Reunion!

16 years later, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Selma Blair got together yesterday at the Cruel Intentions musical which is spreading all kinds of 90s joy around the internet today. I am also participating. Because as I’ve mentioned before – click here for a refresher -…      

Giuliana Rancic has kept a low profile after the end of awards season and her promotional memoir tour. Much of that tour revolved around Giuliana discussing her weight. She initially wanted to focus on the book and didn’t want to talk about her body. Giuliana framed the issue as knowing her own “truth, that’s all that matters.” As the press appearances continued, so did public concern over her fragile appearance. Journos asked about her weight, so Giuliana gave in and started talking. A lot.

Giuliana denied having an eating disorder. Her anti-cancer meds make it hard to gain weight, which is true for many people. Guiliana doesn’t find herself attractive at a lower weight, and she knows people find her “disgustingly skinny.” After some time off, Giuliana is ready to confront the issue again. She posted this bikini shot on Instagram.

On top of the world ????????

A photo posted by Giuliana Rancic (@giulianarancic) on May 27, 2015 at 3:30pm PDT

This photo is a direct challenge. Maybe Giuliana was able to re-up with some time off after defending her body for weeks on end. It must have been exhausting to keep getting picked apart. Giuliana has always been very thin, and she lost even more weight after her cancer diagnosis. I understand the desire to side-eye a woman who didn’t want to gain 10 pounds to boost her fertility potential. She also once tried her hand at a diet and fitness newsletter, which didn’t go over well. I remember reading her instructions for restaurant eating. She always wanted her veggies roasted with no-calorie Pam spray.

All the same, I’m cutting Giuliana some slack because body criticism is rough to deal with. She has a legitimate health issue that makes it hard to gain weight (even if she wanted to, which she may not). Giuliana felt good enough about her body to post this bikini shot, which is good news. It still feels like she’s trying to restart the conversation again.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN

I forgot that Kristen Stewart made this movie! The NSFW Red Band trailer was released for American Ultra, otherwise known as the stoner action movie. Think Dazed & Confused meets The Bourne Identity. Jesse Eisenberg plays the stoner assassin and Kristen Stewart plays his girlfriend and the damsel in distress. It’s supposed to be a stoner comedy with badass action sequences. It could have ended up failing hard, but I kind of think the trailer makes it look pretty enjoyable?

NSFW Warning for language, drug use & violence (there’s no nudity). Here’s the red band American Ultra trailer:

Kristen barely annoys me here. Jesse actually seems really intriguing. I’ve always worried that he’s somewhat one-note, like he can do socially awkward nerds and not much else, so it’s nice to see him doing such a physical part and having such funny line readings. There’s a problem with the casual use of the n-word (by John Leguizamo’s drug dealer character), but then I laughed when he said “Nurr…” like Madea. So, I don’t know. Will this be a hit? I would see it for Jesse more than K-Stew.

Here are some photos of Jesse at the Southampton Book Expo yesterday. IS THAT HIS DOG?

Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.

It was reported several weeks ago that Leonardo DiCaprio was hooking up with Kelly Rohrbach, the current Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Rookie Of The Year. Click here for a refresher. At the time there were no photos.

Right now, there are still no photos. But there is this that showed up o…      

It was reported several weeks ago that Leonardo DiCaprio was hooking up with Kelly Rohrbach, the current Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Rookie Of The Year. Click here for a refresher. At the time there were no photos.

Right now, there are still no photos. But there is this that showed up o…      

Above is Jessica Alba on the cover of Forbes’s “America’s Richest Self Made Women” issue. It looks like they put two halves of her face together from separate photographs. Forbes’s profile of Alba’s Honest Company is careful to note that she’s not quite on the list of the Richest Self Made Women yet, but that she’s headed there. The Honest Company, which Alba founded in 2011, sells organic baby, cleaning and household products and is currently valued at $1 billion. Jessica’s 15% – 20% share gives her a personal net worth of around $200 million.

You can see the full list of Forbes’ 50 richest self made women here. It includes celebrities such as Oprah (#5: $3 billion), Madonna (#28, $520 million), and Kathy Ireland (#33, $420 million), with Beyonce and Judge Judy in a tie at the end of the list with a net worth of $250 million. You’ll recognize many of the other names, including fashion moguls Tory Burch, Diane Von Furstenberg and Vera Wang along with tech leaders like Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo! I could spend all day reading that list and thinking about these powerful women, but I digress. (I haven’t even heard of #1, Elizabeth Holmes, who is all of 31 and founded a blood testing company called Theranos. I’m going to look up her Ted talk after this.)

Alba’s story goes into how The Honest Company was founded, and it sounds like it lives up to its name. Alba saw a need for products that were eco-friendly, chemically safe and with a design that would appeal to modern moms. She wanted products that she would use for her family that didn’t exist under a single brand, so she created one. I’ll just except some of the relevant parts here and the entire article is worth a read if you’re interested.

Alba works 86 hours a week
Details and hard work. Alba laughs about how she once worked an 86-hour week as the star of James Cameron’s sci-fi TV series, Dark Angel — the series that launched her career. Now, she says, she spends those 86 hours at a vintage teal blue desk, overseeing marketing and brand development for a company that feeds a growing demand for safe, nontoxic products, particularly among young helicopter parents who treat children — and what goes near or inside them — like porcelain.

Her company is valued at a billion
Safety sells. The Honest Company has experienced an absurd level of growth. In 2012, its first year selling products, it hit $10 million in revenue. By last year it was $150 million, and industry insiders are predicting over $250 million this year. The company is focused on growth over profits, boasting a current valuation to match: $1 billion.

How Alba was inspired to create safe products
[After getting hives from laundry detergent twice] Alba spent late nights on Google and Wikipedia researching the contents not just of the offending detergent but also of everything in her bathroom cabinet and under her kitchen sink. “I was like, ‘How can this be safe for babies if I’m having this type of reaction?’” she says. What she found terrified her: petrochemicals, formaldehydes and flame retardants in everyday household products from floor cleaners to mattresses. Some were listed on the ingredients label plain as day, with others disguised under the catchall of “fragrance,” which is entirely legal…

By 2011 she had turned herself into an expert on consumer products and traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby for updated legislation. She was — and is — particularly focused on reforming the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which has allowed more than 80,000 chemicals to remain in household products untested. Only five are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency; just 11 are banned from consumer goods. (In Europe that figure is more than 1,300.) “Enough people have to get sick or die from a certain ingredient or chemical before it’s pulled from the marketplace,” says Alba.

[From Forbes]

I’m chemically sensitive and have to be careful of perfumes and dyes in my products, so I appreciate when anyone brings awareness to this issue. Certain perfumes make me dizzy and my skin is very sensitive. It goes beyond that though, to long term health concerns. I heard a radio show recently on NPR about how the EPA barely controls any of the chemicals in consumer products, and how the conversation around chemicals is almost entirely controlled by “scientists” hired by powerful chemical conglomerates. It was sobering and this is what Alba is lobbying to change. Everyone should have the right to safe products, but much of the information required to make purchasing decisions isn’t known or is deliberately covered up. Good for Alba for creating products that families can feel good about.

Jessica Alba is shown at LAX yesterday (credit: Pacific Coast News) and out on 5-25 (Sail away shirt, credit: FameFlynet) and on 5-24 (scarf, credit: FameFlynet

Melissa Rivers and son Cooper, 14, cover the June/July issue of AARP. The reality star, 47, opens up about coping with the loss of her beloved mother, legendary comedienne Joan Rivers, and the tough decision to let her go.

On where she is in the grieving process: “I’m still in that deification phase. You miss even the sh-ttiest things: I miss when she’d come in and rearrange my furniture and tell me how I ran my house wrong and criticize everything. I miss the criticism! I’m still in that phase.”

On the working relationship she had with her mother: “My mother and I each had our own lanes. She’d work on one thing, I’d work on another, and then we’d come up with the game plan. Suddenly it feels like the work hasn’t doubled; it’s tripled. There’s a new entity: the estate and the legacy. And there’s no map. I don’t want to blow it, so there’s a lot of pressure.”

On dealing with the loss of both her mother and creative partner: “I was part of a comedy team. I was the straight man. And now I’m a solo act. That’s the hard part. I’m trying to find my voice.”

On making the decision to let her mother go: “She had a living will and an advance directive that was very specific. My mother’s definition of quality of life was having all her faculties and being able to go on stage for one hour and, here was the kicker, be funny. As hard as it was, I knew the right decision.”

On her thoughts on moving forward in life without her parents: “When one parent dies, it’s a comma. When the second parent dies, it’s a period.”

For more from Melissa, go to AARP…

Prince William is being accused of sexism, and… I’m not really seeing it? Don’t get me wrong, I will accuse William of all sorts of things, and if you asked me if I thought William displayed a sexist attitude in general, I would probably agree. But in this particular instance, I think he just came across as dorky and like he was trying too hard to seem casual and “normal.” William sat down for an interview with BBC One. The interview will air on Saturday, but they’ve released some excerpted quotes, including one quote where William refers to Duchess Kate as “the missus.” That’s the scandal. The quotes:

When will William bring George to a football game? “I don’t know, I’ll have to pass that by the missus, see how I can get away with it! At the moment, being only 22 months, it’s a little bit early.”

He’s a big Aston Villa fan: “A long time ago, at school, I’d just got into football big time. I was looking round for clubs to support and all my friends at school were either Man U fans or Chelsea fans. I didn’t really want to follow the run of the mill teams, and I wanted to have a team that was more middle of the table, that could give me the more emotional rollercoaster moments – to be honest, now looking back, that was a bad idea. I could have had an easier time!!”

George & Charlotte can support who they like: “But if he supports Villa, it’d be fantastic…I’d love to go to the odd match with him in the future. It’ll probably end up being that Charlotte is the Villa fan, and George will go and support someone else!”

His work as President of the Football Association: “There’s a number of things that could do with being changed. I’d like to see racism stamped out for starters – in all competitions. I think, domestically we’re very good at it, and we’re a lot better to be than we used to be, and actually I think we’re now a leading light in it. There’s still much more to do, but I think we’re very good. I think the rest of Europe probably and the world have some catching up to do.”

[From Hello]

The Telegraph said William’s use of “the missus” was “casual sexism” and they actually make a pretty good point – that he’s playing into the idea that he’s one of the lads down at the pub, grateful for a few hours away from “the old ball and chain.” Which, let’s face it, really is how William thinks. He loves to get away from Kate and his children whenever possible so he can go off and do… whatever (Jecca Craig?). Now, all that being said, my first impression of his quotes were that William needs Kate’s “permission” about anything having to do with their kids. As in, she’s raising them and he’s a largely absent father.

Photos courtesy of WENN, BBC One.

For a couple of weeks now, several tabloids have been reporting on the alleged imminent demise of the Jennifer Garner-Ben Affleck marriage. And yesterday the New York Daily News published a story about how the two are “leading separate lives” citing several sources who claim that they hardly spen…      

For a couple of weeks now, several tabloids have been reporting on the alleged imminent demise of the Jennifer Garner-Ben Affleck marriage. And yesterday the New York Daily News published a story about how the two are “leading separate lives” citing several sources who claim that they hardly spen…