated.

Natalie Portman and her husband, Benjamin Millepied, have separated after 11 years of marriage, Us Weekly can confirm.

“After news of his affair came out, they’ve been trying to work on their marriage but are currently on the outs,” an insider exclusively tells Us of Portman, 42, and Millepied, 46.

The estranged couple — who share son Aleph, 12, and daughter Amalia, 6 — renewed speculation about their status on their 11th wedding anniversary on Friday, August 4, when Portman was spotted without her wedding ring during an Angel City FC event in Sydney, Australia.

In June, rumors swirled that Millepied was having an affair with Camille Étienne, a 25-year-old climate activist. At the time, an insider told Us that Portman remained committed to her marriage despite the alleged infidelity.

“Natalie believes Benjamin’s affair was a brief and stupid liaison that means nothing to him,” the source exclusively told Us, adding that Portman was “humiliated” by the rumors. According to the source, Portman was “willing to see if she’s capable of rebuilding her trust” in Millepied to ensure that their kids don’t “grow up in a broken home.”

[From Us Weekly]

First off, Benjamin is such a douche. As everyone is quick to point out, his romantic history is pretty rough – he was living with girlfriend Isabella Boylston when he met and impregnated Natalie Portman, leaving Boylston in the lurch. Then fourteen years later, when he’s married and has two children with Portman, he’s slinking off and having affairs with 25-year-olds? Gross. Personally, I don’t find it weird that they’re separating or that Portman couldn’t get over his affair. The weird thing, to me, was that she tried to protect him initially and tried to save the marriage. Some things are unforgivable, some things you just can’t move past.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.

DeSantis has been out-of-state on the campaign trail in his mythic quest to seek the Republican 2024 nomination. How is the charm-offensive working? Just ask this kid in Iowa who was sipping an Icee. Well as it turns out, he’s not the only one who’s been leaving Florida: people are pulling out of conferences and tourist visits, both key pieces of the Sunshine State’s economy. The reason? The slew of terrible bills DeSantis enacted has left many feeling like Florida is now a hostile environment for them. Per CNN:

Early numbers from Broward County: “Unlike leisure business, which is a very short-term booking window [in weeks or months], conference business is long term,” said Stacy Ritter, president and chief executive officer of the Visit Lauderdale tourism marketing agency in Broward County, Florida. “We’re booking ‘26 to ‘30 now, so any impact that this might have is not going to be seen for years to come.” As of July 26, Ritter said that Visit Lauderdale has tallied 10 events and conventions that were canceled by organizations citing recently enacted laws, policies and travel advisories. That amounts to 15,000 lost hotel room nights and an estimated $20 million economic impact, she said.

2025 bookings are low for Broward’s new $1.5B hotel: “Broward County has invested $1.5 billion in building an 801-room Omni hotel connected to our expanding and renovated convention center, [but] we are not seeing the bookings for ‘26, ‘27, ‘28, ‘29 and ‘30, which we would have anticipated — considering that we will have this shiny new toy in the neighborhood in late-2025,” she said.

AERA pulled to stand up for trans rights: AERA pulled its 15,000-person meeting in Orlando after Florida passed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which prohibits transgender female athletes from participating in women’s sports teams, said Tony Pals, spokesperson for AERA, in an email to CNN. In 2021, AERA adopted a motion that it would not hold a conference or event in a state with anti-trans laws, Pals added.

Some groups are canceling despite the money they will lose: It was a difficult decision for the National Society of Black Engineers to move its 2024 event from Florida, said Janeen Uzzell, CEO of the National Society of Black Engineers, which two years ago selected Orlando to serve as the host city for its 50th annual convention. But after conversations with the NAACP, the National Urban League, legal team, sponsors, members of Congress as well as other organizations in the same boat, the NSBE decided it was best to not have the event there, she said, adding that “significant sums” of money are potentially being left on the table.

A ‘gut-check moment’: [Co-founder and CEO of Equality Florida Nadine] Smith said that this is a “gut-check moment” for businesses that have talked about diversity and that “everyone’s paying attention to who stands up and who doesn’t.” She added that she fears the damage has already been done from these laws, and that it will take years to recover. “The thing about economic erosion, it’s like climate change: People go, ‘Oh, we’ve still got tourists and people are still on the beaches.’ Yeah, we do, and Florida is a beautiful place, but how do you tally what you’re losing?” Smith said. “How do you tally what it means to have the best and the brightest students after graduation go elsewhere with their talent?”

[From CNN]

It’s not just the students leaving, it’s the teachers too, in what’s being called a massive “brain drain.” But who actually thinks Meatball Ron cares a whit about talented minds leaving the state? Yeah, I thought so. He can’t even acknowledge the business drain happening in his state. When Disney announced they were abandoning a $1.3 billion office project the best DeSantis could come up with was “well it’s been two years already and they haven’t done it!” Yes, because unlike their cartoons, Disney corp can’t actually wave a magic wand or bibbity-bobbity-boo a building complex into existence. (At least, not yet…) DeSantis’s office issued an anemic response to CNN saying their story (otherwise known as the facts) were “nothing more than a media-driven stunt.” Touche, Ron. Can’t wait for the debate.

One thing I was really struck by was the National Society of Black Engineers being open about the fact that they will likely lose quite a bit of money in pulling out of Florida now. But they are willing to risk the “significant sums” in the name of their values. Funny, then, that it appears DeSantis is inadvertently doing the same thing. His culture war on “woke” is costing his state billions of dollars and countless opportunities. So in reality, Florida is where “work” goes to die.

photos credit: Avalon.red and screenshots from YouTube

This weekend, the Sun exclusively reported that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex bought the rights to Carley Fortune’s Meet Me at the Lake, a romance-drama bestseller. While Deadline picked up the story, I was unsure if this was really happening. As it turns out, it is. Carley Fortune confirmed the news and she sounds incredibly pleased that the Sussexes will produce the film adaptation for Netflix.

Author Carly Fortune has confirmed that her bestselling romance novel Meet Me at the Lake will be adapted for Netflix by Harry and Meghan’s production company. News that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Archewell Productions had acquired rights to Fortune’s book broke over the weekend, weeks after their exclusive, multi-million pound deal with Spotify was terminated.

In a statement to The Independent, Fortune said: “I’m so thrilled about working with Netflix and Archewell to bring Meet Me at the Lake to the screen. Will and Fern’s love story is dear to my heart, and I can’t imagine a more perfect partnership.”

A former journalist, Fortune’s second book Meet Me at the Lake was released in the US on 2 May, and debuted at No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. It is published by Penguin Random House, who also published Prince Harry’s memoir Spare.

The book follows Will and Fern, “two strangers on a daylong adventure where they make a promise one keeps and the other breaks, with life-changing effects”. The plot bears some likeness to Harry and Meghan’s whirlwind romance, as one of the protagonists in Fortune’s story lost a parent in a car crash and struggled with alcohol and drug use.

[From The Independent]

Fortune is Canadian and the book is supposed to be a love letter to Toronto, a city Meghan called home for eight years. While the Sun’s report, over the weekend, made it sound like Fortune made a bad deal because of the Sussex connection – as opposed to more seasoned producers – it actually sounds like Fortune is beyond pleased that Meghan and Harry will take this on. I would imagine nothing will move during the strikes – the first thing that needs to be done is adapting the book into a screenplay, and the writers are still very much on strike, and Netflix is very much a struck company. So we wait! Seriously though, it sounds like a good fit and just an old-fashioned love story. People who have read the book: who are you dreamcasting in these roles? If any of you say Blake Lively, I will scream.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

After all of the crap Sandra Bullock dealt with in her first and only marriage to Jesse James, she kept her romantic life out of the headlines. I didn’t even realize that she had been with Bryan Randall for the better part of eight years, that’s how low-key they were as a couple. They met in 2015 and they were together ever since. Last year, Sandra spoke about needing a break and being “burnt out.” Most of us didn’t blink an eye or think anything of it, but it turns out that she took this break to care for Bryan, who battled ALS in the last three years of his life. Bryan Randall passed away on Sunday.

Sandra Bullock’s longtime partner Bryan Randall died over the weekend, his family revealed in a statement to PEOPLE on Monday. He was 57.

“It is with great sadness that we share that on Aug. 5, Bryan Randall passed away peacefully after a three-year battle with ALS,” his family shared. “Bryan chose early to keep his journey with ALS private and those of us who cared for him did our best to honor his request.”

“We are immensely grateful to the tireless doctors who navigated the landscape of this illness with us and to the astounding nurses who became our roommates, often sacrificing their own families to be with ours,” his family added. “At this time we ask for privacy to grieve and to come to terms with the impossibility of saying goodbye to Bryan,” the statement concluded, signed, “His Loving Family.”

Bullock, 59, first met Randall, a model-turned-photographer, when he photographed her son Louis’s birthday in January 2015. They took their relationship more public later that year, including an appearance at Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux’s wedding.

Bullock, who is mother to her son Louis, 13, and daughter Laila, 10, addressed the topic of marriage during a December 2021 appearance on Red Table Talk.

“I found the love of my life. We share two beautiful children— three children, [Randall’s] older daughter. It’s the best thing ever,” Bullock said at the time. “I don’t wanna say do it like I do it, but I don’t need a paper to be a devoted partner and devoted mother,” she said, adding, “I don’t need to be told to be ever present in the hardest of times. I don’t need to be told to weather a storm with a good man.”

[From People]

This is so sad and so devastating for Sandra. There were photos, over the years, of Sandra and Bryan just doing normal-family things in LA, like going out for some ice cream or taking the kids somewhere. It was a real partnership and more of a marriage, frankly, then that Jesse James bullsh-t. He always sounded like such a solid guy. What an utter tragedy.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.

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We’ve been seeing Hilary Duff comment a lot over the past year on her health practices, from her crazy good interview in Women’s Health to her divulging that she sometimes drinks coffee in the morning as a way to stave off hunger. Whenever she weighs in, she qualifies her choices with the note of “do what’s best for you,” and she gets candid about mental wellbeing going hand-in-hand with physical health. It makes sense, then, that she’s become an ambassador for OLLY, makers of my favorite melatonin (along with many other excellent products for the awake hours). On the heels of hosting a back-to-school brunch with OLLY in New York last week, Hilary spoke with Yahoo! Life’s It Figures series about her current body image views:

On her awkward years existing on the internet: “It’s funny, to an extent,” she tells Yahoo Life of the pictures and memes that exist of her at all ages across the internet. “And then there’s some days where I’m like, ‘Wow, that was a really hard time in my life.’ It almost hurts for me to look at that girl.” While so many idolized and envied the life of the young star, the 35-year-old hasn’t been shy speaking out about the scrutiny that she faced as a public figure. “The magazines were mean and the press was mean,” she says. The cruel remarks that were made about her body, specifically, led Duff to develop an eating disorder at 17 years old.

‘Be your own beauty icon’: “I don’t know what’s real anymore. Everything’s so heavily edited and filtered,” she tells Yahoo Life. “You just have to experiment and find out what works for you and what feels good… Kind of be your own beauty icon.” It’s a perspective that Duff partially credits to age. “As I get older, I’m more happy with who I am and how I look,” she says. “I care about being healthy, I care about feeling good in my clothes, but I don’t care about being tiny.”

Pregnancy & motherhood have helped her body image: “I’ve had three kids, I’m obsessed with them. I loved being able to grow them and give birth to them,” she says. “It did change my mindset to understand my body was like meant to do this and it’s changing. It just kind of forced me into a different zone.” She’s now mindful about speaking positively about bodies and food as a parent. “Especially having girls, I’m so careful about what I say and the rules that we follow at home.” Around all three of her children—son Luca Cruz, 11, who she shares with her ex-husband Mike Comrie, and two daughters, Banks Violet, 4, and Mae James, 2, with husband Matthew Koma—Duff preaches one thing: “We only have one body in this life and we have to take care of it. We don’t deprive it,” Duff says.

It starts so young: “My daughter is four and she was looking in the mirror the other day, and she was like, ‘My tummy is big.’ And I was like, ‘What are you talking about? You’re the exact size that you’re supposed to be,’” Duff recalls. “Your belly is holding in all of your organs. You haven’t stretched out tall yet, you are exactly how you’re supposed to be.”

[From Yahoo! Life]

I am so here for the influx of body-positive stories we’ve been getting from celeb mamas lately. Granted, Hilary didn’t recently give birth, but she clearly credits the experience of pregnancy with transforming her body image–no easy feat after having your entire teenagedom be public and live on digitally. I both loved and was heartbroken over the story of her daughter already saying her tummy was big. Argh! How do we plug into this mentality so young? I thought Hilary handled it really well, though. She responded in a way that made sense to a four-year-old. Or maybe I just like her response because I, too, am waiting to stretch out tall.

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