Since the beginning of time (1998), one question has haunted humanity: Is the boy Brandy’s, or is he Monica’s? Next week, we might just find out once and for all.
As “The Boy Is Mine” singers announced on Saturday, Brandy and Monica will be doing a Verzus battle on Aug. 31, streamed live over Instagram and Apple Music, Billboard reports.
“History,” said Brandy on Instagram.
Monica agreed: “This will be historical.”
I know that both singers have big ol’ catalogs full of hits to their names and are much more just than that one song where they play-fight over an imaginary man who’s dating them both, but also that song was huge—as in was the best-selling single of 1998, staying at #1 for 13 weeks huge—and it still fucking rules some twentysomething years later so I hope you’ll excuse me for being so tunnel-visioned and reductive about the thought of them going head to head on “The Boy Is Mine” one more time!!!!
In her upcoming documentary, This Is Paris, Paris Hilton opens up about the physical and verbal abuse she claims to have suffered as a student at Provo Canyon School, a boarding school in Utah.
“From the moment I woke up until I went to bed, it was all day screaming in my face, yelling at me, continuous torture,” she said in a recent interview with People. “The staff would say terrible things. They were constantly making me feel bad about myself and bully me. I think it was their goal to break us down. And they were physically abusive, hitting and strangling us. They wanted to instill fear in the kids so we’d be too scared to disobey them.”
“They would use [solitary confinement] as punishment, sometimes 20 hours a day” she added.
Watch the trailer for This Is Paris, premiering Sept. 14 on YouTube, below.
British model Maxine Heron is speaking out against the transphobic pushback she received from the fashion industry as well as her former modeling agency after publicly disclosing that she’s trans in 2018.
Heron, now 26, transitioned as a child and decided to keep that to herself as she began working as a model—possibly to protect herself, as being outed has ruined many trans women’s successful modeling careers. This happened to models April Ashley, Tracey Africa, and Caroline Cossey in decades past, and the threat of weaponizing trans women’s identities against us is still very real, as the NikkieTutorials blackmail situation from earlier this year demonstrates.
Anyway, Heron decided to disclose her past to the public two years ago as an act of solidarity with trans people as well as to better use her platform to advocate for trans rights. Unfortunately, this led to her not getting booked for a single paid gig in the year that followed, which her agent rationalized in a really fucked-up way.
“The founder of the agency told me it was ‘probably the trans thing,’” Heron said, per PinkNews. “They then told me this was something I’d have to deal with in my career because of the lifestyle choices I’d made. I thought they meant my choice to come out, but they replied: ‘No your lifestyle choice to transition in the first place.’”
She has thankfully signed to a different agency since then and, by the looks of her Instagram, appears to be booked and busy.
- Vanessa Bryant has shared an emotional tribute to her late husband and daughter on what would have been Kobe Bryant’s 42nd birthday. [Hollywood Life]
- Opera legend Plácido Domingo denied ever abusing his power and sexually harassing women while managing the Los Angeles Opera or the Washington National Opera despite two investigations finding credible accusations to the contrary. [Associated Press]
- The American Civil Liberties Union has offered to help Britney Spears end her conservatorship. “People with disabilities have a right to lead self-directed lives and retain their civil rights,” the ACLU tweeted. “If Britney Spears wants to regain her civil liberties and get out of her conservatorship, we are here to help her.”[Page Six]
- Following in the footsteps of Kehlani, JoJo has removed Tory Lanez’s verse from her upcoming album in solidarity with Megan Thee Stallion. [Entertainment Tonight]
- I totally forgot Gigi Hadid was pregnant?? [Us Weekly]
- Nas says his recent Doja Cat diss (“unapologetically Black / the opposite of Doja Cat”) was not a diss. “I was really just saying a rhyme that rhymed with ‘Ultra Black,’” he explained. “I didn’t even think of it.” I get it. Like when I say “there is no bigger bummer / than hanging out with Jezebel staff writer Joan Summers,” I’m just saying words, which famously mean nothing! [Bossip]
- This Brandy song also still fucking rules: