As CB said yesterday, our thoughts and prayers are with everyone in Texas right now – Oya and some of our favorite commenters live in the Lone Star state, and they’re facing some horrendous conditions right now because of a historic winter storm. Millions of Texans have been left without power, and the roads are so bad, stores cannot restock essential items.

The dire situation in Texas has been made worse because Republicans have had control of the state for decades, and they’ve deregulated and privatized everything to the point where Governor Abbott is literally telling Texans that they should be okay with freezing to death for capitalism. Gov. Abbott, former governor Rick Perry, Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Senator Ted Cruz – all Texas Republicans – have explicitly blamed socialism, AOC, and Democrats for all of Texas’s current problems. Instead of actually working to fix things and get the power back on, they’re literally stopping by Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to say sh-t like “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.” 93% of Texas’s power grid is fueled by natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. Just FYI.

As for Ted Cruz, he literally left millions of constituents to freeze to death in Texas while he took a little jaunt down to Cancun, Mexico.

I now have multiple people DMing me, confirming he was on their flight to Cancun today ? https://t.co/B6aikULyZ6

— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) February 18, 2021

Just confirmed @SenTedCruz and his family flew to Cancun tonight for a few days at a resort they’ve visited before. Cruz seems to believe there isn’t much for him to do in Texas for the millions of fellow Texans who remain without electricity/water and are literally freezing. pic.twitter.com/6nPiVWtdxe

— David Shuster (@DavidShuster) February 18, 2021

Older peeps: this has the feel of another Katrina, right? Remember when George W. Bush and all of the Bush officials just continued with their vacations while people were dying in Louisiana and Mississippi? Only this time, it’s just in Texas and the state Republicans are batsh-t crazy AND lazy AND compromised, while the Democratic president is actually authorizing federal aid and trying to save people.

Beto O’Rourke has been on the ground and trying to help seniors.

“There has been complete Republican control of the state of Texas for 20 years.”

Former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke dismisses Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s claim that renewable energy is responsible for power shortages during the winter storm in Texas. pic.twitter.com/vGg2LukFK5

— CNN (@CNN) February 18, 2021

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

If you haven’t been repeatedly bashed in the head by this information over the past 72 hours, here it is again: the Queen is absolutely going to force the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to give up their royal patronages, which will include Meghan’s National Theatre patronage, and Harry’s honorary military titles. What’s being parsed is who knew what and when and why, and there’s still not a straight answer. Buckingham Palace would seemingly want us to believe that Harry and Meghan knew they were being kicked out of the patronages and that’s WHY H&M decided to give an interview to Oprah. But who even knows at this point. This has become like that fakakta tiara story – there are so many different versions and all of them are offensive and stupid, so at some point I just give up. Anyway, the point is that even People Magazine says that Harry and Meghan are being forced to give up their patronages:

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are awaiting a final decision surrounding their official royal roles — and it’s expected soon. Most insiders now expect that the couple will lose the royal patronages — which represent their involvement with numerous U.K. charities — that were given to the couple by Queen Elizabeth. Harry is also expected to lose his honorary military appointments.

Final decisions have yet to be confirmed, but events are moving faster than initially thought. Rather than wait until March 31, when the probation period since the couple left full-time royal work comes to a close, PEOPLE understands the decision will now come down sooner. Although the couple no longer use their coveted His/Her Highness titles, they are expected to retain them — along with their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles. Reports also indicate there is a question mark over their roles as President and Vice-President of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust and Meghan’s role as patron the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

A close royal insider says that whatever the final decision regarding his military and Commonwealth appointments, “Harry will always be a great ambassador for this country.”

Palace sources have told PEOPLE that the challenge of keeping the royal roles stems from the couple’s commercial relationships with the likes of Netflix and Spotify — partnerships that have helped them achieve their dream of becoming financially independent. However, the Queen’s view is that members of the royal family can’t be “half in, half out” — that is, representing the Queen and the U.K. while also pursuing personal financial goals. A source adds, “It was clear to her from the start that a hybrid role is not an option.”

Queen Elizabeth has also had to balance her role as grandmother and great-grandmother. After the couple worked out details of their exit at the historic Sandringham Summit, she released a rare public statement of support. A royal insider told PEOPLE, “One thing about the Queen is she has to manage being grandmother but also how it affects the wider institution.”

[From People]

Translation: the Queen is a bitter, petty, nasty, reprehensible old bitty and she’s surrounded by abject amateurs who fail to advise her properly, so while she’s doing all of these horrible things to her grandson and her granddaughter-in-law, she wants us to know that she’s doing it all because she’s a tough but firm granny. No one is buying it. Meanwhile, did you hear that once the Queen takes away Harry’s military titles, he will no longer be allowed to wear his military dress uniforms at events?

The Duke of Sussex could be banned from wearing his military uniforms at future engagements when the Queen strips him of his patronages and Armed Forces titles – with an announcement expected to be brought forward. Prince Harry would still be allowed to wear his medals, including his Operational Service Medal for Afghanistan and those for the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, but could be prevented from wearing his uniforms.

The 36-year-old royal is known to cherish his role as Captain General of the Royal Marines. He is also honorary air commandant of RAF Honington in Suffolk and the Royal Navy’s commodore-in-chief of Small Ships and Diving. Harry has at least two ceremonial uniforms for his roles in the Forces, but has also worn a variety of military outfits in previous years before his appointment to his current three positions – as well as when he was in active service.

[From The Daily Mail]

Again, the Queen is doing all of this to the only grandson who served two tours in combat. A grandson who was haunted by what he saw in war and dedicated his post-military career to working with veterans, to mental health in the military community, to organizing a huge, multi-nation veterans’ Olympics-style games. These petty f–kfaces are going to ban HIM from wearing military uniforms. Notice that no one asks “why did Harry get out again?” It’s been obvious since the jump.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Eva Mendes famously plays her hand close to the vest when it comes to her family. If we know anything about her life with partner, Ryan Gosling or her two girls, Esmeralda, six, and Amada, four, it’s only because Eva allowed us that small glimpse. I applaud her for it, I think everyone should be allowed to keep their family out of the public eye if that’s important to them. Since lockdown has been in place, Eva has opened up ever so slightly on parenting while quarantined. Nothing salacious. If anything, she is posting accessible content, reaching out to fellow moms who might be having a hard time as we near the one-year anniversary of Stay At Home here in California. On Tuesday, Eva posted a photo of herself in a robe with a caption about parenting during quarantine that was both humorous and recognizable. In her caption, she said full time parenting was starting to get to her and added a few IG’s she’s been following that’s helped her get through so far:

Full on Mom mode.
I’ve graduated from my man’s sweats to a robe. All day. File under: stopped caring for now. (And anyone else out there go horse-like on selfie mode?)

These days my kids are getting my full on attention. It’s challenging for sure but they need me now more than ever. If you find yourself in a similar situation, here’s a list of parenting pages that are getting me through so thought I’d share…

@biglittlefeelings
@themompsychologist
@babiesandbrains
@latinxparenting
@thegentlemamma
@wholistickids
@raisegoodkids
@transformingtoddlerhood
@busytoddler
@thefoodbabe

[From Instagram via Buzzfeed]

This is the latest in a collection of posts in which Eva admits lockdown has been getting tougher. Again, she doesn’t unload with specifics or lengthy paragraphs about where she is. She gives more general information that is completely relatable to anyone in the same headspace. Sometimes her comments are just funny momisms. And sometimes there’s weight behind her humor in which she lets her followers know that its hard right now. I know some of you are really enjoying your time at home and have been lucky enough to secure your income. If this period has been good for you, that’s great and you have every right to enjoy it. But for those who aren’t thriving right now, I feel you. Eva has young kids. I’ve said a few times I don’t know how I would have gotten through this with toddlers or babies. For all you moms of small children, I salute you. I checked out the IGs Eva suggested above, they are geared towards younger children and look good. Themompsychologist and latinxparenting especially had some good lists and series to check out.

My kids aren’t young, so I can’t exactly identify with Eva, but I relate in another way. Without boring you guys, I’ll just say I feel the schools in my area are failing the students. Both my kids’ confidences are shattered so I have to rebuild them and their grades. Or, as Eva put it, I’ve had to become “full on.” This pandemic is difficult, guys. And with the end date constantly getting pushed back, it seems like we’re never getting out of it. I think Eva’s got the right idea. Take it one day at a time, do what we need to but it’s okay to say it’s rough every once in a while. And if you have any tips and tricks that make it better, pass them along to each other.

Photo credit: Instagram

Jennifer Lopez covers Elle for early promotion for Marry Me, the film she did with Owen Wilson and Maluma. Maluma got his own Marry Me cover of Elle too – Owen did not. But for the bulk of this interview, Jennifer is talking about her J.Lo Beauty line, which she launched a few months ago. What I didn’t realize before now is that the line consists of only eight products: “a cleanser, a serum, a sheet mask, a night cream, an SPF moisturizer, an eye cream, a bronzer/complexion booster, and a dietary supplement.” I thought it was a lot bigger than that! You can read the full Elle piece here. Some highlights:

The second Latin music wave: “I was part of that [first wave], and that was Latin artists coming over and singing in English, but now this is such a different thing. This is Spanish music becoming American music, becoming global music.”

Figuring out her beauty line during the pandemic: “I didn’t plan to be trapped at home. But I had planned to be home, and it’s been good. Wherever I go, the number one question people ask is, ‘What do you do for your skin?’? Even my closest friends are like, ‘Come on, bitch, what are you doing with your skin?’?”

The products include olive extract: “Some of us had drier hair than others, and they’d take out a bottle of olive oil and they’d put it in your hair. Then it would drip down onto your face, and the next day, your complexion looked like you were 10 years old. Even when I was working in the business, and they would be gluing stuff to my head, and hitting me in the face with a fan at 100 miles per hour on movie sets, I’d come home and lather myself in it.”

She’s a big believer in her sheet mask: “I’ve tried everything from the cheap products at the drugstore to the most expensive stuff—and some of these masks can run you $50 to $200, okay? They are expensive. My kids are, like, trying to put it on, and I’m like, ‘Don’t touch that mask, that’s too expensive to play around with.’”

Alex Rodriguez tests her products too: “[Alex] tries everything. We did the mask together on the first night, and I filmed myself and it was just life-changing. I was like, My God, I feel like I have a baby face! He loves it, and now we’re always fighting for the mask since they’re not in full production. [These products] are for anybody who has skin, which is everyone.”

On her wedding to A-Rod: “We postponed the wedding twice. We had planned what we really, really wanted to do, [but] I don’t know if we’ll be able to re-create that. We canceled it, and since then we haven’t really talked about it. There’s no rush. We want to do it right when we can do it. We just have to wait to see where the world lands.”

On politics (this was before the election): “I’ve told everybody who works around me, all my family, ‘Don’t even talk to me if you haven’t voted.’ The world right now is so confusing to me, because I feel like we all know that things need to change. It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat, if you’re looking at the world right now, you know that we can do better—you know that. We can’t stay with this administration, we just can’t. It’s the definition of insanity.” Four years ago, she was at Hillary Clinton’s election-night party. “I just remember thinking that [a Trump win] could never happen. So we can’t take anything for granted.”

On being Puerto Rican and American: “The idea of using the song ‘Let’s Get Loud’ [was about] never staying quiet and always using your voice against any injustices in this world. I feel like sometimes people act like it’s not our country, too. It was very important to me to put in ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ and have my daughter sing it, because she was [born here] and I was, too. My mom came here. She was not born here; she was born in Puerto Rico, and [my parents] moved to New York. We are proud Puerto Ricans and Latinos, but we’re proud Americans, too.”

[From Elle]

I appreciate the part where she didn’t want her kids to play around with her expensive beauty products. Unlike so many celebrity parents, I’ve never gotten the vibe that Jennifer spoils her kids to excess, and she has kept in touch with her middle-class-Bronx side when it comes to parenting (and probably not much else). That being said, she actually sold me on her beauty line! I’m a big fan of Jennifer’s perfumes so I was curious about this beauty line, and now I really want to try some of these products, especially the eye cream and night cream.

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A post shared by ELLE Magazine (@elleusa)

Cover & IG courtesy of Elle.

Vera Wang, 71, wants to reframe how we discuss women. Last year, Vera got bored and started posting these rather fabulous shots of her lounging around her Miami manse to Instagram. The photos were posted on Twitter where they quickly went viral. Vera was shocked that anyone cared about little ol’ her and her amazing legs. But she’s fine giving away her secrets to being a sexy septuagenarian on one condition: don’t bring age into the discussion. Vera talked to Access to promote her new vodka. Here’s part of what she said and you can see the video here.

On her photos going viral
I was working out and it never occurred to me that anyone would even notice. This whole thing was crazy, really crazy.

On the public’s fixation with her age
I joke and say I’m really 101. I understand the focus, but I don’t think it should be about that focus. It should be about all women of any age. It’s really about you and having confidence.

On her new vodka
We tested 14 vodkas. It was the first time that anyone in fashion had created a vodka with a fashion take. Not only the liquid, but also the bottle itself. Vodka is sexy to me, it’s cool.

[From Access]

I’ve always like Vera, primarily because I really like her as a designer. I appreciate it when she says that we shouldn’t focus on women’s ages but their confidence.I realize how easy that must be to say for someone as rich and privileged as Vera, who looks amazing and clearly has the time to devote to her physical and mental health. But ideally it should be about us and how bad@$$ we are at whatever age we are. Society still tells women we are no longer viable after a certain age unless we break the register by looking like Halle Berry or Shohreh Aghdashloo. I’ve never been pretty, but I’ve always made an impression. I don’t see any reason that needs to stop just because society slapped a sell-by date on me.

CB and I were giggling over Vera’s “vodka with a fashion take,” concept. That sounds like something Zoolander would promote. I picture a bottle of air and the whole ad campaign is paper-thin models refilling their martini glasses with vapors, claiming they can breathe in the essence of fashion. Maybe I just don’t get it because I don’t see vodka as that sexy. For me it’s more a filler booze, because you can mix it with so many different things. I don’t know what I’d call sexy, maybe sparkling wines? However, I will credit Vera with a creating a very sexy vodka bottle. I scoffed when I read it, but I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t display her bottle out in the open.

Photo credit: Instagram

Embed from Getty Images
Bette Midler was on Jimmy Kimmel promoting her new children’s book, The Tale of The Mandarin Duck, which is about the handsome Mandarin duck in Central Park. Remember that fine specimen? I could have sworn that we first saw it last year, but it has its own Wikipedia page and the first sighting was in October 2018. The beautiful duck left around March 2019 to hopefully find a mate and make gorgeous ducklings.

Bette is generally a good Democrat, but she’s made some painfully obvious missteps that my mother, who is the same age, would never make. I’ll just say that. My opinion of her has changed over the years but I did enjoy this interview and I agree with what she said about how she’s feeling now that we’re getting vaccinated. Bette told Jimmy that she’d just received her second shot.

On her plans after the second vaccine is fully effective
Tons of anonymous sex. Actually I have no idea. I feel as if there’s kind of a pall over all of us. I don’t know when I’m going to recover from it. I’m just working my way through it now. The pandemic is the least of it. I don’t mean to put anybody down or make anyone feel lesser than. The whole thing is such a nightmare. It’s been like this for years. I feel like a battle has ended but we’re still in a war.

On her daughter’s pandemic wedding
[We had 11 guests]. We divided it up. My husband did the food, I did the flowers. They asked their friends to join the universal life and become ministers. They wrote their own vows. It was so sweet. My wedding was two people and the Elvis impersonator who married us. We eloped to Vegas [in 1984]. We had nobody. She had ten friends. She was over the moon.

There were no cell phones in 1984 and we had no photos [of my wedding], but apparently there was a photographer there. When the Starlight Chapel closed its doors five years ago they sent us the pictures.

She was inspired by the handsome Central Park duck to write a children’s book
My dinner partner [on Thanksgiving] was a birder. She told me she had been documenting this Mandarin duck, had I seen it? She showed me the bird on the phone and I was knocked out. She said ‘I’d love to write a children’s book but I hate writing.’ I went home and kind of banged it out that night. It really spoke to me.

[From Jimmy Kimmel Live on YouTube]

Bette’s daughter, Sophie Von Haselberg, is 34, which is surprising to me since Bette is 75, but Bette married Sophie’s dad when she was 39. I love looking up the ages when people did things for some reason. Sophie only posted one photo of her June wedding, here’s a link to that. There are a couple more photos in the essay she wrote about it for Brides Magazine. I’ve included a screenshot below of the photo Bette shared of her own wedding. I didn’t realize she hadn’t posted it on Instagram yet!

As for Bette’s thoughts about how we’re all feeling, I can relate. I am still so tired, worn down and just ready for this to be over. I haven’t gotten my first vaccination yet and I keep telling myself it will be different once I’m fully vaccinated. Things have gotten so much better under Biden, that’s for sure. What if it’s only a little better once we’re vaccinated though? It just feels like Bette said, that a battle has ended but we’re still in a war. I will never look at other people the same. While I’ve always been a cynical person, I’ve never trusted people less. Thanks for listening to me complain. I’ll try to end on a positive note. I’ve found my people during lockdown and for that I’ll always be grateful.

Here’s that interview!

Embed from Getty Images

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A post shared by Bette Midler (@bettemidler)

Photos credit: Avalon.red and Getty

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