Are you an avid watcher of The Late Late Show? Yeah, me neither, but I’m about to become one, now that James Corden (a.k.a. the childless baker from Into The Woods) is at the helm, bringing a new vitality to the brand. In his debut episode, he managed to convince Tom Hanks not only to appear on the show, but to recreate all his films at breakneck speed. Hanks’ arm-flailing Woody impression is too adorable for words. See it for yourself:

Corden could have stopped there, but went the extra mile by getting Mariah to agree to ride shotgun in a normal person car and sing along to her own songs. The result is #Beautiful.

The Atlantic is heralding Corden’s arrival to television as “part of a new, cheerful generation of late night.” Based on his first week, we’re more than happy to have him!

Since the departures of comedy greats Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig, I don’t pay attention to Saturday Night Live like I once did. But every now and then, a celebrity host exceeds expectations and delivers a bit even the haters can love.

This time, the-little-skit-that-could stars The Rock as Bambi and riffs on how Disney’s addiction to transforming animated classics into live-action features (see: Tim Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland, Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent, Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast adaptation starring Emma Watson).

It’s hunting season and Bambi is finally old enough to exact his revenge against those who killed his mother, with the help of Thumper (played by a fake Vin Diesel) and friends. “It’s time for them to pay…deerly.” There are more Carrie Bradshaw-esque puns where that came from. Check it out:

No matter how much we pretend it isn’t so, the truth of the matter is that Jon Stewart will be leaving The Daily Show desk. Last time he abandoned us, we got John Oliver as a fill-in, and look how great that turned out! So it’s with an optimistic heart that we greet the announcement of Stewart’s replacement. Drumroll, please! Is it Samantha Bee? Or Jessica Williams? Or Amy Sedaris? No, Nope, and Nu uh. It’s Trevor Noah!

You might be asking, Who? And that’s okay because that’s exactly what many people said when then relatively unknown Jon Stewart was tapped to take over The Daily Show back in 1999. For those who don’t know, Trevor Noah is a 31-year-old comedian from South Africa, born to a black mother and a white father during apartheid. He speaks six languages and is the subject of a 2011 documentary called You Laugh But It’s True (you can watch it on Netflix!). He’s only appeared on The Daily Show three times (talk about a promotion!), but each bit made an impact, like his very first, in which he uses his outsider perspective to poke fun at America’s myopic perception of Africa.

Or his second, in which he managed to make chess interesting:

Or his third, in which he schooled Jon on what Boko Haram was doing in Nigeria, while the world was focusing on the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.

Pretty good, right? If you liked that, you can also watch his comedy specials 2012’s Trevor Noah: That’s Racist and 2013’s Trevor Noah: African American.

While we’ll continue to think of Jon Stewart whenever we hear Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” it’s time to stop pouring one out for him and start pouring it up for Trevor Noah!

Full House lives! According to TVLine, Netflix is dangerously close to green-lighting a new series called Fuller House, starring D.J. Tanner (Candace Cameron Bure) and her BFF Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber), with probable guest stars John Stamos, Bob Saget and Dave Coulier! If you’re feeling a wicked case of deja vu, it’s probably because this kind of news has been reported before and then revealed as a hoax. (You might remember the mini meltdown I had over the last fake-out.)

We’ll hold off celebrating until the paperwork is signed, sealed, delivered, but in the meantime, here is a humble request if this thing is actually going to happen: More Stephanie Tanner! None of the articles I’ve read on the subject have mentioned the best Tanner daughter (how rude!). Why shouldn’t she be in the mix?

She goes to make out parties:

She tells it like it is:

She is an expert at throwing shade:

She faces the same dilemmas as us:

She stands up for herself:

And she break dances to Boys II Men:

I rest my case.

This coming Sunday, a demigod will rise again! No, I’m not talking about Jesus, but Mad Men‘s Don Draper, the womanizing alcoholic we’ve been following for the past eight years. Over that stretch of time, I’ve gone from being obsessed with the show to being fed up with it to attempting to telepathically convince Matthew Weiner that a spin-off starring Peggy and Joan is what modern civilization desperately needs. Through all of this, I never stopped watching.

Maybe you have though. If you’ve lost that loving feeling and want it back, check out these tips on how to feel excited about Mad Men again:

If that works, you’ll probably want to throw a theme party in honor of the show. Want some advice on how to do that? You’re in luck:

And if you can’t wait ’til the season premiere to find out what might be in store for Draper and co., take a look at these new promotional photos and some wild speculations I made based on them:

Now, you should be ready to embark on Mad Men‘s final lap! Will Sal finally resurface? Will Betty snap and go on a homocidal rampage? The only way to find out is by watching the final season, which starts this Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015. See y’all there!

The tween punk friendly clothing brand Hot Topic recently made a brilliant decision launching an Orphan Black inspired clothing line. Now you can rock Cosmina’s bohemian style or something more hardcore like Helena’s. Orphan Black is not the first television show to get in the clothing game and it won’t be the last; there’s the Mad Men collection with Banana Republic and, thanks to The Limited, we can all feel like Olivia Pope.

And why not? For many shows, clothing plays a critical role in setting mood and tone, bringing the creator’s vision to life. You could almost argue that, for a series like Mad Men in particular, the wardrobe is a character unto itself. So let’s take a moment to see which other beloved shows deserve their own fashion line!

Walking Dead

When the world is dealing with a zombie apocalypse, functionality matters, which is something designer Maharishi understands very well, as evidenced by its Spring/Summer 2015 line.

Empire

Although the men have very distinct styles of their own (those scarves), Cookie always steals the show with her fierce looks. Now you can get a taste of her chic animal print with these looks from Giorgio Armani‘s Spring/Summer 2015 collection.

Orange is the New Black

While the prisoners of Litchfield Penitentiary are limited in their clothing options, you have to admit they do make orange look good. Agatha Kowalewski and Sarah Schofield, the creators of the Australian clothing line ASSK, see the potential of the new neon black.

Fresh Off the Boat

Fresh Off The Boat has been making waves for its portrayal of an Asian American family in very suburban Florida. While the comic chops of the cast are worth a watch, so are the super fly fashions of the ’90s. Little Eddie Huang swaggers with the best of them with his Notorious B.I.G. tees and track suits, and you can see those influences in Astrid Anderson‘s men’s Spring/Summer line.

Gotham

Let’s face it, Gotham is as much a city of heroes as it is of villains, but  it seems like the people living in the shadows have the better outfits. If you’ve been dying to dress like the formidable Fish Mooney, you can check out steampunk inspired looks that make up the Mathieu Mirano spring 2014 collection.

Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey is known for its grandeur and sheer luxury, so it makes sense that the king of romance and opulence, Valentino, came out with a line that reflected the best that Downton’s era had to offer.

Game of Thrones

There’s a lot to love about Game of Thrones. Aside form the drama and conniving characters, the inventive looks of key players like Daenerys is another great reason to tune in. Although characters wear everything including fur from head to toe to scraps of cloth, Helmut Lang was able to create some outfits that even we regular people can get a way with.

What other shows do you think deserve their own fashion line? Leave your ideas in the comments!

Let me start with a confession: I have seen every single episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and its 5 spin-offs (that’s 114 episodes, in case you’re wondering how much of my life I’ve spent thinking about these people versus learning a new language or how to paint a bowl of fruit or undertaking some other worthy pursuit). I have also on numerous occasions defended various members of the Kardashian clan, usually Khloe.

Why the debate? Because the prevailing notion is that they’re famous for no reason (it’s true that they don’t have talent in the traditional sense, but they’re able to create a heightened version of their family life for television that has kept people interested since 2007 and that’s something). Another major criticism is that they will do anything for more publicity and fame (I concede this point).

Over the years, there’s been a lot of family drama, to say the least. Everything from standard sibling bickering to 72 days marriages to serious drug addictions. No matter what kind of craziness goes on, Bruce Jenner is on the sidelines, offering advice that no one heeds. He pretty much stays out of the way and, in recent years, has appeared to disdain his now ex-wife, Kris, and the things she and her children hold dear: looks, fame, name brands, money.

So it was a bit shocking when buzz started to circulate around Jenner for once. Because he prefers his hair long and appears to have an affinity for plastic surgery, rumors began to swirl that he was transitioning. Those two characteristics aren’t enough to make assumptions regarding gender identity, yet here we are.

The family has not publicly commented on Bruce allegedly being trans, but, earlier this year, Kim had this to say, when asked about her stepfather: “I think everyone goes through things in life, and I think that story and what Bruce is going through, I think he’ll share whenever the time is right. I feel like that’s his journey to talk about.”

So, either she means what she says about his supposed transition not being her story to tell…or — and I really hope it isn’t this or — she is teasing around the issue, using terminology that could be applied to a transition, but actually is about something mundane like his transition from being married for 24 years to being single in his 60s.

All our questions will be answered when the much-hyped interview with Diane Sawyer airs on April 24, 2015. The promos tease: “The  Journey, The Decisions, The Future.” And Jenner is quoted as saying: “My whole life has been getting me ready for this.” Again, words that could be about being trans, but are not specific enough to get anyone in trouble if this all turns out to be a ratings ploy. It’s not their fault we assumed they were talking about being trans, right? No one ever said anything explicitly about that.

That level of manipulation seems extreme, even for the Kardashians, but what if they truly go there, in order to get some buzz and to assure that Bruce, who is no longer tied as tightly to the Kardashian empire, still gets a check? Using the very serious topic of trans people owning their truth and enduring everything that comes with that, in order to stay on magazine covers and keep people talking would be wildly insensitive, to say the least.

It seems outlandish to think they would take the risk of pissing off so many people, but I worry nonetheless because I’ve seen this kind of thing play out with them before. A few years ago, there were rumors that Khloe had a different father than the rest of her siblings. This was allowed to play out in the magazines and on the show for months. Could O.J. Simpson be her father? Or maybe this random hairstylist? What should have been a private matter was used as a dramatic arc for TV, only to ultimately be laughed off, because it probably was never true to begin with, manufactured, sold to the media, and acted out for the cameras, until the next storyline was cooked up.  No harm, no foul, cause it was not about their real lives, but about the versions of themselves they play for us.

Last year, when Beyoncé and Jay Z came to town with their On The Run tour and pretended to hate each other, only to be all over each other immediately after the tour ended, I wrote a piece asking if the divorce rumors were all just a marketing scheme:

“Maybe they feel fine messing with our conception of them because, at the end of the day, we don’t know them; it’s all fiction. Maybe they are just playing characters in a modern day opera, putting on the show they know we want to see…Would it be that surprising if they were savvy enough to create a narrative that would keep us interested, keep us buying $300 tickets, while they laugh all the way to the bank?”

Perhaps the only truly surprising thing isn’t how far celebrities will go to keep our interest and stay rich, but the fact that we expect anything else from them.

On a recent trip back East to visit my family, I made them buy a huge recycling bin and educated them on the importance of not throwing styrofoam containers out of the car window on the highway (no, really) and instead treating our planet with respect. Sure, living in San Francisco for almost nine years has definitely turned me into more of a hippie than I was upon arrival (I chant in yoga and have been known to keep browning banana skins and other organic detritus in my bag until I can deposit them in my compost bin at home), but the foundation of my Mother Earth-loving self was not born here, but in front of Nickelodeon in the early ’90s.

That’s where I met Z.Z. Ziff of Salute Your Shorts, a short-lived show about various trouble-making teens and their obnoxious counselor “Ug” at a summer camp called Camp Anawanna. There was the ginger bully and his dim sidekick, the All-American boy, the geek, the prima donna, the sporty girl, a Rilo Kiley member, and, last but certainly not least, the animal-loving, tree-hugging environmentalist. While the other kids were giving into greed or jealousy or whatever other silly thing middle schoolers are into, Z.Z., with her Earth earrings and naive idealism was always the voice of reason.

And never moreso than in the season one finale, “Environmental Party,” in which she attempts to educate her peers about the irreparable damage humans are doing to our fragile planet. At first, she goes the enraged activist route, shutting off the power and water to send a message to her blow-drying, long-shower-taking room mates. She also turns their room into a recycling center. This does not go over well and she is asked: “Are you out of your granola-munching, whole-wheat, tie-dyed save-the-planet mind?!” Um, rude!

Z.Z.’s second approach is better: a catchy song about environmentalism! Sample lyric: “If we don’t change the way we live, we’ll be covered in PUKE AND ROTTING GARBAGE! IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!” Despite being the best thing ever written (sorry, Marcel Proust), the kids think she’s insane and end up food-fighting and moshing ’cause why the hell not?

Eventually, with the help of a Greek trash collector so stereotypical that his last name is Spanakopita and he randomly exclaims Opa! for no reason (Tourette’s?), Z.Z. gets through to her friends by informing them that they can actually make money from recycling! Being Americans, they respond well to this and, after some soul-searching, come to realize that Z.Z. is not crazy just because she cares about something.

So, in honor of Earth Day, consider shedding your litter bug ways and being more like Z.Z. Ziff. If you happen to write an enraged compost-related song, please send it to me so it can keep “Puke and Rotting Garbage” company on my Love Me Some Gaia playlist. Oh, and you can watch this entire life-defining episode here!

This story was originally published in 2013.

The cultural debate over having kids vs. not having kids continues strong, with impassioned think pieces, statistics and the word “selfish” bandied about in both directions (even the Pope has weighed in!). I used to read these articles with some interest, as if they might hold answers for my own profound ambivalence on the matter, but I do so less these days. It turns out, of course, the answer isn’t there, and the whole discussion begins to feel a little bit noisy after a while. It’s all more personal than this giant public display.

There are a lot of complicated decisions in our lives, ones that take a really long time to make and matter a great deal. Then there are the narratives spinning around us as we do. This happens in a very particular sort of way for women, with a lot of judgement and rules. Our real life decisions and roles are complicated and full of paradox and our popular culture ought to reflect that, rather than simplify or dictate.

The photographer Sally Mann’s recent essay in The New York Times got me thinking about all the rules women must follow, both those shouted loudly from the rooftops and those sneakily, silently believed in the darkest parts of our hearts. We believe mothers embody certain characteristics or they ought to. They are either meant to be earth mamas knitting booties on a loom or harried soccer moms in ads for laundry detergent. They are barren witches or asexual caretakers with no desires of their own. They take naturally to the role of mother as they should or they are stricken by disconnect and a failure of their biology and femininity.

In Mann’s essay, she eloquently, and somewhat defensively, discusses being both an artist and a mother, how the critiques of the former intersected with those of the latter. She famously photographed her young children on their Virginia farm, which caused some serious hoopla over what some deemed the indecent and pornographic quality of the images. Mann’s essay describes the controversy with insight and clarity for the most part, but the claims of those branding her a bad mother clearly rile her. And we do seem particularly ready, as a collective, to label mothers one thing or another, too much of this or not enough of that.

Despite its soapy ridiculousness, the country soap Nashville sometimes reflects some surprisingly accurate versions of ourselves, albeit in the guise of country music stars. A recent storyline has former country starlet Juliette Barnes struggling with a postpartum yearning for country music fame, rooftop concerts, and elevator sex, instead of longing for mother-daughter bonding and bliss with her new baby. The scenes where the baby cries, and Juliette’s face gets all cold, and she wants to go to a party instead sort of give me a wonderful thrill. And not because I’m rooting for the darkness, but because I think the darkness needs to be illuminated a little bit more.

I hope this is the only place on the internet where Nashville and The  Babadook are uttered in the same sentence, but there’s an important thread connecting them. The Babadook inspired Anthony Lane of The New Yorker to declare, “Let a law be passed, requiring all horror films to be made by female directors.” The Babadook is an entirely discomfiting look at motherhood. It examines the all-consuming nature of grief, the sometimes totally annoying demands of a child, and how a mother’s identity fits into those heavy things, exploring whether she will even survive. All of this leads to an admission: being a mother is really, really hard sometimes. As with a lot we don’t readily admit, it seems that just saying this out loud is a great place to start.

Personal essays often seem to be where the complexities of motherhood begin to get the attention they deserve, where some of the tropes break down and make room for more interesting details. Ayelet Waldman’s controversial essay from 10 years ago is a good example, in which she states that she loves her husband more than her children, and subsequently caused the world to freak out. I appreciate her willingness to thoughtfully explore an unpopular point of view and her reminder that there are countless experiences of love and motherhood. She writes:

“And if my children resent having been moons rather than the sun? If they berate me for not having loved them enough? If they call me a bad mother?

I will tell them that I wish for them a love like I have for their father. I will tell them that they are my children, and they deserve both to love and be loved like that. I will tell them to settle for nothing less than what they saw when they looked at me, looking at him.”

There is also the amazing Megan Daum, whose essay on social work, miscarriages, and the decision to be a mother (or not) is one of the most interesting things I’ve read in a long time, about any subject. Much like Waldman’s piece, I felt grateful and reassured by the voice of a woman so truly and specifically sharing her individual experience.

Ditto Maggie Nelson’s essay on childbirth, which mixes transcendence and death in equal measure. She considers the idea of childbirth as a way to feel a certain closeness with death. At first glance, it might seem like a morbid notion, but I don’t think it is. We are born and we will die. It makes sense that a woman deeply engaged in the act of giving birth would be profoundly, physiologically reminded of the counter-pose.

My own mom once told me that, when I was first born, she cried because she realized that someday I would die. Who among us might know that in their bones more than our mothers? It isn’t sweet or sentimental, it isn’t an ad for laundry detergent, or a lifestyle blog with a handmade bassinet, or a pink glittered card to send on one day of the year. It’s far darker, deeper, and more profound than all that. It’s much more about love. We should all be willing to tell these stories, and we should all want to listen.

Mothers’ Day is right around the corner, a day about finally remembering to return your mom’s phone calls and crafting bad macaroni art that expresses your appreciation for her. It’s also a day to remember those other women that helped mold you into the dazzling creature you have become. No, I’m not talking about your first grade teacher or your great grandmother (although I’m sure they’re really spectacular women); I’m talking about those fictional moms that made an impact through television or movies, the ones that you sometimes wished were your mom and the ones that made you thankful for your own.

Here are the most frightening and most beloved fictional mothers in the history of forever:

THE FRIGHTENING

Joan Crawford: Mommie Dearest

Joan Crawford isn’t technically a fictional character, but there is some dispute over how accurate her daughter’s depiction of her is so I say it counts (also, why would we forgo any opportunity to talk about Joan Crawford?). So we all know that Joan is not a huge fan of wire hangers (who is really?), but that’s the least of it. Crawford also ties her son to his bed, says “I’d rather you go bald to school than looking like a tramp!” while cutting off her daughter’s hair, forces her daughter to stay at the dinner table overnight until she finishes her undercooked steak, says “YOU LOVE TO MAKE ME HIT YOU!” while slapping her daughter in front of a reporter, and then leaves them both out of her will. Way harsh, Tai.

Margaret White: Carrie

Some teens lock themselves in their rooms and write bad poetry about how absolutely horrible their mother is for grounding them or taking away phone privileges or whatever. These whiners obviously haven’t seen Carrie, a movie that makes most mothers look as gentle as Dumbo’s mom. Margaret White has a lot of opinions on what is suitable behavior for her daughter, Carrie. Let’s go over some of them: she should never wear red (that’s for hell-bound whores), she should only refer to her breasts as “dirty pillows,” she should think of pimples as “the Lord’s way of chastising you,” she should pray and ask forgiveness for her sinful period, she should be cool with getting tea thrown in her face, and she should heed the mantra: “They’re all going to laugh at you!” It’s enough to make anyone become a pyromaniac murderer!

Mary Jones: Precious

While there’s a degree of campy comedy to Joan Crawford and Margaret White, there’s nothing funny about Mary Jones (except maybe this genius creation). Not only does she facilitate her daughter’s sexual abuse, Mary also mentally abuses her and tries to drop a television on her head. The only capable person to negotiate a train wreck like this is a social worker played by Mariah Carey.

Betty Draper: Mad Men

Remember that time when you were a real brat during your puberty era? Well, Betty Draper seems to have gotten stuck there. She’s petulant, self-involved and never satisfied, all characteristics that keep her from being a good mother. Like when Sally showed up wearing a plastic dry cleaning bag over her head and Betty warned that the clothes better not be in a pile somewhere. Or when she told Bobby to go bang his head against a wall after he said he was bored. Or when she dragged Sally into a closet and locked her inside (“You’re hurting me!” “Good!”). You get the picture.

THE BELOVED

Clair Huxtable: The Cosby Show

Before Beyonce had the trademark on being perfect, it was all Clair Huxtable, a tough, elegant lawyer and mother of five children. While her husband believes he holds the power in the household, it’s usually Clair who gets to the bottom of things with a lecture about why you can’t just run off to Baltimore without permission or a perfect lesson on feminism (if you only click on one link for the rest of your life, let it be this one).

Molly Weasley: Harry Potter

The epitome of a mother hen, Molly Weasley is an encouraging, doting mother, who loves to make everyone feel at ease, despite, you know, the world possibly ending and everyone dropping dead and all of that jazz. But that doesn’t mean she’s just a domestic goddess; she will kill your ass if you threaten one of her children (see animated gif above).

Lorelai Gilmore: Gilmore Girls

Best fictional mom? Duh. Best fictional TV character ever? Quite possibly! Lorelai Gilmore is an impressive mom for more reasons than I can get into at the moment, but here are a few:

• named her daughter after herself because a. men do it all the time and b. why not?
• left a life of privilege with a baby in tow at the age of 16 and worked her way up from a maid at an inn to running the joint.
• put aside her pride and made a deal with her estranged parents to send her daughter to a good prep school.
• provided a sanctuary away from a scary religious Korean mother for her daughter’s best friend.
• sang “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Middler instead of getting upset after finding out her underage daughter attended a kegger and was the cause of severe property damage.
• did not kill her daughter when she dropped out of college and stole a boat.

But the best way to sum up the greatness of Lorelai Gilmore (apart from rewatching the entire series every year which I totally do) is through her daughter’s valedictorian speech (grab a tissue!):

SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN

Queen Mother: Alien

Take Molly Weasley’s protective vibe and multiply it by 7000 (plus buckets of slime saliva) and you get the Queen Mother from Alien. Sure, she’s frightening and monstrous and mutilates everyone who crosses her path, but she has her reasons! They pose a risk to her babies and she is not having any of that. No one said being maternal was always pretty.

Lucille Bluth: Arrested Development

Sure, she has a pill problem and drinks before most people wake up in the morning and is real about not particularly liking some of her children, but somehow all of that doesn’t keep us from falling in love with Lucille every time she’s on screen. Maybe she’s not one to help you with your geometry homework or pack you a healthy, well-balanced lunch, but you should really be doing that for yourself anyway. Cheers and winks to this wonderful woman!

And there you have it, ladies and gentleman! Which fictional moms would make your list? And when are you going to call your mom? (Answer: right now).

A version of this story was originally published in 2013.

Ever since Gilmore Girls was abruptly yanked from airwaves back in 2007, fans have tried to forget the sloppy way the brilliant show ended through a mixture of repeated marathons of better seasons and sheer denial. Rumors of a movie or mini-season have bubbled up pretty consistently over the years, but never from the lips of someone actually connected to the show. Until now, that is!

Scott Patterson, a.k.a. Luke “Butch” Danes, appeared on the Gilmore Guys podcast and had this to say:

“There are talks going on at the moment…So I’m hopeful, and you know, I’m in. I think it would be a big event, and I think it would be a great fan celebration. They deserve it. I think there’s a lot of territory left unexplored that we could explore in a limited series or a TV movie or feature film, whatever that may be. I think it really just comes down to the script. I think everybody would jump on board.”

Hold me!

We already know that most of the cast is set to reunite for a panel at next month’s ATX Television Festival. Maybe they’ll announce their master plan? Or just have the chance to make one?

While we wait to find out, here’s what this Gilmore Girls fanatic needs from any future iteration of the show:

Give us the Luke and Lorelai wedding!

The writers and stars of Gilmore Girls had no idea the last episode of Season 7 would be the last ever so what we’re left with is an abrupt, vague, unsatisfying womp of an ending. Fans are most bitter about missing out on a Lorelai and Luke wedding, something that was years in the making. Any new season or movie will need to make that right with a flashback of some sort. Or maybe we didn’t miss the wedding? Picture it: L&L hold out for all these years because, like Angie and Brad Pitt, they wanted to wait until all gays could also get married. Speaking of the gays…

Let Michel (and others) be gay!

While Lorelai and Rory seem to be pretty progressive, the show itself is a bit tone-deaf when it comes to LGBT issues. Although not as cringe-worthy as Friends (I dare you to count the number of gay panic jokes), Gilmore Girls has its moments, like when Lorelai tells Luke, “We need to leave the country and have extensive plastic surgery and sex changes, both of us! So…we can kiss and not look funny.”

These occasional gay jokes are the closest the show gets to having any LGBT visibility, as no character within the extensive cast is out. But some characters could be read as gay. There’s Michel, the wise-cracking French concierge who loves Celine Dion and parties all night with Janet Jackson drag queens. And Gypsy, the unmarried auto mechanic. And Sookie’s midwife doula, Bruce. It’s about time Gilmore Girls got with the times and allowed gays to become more than just a punchline.

Put Emily outside her comfort zone!

With the passing of Edward Herrmann, Emily Gilmore would presumably either be divorced or a widow. This is an opportunity for her to fully commit to her chain-smoking, dgaf alter ego. Let’s see what happens when she doesn’t get her hair set every day and quits the DAR to dance with hot dudes at singles bars. Or maybe Richard leaves all his money to his lurking ex, Pennilyn Lott, and Emily has to move in with Lorelai! Yes, that’s it!

Allow Lane to enjoy something!

Lane, Rory’s super cool, music-obsessed first-generation bestie, rebelled in early seasons: hiding CDs under her bedroom floorboards, kissing Seth Cohen from The OC while clutching a Bible, and dyeing her hair purple in protest of her mother’s suffocating expectations. But, as the show progressed, Lane ended up losing her nerve and became a martyr with a habit of settling for less.

She agreed to attend a super Christian school that frowns on girls interacting with boys. She settled for Zach, an immature layabout. She only had sex once and didn’t enjoy it and ended up pregnant with twins. And she settled for a best friend who doesn’t keep in touch and only appears when she needs something.

After being relegated to the sidelines and treated like a mere afterthought by the show’s writers for so long, it’s time Lane got hers. Give the girl a storyline! Allow her to get her groove back!

No more Logan!

In the beginning of the series, Rory was counter-culture, albeit in a goodie good sort of way. Enter Logan and all of a sudden she’s hosting DAR functions and wearing pearls and not talking to her mom. Nothing good came from Logan’s introduction and only good can come from his permanent exile.

Put Jackson in jail!

With Melissa McCarthy’s meteoric rise to fame (who would have thunk?), Sookie might not even be in the mix in a future Gilmore Girls project. If she doesn’t Olsen twin her way out of the reunion, I humbly request that her husband, Jackson, does not make an appearance. He might seem innocuous, but lest we forget the time he lied to his wife about getting a vasectomy in order to trick her into having more children than she wanted. The only way I want to see him is if the storyline involves Sookie taking him to court over that mess.

Let’s agree to forget April Nardini!

The show jumped the shark when it introduced Luke’s secret love child, as a way to drive a wedge between Luke and Lorelai. Instead of creating an interesting tension, all it really achieved was infuriating fans and making Luke seem like a huge jerk. It was an unnecessary move deserving of a mindless soap opera, not our beloved whip-smart show. We don’t need a reminder of these dark times. Let’s not speak of her again.

Do not even think about recasting anyone!

The last thing the world needs is another Becky from Roseanne situation. During its run, Gilmore Girls recast Mia, the hotel owner who gave Lorelai her first job, and it was really weird. Almost as weird as when the show cast Sherilyn Fenn in two separate roles. Just say no.

Rory doesn’t get back with an ex…unless it’s Jess!

I’ve already mentioned that Logan should take his stupid rocket gift and be gone. Dean also can’t sit with us. He was an okay first boyfriend (he built her a car!), but he was also jealous, needy and controlling. Rory needs to move on from these zeroes and get with a hero, probably someone brand new…

…unless it’s Jess. Yes, he was bratty at times, but his chemistry with Rory is unparalleled and he was the only guy who truly understood her. By the end of the show, he had calmed down and emotionally matured, on his way to becoming the Dave Eggers of Philadelphia. He tried to make things right with Rory several times, but she was too blinded by Logan’s privilege to take it seriously. Now could be their moment! (Prediction: we’re all a few minutes away from  Google image searching lots of pictures of Milo Ventimiglia.)

Please include the hallowed final four words!

Show-runner Amy Sherman-Palladino has teased that she has known the final four words of the show since its early days, but we never got to find out what they were. Any movie or future season obviously needs to include them and give us the ending that we deserve. Make it so, arc that bends towards justice!

What do you hope to see in a future Gilmore Girls reunion? Leave it in the comments!

After four months of fierce competition, RuPaul finally crowned America’s Next Drag Superstar last night in a pre-taped reunion special. Many people at the live screening I attended complained about how unmoved Violet Chachki looked, upon hearing the news of her win. There’s a reason for that.

For the past four seasons, the producers of RuPaul’s Drag Race film three separate outcomes to avoid spoilers. The queens find out who the true winner is by watching the episode, just like us!

With that in mind, the televised crowning ceremony seems less vital. No matter how good of an actor one is, it’s impossible for a queen to accurately project how they will feel and act upon winning until it actually happens.

Thankfully, the kind people at Logo taped the final three queens watching the finale last night. Check out their reactions below:

It’s no secret that I’m a Full House fan. I’ve written about how crestfallen I felt when news of a reunion were false and how excited I was when that news came true. Also, coworkers can attest to the young adult novel based on the series that is prominently displayed in my cubicle (in case you’re wondering, it’s Stephanie’s The Big Fix-Up Mix-Up). So I’m obviously going to have feelings about Lifetime’s The Unauthorized Full House Story TV movie.

First question: why are they doing this? When they gave Saved by the Bell the same treatment, it kind of made sense because there would probably be some famous-teens-run-amok-in-Hollywood behind-the-scenes dirt (there wasn’t). Most of the Full House cast was made up of children so how scandalous can it really get? Maybe there will be a dramatic reenactment of Ashley Olsen spilling some of her Capri Sun or Mary-Kate wiping a booger on someone?

Despite the fact that we no one wants this TV movie, Lifetime is set on doing it anyway, as evidenced by this official cast photo they just released:

My initial impressions can be best expressed in gif form:
      

This is what the Full House cast would have looked like in an alternate dimension where everything right is wrong. Uncle Jesse, who many of us had the hots for before we knew what that meant, has been the most disgraced here. He’s being played by one of Miley Cyrus’ ex-boyfriends, and not even the one who inspired much of her actually-very-good album Bangerz! Uncle Joey did not fare much better. Somewhere, Alanis Morissette is smiling to herself. Danny Tanner is being played by someone whose most interesting credit on IMDb is that he played a Marine in Pirates of the Caribbean…the video game. And the Tanner girls are dressed all wrong. So much floral.

Where are the geometric shapes?

The funky musical notes?

The yarn people adornments?

And where oh where is Kimmy’s mullet?

This isn’t rocket science, Lifetime. Google Image search is your friend. And y’all should have just gotten John Stamos to reprise his role because he still has it going on. And the worst part about this whole thing is that, because of this grotesque cast photo, there is a 97% chance I will actually watch your god-forsaken TV movie. So I guess kudos are in order.

If you follow this blog even a little bit, you probably already know that I have a pretty intense Gilmore Girls obsession. I’ve ranked the top 10 episodes, visited the set in LA, declared what should and shouldn’t happen in the rumored movie and made shrinky-dinks of Lorelai and Rory’s faces. And now I can add traveling almost two thousand miles to see the cast reunite to the list.

This weekend, I was in Austin, Texas for the ATX Festival and paid witness to the cast reuniting for the first time since 2007. Here’s what you missed:

Will there be a movie or new season?

I know that’s what you’re dying to know so I won’t keep you waiting. Despite Scott Patterson (Luke) getting our hopes way up a couple of weeks ago, Amy Sherman-Palladino dashed any movie dreams…for now:

“There’s nothing in the works at the moment. Here’s the good thing: Nobody here hates each other. That’s a very important step. It would have to be the right everything—the right format, the right timing, the right budget—it would have to be honored in a certain way. And if it ever came around, I think we would all jump in and do it. If it ever happened, I promise you I’d do it correctly.”

The beginning of what was to become Gilmore Girls was written on hotel stationery.

After Sherman-Palladino unsuccessfully pitched a bunch of ideas to The WB, she blurted out a vague idea about a mother and daughter who are more like friends. They bought it and Sherman-Palladino had to scramble to figure out what the story actually was. “It’s a mother, it’s a daughter. Do they rollerskate?” It all came to her on a trip to Connecticut.

“There were pumpkins and hay rides and people asking where you can go buy your pumpkin. And I thought this is not real…I didn’t understand the concept of people talking to each other and caring and wanting a response. It was strange. And that’s when I decided, Well, I’ll put them here, it seems nice, there’s trees. And over the weekend, I said ‘Oh, we’re staying at an inn. Maybe she works at an inn…look, I was desperate.'” The first kitchen scene was jotted down on the inn’s stationery and the rest is history!

Lauren Graham (Lorelai) on what it was like reading the script for the first time:

“Something really clicked. I remember Christopher Reeve saying ‘The way you know a part is really for you is if you can’t stand the idea of anyone else doing it.’ And that’s how I felt about this. I was like, Oo, this is mine, I can’t stand the idea of anyone else doing it! I had that kind of a strong reaction.”

Alexis Bledel (Rory) was sick during her audition and came across as hateful.

Because of a cold brought on by a modeling job that involved buckets of water being thrown at her head during winter, Bledel came across as prickly. Sherman-Palladino thought, “She hates me! I love her! I want the one who hates me!”

Lorelai and Rory’s cozy chemistry in the first season is due to Alexis Bledel not knowing what she was doing.

“I didn’t know how to clear the camera…I’d walk right behind Lauren because I didn’t know so she would have to grab me and make sure I was on-camera,” Bledel said.

Graham added: “You can watch me doing a lot of man-handling of Alexis in the early episodes. I think part of the Wow, they have instant chemistry is that I was literally mauling her all the time, like ‘over here, over here, we made it!’”

Bledel agreed, “I was never on my mark the first week of shooting, she was always scooting me over during the scene trying to help me.” Aww!

The first year was “particularly brutal” for the leading ladies.

Because much of the first season was spent building the world of Stars Hollow, much of the focus fell on Graham and Bledel. “The two of them were in every f*cking scene,” Sherman-Palladino said. The exhausted actresses came to Sherman-Palladino to beg for some rest: “We’re so tired. Is there anything you can do because we’re so tired?”

Team Jess rules! Teams Dean and Logan drool.

It didn’t take long for the rivalry between Rory’s boyfriends to come up. Both Jared Padalecki (Dean) and Matt Czuchry (Logan) admit they are Team Jess. Milo Ventimiglia (Jess) said he is Team Dean and added that “Logan was a dick.” Amen! Scott Patterson channeled Luke with the final word: “None of you are good enough for Rory.”

They all really miss Edward Herrmann (Richard Gilmore).

Amy Sherman-Palladino prepared a retrospective of Herrmann’s best moments (he passed away last December). Bledel, Kelly Bishop (Emily Gilmore) and especially Graham were super emotional after watching it, wiping away tears. Sherman-Palladino spoke for the group: “It’s really crappy that he’s gone and we miss him so much.” Sherman-Palladino added that he was the first person in the cast to RSVP for the reunion panel. An empty leather armchair on the stage stood in honor of Herrmann.

Liza Weil (Paris) auditioned for Rory and was only supposed to be on the show for three episodes.

“I went in and read for Rory and then I got a call and they were like ‘They really liked you, but they don’t think you’re quite right, but…maybe they’ll find something else for you to do.’ I thought that was probably the end of it. And the show went and they wrote Paris and the younger version of myself was really freaked out that that’s what they wrote. I just couldn’t fathom that they would think that I could do that. Now I think it’s very flattering and I’m really glad. It was supposed to just be three episodes and then it just kept going.”

Dean was supposed to be Canadian.

“There was another Dean. A Canadian Dean. Two Canadian Deans. Then we realized you gotta go American,” Sherman-Palladino said.

Lauren Graham (Lorelai) hates the show’s last season just as much as you do.

“For me, it didn’t end in a satisfying way. We weren’t sure it was the end. Amy wasn’t with us in the last season. It didn’t really end. It didn’t resolve satisfactorily.”

Graham also didn’t care for the episodes when Rory and Lorelai were estranged.

“I remember not liking it. I remember really struggling with it and feeling bad. It was personally difficult, as it should’ve been, as the actor and as the character. It was hard, but it set up something that was also important.”

The studio really wanted Rory to have sex.

Amy Sherman-Palladino remembers that the decision of when to have Rory lose her virginity was a bigger deal than the decision of when to let Luke and Lorelai be together. “At the time, everybody on TV was just f*cking. I’m all for a bunch of little whores running around. We weren’t trying to make a statement. We were trying to play the truth of who she was. I didn’t want her to get drunk at a party and be like, ‘Woo, what happened?’ The studio was finally like, ‘Seriously, she should have sex. What’s the deal, is she like a nun?'”

Lauren Graham doesn’t watch the show and has no idea why people keep quoting “Oy with the poodles already!”

“I haven’t watched myself on television since 1995. I’m not kidding. I don’t find it helpful.” Which explains why she doesn’t have a favorite episode: “I just don’t remember.” And why she is perplexed by the line that’s most quoted to her by fans: “Why did I say it and why did you like it so much?” Graham asked the crowd.

Amy Sherman-Palladino is not giving up those hallowed final four words anytime soon.

“For a while, I thought, ‘I’ll just hold on to it in case.’ And then I thought, Oh my god, I’ve held onto it for so long, it’s a thing, it’s going to let everyone down. Now I’m just being an a-hole. I’m holding on to it still because in my mind… who knows? But on my deathbed, I’ll be like, ‘Rosebud.'”

Graham doesn’t know what the four words are and is OK with that. “I don’t wanna know unless either I’m saying them or I’m listening to someone say them on the show the way it was intended, otherwise I would feel sad to know what I wasn’t a part of,” she said.

Where do the actors see their characters now?

Scott Patterson: “Luke has moved to a lake outside of town. He reopened Luke’s diner and it’s a bait-and-tackle shop. He sells camping gear as well. He fly-fishes in the nice weather.” Graham interjects: “Does he have a girlfriend?” Patterson scrambles to correct his faux pas: “Lorelai is coming out for a fishing lesson.”

Lauren Graham: “I think [Luke and Lorelai] are together, 100 percent. But I’m not fishing.”

Alexis Bledel: “Rory would be a journalist. She’d still be on her highly ambitious career path post-academia.”

Kelly Bishop: “I actually think if Richard were still with us, we would be pretty much in the same place. I think we were very comfortable with that life—the country clubs and all of that. Probably still fighting the battles. But now, Emily’s a widow, so that’s a whole other world, so I don’t know where she is.”

Milo Ventimiglia: “I think Jess is just out being Jess and walking away when too many people show up.”

Keiko Agena: “In my imagination, Lane is trying to figure out what kind of mom she wants to be. She wants to be Lorelai, but I think in her heart, she’s really just a little Mrs. Kim. I hope she’s still playing music with Hep Alien.”

Yanic Truesdale: “Well, it’s a tough one for Michel, because I never really understood how he ended up in that town. But patronizing people for sure, somewhere. Maybe in an inn that he now owns or in Paris, because he couldn’t deal with Americans anymore.”

Liza Weil: “I like to think Paris and Doyle are still together. I think they’re really well matched. I hope they’re supporting each other taking over the f—ing world.”

Matt Czuchry: “Logan would not be working.”

Jared Padalecki: “I think that Dean Forester probably would’ve worked long and hard at the market and he probably would’ve taken over Doose’s Market.”

Liz Torres: “I thought that Miss Patty would end up running for mayor of Stars Hollow and winning. I thought she wouldn’t know what she was doing and then she would call Taylor at three o’clock in the morning.”

Amy Sherman-Palladino considers Gilmore Girls her crowning achievement.

“You get one in a career. You get that one thing, that if everything else fails, and I wind up a big dumb drunk in a gutter, at least I got this. I used to say when I got Gilmore, that ‘it’s all downhill from here.’ There’s no way to top this experience, this cast, these leading ladies—and that’s okay. That’s what this business is. Some people get lucky and some don’t. And, god, I got so lucky.”

If you’re still craving more from the reunion panel, Entertainment Weekly has your back. Check out an edited down version of the evening below!

Did you know today is National Pink Day? Yeah, me neither, but I love an excuse to celebrate something and pink is definitely worth some fanfare.

Some history for you: Pink wasn’t always a color mostly associated with girls. Smithsonian Magazine points out that blue and pink didn’t become gendered until the early 1900s. Back then, the colors’ meanings as we know them were actually reversed! “[P]ink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl,” read a 1918 article from Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department. More proof that gender is just a construct and we should express ourselves however we want!

Now that we’ve learned a little something, let’s look in the pop culture rearview mirror and honor some of the best uses of pink in music, movies and television over the years:

When I think pink, my mind immediately goes to Gwen Stefani’s hair circa 2000. She was promoting No Doubt’s Return of Saturn and getting back at her then-ex Gavin Rossdale by looking fine as hell (and started a trend in the process!). Manic Panic owes her a lot of money.

My inner 10-year-old would be so pissed if I didn’t pay homage to Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger. She taught a lot of us that doing sequential backflips should not be tried at home and also taught us how to spell pterodactyl (big ups to the only non land-bound dinosaur on the show!). And no, I do not count the blond Aussie or anyone else who came after Amy-Jo Johnson as true Pink Rangers because I’m old and persnickety.

Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake used to be in love and play charity basketball games together, while wearing jerseys featuring their nicknames for each other. Brit’s was Pinky. This is a safe space; cry if you must.

This girl from Rebecca Black’s “Friday” music video. No explanation necessary.

Wednesday was easily the worst weekday of the bunch for years and years. And then Regina George and the Plastics from Mean Girls reinvented it with a simple maxim: “On Wednesdays, we wear pink.”

Anyone who watched Dumbo as a young child probably still has night terrors starring some of the pink elephants the title character hallucinated after accidentally getting hammered on champagne. You might also recognize them from that time you “accidentally” ate some funky mushrooms in Golden Gate Park.

Pretty in Pink gets a mention because duh, but also because we all need to bring back using “volcanic” as a congratulatory adjective.

I would lose my Baltimore cred if I didn’t mention John Waters’ classic Pink Flamingos, which starred Divine—the reigning queen of on fleek eyebrows—and proved that filthiness is next to godliness. On a semi-related, scarily timely sidenote, the man who created the plastic pink flamingo lawn ornament died today.

Sophia Grace a.k.a. that little British girl who’s always crawling on Ellen’s couch in a tutu makes no secret of her love of pink. And I make no secret of the fact that I loved her last single so much that I remixed it.

And we obviously can’t talk about Sophia Grace without mentioning Nicki Minaj (SG’s claim to fame was a cover of “Super Bass”). Nicki loves pink wigs, outfits, nails, lipsticks, perfumes, etc. and even called her last album The Pinkprint. It’s so good and you should listen to it right now:

Earlier this month, Lifetime released a horrifying cast photo of their Full House TV movie. If you caught a glimpse of it, chances are it’s probably still seared into your retina. Nothing could so crudely demolish our fond childhood memories of that show, we thought.

Oh, but something could…and that something’s name is Perez Hilton, who was just cast as germaphobe Danny Tanner in a musical parody of the series set to take Toronto and New York this August and September. Obviously, this is a comedic venture so the producers aren’t necessarily going for accuracy here. But of all the funny people in the world, they decided on Perez Hilton? The guy who’s made a career out of bullying famous women and drawing lewd things on their faces? Was Dov Charney unavailable?

Here’s a look at the rest of the cast ’cause I know your morbid curiosity is nagging at you right now:

And yes that’s a grown human cast as the Olsen Twins.

I’ll let Michelle speak for herself:

Yeah, what she said.

Rilke says, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your own heart, and try to love the questions themselves.” Questions can frustrate, but their very existence offers a type of promise. The questions are almost always more satisfying, more intriguing, more true than the answers. Attempts at answering are the reason for every groan-worthy twist ending and every disappointment when a promising, complex set-up devolves into a simplistic conclusion. It’s easy to ask the provocative questions, but harder to find deserving answers.

When I began watching Wayward Pines, I purposefully didn’t read any reviews, not so much because I wanted to avoid spoilers, but because I wanted to have my own experience of it. And so I have. The 10 episode series, currently midway through its run, focuses on the sinister and idyllic town of Wayward Pines, a place where people wake up after car crashes and other accidents, only to find it’s a bit harder to get out than it was to get in.

There is a sheer pleasure to the mysteries of Wayward Pines, played out overtly and for full dramatic effect. The mystery is really the only thing about this show, as episode after episode revels in the dreamy, illogical and inexplicable. I have a bad feeling the conclusion of the series is going to disappoint, but I don’t care—in a good way. I’m loving the questions because they’re truly enough.

Is it the future, the past, some kind of vortex, a dying dream? I don’t care! I just like this creepy town, the fog, the rain, the serendipity, the love triangles, the overt danger in every frame, the watchful surveillance. I like Matt Dillon running around in the woods with a map and Juliette Lewis tending bar. I like how everyone whispers the truth just outside the camera’s range.

What does it mean to be stuck somewhere? Why do we let it happen? Are we ever really that isolated and helpless? Are some things for our own good? Must we give up certain freedoms in order to be safe? Do we really want what we claim to long for most? Questions, questions, questions.

I recently went on a trip into the deserts of Central Nevada and the small towns within. In each new place, shimmering mirage-like at the horizon and then appearing fully, I yelled with delight and mild trepidation, “It’s Wayward Pines!” Granted there weren’t pine trees after we got through the mountains, but there was some similarity, mainly the distinct sense that we might get trapped in these places, and that others before us had.

We searched for ghost towns, the kind that are marked with signs and called such on the map. But we soon realized that it was the real towns where people still lived that seemed even ghostier. These former boom towns had lost most of their inhabitants long ago. I started to wonder why some people had stayed. Or why I always think escaping is better.

I grew up in the country. I spent a great deal of my adolescence writing the age-old narrative of escape to the big city. But I’m not a city girl in my heart. Or maybe I am, accidentally, these last 15 years finally taking their urban toll. The remoteness of these places in the desert struck at some anxiousness I didn’t know I possessed. I glanced from time to time at the silent, useless artifact of my cell phone. The roads stretched forever, dried lake beds running alongside. There was nothing and no one. It was gorgeous, vast, and unsettling.

Who thought to stop and live here once upon a time? Gold was the answer long ago, but why now? Why have people stayed? One town had a graduating high school class of five, we read in the local paper.

Wayward Pines almost seems like a nice place to live. It’s welcoming, small, untouched by contemporary concerns, perhaps even a safe haven from some terrible alternative. And isn’t that so often why we stay somewhere, for fear that leaving would only bring more harm?

These days, we are weary of our connectedness, our constant stimulation. People pay to have their phones taken from them. What if we lived in a place where our calls never even made it out, as when Matt Dillon calls and calls his wife to no avail? I had a similar feeling in the desert, no signal for miles. How rare it actually is to be truly disconnected. How quiet and strange it gets, our brains and bodies reacting, first in rebellion, and then in relief.

In Ellen Meloy’s The Anthropology of Turquoise, she describes a kind of knowing she calls “indirect and sideways,” one especially inspired by being in the desert. Her book begins with a W.G. Sebald quote that describes the colors of duck feathers as “the only possible answers to the questions that are on my mind.” Color, texture, and profound sensory experience as the answer, as the reflection of our humanity no less, those are the kind of answers I want. I want there to be multiple realities laying side by side, some full of zombie devolved humans that Matt Dillion can’t escape, some that open up into the eternity of the desert, some that are our own inexplicable, inconclusive, beautiful, mournful lives.

One of my favorite scenes is when Matt Dillon tries to escape the town initially, and just drives in circles. It makes me think of the perfect adult lives we curate for ourselves, lives we think we want, only to be entrapped by them so easily and tell ourselves that this is it. But, of course, the idyllic is in fact often the nightmarish, what we think we want is not at all what we want. We are so willing to police and limit ourselves. Warpaint’s Shannyn Sossamon, as the brand new real estate agent, offers a free house to a dazed and newly captive townsperson. Just smile and say thank you, she whispers to him, while out of range of surveillance. And he does.

Wayward Pines is a nice dark mythology for these crowded, connected and surveilled times. We create the reality we live inside. We adhere to it so completely. We are not as stuck by geography or even by time as we imagine ourselves to be. Our lives are made of endless questions and thin, ever-changing attempts at answering them.

Wayward Pines is everywhere, in any city or former boom town that someone cannot bring themselves to leave. Matt Dillion is all of us, bellowing that he wants to escape, but perhaps not so sure he really does, running to the edge, expecting to see one reality and finding an altogether different world instead.

Everyone has an opinion on Kim Kardashian and that’s never been clearer than in the two weeks since she appeared on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! for a harmless 10-minute segment. She was charming, self-aware and a good sport. But many listeners didn’t feel that way and took their outrage to social media, as well as the comment section of NPR’s site.

I wrote a piece defending Kim against these attacks, which got the attention of The Washington Post and the NPR Ombudsman, and led to a guest appearance on KQED’s Forum to get to the bottom of the backlash.

During the 30-minute segment, many people chimed in with their views on whether someone like Kim should be allowed on NPR. But there was one comment by a caller that really hit at what this whole thing is really about.

Gina from Oakland had this to say:

“I was just listening to this and I couldn’t help feeling there was an undercurrent of gender bias going on…Because she’s a woman and because there’s a sexual element to her fame, I think that actually is driving some of the discomfort, the ability for people to kind of pooh-pooh her and dismiss her.”

I agreed wholeheartedly:

“When we talk about her sex tape, I just keep thinking of the male celebrities who have had sex tapes. When we’re talking about Rob Lowe or…Colin Farrell, that never comes up and that isn’t used to discredit everything they’ve accomplished. But with Kim, because she’s a woman and we’re used to shaming women for their sexuality, it’s just easier for us to pile on and I think it’s wrong.”

Listen to the full exchange:

A huge portion of the comments I’ve read in response to Kim’s WWDTM appearance mention her sex tape or resort to name-calling. And there are a lot of words for these people to choose from—strumpet, harlot, floozy, hussy, trollop, trash, bimbo, whore, slut, and on and on. On the flip side, you would be hard pressed to find equally derisive language to describe a sexual man. They get called lotharios, players, pimps, studs or, most often, nothing at all. Women are placed under a different level of scrutiny in our culture and nowhere is that clearer than within discussions about Kim.

Just this weekend, a concertgoer at the Glastonbury music festival printed a still from Kim’s sex tape on a flag and waved it during Kanye West’s set. That’s how pervasive this culture of slut-shaming is. Her sexuality is being used as a weapon against her and her husband. And people don’t bat an eye.

Kim’s sexual past doesn’t negate her success. She has an estimated net worth of $85 million. She has created fashion and cosmetic lines, clothing stores, an app worth $200 million, and a reality show that’s in its tenth season. Regardless of whether you like her or her products, she is a prominent businesswoman, who, yes, has had sex before and has cleverly used our culture’s obsession with objectifying women to her advantage. Like host Joshua Johnson said on today’s Forum segment: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

We might disagree on whether Kim warrants a discussion worthy of NPR. But hopefully we can all come to realize that this debate is about something much deeper and more insidious than the value of reality television or celebrity culture. If you’re one of the people who thinks Kim’s perspective shouldn’t be heard on public radio, it’s time to take a moment and ask yourself what’s really behind that belief and what you can do to stop it.

Listen to the entire Forum segment:

When INFORUM, the Commonwealth Club’s Innovation Lab, announced that they would be hosting Kim Kardashian, people freaked out, to put it mildly. The reaction was similar to the outrage many felt after her appearance on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, which this blog has covered pretty prominently. If there’s anything we’ve learned in the last two weeks, it’s that Kim Kardashian is a guaranteed conversation-starter. So with that in mind, two of us who attended the event went home, opened up Facebook chat, and had at it.

Gabe Meline: So Emmanuel! We saw Kim Kardashian at the Commonwealth Club tonight, and I think it’s safe to say that it didn’t go as well as we’d hoped!

Emmanuel Hapsis: Yes, definitely safe to say that. Adele singing “We could have had it aaaaallllll!” keeps playing in my head.

GM: It’s rare that she gets put in an interview situation like this, where the goal is intelligent conversation on smart topics. Knowing this, you’d think she, or at least her publicist, would have prepared a little more. But if this were her attempt at winning over the highbrow crowd, she really came up short. Shall we recount the missed chances?

EH: As painful as that will be, yes, let’s do it. Her publicist should totally just make her memorize an answer to expected questions. Like for “Do you consider yourself a feminist?”, she could have simply said “Duh” and then quoted Bell Hooks or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Malala or Emma Watson or even Beyonce. Instead, she said, “I guess people would call me a feminist, so I guess you could, but I don’t really like to put labels on things. I’m not really one to say ‘I’m a feminist, and this is what I believe in so you have to believe in this, and, like, free the nipple!’ kind of person. I’m not that person at all.” My reaction to that moment can be best summed up with this Tyra Banks gif:

GM: Yeah. Like, come on, really? How controversial is it to just say, “Yeah, women should be treated fairly and have equal pay”?

And so many of her answers were like an eighth grader who hadn’t studied for the test, who “answers” with thinly veiled rewordings of the question. I’m paraphrasing here:

Q: How do you plan on having a conversation with your children about racism?

A: Well, we’re going to have a conversation with them about racism.

It wasn’t just the important questions, either; she even ducked frivolous questions.

Q: Tell me how to use lighting and angles to achieve the best selfie.

A: Oh, well, lighting is really important. And it’s good to get the right angle.

You know?

EH: And the platitudes. My god, the platitudes.

Q: What advice would you give a young female entrepreneur who’s trying to make it in a man’s world?

A: Be determined! Have a good work ethic!

Q: What would you say to a girl struggling with body image?

A: Have confidence! Be proud of who you are!

Q: What advice do you have for women facing discrimination and sexism in the workplace?

A: Stay focused!

It was all so pageant-y and safe. I loved when LaDoris Cordell (the interviewer) added “Lawyer up!” after Kim failed to give a legitimate answer to that last question.

GM: Kudos to LaDoris Cordell, who actually asked some pointed questions. Like about the famous Paper magazine cover: “Your photo was a recreation of a photo of an African-American woman, in the same pose, that was denounced as degrading or objectifying the black female body. Were you surprised at the reaction to that photo, and were you aware of the earlier photo of the black woman?” It’s pretty crazy for Kim to sit there and say, face-to-face with a respected black woman, “I can see how someone would think that, but that wasn’t my intention. The photographer, it was his idea.” And just leave it at that.

Or how about when the audience was able to ask questions, and one was simply, “Do you think you promote an unhealthy body image?” Kim’s answer was like, “No, because my makeup is inexpensive, and my new website coming soon is going to have a lot of tutorials on how to do your brows!”

EH: Kim so readily saying that she would absolutely pose for that Paper magazine photograph again, despite knowing the loaded history behind the image, seemed kind of selfish to me…which happens to be the name of her book of selfies! So maybe she bombed that question so I would call her selfish and plug her book?? Wow, she really is good at marketing!

GM: Ah, yes, her book, two copies of which were given out to each attendee in that bizarre-looking tote bag with a stencil of her face on it. Is this an appropriate time to note that due to low ticket sales, this event was moved from the Paramount Theatre (3,040 seats) to the Castro Theatre (1,400 seats)?

I imagine that Cordell also was strongly advised and/or forced via the mucky trenches of the celebrity-publicist industrial complex to ask about certain subjects, like the softball questions about Kim’s app (the developers, Glu Mobile, sponsored the event) or her work with the Children’s Hospital. That was a letdown.

But hey, enough wallowing. What did you *like* about the conversation? As someone with a Master’s Degree in Kardashian, what stood out?

EH: Wait, I need to get one more negative thing out or it will stay inside my body and slowly poison me until I drop dead days from now, while I’m innocently scrolling through Taylor Swift’s Instagram feed!

When she was asked about whether she was surprised about the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, she said “It’s about time.” Yay, she got it right!, I thought. But she wasn’t finished: “I’m proud of Obama for getting it done.”

Maybe she missed the day in eighth grade when her History teacher explained how the three branches of government work?

But on the positive tip: I think she was charming, gracious and funny, for the most part.

I liked when she opened up about Caitlyn Jenner and how she has made her a less judgmental and more compassionate person.

I also loved that she brought up the need for stricter gun control laws, when asked to give an idea to change the world. It’s obviously a hot button issue in America right now so I appreciated that she stepped out of her safe stock answers and got a bit real with that one.

And her anecdote about being obsessed with eBay back in the day and making a profit off of reselling Manolo Blahnik Timbaland shoes from a J. Lo music video was like an early aughts time capsule. I loved that blast from the past.

GM: Yeah, there were a few moments where you were like, “Oh yeah, she’s actually a person with a family and a life.” My personal favorite part was when she was asked if she could interview anyone in the world, who it would be. And she answered, “Donda West.” (For those who don’t know, that’s Kanye’s mother, who passed away in 2007.)

I just realized I have one last gripe too. She talked about how Kanye advised her on her app, how he envisioned and supported her book, how he had all these creative entrepreneurial ideas. And when asked if she gives any advice to Kanye, she was all, “Yes, I tell him what to wear, and that we need more storage space in our kitchen.”

This all goes back to the question you mentioned, about if it’s realistic for young women to be successful in a male-dominated business culture, and I thought her answer was telling: “I see so much from social media. There’s this generation of girls that are beautiful, but I don’t see a strong work ethic.”

What I took away from that, and from her answers about body image and objectification of women in the media, is that Kim operates under the assumption that it’s not just her goal to be as beautiful as possible, but it’s *every girl’s goal* to be as beautiful as possible. They just have to work hard at it and they’ll be successful for their beauty — not their talent. Numerous examples of this cropped up, like her “I can’t code, I leave that to the developers, I just tell them that the dress in the video game needs straps” comment.

EH: Yeah, I was bummed when she kept being demure about her achievements and giving Kanye so much credit.

GM: There are a lot of reasons why I root for Kim Kardashian, and my favorite theory about her is that she helps young women accept their own bodies by showing, openly and publicly, just how much time, effort and money goes into maintaining her own body. More than any celebrity before her, she broadcasts the 24/7 work of her wardrobe and makeup team, and even her plastic surgeons. If I were a teenage girl, I’d look at the unattainable effort Kim Kardashian is putting into her look, and I’d feel a lot better about how I look after 10 minutes in front of the mirror.

But to reduce a woman’s role to helping dress her husband, or to assume all girls could be successful if they were just prettier is, to borrow a phrase from Antonin Scalia, pure applesauce.

EH:  Like you, I root for Kim. Anyone who follows this blog knows that, considering the posts I’ve written about the outrage that followed her appearance on Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! Despite her not sounding as smart as I’d hoped she would tonight, I still think NPR shows geared toward celebrities and comedy should feel free to have her on. I still think public radio is a place where people should be able to discuss Kim and other facets of pop culture in a thoughtful way. And I still believe that a lot of the negative attention she gets is fueled by sexism and slut-shaming.

While we’re on the topic of that whole NPR hubbub, Cordell asked her what she thought about it. Kim seemed like she had never heard of NPR before, which I think is hysterical. Here are all these people flogging themselves because they’re so upset that Kim wants to destroy their sanctuary and she’s like…who?

When pressed to give a response to why she thinks people freaked out so much, she said “I don’t know and I don’t care.” So there you have it, thousands of people who commented on the issue. And contrary to the opinion of some of my friends that my essay had gotten big enough that she had probably seen it, now we know that she has definitely not.

GM: At any rate, I think we can agree: there may be a whole college course to be taught on Kim Kardashian, but based on tonight, Kim Kardashian is not the right person to teach it.

EH: 

Oops, she did it again. Paula Deen, who has been off the radar since her 2013 admission of using the N-word and wanting to hire “slaves” to cater a pre-Civil War era wedding, shared a photo on social media that depicts her dressed as I Love Lucy‘s title character, alongside her son who is in full brownface as Ricky Ricardo.

For someone who has more or less lost her career over being racially insensitive, one would expect at least a smidgen of evolution on the issue, yet here we are, discussing why Deen deemed this photo appropriate for a silly #TransformationTuesday share.

It’s safe to assume that Deen employs publicists to keep her on brand and out of any more controversy. But there’s only so much a publicist can do to cover up the true belief system of their employer. If Paula Deen’s attitudes on race are problematic, they will bubble up in some form, no matter how many prepared statements she memorizes.

Take her 2014 apology tour, for instance. On The Today Show, Matt Lauer asked what she had learned. Deen decided to use the moment to plug her products:

“I’ve learned so much over the year; it’s going to require another book. We are working on a documentary that’s going to air on [my] network because I feel like everybody needs to know the whole entire story.”

After Lauer repeated the question, Deen snapped back: “I’m getting to that…Now I forgot what I was going to say.”

She eventually got around to saying: “It’s the power of words, I don’t care how old they are, words are so powerful. They can hurt, they can make people happy. Well, my words hurt people. They disappointed people, frankly I disappointed myself.”

And images can hurt people too, as she’s learning today.

Deen is part of a certain generation that’s not exactly known for its progressive attitudes (Donald Trump, who’s had a lot to say about Mexicans recently, was born six months before Deen). And she comes from the South, a region where racism is so rampant and unapologetic that black churches are still burned to the ground in 2015. It’s sadly not surprising that Deen felt comfortable enough to share those details about her plantation wedding idea in 2013. It didn’t occur to her that the history of slavery might be more than just an aesthetic palette she’s nostalgic for. That same flavor of ignorance also finds itself all over this latest faux pas.

Some people defend Deen by saying that she just can’t help it; she’s an older person from the South. It’s true that we all are products of how we were raised and where we come from, but it’s too easy to treat our origins as unalterable facets of who we are. We can’t blame Deen for being brought up in a world where racial epithets and offensive depictions of other races was the norm, but we can blame her for perpetuating that ideology and refusing to educate herself.

There is comfort in ignorance, in not admitting prejudice and how you might be contributing to it. That’s a comfort rich white people like Paula Deen and Donald Trump can afford…for now.

There are racists among us. Confederate flags still fly over government buildings. Mexican immigrants are stripped of their humanity and labeled illegal. But a new generation is rising up, climbing flagpoles to bring down racism and promote empathy. Progress can seem slow at times, but there’s no doubt that we’re on the move, and Deen serves as a reminder of where we’ve been and why we refuse to go back.