Caitlyn Jenner has always been a Republican. Maybe we can call her a “California Republican,” which seems to be a bit different than the national GOP. But I remember watching E!’s I Am Cait and being startled to realize that part of Caitlyn’s trans journey was NOT a political education on which political party accepts her right to exist as a transgender woman. During the Trump years, Caitlyn tried to talk politics and people just told her to STFU, basically. In fairness, her political statements were always pretty dumb. But now that Californians are “mad” at Gov. Gavin Newsom, suddenly Caitlyn thinks she’s the lady who can take down the California Democrats.

Former reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner is talking with political consultants as she actively explores a run for governor of California, three sources with direct knowledge of her deliberations tell Axios. Why it matters: Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is facing a recall election. A challenge from Jenner, a high-profile Republican and previous Trump supporter, would draw heightened attention to the race to lead the nation’s most populous state.

Jenner is being assisted in her consideration by Caroline Wren, a longtime GOP fundraiser. Wren initially met Jenner through her work with the American Unity Fund, a GOP nonprofit focused on LGBT issues. Wren previously worked at Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee for President Trump’s 2020 campaign, and also helped organize the rally he addressed immediately before the U.S. Capitol assault on Jan. 6. A spokesman for Jenner declined to comment. Wren also declined to comment.

Republicans have launched a recall campaign against Newsom, angry about his immigration and tax policies. The effort gained momentum amid added criticism of the governor’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

[From Axios]

I haven’t actually been following the recall drama in California but I assume a chunk of it is just disgruntled Californians mad at Newsom about the pandemic? I mean, California did seem to have a disorganized response to the pandemic, but… so did a lot of other states. I don’t know enough about internal CA politics to make a judgment call on Newsom or the recall efforts. But I do know that Caitlyn Jenner and her asinine, deep-as-a-puddle Republicanism AND barely-there trans-activism are not welcome on the national political stage. Republicans have never wanted her! She makes them uncomfortable. What makes ME uncomfortable is the fact that she’s already working with someone adjacent to the insurrection. I have no idea who Caroline Wren is, but I’m sure she’s a co-conspirator to sedition and insurrection.

Plus, Caitlyn would actually be a terrible governor! She just wants to golf and spend time with her 20-something girlfriend.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

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Millie Bobby Brown is one of the stars of the Godzilla vs. Kong movie that opened over the weekend. She and her Madison Russell character repped Team Godzilla, having survived the earlier film, Godzilla: King of Monsters with her dad, Dr. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler). Millie is arguably best known to everyone as Eleven on Stranger Things, a role in which she has grown up on our TV screens. Now that she is almost a legal adult, Millie admits her transition from childhood to young adult hasn’t been that easy. Not so much for her, but for us, because we aren’t ready to accept Eleven is now 17.

Millie Bobby Brown has done a lot of growing up in the public eye, and there’re some people out there who still aren’t ready to accept that she’s almost an adult.

The actor opened up about how her fans have been having a hard time seeing her grow up in the wake of playing Jane “Eleven” Ives on Stranger Things since she was a preteen.

“I’m only 17, but at the end of the day, I’m learning to be a woman. I’m learning to be a young woman,” she told MTV News. “So being a young girl, people watch you grow up, right? And they’ve almost become invested in your growth and your journey. But they aren’t ready to accept the fact that you’re growing up.”

Brown wishes that her fans would accept the person she’s becoming because she won’t be a kid forever.

“They’re not accepting it and I’ve completely accepted it,” she said. “You know, I’m ready. I’m like, ‘It’s been a while. Let me wear a high heel!’”

[From Buzzfeed]

You can watch her full interview with Josh Horowitz here. I love Josh’s interviews because he either knows the person or does his research so they feel more like conversations at a cocktail party. Plus he can be familiar without getting creepy. Millie is quite fun and relaxed in this interview, very well composed for a 17-year-old. I understand where she’s coming from on public perception. There’s a difference between a child actor who makes one film and reappears years later grown vs. an actor who grows up in front of the audience. It’s harder to accept the latter. It’s like your own kids or nieces/nephews – because you spend more time with them, you are more attached to them. Remembering them as little kids is so easily accessible and in some ways, becomes our default. Plus, CB put it so well when she wrote of Millie, “she’s always been so self-possessed and confident in interviews and on the red carpet,” she comes across mature, regardless of what she’s wearing. I’m fine letting Millie grow up and wear what she wants. She’s earned the right to grow into her next stage in life, regardless if we’re prepared for it. I do, however hope she’s been able to get out of her “friendship” with Drake.

SPOILERS FOR GODZILLA VS KONG: Millie and Kyle lived to cheer Team Zilla for Round Two. I have no idea if there will be a round two. I was hoping for a post credit seen with Mothra chewing on a Swisher Sweet in a leather jacket and Doc Martens sloshing through a swamp. I guess Millie was good? I didn’t see Godzilla: KoftM and while I liked her trio of conspiracists that made up Team Zilla, their story was lost on me.

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It was no secret that Kim Kardashian was and is insanely jealous of her half-sister Kylie Jenner. Kylie built a massively successful business (Kylie Cosmetics) out of her childhood room, and at Kris Jenner’s kitchen table. Kylie Cosmetics has grown into a billion-dollar business because Kylie was just doing something somewhat organic to her (lip kits) and she ended up finding a hole in the cosmetics market. Kylie also had so little overhead for the entire business. So, yeah, Kim was jealous. She was dying to create her own billion-dollar business but for the longest time, Kim’s businesses were only “moderately” successful. In that, she made millions, but not billions. Then SKIMS happened. Kim wanted to revolutionize the industry of shapewear and she absolutely did. SKIMS, more than anything else, is Kim’s billion-dollar business. But the other stuff helps, which is why Kim is now officially a “billionaire” according to Forbes:

When Kim Kardashian West was first mentioned in the pages of Forbes in 2011, it was simply a tally of her Twitter followers: 6.6 million, just below Barack Obama and just above Ashton Kutcher. Five years later, she graced the cover of Forbes thanks to her booming mobile game, which helped her earn $51 million that year. Now, she officially joins the World’s Billionaires list for the first time.

Forbes estimates that Kardashian West is now worth $1 billion, up from $780 million in October, thanks to two lucrative businesses—KKW Beauty and Skims—as well as cash from reality television and endorsement deals, and a number of smaller investments.

Kardashian West founded KKW Beauty in 2017, following the success of her half-sister Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics. She borrowed from Kylie’s playbook, using a similar direct-to-consumer model that relies heavily on social media marketing. Her first launch, 300,000 contour kits, sold out within two hours. By 2018, the business had expanded into eyeshadows, concealers, lipsticks and fragrances, and was bringing in about $100 million in revenue.

“It’s the first time I’ve moved away from having licensing deals and transitioned into being an owner,” Kardashian West told Forbes in 2017, when she announced her cosmetics line.

She cashed in on that ownership last year when she sold 20% of KKW Beauty to cosmetics conglomerate Coty for $200 million, a deal that valued the company at $1 billion. While Forbes estimates that figure is a little bloated—Coty, which also bought 51% of Kylie Cosmetics in 2020, is known for overpaying—her remaining 72% stake is still worth about $500 million, by our count.

Then there’s Skims, the shapewear line Kardashian West launched in 2019. She raised money from fashion insiders like Net-a-Porter’s Natalie Massane and Theory’s Andrew Rosen, and capitalized on her massive social media following to shill the brand. (She now has 69.6 million Twitter followers and 213 million followers on Instagram.) Skims has been quick on its feet: During the pandemic, when consumers became more interested in comfy clothes for the couch than in smoothing their stomachs under evening gowns, she swiftly started turning the focus to loungewear.

Kardashian West owns a majority stake in closely-held Skims, which hasn’t disclosed its revenues. A source familiar with Skims told Forbes about a transaction that values the shapewear company north of $500 million. As a result, Forbes estimates her Skims stake is worth a conservative $225 million, enough to lift her fortune to $1 billion.

The rest of Kardashian West’s fortune sits in cash and investments, including real estate. Every year since 2012, she has earned at least $10 million pretax, by Forbes’ count, thanks to paychecks from Keeping Up With the Kardashians, endorsement deals and endeavors like the aforementioned mobile game and her now-defunct Kimoji app. She’s also got three properties in Calabasas, northwest of Los Angeles, and a portfolio of blue-chip investments, including shares of Disney, Amazon, Netflix and Adidas that her soon-to-be ex-husband Kanye West gifted her for Christmas in 2017.

[From Forbes]

Yeah, I agree with Forbes? I think their math is correct, unlike their faulty reporting around Kylie Jenner’s empire. If anything, Forbes might be undervaluing some of Kim’s businesses. I do appreciate that they acknowledge that Kim was just blatantly copying Kylie with her KKW Beauty line, because it’s true. KKW Beauty is just the Kmart version of Kylie Cosmetics, and Kim is very much stepping on Kylie’s empire. But whatever. SKIMS is where it’s at. And I didn’t know the Kimoji app was defunct! Damn. Hire people to fix the app!

Photos courtesy of Kim’s Instagram.

Yesterday marked three years since Cardi B released her debut album, Invasion of Privacy. I still love that title, especially for a debut. The album made history when she became the first solo female hip-hop artist to win Best Rap Album at the 2019 Grammy Awards and Invasion also launched two Billbo…

There were so many surprising moments within the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Oprah interview, people barely had the time to point out what wasn’t in the interview. For instance, Oprah did not ask them any questions specifically about Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein. There was some conversation about how Meghan and Harry were and are friends with Princess Eugenie and it also sounded like Fergie and Meghan are somewhat friendly. When you really think about it, it *is* strange that Oprah didn’t mention Andrew once, although it’s probably less strange that Meghan and Harry didn’t bring him up. So what’s up with that? Anna Pasternak – famously the author of Tatler’s Catherine the Great article – has some thoughts.

One royal expert believes there’s a good reason why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle didn’t bring up Prince Andrew during their bombshell tell-all with Oprah Winfrey. When the network first announced the special on Feb. 15, it revealed that nothing would be off-limits during the wide-ranging interview. However, Winfrey never asked the couple about the Duke of York, 61.

“I supposed it could be said that he wasn’t relevant,” royal author Anna Pasternak told Fox News. “It could also be out of loyalty and respect for his daughter, Princess Eugenie, who is close to both Harry and Meghan. And if that’s the reason, I think that’s rather charming because I think Eugenie has been a very good friend to both of them. It’s believed that [Eugenie] is probably the only member of the royal family who is the closest to them and has kept in touch. We don’t know the reason, but one can only suspect that maybe out of respect for her, they didn’t want to go into her father.”

In the interview, Markle, 39, confirmed that she and Eugenie, 31, knew each other before the former American actress met Harry, 36. Prosecutors in New York have wanted to speak with Andrew for several months as part of their allegations, made by several women, that some of Jeffrey Epstein’s staff and his girlfriend helped recruit him underage sex partners.

Pasternak is aware that some critics believe Andrew hasn’t faced the same media backlash as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex after the couple spoke out.

“I think [those people] have a very short memory if they think that because Andrew gave his own interview and the backlash against him was intense,” she said. “He’s become a sort of a royal pariah, a non-person.”

[From Fox News]

“It could be said that he wasn’t relevant…” I mean… Andrew has always been an irrelevant person in the larger scheme of things, and he was specifically irrelevant to the larger story Meghan and Harry were trying to tell. That being said, the timeline of Jeffrey Epstein’s death and the Queen’s very public shows of support for Andrew definitely would have emphasized one of the points that Harry and Meghan were making. Namely, that the institution was perfectly capable of protecting and coddling certain (white) family members while they threw Meghan and Harry to the wolves and actively sabotaged them. The story of the institution smearing the Sussexes throughout 2019 cannot be told without the story of how the same institution did the most to help Andrew. That being said, I do think H&M probably avoided speaking directly about Andrew because A) they weren’t asked and B) they’re tight with Eugenie.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red, CBS.

Many of you know that I have a “thing” for Diplo. It’s not even that I like his personality or anything, and I’m sure he’s pretty scummy to women, which definitely kills my lady-boner. But yeah, I’m attracted to him. I don’t want to speak to him or hang out with him or share feelings with him. I just want to bang him and leave and never tell anyone. Is my girl Angelina Jolie the same way? Does she also have a thing for dirtbag douchebags? Lord, Angie, I hope not. DeuxMoi posted this screen-cap from Diplo’s IG Stories, where it definitely looks like Angelina and Diplo were at the same backyard BBQ:

The look on her face, you guys. That’s a face that says “why am I here again?” That’s not the face of someone who is willingly hanging out with Diplo because they’re banging. Even though the idea of Angelina & Diplo enjoying a quickie one sultry spring night is fun, I doubt it. I just… hope not. But even if she did, she’s like me – she would never tell a soul.

Apparently Diplo and Jolie are neighbors or something? And maybe her kids are into Diplo? Eh. Also: he name-checked her in 2013!!

im the angelina jolie of EDM

— diplo (@diplo) October 9, 2013

Angelina Jolie lives in the same neighborhood as Diplo. This alone is why if I were Angelina I wouldn’t live in LA. Too much overlap with losers. pic.twitter.com/wJSXPoGNbt

— kittybswift (@kswiftthegreat) April 6, 2021

Photos courtesy of Diplo’s Instagram & Avalon Red.

Dear Gossips, Oscar voting this year begins a week tomorrow as Academy members will have five days to make their selections – and as we’ve been saying, in most of the major categories, the races are totally unpredictable. The way I see it, there are only two Oscars that seem locked at this point: Ch…

Last month, Georgia’s governor and legislature pushed through a massive voter-suppression omnibus bill. Georgia Republicans remain mad as hell that their state now has two Democratic senators, and that Joe Biden won the state by a narrow margin. Georgia Republicans want to ensure that Black folks are not allowed to vote freely in their state ever again, and the new voter-suppression laws represent some of the most historic voter disenfranchisement since the Jim Crow era. In the weeks that followed, corporations based in Georgia (like Coca-Cola) have faced public pressure to disavow the GOP’s now-codified racism. Major League Baseball was also under pressure to move their All-Star game out of Atlanta, which they did several days ago. The MLB All-Star game will now take place in Colorado. During yesterday’s press briefing with White House press secretary Jen Psaki, a Fox News douche tried to make “Colorado has bad laws” into a thing:

If you’ve yet to tune into the White House’s daily press briefings, something you may not know is that they regularly feature Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asking inane questions that simply serve to further fact-free Republican talking points, or complaining of discrimination because the president didn’t call on him. On Tuesday, Doocy did get to pose a question to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and he used his time to suggest that Major League Baseball shouldn‘t have moved the All-Star Game from Georgia in protest of the state’s new highly restrictive voting law, i.e. conservatives’ bad-faith argument du jour. And, as is typically the case of a Doocy-style inquiry, Psaki was having none of it.

“Is the White House concerned that Major League Baseball is moving their All-Star Game to Colorado where voting regulations are very similar to Georgia?” Doocy asked, a question predicated on bullsh-t. To which Psaki responded, rhetorically stuffing the Fox News correspondent in a locker: “Well, let me just refute the first point you made. First let me say on Colorado, Colorado allows you to you register on Election Day. Colorado has voting by mail where they send to 100% of people in the state who are eligible, applications to vote by mail; 94% of people in Colorado voted by mail in the 2020 election. They also allow for a range of materials to provide, even if they vote on Election Day, for the limited number of people who vote on Election Day.”

“I think it’s important to remember the context here: The Georgia legislation is built on a lie. There was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Georgia’s top Republican election officials have acknowledged that repeatedly in interviews. What there was, however, was record-setting turnout, especially by voters of color. Instead what we’re seeing here for politicians who didn’t like the outcome is they’re not changing their policies to win more votes, they’re changing the rules to exclude more voters, and we certainly see the circumstances as different. Ultimately, though, it’s up to Major League Baseball to determine where they’re holding their All-Star Game.”

[From Vanity Fair]

As Daniel Dale (via VF) pointed out, Colorado actually has one of the better voting systems in the country, and the state has a really high voter-participation record. Colorado sends ballots to every registered voter, Colorado doesn’t require a photo-ID (any kind of identification will do) and Colorado has same-day voter registration on Election Day. And for people who do want to vote in person on Election Day, if those people are standing in line, you can hand out food and water to them, unlike Georgia. Georgia has none of those provisions because they want to make it harder for people to vote. It’s that simple. There was no voter fraud, there was only white aggrievement and racism. Oh, and when corporations – like MLB – make business decisions to NOT align themselves with racism and fascism, suddenly Republicans whine about “getting corporations out of politics,” which is… pretty rich.

PETER DOOCY: Is the WH concerned MLB is moving their All Star Game to Colorado, where voting rules are very similar to Georgia?

PSAKI: Let me refute that. CO has same-day registration, universal mail voting… it’s important to remember the context. The GA bill is built on a lie pic.twitter.com/TaDLU0mYNP

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 6, 2021

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

Andrew Morton has been giving tons of interviews to support his new book, Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters. While some of the gossip about the Queen’s relationship with her sister is interesting on its own, I find it odd that Morton is using so much of his promotional time to talk about Prince Harry, Meghan and Princess Diana. I mean, he was the one who wrote the bombshell biography of Diana with Diana’s help. He’s very entrenched in the various royal courts and all of that. But what I don’t get is why he’s going above and beyond to draw the comparisons between Margaret and Harry. At this point, WHY? He did the same when speaking to Vanity Fair:

Why the Queen has always adored Harry: The Queen has shown “infinite patience” towards her grandson Prince Harry because she recognizes the challenges faced by younger royal siblings, according to biographer Andrew Morton. “I think the Queen knows that being the spare is hard and a part of her recognizes that Harry was… sometimes a bit of a lost soul just like her sister,” Morton said. “She has always wanted to protect Harry and I think in part that’s because she watched Margaret fall victim to the system. Shutting out Margaret didn’t help and the Queen has learned from that. She didn’t want history to repeat itself with Harry.”

Harry & Margo were the rebels: “When you compare personalities, Harry is like Margaret, a royal rebel. Margaret once said ‘disobedience is my joy’ and you see some of that in Harry. The Queen also knew Margaret sometimes felt like an outsider and I think that’s why she has made sure the door is always open for Harry to return to the royal fold. She will have a lot of empathy and sympathy for him because she grew up watching her younger sister act the role of the spare, which is not easy.”

Margaret struggled without a defined role within the Firm. “Margaret often felt that she was in Elizabeth’s shadow. She was four years younger, and tried to make up for the age difference by wearing the same clothes and doing the same things as her older sister, but there was a hierarchy and Margaret always came behind the Queen. She found out very soon in life that she would be number two.” Morton compares it to when Harry would complain as a child that William got the more attention, or felt left out when, for example, William alone would be invited for tea with the Queen Mother. Princess Diana would make an extra effort with Harry and insisted that her boys should be treated equally, but the fact was William was born to be king and as such was always treated differently.

The challenges of being the spare: “The Royal Family is a hierarchy and if you’re not number one that can be challenging,” said Morton, who points out that the issue of the heir and the spare has historically been problematic within the Royal Family. “There are also many parallels between the relationship between Elizabeth and Margaret and William and Harry. William is dutiful, serious, considered, cautious, just like the Queen. I think one of the main differences between Margaret and Harry was that Margaret was always loyal to the crown.”

The Queen has been more forgiving towards Harry. “She has a lot of affection for Harry. She was there the day Harry lost his mother and has been there for him ever since,” Morton said. “She has deliberately taken him under her wing. I think as a grandmother she has been far more understanding than as a mother at times.”

[From Vanity Fair]

This is an absolute mess from Morton, I’ll be honest. The analysis is all over the place. “Margaret was always loyal to the crown” – yes, because Harry was “disloyal to the Crown” when he watched his family heap racist abuse on his wife and understood that he needed to get out. If Margo watched Lord Snowden and her children being scorned and abused by the family, she would have gotten out too, or at least she would have wanted to get out. Morton just wants to analyze the familial dynamics in a vacuum without acknowledging the change in circumstance between how “the heir” (William) treated the Spare and his wife. Elizabeth was never gleefully pushing negative stories about Margaret so that Liz could hide her own bad storylines. Morton acts like Harry left the UK because he could not stand being the spare, and it was a lot more complicated than that. Morton knows that too. So why is he doing this?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

A few years ago, Kelly Ripa admitted that she was unable to fully smile for six months after getting Botox. If you look at photos of her from around that time, she was making a kind of open-mouthed grimace instead of a natural smile. Casey Wilson of Black Monday said something similar, that Botox froze half her face after she had a bad reaction to it. Photos of Casey show her making that grimacing smile also. A blogger from Chicago named Whitney Buha, who has about 89,000 followers on Instagram, showed some scary results of getting Botox recently. She had gotten Botox and noticed that one of her eyebrows was lower than the other one. To fix this she went back to get four more units of Botox in the eyebrow that was lower. Instead she was left with one very droopy half-closed eye and the other eye wide open. She explained that the non-droopy eye was working to compensate. Here’s a video showing the progression of her journey with this.

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The good news is that her eyes look almost normal now. I checked Whitney’s Instagram stories and you can still see a difference, but it’s not as bad. The Botox is wearing off and she’s been using a Nuface Mini microcurrent device (I have the Trinity version and like it), a rose quartz vibrating roller, acupuncture and a little more Botox to try to even it out. She’s kind of annoying in some of her posts, I guess you have to be extra to have that career, but she seems like a sweet person in her videos. Whitney said so many women have reached out to her with similar stories and that she appreciates it.

I haven’t gotten Botox yet and have been considering it. Stories like this make me want to skip it though. I’m sure this type of reaction is rare but you just never know what’s going to happen. The other side effects of Botox include headaches, dizziness, muscle weakness and so much more.

Thanks to People magazine for the heads up on this story.

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