Category Opinion

It’s been three long years since the world last heard from Rosé. In 2021, the Blackpink member embarked on her first-ever solo project, R, featuring the singles “On the Ground” and “Gone.” An instant hit, it thrived not only on Rosé’s K-pop fame, but also the strength and versaility of her honied vocals, here applied to indie-rock and electro-pop sounds.

Now, the singer is gearing up to release her first full-length studio album, Rosie, on December 6—and to give her fans a taste of what’s to come, she’s dropped its first single, “Apt.,” featuring pop icon Bruno Mars. Unlike her vibier debut singles, “Apt.” is a full-fledged pop song that will have fans chanting along as it plays on the radio. (Just think Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl,” with that infectious bridge—“B-A-N-A-N-A-S!”—but swap in the words “Apartment! Apartment!”)

But what does its title actually mean? Rosé explains exclusively to Vogue that the song was inspired by her favorite Korean drinking game, Apartment. “I remember going home [from the studio] kind of freaked out. Is this OK, that I’ve written a song about a drinking game?” she says. Conflicted, she asked her team to delete the song from their phones—only to realize that they were already obsessed with it. (To honor Rosé’s Korean roots, throughout the song both she and Mars stick to the Korean pronunciation of apartment, apateu, or 아파트.)

Well, it’s official: the world hates love. It’s something I’ve long suspected—not just because the modern dating scene feels so broken, but also because of the response whenever a happy, famous couple is photographed in public together. Typically, what follows is a set of memes, hyper-critical analysis, and tweets that will rip into the couple’s style and body language. And, of course, the severity of the reaction tends to be multiplied by 13,000 if Taylor Swift makes up one half of the duo in question.

In case you missed it, the musician spent Sunday afternoon at the US Open with her boyfriend, Travis Kelce. They were all over each other. I’m talking cuddles: his 6’5 athlete’s body looming behind hers, arms wrapped around her waist. I’m talking kisses: cute, giggly ones. And then there was the singing. Oh, and the dancing, and the air guitar-playing to The Darkness’s “I Believe in a Thing Called Love.” Cue a viral video that has sparked so much online derision and mockery you’d think they’d started having sex in their box before falling onto the tennis court completely naked. (They didn’t!)

“Incredibly cringe,” wrote one person in response to the video. “Someone should tell her she doesnt have to over act so happy on camera and that it’s actually a sign of terribly deep and incureable sadness,” another (excellent speller!) chimed. Other keyboard warriors with too much time on their hands decided to label the relationship “nauseating,” with the word “showmance” thrown about with abandon.

You get the picture. All of this is a grave shame for many reasons. The first is that Swift and Kelce are obviously very in love—you can tell by the way they look at each other. If you can’t, perhaps you’ve never been looked at like that. It’s obvious that this is a real relationship, which is exactly why they’re able to be so deeply cringey with one another. It’s the antithesis of most celebrity couples, who take themselves far too seriously to ever be seen so much as holding hands in public, let alone being as goofy and giddy as these two.

Frankly, it’s refreshing, particularly when you consider that Swift is inarguably one of the most famous people on the planet right now. Not only that, but she has a long history of being subjected to a relentless campaign of online misogyny and slut-shaming with regards to her love life. Her dating choices have been scrutinised to the point of parody, something she’s addressed in her songwriting more than once. With all this in mind, few would blame Swift for wanting to hide her relationship with Kelce from the media. That’s certainly what she did with her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn. But now, here she is, proudly showing her love off to the world.

The relative success or failure of the Emmy Awards can often be traced back to their host, and a high note was set early on at the 2024 Emmys with the father-son duo of Eugene and Dan Levy treating us to a show that was well-paced and studded with genuinely funny moments—from Martin Short and Steve Martin joking about Nicole Kidman’s small-screen omnipresence (Martin: “When I see an actor I don’t know, I just say, ‘I loved your scene with Nicole Kidman,’ and 9 times out of 10, I’m right!”) to Jean Smart poking fun at HBO while accepting her sixth Emmy. Below, find seven of the very best moments from this year’s Emmys ceremony:

The Saturday Night Live-alum tribute (of sorts) to Lorne Michaels

We’re always happy to see any combination of Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Bowen Yang, and Seth Meyers, and their joking tribute to Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels’s many Emmy losses (and, as Meyers pointed out, not-insubstantial number of wins) had the stage-confident, quippy energy of a really good SNL sketch. I love even the suggestion that Yang thinks Michaels’s name is “Lauren.”

John Oliver’s sweet, impromptu tribute to his dog

As soon as the temperature dropped and the leaves began changing colors, something strange came over me. I bought a new mattress, my old one suddenly seemed disgusting and ancient. I gave away at least 30% of my clothes—it’s a mystery as to why I ever thought all that matching linen made me look “cultured” and not like Nigel Thornberry. I booked an urgent hair appointment—I don’t remember asking the hairdresser to help me channel the spirit of Rod Stewart last time, but that must have somehow occurred. It was as though, along with the advent of autumn, came the desire to completely overhaul my life for the better. Enter something I swear by: the big autumn reset.

Spring has traditionally been the season in which we’re supposed to sort our lives out, which does make sense in theory. It’s a time of new beginnings and warmth, and you no longer feel like some sort of half-frozen, shuffling medieval hag every time you move from the bedroom to the kitchen and back again. But I’ve always found that, in practice, fall is the superior season for reworking your entire existence. Your wardrobe completely changes during this season. The waning temperature means that you can actually think for once (in summer, “waking up” is enough to make me want an Aperol Spritz and exactly one cigarette). And it’s probably also because a lot of us still associate autumn with a new school year. I can barely remember being at school, but I still inexplicably get the urge to purchase a new pencil case every September. So, it has served me well to harness that very specific energy as an adult.

I also feel like autumn makes the most sense for a big life reset because you’re not going to be going anywhere come winter. The season is long, and cold, and involves a lot of staying in bed on your laptop until 1 pm and also mainlining Oreos while half-watching The Holiday on your mum’s sofa and scrolling Instagram. That’s not the time for a total overhaul. Obviously, there are New Year’s resolutions to be made, and I do like the neat circularity of starting afresh on January 1st, but life changes are hard to implement in the dead of winter when every time you open the curtains it looks like the trailer for Silent Hill. Indeed, all signs point to autumn as the ideal time for resetting the clock.

To be clear, when I say “big autumn reset,” I don’t necessarily mean handwringing over bodily or psychological improvements, which often just make us feel shit about ourselves (although I am trying to generally care less what others think of me, and I would like to have really strong arms). I’m talking more about admin and lifestyle-based changes. Investing in a proper winter coat. Doing a deep clean of the fridge. Gathering up all the books that aren’t serving you anymore and donating them to charity. Over the years, I’ve learned that actually decluttering your life tends to have a mind-body ripple effect anyway. You won’t need to make vague promises to “be a more positive person” or “prioritize sleep” when having a nice new mattress will make you feel like you’re doing those things already.

Ultimately, of course, you don’t have to do any big reset at any point in the year if you don’t want to (which, fair). When we’re constantly bombarded with tips and tricks that promise to finally turn us into a more perfect version of ourselves, à la The Substance, it can feel refreshing to just watch YouTube videos with a big bowl of pasta like we wanted to instead. But if you’re considering revamping your bedroom, trying out a new hairstyle, becoming the sort of woman who wears a trench coat and leather gloves, or finally emptying that weird “everything” drawer in the kitchen, then don’t wait until spring. Just give it a go now—you won’t regret it.

World AIDS Day arrives every year on December 1 and yet it remains one of the more confusing—and I’ll add, often dreaded—markers in the AIDS community. Advocates are often forced to choose between mourning the loss of loved ones or using the globally recognized day to highlight the persisting struggles holding us back from seeing an AIDS-free generation. As we face an incoming administration that campaigned on promises to “reshape” our healthcare with guidance from one of the loudest leaders in the anti-science and denialist movement, our impulse to resist has never been more clear or urgent. If the early AIDS movement and our ACT UP veterans taught us anything, it is how to collectively and fiercely fight for each other and never give up in times of despair.

I’m sometimes asked how I started in AIDS organizing. Although it’s hard to pin when it happened, I will always remember where I was when I did—Room 207 at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at an ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) meeting in New York City. Right away, I knew I was at home. There is a lot of romantic historicization and depictions of ACT UP out there in the media, but I always hear surprise when people learn that ACT UP still exists and continues vital work across chapters.

When I joined ACT UP NY, we were a few years into the FDA’s approval of oral PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis). Although we had a drug on the market that, when taken daily, can effectively prevent people from acquiring HIV, its pharmaceutical manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, was marking up the price by 66%, potentially having users pay up to $24,000 out-of-pocket for an annual supply. This news of price gouging only became more disturbing when we discovered that the funding for the trials were sourced from US taxpayer dollars.

Almost a decade later, there are now several generic forms of oral PrEP on the market—but equality still isn’t here. According to the US CDC and referenced in PrEP in Black America’s For Us By US report, 91% of Black Americans who could benefit from PrEP have never received a prescription. This is especially important as we reflect on the recent (and exciting) results from the PURPOSE 1 and 2 trials for lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable PrEP that proved highly effective among cisgender women (PURPOSE 1) and gay men, trans, and nonbinary people (PURPOSE 2) in preventing HIV (it’s currently approved as a treatment for the disease, not a preventative measure equal to the daily oral pill). While the price is uncertain, we know that the cost of lenacapapir as treatment is currently a whopping $42,250 for the first year—when it could be incredibly profitable at the price of just $40 annually. We also know that lenacapavir’s manufacturer, once again Gilead Sciences (seeing a trend here?), announced they would license generic forms of the drug in 120 countries—excluding Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru—all countries that helped make the trial a success by participating.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any true rom-com fan must be in want of a Laura Dern-gets-her-groove-back vehicle, and that’s exactly what Netflix hath delivered unto us with Lonely Planet, a new film from Erin Brockovich screenwriter Susannah Grant that features Dern as a novelist who heads to Morocco for a writer’s retreat and meets a handsome young man by the name of Liam Hemsworth (or whatever his name is in the movie; I’m going to call him Liam Hemsworth). May-December romance fans, ahoy! Let’s dive in, shall we?

1. When a movie starts with that little “ding” sound you hear on a plane, you know the protagonist is going places.
2. Literally.
3. We’re approaching Marrakech, Morocco!
4. A refreshing lack of the Global South yellow filter (so far).
5. Laura Dern! Every time I see her, I hear her scream “ISAIDTHANKYOOOOOOOU” on Big Little Lies in my head.
6. Sheep! In the road! Not as exciting as a Laura Dern sighting, but still pretty cool.
7. Oh, no, Laura Dern’s luggage got lost.
8. Not going to the first-night dinner on a press trip because you’re tired is very relatable, I must say.
9. Just kidding! Please still invite me on press trips, media powers that be!
10. Hey, it’s Liam Hemsworth! With a girlfriend! Who is not Laura Dern!
11. The shirt he’s wearing looks dangerously close to a henley, although upon second examination, I think it’s just a polo.
12. Ooh, it sounds like Laura Dern is going through a bad divorce. Or maybe has already concluded one? Either way, some man is pissed at her.
13. Let’s get our Eat Pray Love on, girlfriend!
14. Actually, maybe we can skip “pray.”
15. Diana Silvers as a love interest for anyone but Kaitlyn Dever makes me upset.
16. I do like her chunky highlights, though, I must say.
17. Wait, is Liam Hemsworth also a writer? Or just weirdly supportive of his GF?
18. A man who turns down an Ambien because he has a call scheduled? No fun! Dump him!
19. No clue what this call is about, but I gather it’s important.
20. Ooh, Liam and Laura are meeting!
21. Wow, even their names sound good together.
22. An annoying reporter on a press trip? That’s me!
23. “I see your face in bed a lot,” followed by the girlfriend reveal? Come on, Liam!
24. This makes me think of SATC’s Sam Jones lamenting guys who are obsessed with letting you know they have a girlfriend right away. We get it, dude!
25. My God, this village is picturesque.
26. Laura Dern was born to casually quote Flaubert in a movie.
27. Liam has four sisters, so we know he’s a Good Guy.
28. Sorry, my brand-new puppy was freaking out for the last four minutes, so I missed the context behind Laura and Liam’s meet-cute, but things seem to be progressing apace.
29. Ah, Liam’s GF Diana Silvers is a big fan of Laura’s novels. Interesting.
30. Laura, don’t travel anywhere (especially not to a foreign country) if you can’t handle a tiny bit of yelling in the background!
31. Maybe I’m just smug because I’ve trained myself to write to the din of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, to be fair.
32. Ah, cool, Liam’s job is…coal mining, somehow.
33. “Clean coal,” LOL.
34. Writer girlinas, I beg of you: Do not bring your extraction-bro boyfriend on a retreat, because he will get correctly roasted by all the socialists.
35. Oh man, Laura lost a farmhouse in her divorce?
36. Laura published her first book in college? Zadie Smith vibes!
37. Laura eviscerating Liam for clearly being a former high school sports bro is so cathartic and hot to me.
38. I know Liam was saying “How come you can’t finish your book at home?” to Laura, but as someone who spends $40 every other weekday to “work” at my local lesbian all-day cafe, I’m taking it as a personal attack.
39. Ooh, dramatic confession time just nearly averted!
40. In the most appropriate, respectful way possible, may I say: Diana Silvers looks really good in a tank top.
41. So does Liam Hemsworth, for that matter.
42. “Come find me when you’re in a better mood” is actually a very mature and devastating own to deliver.
43. Liam is angrily riding a motorcycle through the streets of Marrakech, as one does.
44. That’s the way, man! Watch local sports! Drink a local beer! Hug local guys! Forget about girls!
45. If you are in Morocco and (as Laura is right now) turning down anything at all that comes served out of a tagine, you are simply an idiot.
46. I don’t care if you’re full! Eat a bite of that harira!
47. I want to lie on a floaty in a Moroccan pool right now.
48. I’ve never actually been on a writer’s retreat; is this what they’re like?
49. Liam Hemsworth’s facial hair is perfectly calibrated in this movie, I must say.
50. Wow, really, Liam? Your bosses in the natural-resource-extraction business aren’t nice?
51. Oh, he’s an eco-antagonist with a heart of gold who’s actually on the side of the West Virginia coal miner. Cool :/
52. Laura’s divorced from a sculptor? So Meryl-coded.
53. This guy really is kind of a dick to his girlfriend Diana Silvers, who is just trying to have fun on her trip.
54. “You always find a way to ruin the things I’m excited about” is a rough way to feel about your partner! Do better, cishet men.
55. Good for Diana for breaking up with him!
56. Laura’s really just listening to their whole breakup through her wall, huh?
57. Bro, you’re going to “stay out of her way” but not just go home so she can actually enjoy the retreat? I hate this man! Go frack something!
58. Ooh la la, scandalous Laura/Liam shoulder-kiss scene.
59. “I could fall for a kid like you”?????? Damn.
60. Okay, Liam didn’t like that.
61. Hannah Horvath’s boyfriend called her “kid,” and you didn’t hear her complaining about it, man! Although maybe she should have?
62. Liam’s leaving to “do some exploring.” Ugh.
63. He invites Laura!
64. Parasailing montage!
65. Oh, that was other people parasailing. Our lovers are just holding hands on the beach.
66. Sex scene!
67. A pretty good one, too, if I may be so bold.
68. Feeding each other olives? Inctedible.
69. “You know I love an olive.” He already knows this about her?
70. I really don’t care what happens with this man’s coal deal.
71. Laura’s going home 🙁
72. Alone 🙁 🙁
73. Solo Liam surfside shot 🙁 🙁 🙁
74. God help me, I love a last-minute rekindling.
75. I do wish Laura Dern’s actual character Katherine Loewe’s last name were pronounced lo-WAY-vey.

If such a thing as a “Bennifer-ologist” exists, I’d like to think I’d be vaguely qualified for the role. I have, after all, written what must number in the dozens (but feels more like hundreds) of articles about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s relationship over the past three years—and, not for nothing, I got my hands on a bottle of J.Lo’s signature fragrance Glow before any of my friends did in 2002.

Still, despite all these qualifications, when I heard that the embattled couple had been seen kissing and holding hands during brunch (arguably the most significant meal of heterosexual courtship) at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge amid their recently announced divorce, I had to admit it…I was stumped. Will I, or anyone else, ever figure these two out?

To be fair, there’s been a lot of Bennifer drama to keep up with this summer, from Lopez getting her Nancy Meyers movie on in the Hamptons, to Affleck’s sad-hot-single-dad faux-hawk, to Lopez queening out with fellow Affleck ex Jennifer Garner (and Affleck bestie Matt Damon, for that matter). And honestly, as difficult as it can be to stay on top it all, I’m sort of obsessed with the lack of narrative coherence. Who says you can’t make out after a divorce? And, for that matter, why not seat your kids separately at the Polo Lounge so you can rekindle the flame? (To be clear, I actually am in support of this; what teen wants to sit with their parents at brunch, even if their parents happen to be the stars of Gigli?)

People magazine claims that the Affleck-Lopez divorce is still moving forward, and at the risk of implying that basically all celebrity gossip is essentially fake…I have to wonder if any of us would really know if the divorce weren’t moving forward, “exclusive source” be damned. Whether together or apart, Affleck and Lopez have been conducting their love lives in public for over two decades now, and I feel like they’re playing three-dimensional chess. Is it time to consider the possibility that we know only what these two crafty celebrity innovators want us to? Or were they simply so overcome with lust for one another that they had no choice but to get the round-three relationship rumors flying? Either way, I’m seated.

I was in Ibiza recently, at a beach restaurant, in front of the sort of turquoise seawater views that are borderline painful to look at. You know when you’re having such a good time that you almost feel angry? Because it’s like, why can’t I experience this every second of my life? Yeah, it was basically like that. And I thought to myself, I would love a cocktail right now. So I ordered exactly one spicy mango margarita. And it was delicious. Just the right amount of tart sweetness, with a little jalapeño kick. I felt so smug in that moment that I could have simply… floated out of my chair. Just floated away from all the smugness.

The aforementioned type of drinking is what a friend of mine recently described as “vibes-based drinking.” As in, only drinking when the vibes are just right. As in, only drinking when the act might further enhance your already good time (as opposed to it being the main event). Essentially, not drinking for the sake of it, and not very often. Only drinking when the stars align, for example when in Ibiza at a beach-front restaurant. Or at a really fun Halloween party. Or on New Year’s Eve at midnight when someone passes you a flute of champagne. Obviously, vibes-based drinking isn’t advisable if you have a history of problematic drinking and need to abstain. But if you’re going to drink, then why not do so in a sort of mindful way, rather than knocking it back for no discernible reason?

The type of drinking I engaged in during my teens and early to mid-20s was probably the opposite of vibes-based drinking. I’d drink if I was tired after work, or if I was excited about something, or if I had nothing else to do at the weekend. I’d drink if I felt socially anxious on nights out—which was always—or if I wanted something interesting to happen, or if I was bored. The alcohol would be the activity, and the environment would exist to facilitate that activity (would I really have sat in a dank bar in Deptford until closing time otherwise?) In the latter half of my 20s, I moved away from drinking like this. By that time, hangovers had ceased to be “not that bad, actually”, and every corner of my life improved when I drastically cut down. Although you don’t need me to tell you that—everyone seems to be sober or sober-ish now, and everyone’s reaping the benefits.

These days, I drink about once every couple of months, and only when the occasion truly calls for it (I had a crisp pint in Croatia recently and it was like sipping on the sun, in a good way). But vibes-based drinking is clearly not a new invention—a lot of people drink that way naturally. It’s what some people might call “sober adjacent”—a slightly strange term used to describe those who aren’t fully teetotal, but are more likely than not to go “dry” on a night out. Another term you might have seen is “mindful drinking”, which is basically drinking in ways that are reasonable (mindful drinking expert Derek Brown swears by “the four Cs” when it comes to reasonable drinking: celebration, conviviality, consecration, and connoisseurship). Again, if you’ve got a history of alcohol issues, “reasonable” will be difficult to measure. But if you’re able to live a mostly sober lifestyle then “reasonable” can be a good rule of thumb.

My daughter is the light of my life, but her birth could have killed me. I didn’t have an epidural, because thanks to years of writing Greys Anatomy, I was more fearful of complications than of labor pain.

My labor was considered normal, which is to say, I paced, doubled over, and vomited from agonizing pain every few minutes for 22 hours, then pushed with my entire body for four more hours. And still, I required a vacuum assist to get the baby out because her head was stuck on my pelvis. When my daughter finally emerged, healthy, I wept with relief, but my face was dry because I was too dehydrated to produce tears. That was the moment it quickly went from normal to terrifying as blood started pouring from my body and pooling on the hospital floor.

I didn’t bleed to death because the medical team had easy access to misoprostol—a drug that has now been taken off emergency carts in Louisiana because, although it’s incredibly effective at stopping post-partum hemorrhaging, it can also be used to induce abortion. I also required packing with sponges and gauze and nine stitches to stop the bleeding.

It took me months to fully recover from childbirth, partly because of blood loss, and partly because one of the sponges was forgotten inside of me. If you’re a Grey’s fan, you know that a left-behind sponge can lead to serious infection, illness, and death. I was lucky that I could feel that something was off and that the doctors believed me, searched, and found the rotting sponge while antibiotics could still treat the infection.

I’m telling you the grisly details of my child’s birth because women usually don’t. The same way that our culture has taught us to whisper about our periods and hide our tampons—despite the fact that our menstrual cycles perpetuate our species—new mothers are culturally guided to hide the more brutal details of childbirth. Our society focuses on beautiful, giggling babies. It ignores, through culturally perpetuated silence, the physical and emotional wounds that accompany the experience of pregnancy, miscarriage, labor, birth, and motherhood.

I believe it’s partly because of this silence—because we are made to feel that we are somehow betraying our breathtaking, beloved babies when we name the realities that lead to and accompany their existence—that we have allowed laws to be passed in the United States of America that force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. I believe it’s imperative that women start talking about what the term “reproductive rights” actually means—because it’s the only way to drive home the reality of how important it is that we all vote in this election.

At the height of X’s popularity (really, back when it was still Twitter), it seemed like we couldn’t get through a week without the advent of some new viral, internet-friendly animal, from the Cincinnati Zoo’s Fiona the Hippo (she takes showers, guys!) to Koko, arguably the world’s most iconic gorilla. Unfortunately, genuinely fun animal content has really taken a hit online lately, which might explain why the arrival of Thai pygmy hippo Moo Deng has captivated the world. Below, find everything you need to know about Moo Deng, the girl we all wish we could be.

Who is Moo Deng?

Moo Deng, whose name translates to “bouncy pork” in Thai, is a two-month-old pygmy hippopotamus who has been stealing hearts ever since she was born on July 10, 2024. She’s one of seven babies born to proud hippo parents Jona and Tony, and at the risk of offending her siblings, who can definitely read and have Vogue web subscriptions, she’s pretty clearly the star of the show: She’s become a Utah Jazz meme and even inspired a Sephora Thailand campaign urging shoppers to “wear your blush like a baby hippo.” What greater honor could there be for a baby animal?

Where does Moo Deng live?

Moo Deng’s current residence is Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi, Thailand, which has become overrun with visitors hoping to get a glimpse at the baby hippo. According to a social media post from the zoo, visitors are now being limited to five-minute windows of hang time with Moo Deng, in part due to instances of people throwing objects or pouring water on her. As zoo director Narongwit Chodcho told a local paper: “These behaviors are not only cruel but also dangerous. We must protect these animals and ensure that they have a safe and comfortable environment.” (It’s worth noting that Moo Deng’s breed of pygmy hippo is an endangered species, with only about 2,000 of them left in the wild.)

Why has Moo Deng become such a viral sensation?

Moo Deng’s cuteness speaks for itself—she’s a curvy, shiny, wet-eyed glamour queen—and online, her loyal followers have devotedly posted pictures of the hippo doing everything from bathing to eating to seemingly screaming into the void. In the span of about a week, she’s become an icon for our addled times.