Modern Beauty Trends: In: Lana Del Rey’s Confession

Lana Del Rey confirms your suspicions. So does a new Hollywood study.
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“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” - Gloria Steinem

Lana Del Rey’s Candor

“Harvey”

Amid the Harvey Weinstein scandal, a minor battle between gossip titans emerged about an odd item. Page Six, you see, claimed that Lana Del Rey’s infamous song “Cola” included references to Harvey Weinstein. TMZ, however, jumped in to claim otherwise, and that the lyrics some heard as “Harvey” was actually “Ah, he.” Well, Lana Del Rey has finally chimed in with her trademark bluntness. Yes, the song was sort of inspired by Weinstein. “When I wrote that song, I suppose I had a Harvey Weinstein/Harry Winston-type of character in mind,” she recently told MTV. “I envisioned, like, a benevolent, diamond-bestowing-upon-starlets visual, like a Citizen Kane or something. I’m not really sure.” Of course, now she’s decided it’s no longer appropriate to sing and has retired the song once and for all. Who would have guessed that the song’s most controversial lyric would end up being “Harvey” and not the one about her anatomy tasting like a soda brand.

Gloria Steinem

Sarah Palin

The last time Julianne Moore took on a real-life political figure it was as the plainspoken Sarah Palin in HBO’s Game Change. For her next role she’ll take on the role of the exact opposite of Palin: feminist legend Gloria Steinem. A co-founder of Ms. magazine and a national feminist leader since the late ’60s, Steinem has lived a life more than deserving of the biopic treatment. Broadway director Julie Taymor, who hasn’t helmed a motion picture since 2010’s The Tempest, will handle the direction. Meanwhile, celebrated playwright Sarah Ruhl will handle the script. Moore, who has namechecked Steinem as a personal hero before, last appeared in Suburbicon and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. She also recently wrapped Bel Canto, a film in which she plays an opera singer taken hostage in South America.

Diversity

...Except As It Turns Out Not Really

There were a number of milestone wins at the Emmys this year, but don’t think the television industry is really now some totally diverse and inclusive place. A new study entitled Race in the Writers’ Room: How Hollywood Whitewashes the Stories That Shape America finds that, yes, the writers’ rooms of scripted shows are still disproportionately white. It turns out, just 4.8 percent of TV writers were black this past season, and two-thirds of television shows have no black writers at all. In fact, Hulu didn’t have a single black writer. The study also found that while only 5.1 percent of showrunners in Hollywood are black, they all had white writers on their show. Sixty-nine percent of white-run shows, meanwhile, had no black writers at all. This despite numerous recent success stories like Issa Rae’s Insecure, Donald Glover’s Atlanta, and Lee Daniels’s Empire.