Sometimes, when I’m fresh out of the shower and I know I’m just going to be bumming around the house for hours, I’ll slip on a pair of sweatpants or shorts with no underwear. That’s really the only time – I think the last time I left the house without underwear was probably when I was in college. “Going commando” was a thing back then, in the olden days, but I guess every generation experiments with going sans pantalones. But to carry that into actual grown-up life? To go commando everyday of your professional life? I could not. Jenna Bush Hager can and does. This shocked me!

Hoda Kotb made one cheeky revelation about her co-host Jenna Bush Hager. On Wednesday’s episode of Today with Hoda and Jenna, Kotb revealed that she recently learned something new about Bush Hager — that she “never wears underwear.”

“I was a little surprised because Jenna and I know a lot about each other,” Kotb told the crowd on the NBC daytime show, which this week is being filmed in front of a studio audience again. She went on to explain that she discovered Bush Hager’s love for going commando right before the show, when the two had to change in the dressing area. “I just had a little shock with it,” said Kotb, recalling of when she “noticed.”

Bush Hager, for her part, defended her choice. “I think it makes a more pretty silhouette!” she said. “I also think you don’t have to pack as much. There’s a lot of pros to it!”

But she also appeared to be a little embarrassed. “You promised me you wouldn’t do this! There’s a lot of people here!” the former first daughter told Kotb, later joking, “I’m sure my mom has never been more proud.”

Kotb went on to note some of the benefits of not wearing underwear, pointing to their show’s wardrobe supervisor who said “it actually does make life a lot easier.” The downsides? “It’s a lot of washing of clothes, over and over,” Kotb noted.

[From People]

There was that viral tweet last week, or a few weeks ago, where a young woman was kind of snide about how people shouldn’t wear underwear in the gym, and everyone yelled at her about how gross she was and how she needs to wipe down all of the gym equipment extra-hard. I think… everyone’s different, obviously, but I can’t imagine wearing professional clothes, gym clothes, everyday clothes all the time and just… never wearing underwear. Are y’all really that obsessed with visible panty lines? It is a lot of clothes-washing. What do you do when you’re menstruating?

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

Magic Mike: Last Dance has a trailer and it’s good, but I’ve always believed that Channing Tatum completely overestimated the audience’s interest in plot. [LaineyGossip]
Eva Mendes & Ryan Gosling are probably secretly married. [Dlisted]
We could get a third Princess Diaries movie!! [Seriously OMG]
A rant about all of those “oil protests” defacing works of art. [Pajiba]
Herschel Walker tries to talk sh-t about Raphael Warnock. [Jezebel]
Julia Roberts’ outfit is hilariously bad. [Go Fug Yourself]
Tom Brady changed his Twitter header. [Gawker]
Kumail Nanjiani & Emily V. Gordon at the Welcome to Chippendales premiere. [Just Jared]
Rihanna & A$AP Rocky wore his-and-her Celine. [RCFA]
Madonna is really a catastrophe at the moment. [Egotastic]
I love that this guy made a huge Google Doc full of Twitter meme templates. [Buzzfeed]
Estee Lauder bought Tom Ford’s brand for $2.3 billion (it’s arguably worth more, I would think? But what do I know.) [Towleroad]

The Duchess of Sussex’s Archetypes podcast this week has ruffled some feathers over in Salt Island. This week’s pod is “The Audacity of the Activist,” where Meghan spoke about the importance of women’s activism throughout history, and how people react to that activism. Salt Island is currently trying to figure out who was the very “prominent woman” who told Meghan before her wedding that she should continue to be an activist. Salt Island is also trying to shame Meghan for being an activist (too political, too woke, too loud, too aggressive, surely!) while also making it sound like Meghan was simply following in the well-trod footsteps of other royal activists, like… the current Princess of Wales, our duchess of buttons. Kate is many things but an activist is not one of them. Which is the point of a particularly notable piece of commentary making the rounds online:

This is why Catherine, Princess of Wales is ‘popular’ with a certain demographic. pic.twitter.com/V8WV3PKYyz

— Ange Andrews (@andrews_ange) November 15, 2022

“One of the reasons why Catherine is so popular amongst certain demographics – and I’m going to say older people and men – is because she says absolutely nothing. She’s a good little girl who keeps quiet, doesn’t tell, doesn’t complain, doesn’t do anything, doesn’t rock the boat, and is a very traditional, old-fashioned mute woman.”

Here’s the thing – this woman is right, that Kate is popular with older folks and (some) men because she is a dishrag, a mute doll who stays in the background, doing nothing but fiddling with bows and buttons. The problem is, there are people around Kate who know that this isn’t the best branding long-term. This branding was falling apart before Meghan entered the picture, and if anything, Meghan’s presence defined and highlighted Kate’s mute uselessness. Which is why Kate began competing with and copying Meghan stylistically and trying to become some “palatable” version of Meghan. There’s an inherent conflict with what Kate is and what the people around her want her to be. Anyway, love it when royalists accidentally tell the truth.

Photos courtesy of Instar, Cover Images.

Last night, the media called several House races one week after the midterm election. It’s official: the Republicans took back the House, but only by a slender margin of maybe two or three seats. There will probably be a minor fight over House leadership, with Kevin McCarthy being made to pledge fealty to Donald Trump and the Insurrection Caucus. That was the backdrop for Donald Trump’s big announcement last night: he is now formally running for president again. He announced his candidacy in a meandering, slurred speech full of Adderall sniffing, insanity and lies.

The coverage of Bigly’s big announcement is probably not what Trump was looking for. NPR’s headline: “Donald Trump, who tried to overturn Biden’s legitimate election, launches 2024 bid.” NBC News headline: “Trump, whose lies about the 2020 election inspired an insurrection, announces third White House bid.” National Review: “No.” I actually glanced through National Review’s editorial and their big complaint about Trump is that he was so chaotic and unserious, not the fact that he’s a liar, a deviant sexual predator and he degraded the highest public office in the land to incite an armed insurrection against members of Congress and his own vice president.

Meanwhile, the DOJ/FBI investigation into Trump’s theft of highly classified documents is still on-going and AG Merrick Garland is incredibly methodical, so who knows when we’ll hear anything. There are also a multitude of financial crimes for which Trump (and Trump Org) must answer. And yes, there’s the insurrection too. I genuinely hope that Trump is criminally charged with something, anything involving January 6th.

pic.twitter.com/tmfMbQTrkd

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 16, 2022

Fox cuts coverage while Trump is ranting about Angela Merkel pic.twitter.com/5txDGyCOG0

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 16, 2022

BREAKING: Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, has filed to run for president again in 2024. https://t.co/iqIcaN3SZA

— NPR (@NPR) November 16, 2022

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

Every Tuesday, the Duchess of Sussex releases an Archetypes podcast episode and every week, the British papers find something to scream and cry about. As we’re nearing the end of this season, the British coverage has gotten more subdued, although maybe I’ve just gotten better at tuning them out. I saw a few different people – Sussex Squaders – talking about the Telegraph’s coverage of this week’s podcast, “The Audacity of the Activist.” The Telegraph isn’t trying to make a meal over every little nitpicky thing about Meghan, but they did layer in some very hilarious commentary about how Meghan was an activist when she was a working royal, just as other royal women are suddenly activists too!! HRUMPH!

The hour-long episode, the tenth in the series, sees the Duchess explain why she has chosen to campaign for gender equity. She did so throughout her short time in the Royal family, whose members have regularly worked to promote the rights of women.

Describing the lead-up to her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry, the Duchess said: “Just a few days before my wedding, a very, very influential and inspiring woman – who for her own privacy I won’t share who [it] was with you – but she said to me, I know that your life is changing but please don’t give up your activism. Don’t give up because it means so much to women and girls. And I kept doing the work for women and girls because it matters, yes, but also because she encouraged me to do so and the collective voice of all of us telling each other.”

The Duchess’s campaigning for women and girls during her two years in Britain included becoming patron of SmartWorks, a charity helping to boost the confidence of vulnerable women by dressing them for job interviews, and a cookbook for the Grenfell Tower community. In doing so, she followed in the footsteps of other female members of the Royal family, who are still working within the palace system.

The Queen has made domestic violence a cornerstone of her public campaigning, while the Princess of Wales focuses closely on the mental health of mothers and promotion of women in sport. The Countess of Wessex works with the UN for the protection of women from sexual violence in warzones, the Princess Royal has been a lifelong supporter of women in Stem and the military, and the late Queen Elizabeth II is regularly held up as one of history’s most influential women, reigning through decades dominated by men.

[From The Telegraph]

Dictionary definition of “activist”: “a person who campaigns to bring about political or social change.” In fact, when Meghan used her position within the royal family to be an activist, she was always ripped to shreds for being “too political, too woke, too American” and for trying to “change” things which are perfectly fine already, at least according to the old, stale, male editors of the British papers. I would agree that other royal women have sometimes ventured into something resembling activism, but there’s a difference between activism, advocacy and patronage. Most royal women are not actually activists, they are advocates and patrons. I just find it funny that Meghan is like “activism is cool, more women should be activists” and the Telegraph is crying about how no one recognizes Kate’s “activism” in saying “the early years are important” for five years.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

I have a lil’ theory about the British media’s water-carrying for King Charles in regard to his campaign against The Crown. My theory is that there are a significant number of people in the British media who have been sharpening their knives and looking for a way to begin attacking Charles, and they thought “critiquing The Crown” would be their vehicle to do so. The fact that The Crown’s Season 5 was a somewhat flattering portrait of Charles has bummed them out, but they’ve still used the coverage to remind people about Charles’s despicable behavior, and how he treated Diana in particular. So it’s unsurprising to hear that Princess Diana’s former chief of staff – her longtime private secretary Patrick Jephson – spoke to The Scandal Mongers podcast and got into some nitty-gritty stuff about Charles’s gaslighting and smear campaign against Diana. Some highlights:

On Charles’s campaign to paint Diana as unstable & unwell: “This is not just some casual gossip, it was a systematic campaign. Okay, it was a long time ago, but … the man they were supporting is now our king and these things should not be buried, they should not be conveniently pushed to one side. They happened, in theory they could happen again, and certainly they shouldn’t pass without censure.”

On the official line that Diana was “a bit crazy”: “I get very frustrated. That has become the official line. If you ask people close to the current royal establishment — if you dare bring up the subject of Princess Diana, which very few people would — then I think that is the answer you would get; that it was a tragic story and that she was essentially troubled mentally, and the implication being that she was not entirely up the job, which essentially then she failed at.” Referring to the new Queen Consort Camilla, he said: “And the unspoken addition is that everything is alright now because we have her replacement, who is wonderfully down-to-earth and grounded and not at all flakey or paranoid.

The real Diana was perfectly sane: “When I hear people follow this line, when I see it not being challenged, I think, well, wait a minute. I knew Princess Diana probably better than almost anybody — certainly professionally — and she was one of the most sane people I ever met. Considering the life she lived, considering the pressures she was under, she wasn’t just sane, she had a kind of ability to restore sanity to crazy situations. As an eye witness, she could be a bit of a handful sometimes, but she was always extremely aware, sane, grounded, and funny.”

Diana would turn those accusations to her advantage: “Once it became apparent her critics were trying to smear her with allegations of mental instability. She said ‘Yes, I do have an eating disorder,’ for example, and she gave a speech about eating disorders. I can’t think of a better definition of sanity than [to] have people accuse you of being nuts, and stand up and make a speech about the condition that you do have,” and explain how it “affects a lot of people, particularly young women. I think that is a sign of extraordinary strength and shows the essential pettiness of her accuser,” Jephson added. He said the stories about her mental health were spread “by and large, by men, about a woman in a marriage with the intention to help another man.”

Diana wanted to tell her story & people really were after her: “It was also no wonder that Diana turned to Andrew Morton to tell her story in a book —and no wonder that she fell for Martin Bashir’s lies… There was plenty of evidence that people were briefing against her, they were tapping her phone, they were hostile to her in many ways and determined to clip her wings as a princess. There were reasonable grounds also to think that her connection to her children might be at risk during the divorce negotiations. Bashir knew what he was doing, he undermined her confidence in her ability to form decisions that she could have confidence in, in those circumstances, to act in a cautious way. If she believed what he told her, it was a perfectly reasonable response to do what she did.”

Diana wanted someone to call Charles to account: “She was also far too aware that nobody was calling the prince to account for his conduct, nobody in his family was calling him to account. They seemed to be complicit in what to her was a betrayal. The establishment was complicit, the affair with Camilla was well known in establishment circles and all they did was to talk about Diana behind her back, to whisper about her. Nobody offered her support, nobody took her to one side and said ‘now look this is all very unfortunate, but it happens in all families, but but you’re going to get through it and we’re going to support you and you’re doing a great job and we want you to do more of it — but no. She was left isolated, she was left with no acknowledgment of the situation she was in, the stress she was under, the challenges she faced every day to raise her children in these circumstances, plus she had to prepare them for a life of service. And she thought, ‘How am I going to get my side of this out?’”

No one understood what an asset Diana was: “Unfortunately, instead of embracing Diana as a fabulous asset, as somebody who could be an essential part of the modern royal family, they chose instead to be suspicious of her, to resent her, to undermine her and to dislike her.”

[From Page Six]

“They happened, in theory they could happen again, and certainly they shouldn’t pass without censure.” It’s literally happening again because the same people are running the exact same play against Diana’s younger son and his wife. The same establishment has tried to convince everyone that Prince Harry is weak, unstable, mentally ill, and that’s why he was attracted to Meghan. Let’s not forget that when Meghan was truly suicidal – after they did everything they could to make her so – they refused to get her help.

As for Jephson’s pointed comments about Charles’s campaign against Diana and how desperate she was to be heard and acknowledged… again, that’s what people thought The Crown would be this season. They were expecting Peter Morgan to get into Charles’s very real smear campaign against Diana and how poorly he treated her overall. The fact that Morgan largely ignored or soft-pedaled that part of that story is narrative malpractice!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Jeff Bezos pledges to eventually give his fortune to charity. [Towleroad]
Happy 50th birthday to Scorpio King Jonny Lee Miller. [Dlisted]
Daniel Craig did a commercial for Belvedere Vodka. [OMG Blog]
Julia Fox talks about (lack of) sex & patriarchy. [LaineyGossip]
More photos from the Baby2Baby gala. [RCFA]
What are some of the dumbest tweets of all time? [Pajiba]
Liam Hemsworth is still with Gabriella Brooks. [JustJared]
This is a heavy, almost matronly look on Diane Kruger. [GFY]
Yeah, Khloe & Kim Kardashian have been leaning into disordered body-image messaging and viewers are tuning out. [Buzzfeed]
Breaking: Anna Duggar wore jeans. [Starcasm]
Larsa Pippen is dating Michael Jordan’s 31-year-old son Marcus. [Egotastic]
Gigi Hadid didn’t go to Leo DiCaprio’s big birthday party?? [Gawker]

Candace Cameron Bure is very right-wing, very Evangelical Christian. She’s also the kind of new-wave fundamentalist who can reframe issues so she seems like less of a close-minded bigot. Make no mistake, though. She’s absolutely a close-minded bigot. She’s not anti-vaccine, she’s just pro-immunity! She’s not anti-LGBTQ, she just thinks gay folks shouldn’t have the right to marry or be represented positively in the media. She’s not a fundamentalist Christian hellbent on turning America into Gilead, she just “loves Jesus.” Which brings me to this story – Candace left the Hallmark Channel in April after a decade spent on making those churchy, wholesome TV movies. Candace is now working with the Great American Family network to turn that into the kind of “family values” channel where LGBTQ folks are never heard from or represented. It looks like Candace might have put the GAF network in a bit of a pickle though, because she said that sh-t explicitly.

Candace Cameron Bure does not expect the Great American Family (GAF) network, which she serves as the chief creative officer for, to feature same-sex couples in its Christmas movies. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Monday, the Fuller House alum, 46, said, “I think that Great American Family will keep traditional marriage at the core,” when asked about the subject.

Bill Abbott, the former Hallmark Channel CEO who now runs GAF, added of featuring same-sex couples: “It’s certainly the year 2022, so we’re aware of the trends. There’s no whiteboard that says, ‘Yes, this’ or ‘No, we’ll never go here.’ ”

A representative for GAF and Bure did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. Bure exited the Hallmark Channel in April — a network she had worked with for over a decade. The channel currently has plans to air a more diverse lineup this year, including the upcoming movie, The Holiday Sitter, which will feature a main LGBTQ love story.

Bure told the WSJ that the Great American Family has no plans to do the same, but will instead focus on other stories, like that of her first movie with the network, A Christmas … Present, which will premiere on Great American Family this month. Bure previously starred in 10 holiday-themed movies and 30 films overall for Hallmark’s Crown Media.

Now, Bure told the WSJ: “My heart wants to tell stories that have more meaning and purpose and depth behind them. I knew that the people behind Great American Family were Christians that love the Lord and wanted to promote faith programming and good family entertainment.”

The outlet said that Bure would not speak about her departure from Hallmark Channel, only telling them, “It basically is a completely different network than when I started because of the change of leadership.”

And while Hallmark executives declined to comment on Great American Family to the WSJ, a spokeswoman for Hallmark said, “We want all viewers to see themselves in our programming and everyone is welcome.”

[From People]

Again, Candace is the kind of fundamentalist bigot who enjoys reframing conversations – it’s not that the Hallmark Channel is a den of LGBTQ hedonism, it’s that GAF will be so much more “wholesome.” GAF will take pains to show a world in which LGBTQ folks have no right to marry, love, exist or celebrate Christmas. You know, family values! Wholesome! Not like those pagan sodomite abortionists at the g–damn Hallmark Channel! It’s hilarious. When did “Christianity” become synonymous with “we’re scared of fictional representations of the existence of gay folks”?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

I didn’t even really catch the interesting “staging” of the Windsors on Remembrance Sunday, but the Telegraph made a point of dissecting it. For most of QEII’s reign, she was down on the ground at the Cenotaph, laying her wreath. When she got much older, she gave Prince Charles the task of wreath-laying while she stood on the balcony of the Foreign Office, flanked by the most senior women in the family. QEII was always supposed to be the “center” of the image, whether she was physically laying the wreath or whether she was on the balcony. But it’s different now that King Charles III is in charge. He was centered on the ground, with William directly behind him, then Anne and Edward behind William. On the balcony, Kate and Camilla were given equal prominence.

The Queen and Princess of Wales were given equal prominence as they shared a balcony to watch the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph, ensuring that neither took the place of Queen Elizabeth II. In a break from tradition, the two senior royals stood side by side, while the Countess of Wessex stood on a separate balcony alongside the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.

The arrangement meant that no one was deemed to have replaced the late Queen by taking her central spot at the first Remembrance ceremony since her death. The monarch had stood front and centre on a Foreign Office balcony overlooking Whitehall since her son, then Prince of Wales, took on the responsibility of laying her wreath in 2017.

The late Queen missed last year’s service due to a back strain that put her temporarily out of action. Her absence meant that the Duchess of Cornwall, the Countess of Wessex and the Duchess of Cambridge stood together on a balcony, with the latter in the middle, suggesting that Camilla had opted not to pull rank by substituting herself for the monarch. However, royal sources insisted at the time that the arrangement was spontaneous, rather than being pre-planned.

This year’s arrangement ensured the family neatly avoided the issue altogether.

[From The Telegraph]

So last year’s balcony placement made it look like Kate was super-eager to “take the place” of QEII, with Camilla off to the side. This year, Kate and Camilla stood as “equals” on the balcony, and shifted the Countess of Wessex to a separate balcony. Really, the staging would have made more sense with Camilla in the center, flanked by Kate and Sophie on either side. Camilla IS the Queen Consort after all. But it was seemingly more important to “mean girl” Sophie. I wonder who made that call?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

This week’s Archetypes podcast is “The Audacity of the Activist with Jameela Jamil and Shohreh Aghdashloo.” The Duchess of Sussex focuses on how women’s activism is diminished, mocked, ignored and marginalized across all spectrums of society. Meghan also speaks with Ilana Glazer and Lisa Tetrault, author of The Myth of Seneca Falls. I like the framing Meghan and Ilana Glazer made about “hiding your vegetables,” as in women feeling the need to soften their opinions or activism to make everything more palatable. Here’s the pod:

Honestly, for years I haven’t really been able to stand Jameela Jamil, but I listened to most of Meghan’s interview with her and I came out of it feeling differently. Meghan gives her a platform to discuss the proliferation of diet culture online, then they talk about how the media has gone after her. Jamil is right – we’re rarely seeing celebrities posting about their “fat-burning teas” or diet whatever, and she was a huge part of that change. Jamil also admits that she entered spaces and conversations that she shouldn’t have, which is a huge reason why I tuned her out years ago – she thought she was the most important person to ever speak on every issue, ever. There’s a difference between “bold, loud and passionate activist” and “a narcissist using various causes to get attention for themselves.” Jameela was both at various times.

This pod, for me, got a lot more interesting when Meghan talks to Lisa Tetrault about the history of women’s activism and women’s movements, from the Suffrage movement, to Angela Davis, Gloria Steinem and Tarana Burke. Then around the 37-minute mark, Meghan begins speaking to Shohreh Aghdashloo, the Iranian actress and activist. She was an actress in Iran before the 1979 revolution and she, like many Iranians, fled their country under the ayatollah. Shohreh made me cry – she spoke about what it was like after the shah was overthrown and how she was stoned by pro-revolutionaries. Meghan uses this conversation to highlight the murder of Mahsa Amini by Iran’s morality police and the subsequent protests all around Iran, with women removing the hijabs, cutting their hair and fighting for their rights.

Photos courtesy of Spotify, Archewell, Avalon Red.