Harper’s Bazaar Accused Of Ripping Off A Bunch Of Feminist Artwork

The rips in this attempt at feminism by Harper’s Bazaar run bigger than the ones in Kendall Jenner’s jean shorts.

Just days after Jezebel reported the publication used stolen artwork for one of the patches at its jean jacket decorating party with social club The Wing without compensating or getting permission from the artist who created it, the site now reports three other artists’ designs were used without their knowledge.

The first pin in question, which reads “When women speak it is mostly poetry,” was created for Leste Magazine, a small publication which currently has a GoFundMe page to help support its production

The photo from the party appeared on Get Artists Paid’s Instagram account, which advocates for fair practices and transparency in art and media industries. The caption demanded credit from those who have posted about the patches and compensation from The Wing.

For its part, someone at The Wing issued an apology in the comments section and explained they they did not “approve or sell these patches.” It has also since made a donation to its GoFundMe page.  

Someone from Leste Magazine replied to the the site, saying it “blocked and deleted every comment and everyone who tried to defend us,” adding, “you are not innocent in this at all.”

The other two designs, one that reads “wild feminist,” another that reads “my girls my gang my friends my way” and one that reads “girl gang,” were created by Emma McIlroy, Lotte Andersen and Madison Kramer respectively.

McIlroy told Jezebel she is not looking for compensation but merely a public apology, which she was informed by a representative at Harper’s they were unauthorized to do. 

Independent artists being ripped off by big retailers is unfortunately all too common, and it’s at least refreshing to see The Wing take action in compensating Leste. But using stolen artwork to tout feminism feels especially jarring. Here’s hoping these artists get the money ― and apologies ― they deserve. 

HuffPost has reached out to Leste, Harper’s Bazaar, Emma McIlroy, Lotte Andersen, Madison Kramer and The Wing and will update this post accordingly. 

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Fred Weasley Calls Out Catfish Using His Photo To Hook Women Online

Beware of the catfish using Fred Weasley’s photograph online.

Harry Potter” star James Phelps (who played one half of the mischievous Weasley twins) has been forced to reveal that he isn’t on dating app Tinder after a fan spotted someone using a recent snap of him as their profile picture.

“When a guy tries to catfish you on Tinder but @James_Phelps was your childhood crush,” wrote Twitter user @BriMasterMcPhee on Saturday.

She also posted a screen shot of the fake Tinder profile of 22-year-old “Trent.”

The tweet came to the attention of Phelps, who confirmed Tuesday that he is “NOT” on Tinder ― and that he wasn’t actually called “Trent.” 

Twitter users loved his response:

 

For the record, the actor and his identical brother, Oliver Phelps, have changed quite a bit since their “Harry Potter” days. Here’s how they looked in 2004 on the release of the the third movie, “Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban.”

And here’s what they look like now:

 

Now what’s that banishing charm for “Trent?”

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Fred Weasley Calls Out Catfish Using His Photo To Hook Women Online

Beware of the catfish using Fred Weasley’s photograph online.

Harry Potter” star James Phelps (who played one half of the mischievous Weasley twins) has been forced to reveal that he isn’t on dating app Tinder after a fan spotted someone using a recent snap of him as their profile picture.

“When a guy tries to catfish you on Tinder but @James_Phelps was your childhood crush,” wrote Twitter user @BriMasterMcPhee on Saturday.

She also posted a screen shot of the fake Tinder profile of 22-year-old “Trent.”

The tweet came to the attention of Phelps, who confirmed Tuesday that he is “NOT” on Tinder ― and that he wasn’t actually called “Trent.” 

Twitter users loved his response:

 

For the record, the actor and his identical brother, Oliver Phelps, have changed quite a bit since their “Harry Potter” days. Here’s how they looked in 2004 on the release of the the third movie, “Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban.”

And here’s what they look like now:

 

Now what’s that banishing charm for “Trent?”

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Artist Projects ‘Pay Trump Bribes Here’ Message On President’s D.C. Hotel

A multimedia artist caused a commotion in Washington, D.C., late Monday when he projected a series of images on Trump International Hotel that skewered the president over accusations about his business ties with foreign governments.

Robin Bell, a Washington-based artist known for his political projections, said the work was meant to highlight benefits Donald Trump continues to reap since his ascension to the presidency, including revenue generated at his D.C. hotel. The artwork, which went up around 10 p.m. local time, quickly spread on Twitter before it was shut down by hotel security.

“It seems like a very clear case of his impropriety,” Bell said. “It’s a great visualization of a clear-cut example of the laws that he’s breaking.”

Staff reached at Trump International Hotel declined to comment about the messages.

Legal experts have said they aren’t certain if Trump has actually violated the so-called Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits those holding office from accepting gifts from foreign governments. However, a watchdog group filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year accusing Trump of doing just that through his vast empire of property holdings, which he still owns while they’re being managed by his two adult sons.

The president’s lawyers have contended that paying for a hotel room is not a gift.

Monday’s artwork cycled through three projections: One read, “Pay Trump bribes here”; another, “Emoluments welcome” on top of the flags of Russia, Turkey, China and Saudi Arabia; and a third showed the Emoluments Clause in its entirety.

Bell’s work has targeted others in the Trump administration in recent months, including a projection on the EPA headquarters aimed at noted climate change denier Myron Ebell. Another, crasser message simply read, “Experts agree: Trump is a pig.”

Bell said his work is a simple act of resistance in the nation’s capital, where, he noted, it’s “sad to see the old post office being used” as a Trump business. The hotel has become the go-to destination for foreign diplomats.

“Maybe in the history books it’ll show that we were not for this,” he said.

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As A Queer Kid In Rural France, This Writer Was Subjected To Extreme Violence

In Hallencourt, where writer Édouard Louis grew up, the word “violence” is seldom used. Which isn’t to say it’s a peaceful, idyllic place. There may be the ostensible benefits of the countryside; the surrounding area may be lively and green. But the town ― which, in France’s recent presidential race, favored the Trump-esque Marine Le Pen ― is marked by its gendered social values.

Louis ― born Eddy Bellegueule ― writes in his novel The End of Eddy that he was chastised and bullied for his “affected” voice from a young age. His father and eldest brother were both drinkers and fighters. Like most men in Hallencourt, his father dropped out of high school to work at a factory, but was unable to continue his work due to an injured back. The author flatly recounts memories of his father, who would murder litters of kittens and brawl for sport. Louis, meanwhile, took pleasure in trying on women’s clothes, and devised excuses for skipping out on soccer practice.

Louis’s parents, and others in town, eventually came to accept his queerness just as they conceded the personhood of the only black person they knew in town. But acceptance came with a stipulation, a rationalization: we like you because you’re not like the others. Being not like the others meant being tough. In Hallencourt, toughness was the highest virtue. It meant doing backbreaking work. It meant, in Louis’ case, not flinching when a classmate hocked a phlegmy wad of spit onto his face.

Louis is gifted at limning visceral descriptions of squalor. His want to not allow doctors to cede control of his body, and his resulting choice to spray a tetanus-blackened foot with perfume; his dust-covered and smoke-filled home, made worse by having asthma; his dad’s proclivity for fixing up old TV’s, and demanding that the family watch together in silence over dinner. The psychological insights he culls from these experiences are poignant. His mother’s tendency to declare that she’s “not a lady,” the habit both kids and adults in town had of laughing at the pain of others, as though laughter conveyed strength of character.

Of being bullied at school, Louis writes, “They laughed when my face began to turn purple from lack of oxygen (a natural response from working-class people, the simplicity of those who possess little and enjoy laughing, who know how to have a good time).” On the town’s rampant racism, Louis’ takeaways run the risk of being facile. “There is a will that exists, a desperate, constantly renewed effort to place some people on a level below you,” he explains plainly.

Still, the writer’s emotional tenor and clear-sightedness make this a must-read for anyone looking to learn more about class in the West, and how it weighs on the state of politics.

The bottom line

A touching story that’s artfully told, The End of Eddy will both make you want to turn away ― the descriptions of violence are that rich, and sensate ― and continue on with its frank and generous author.

Who wrote it

Édouard Louis, aka Eddy Bellegueule, is the author of two novels. Michael Lucey, the book’s translator, is a professor of French literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

Who will read it

Anyone interested in the burgeoning subgenre of autofiction, or in stories about class, masculinity, and growing up queer.

What other reviewers think

Slate: “Coming to terms with his childhood has resulted in this stark and honest image of French working class society, rendered in an authentic voice.”

Washington Post: “What is most impressive about The End of Eddy is that its author turned himself into a man capable of creating such a vivid and honest self-portrait.”

Opening lines

“From my childhood I have no happy memories. I don’t mean to say that I never, in all those years, felt any happiness or joy. But suffering is all-consuming: it somehow gets rid of anything that doesn’t fit into its system.”

Notable passage

“The truth was that the display of all these bits of flesh was driving me crazy. I was using words like fags, fairies, queers to keep my distance from them. I used these words against the others in the hope that they would stop invading every inch of my body.”

The End of Eddy
Édouard Louis
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $23.00
May 2

The Bottom Line is a weekly review combining plot description and analysis with fun tidbits about the book.

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A Black Lesbian Horror Film From ‘Get Out’ Producer Is In The Works

Screenwriter Dee Rees is to heart-rending films about black lesbians as producer Jason Blum is to eerily relevant social horror movies ― and the two are joining forces for what should be a one-of-a-kind movie that speaks to the terror of homophobia, sexism and racism, at the very least. 

Rees is the director of the 2011 Sundance film “Pariah,” about a young black lesbian coming to terms with her sexuality and familial rejection, and the Golden Globe-nominated biopic “Bessie” about 1920s queer blues singer Bessie Smith. Blum produced the second highest-grossing R-rated horror film in North American history with 2017’s “Get Out,” a social thriller that intertwines components of the genre with the experience of being black in America.  

Both have mastered the art of using cinema as insight into painful everyday American realities, and, according to a New York Times Magazine article published Thursday, will soon be combining their storytelling talents. 

Blum, who is a fan of Rees’ critically acclaimed Sundance movie “Mudbound,” said Rees recently pitched a horror film centered on a black lesbian couple who just moved to the countryside together, and he was all for it. 

They met at a recent event in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel Air, where both gave speeches to a room of Sundance Institute benefactors. After Rees and Blum both spoke to the other’s brilliance, they connected after Blum’s speech for a meeting of minds. 

Rees’ pitch to Blum went as follows: “You’ve got me and my wife, two black lesbians, and when we first moved in, we fought every day over all these little things: ‘Why is this over there? Did you move that?’ ” she said. 

“Maybe it was a ghost,” Rees continued. “Or maybe it was some other force — like us not wanting to be there or fitting in. Anyway, that’s my horror-movie pitch,” Rees said.

Blum was sold. Just a few weeks later, the two met for lunch and began talking business. 

“I can’t tell you how rare it is that people mean what they say in this business,” Rees told writer Ryan Bradley of Blum. “He’s just letting me make the best possible version of what I want to make.”

We don’t know how long this will take, but we can imagine Jordan Peele is somewhere satisfying a screenwriting itch. 

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Facebook Users Have Awesome Responses To Little Boy’s Makeup Tutorial

A viral video is helping to pose a parenting question to social media users.

On May 13, the Facebook page VibeswithBae posted a video of a young boy doing a makeup tutorial. “You walk in to your son doing this, wyd?” the caption asks.

The video has been viewed over 15 million times. 

Commenters came up with some awesome responses to the question in the caption. Their reactions as his hypothetical parents ranged from asking him to do their makeup to helping him launch a beauty empire.

Many also offered their own beauty tips to the budding makeup artist.

The boy in the video is named Jack and lives in the U.K. His Instagram account, @makeuupbyjack has nearly 45,000 followers. Jack regularly posts photos and videos of his favorite makeup looks. 

While there were tons of empowering responses to the viral video, there were also many negative reactions from Facebook users who said they would punish him if he were their son and do whatever they could to put a stop to his passion for makeup.

In response to the vitriol, one commenter brought up another recent viral video, in which a 3-year-old girl demonstrated how to change the oil in a car. 

“Not 1 comment saying ‘she shouldnt be doing that! Thats a mans thing to do! Slap that girl up!’” the Facebook user wrote. “Everyone commenting saying how clever and awesome she was! So why is it OK for girls to do boys things but a boy getting slated for doing girl things?! Let people, kids, boys, girls whoever do whatever the fuck they like!”

Young boys with more “feminine” interests have faced backlash for not conforming to traditional gender norms.  

Last month, Ellen DeGeneres invited a 12-year-old boy who was bullied for wearing makeup on her show. A viral Twitter hashtag also recently illustrated the way expectations of masculinity limit young boys and promote damaging stereotypes that can have a profound effect for many years. 

In this day and age, maybe it’s time to just let kids be kids. 

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No, Putin’s Piano Recital Doesn’t Make Him Any ‘Softer’

Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian president who is more concerned with consolidating his own power over Russia than addressing the country’s shocking track record of human rights violations, can play the piano.

That’s right, the leader of the world’s largest nation, who has threatened the very bedrock of free press and potentially encouraged the delegitimization of Western democracy, has some semblance of a musical talent. 

Proof of such talent hit the internet on Monday morning in the form of a video of Putin playing Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi’s “Evening Song” and Tikhon Khrennikov’s “Moscow Windows” in Beijing. While you might have imagined such a recital unremarkable, others would disagree. 

The recital showed perhaps a softer side of Mr. Putin, an authoritarian leader who has been in power since 1999 and has often appeared eager to be seen as manly,” Ivan Nechepurenko wrote in a piece that appeared in The New York Times. The story was picked up by other outlets (including this one) and reported in a similar fashion by other publications, who made it a point to note that the piano playing represented a “softer” skill.

When compared to his knack for invading other countries or supporting internationally condemned dictators, perhaps piano playing is a “softer” skill. But the arbitrariness of that comparison reveals the absurdity of the framing: Putin’s ability to play the piano doesn’t make him any softer, or even reveal a supposed “softer side.”

As many people have pointed out on social media, several other men capable of heinous things have demonstrated a talent for the arts. So what? 

Putin’s seemingly spontaneous public outings, always chronicled by a photographer on hand, have been covered before. He hunts, he fishes, he rides horses shirtless. His piano playing is but another public gesture, meant to humanize, even aggrandize, a president whose regime is riddled with corruption. But does it make a difference to anyone that Putin, capable of the atrocities mentioned here, has a “softer side”? Is artistic talent that redemptive of a quality?

Artists are certainly not innately good or soft. (“Hard,” “evil” people can make art, too; to use a particularly popular example from history, Hitler was an acclaimed painter.) Neither is art itself. It can be uncomfortable, dark, provocative, nauseating. Just ask Hermann Nitsch. “The gooey notion that art should somehow be good for you ― Vitamin C for the soul ― is very American,” critic Christopher Knight wrote back in 1992. 

When former American President George W. Bush announced his painting hobby, the internet was quick to praise such a nice, quaint retirement pastime. When he came out with his own art book, Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors, the praise continued, until a Hyperallergic article proposed that maybe we were focusing too much on “the transformative power of art.” He was, after all, the same president who’s believed to have “misled a nation into the Iraq War.” 

Perhaps what’s particularly annoying about the framing of an article that suggests Putin, a totalitarian head of state, is somehow more sensitive after putting on a piano performance, is that it proposes that his talent is also the opposite of “manly” ― as opposed to his more “virile” hobbies: hunting and fishing and shirtless horseback riding. The overtly masculine descriptors are perplexingly outdated and sexist, because, obviously, virile men can play the piano and feminine women can hunt.

At the end of the day, Putin’s piano playing means much less than he or his administration would like you to believe. Whether he’s performed before ― or done so badly ― does not matter. 

Deborah Rothschild, the curator of a show of Hitler’s paintings, once said that, “The union of malevolence and beauty can occur; we must remain vigilant against its destructive power.” But Peter Schjeldahl, an art crtic at The New Yorker, probably said it better:

We must remain vigilant against malevolence, and we should regard beauty as the fundamentally amoral phenomenon that it is.

It does not matter.

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‘Bachelor’ Stars Ben Higgins And Lauren Bushnell Split After Over A Year Together

Sadly, another “Bachelor” couple has ended their engagement. 

Ben Higgins, who starred on Season 20 of the ABC franchise, has officially called it quits with his fiancée, Lauren Bushnell, according to People. The two shared a statement on their split: 

It is with heavy hearts that we announce our decision to go our separate ways. We feel fortunate for the time we had together, and will remain friends with much love and respect for one another. We wish nothing but the best for each other, and ask for your support and understanding at this time.

Cue lots of tears.

Higgins and Bushnell got engaged ahead of the season premiere of “The Bachelor” Season 20 in January 2016. Although they had to keep their relationship a secret while the season played out on the air, it was pretty clear that Higgins had a special bond with Bushnell right from the beginning. She beat out runner-up ― and future Bachelorette ― JoJo Fletcher for his heart and a Neil Lane diamond ring. 

Rumors of a split have been floating around for months, but Higgins shot down any speculation with an Instagram post in February. 

In October 2016, the couple revealed they were in couples therapy, with Higgins telling People at the time, “We’re not the perfect couple. Far from it! But we are trying really hard, and we love each other a lot … ’Bachelor’ or not, our life is not easy to navigate. We have our struggles. But we won’t give up. And for every argument, we’re stronger for it.”

The pair, who debuted their own reality series, “Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?,” on Freeform in October, moved in together last April in Denver, Colorado. (Clearly, the show won’t be back for a Season 2, but at least we still have the Ferguson twins!) 

Bushnell, who’s now a lifestyle blogger, hasn’t posted a photo of Higgins in a month. The former Bachelor, however, just shared a picture of his former love last week, writing, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. -Martin Luther King Jr.” @laurenbushnell continues to spread love while some feel it is their responsibility to spread hate, she is a light in this world. Proud of my gal, @laurenbushnell got me .”

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‘Funeral Parade Of Roses’ Has Been Restored In All Its Queer Art-House Glory

The 1969 experimental film “Funeral Parade of Roses” defies classification: The “Oedipus Rex” update is a master class in queer art-house cinema, integrating documentary techniques in which the movie’s actors break the fourth wall to discuss their roles. Revolving around a love triangle in Tokyo’s underground transgender scene, Toshio Matsumoto’s avant-garde classic has been restored for a June re-release.

HuffPost has the exclusive trailer, which outlines the film’s stylistic flair. “Funeral Parade of Roses” famously inspired Stanley Kubrick’s vision for “A Clockwork Orange,” which also melds violence, sex and outré imagery.

“Roses” opens June 9 in New York and June 16 in Los Angeles. It expands to additional cities thereafter. 

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