Charlotte Alter

By asking people on social media to define the term

On Wednesday, actress Gabrielle Union published an essay on Cosmopolitan.com about how it felt to have her personal photos hacked while she was on her honeymoon. Union was one of the victims of the massive photo hack in August that targeted stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton.

Here’s what she said:

It felt like The Hunger Games: You’re waiting to be attacked. Friends are assuring you that this will pass and people will move on to the next thing. But in this case, the next thing means the next victim — the next woman to have her naked body exposed to strangers against her will. And the crowd in the arena is going wild. People are critiquing and judging, cheering for more. They’re shouting, “Next! Next!”

She also notes that she felt especially helpless because so many of the photos that surfaced had been deleted years ago. Unfortunately, it seems that the “delete” button is practically meaningless:

I felt extreme anxiety, a complete loss of control. I suddenly understood that deleting things means nothing. You think it’s gone? It’s not. What is the point of even including a delete function on a phone if it doesn’t really delete? I had deleted the photos from my phone, but apparently they had remained on some server somewhere, unbeknownst to me, where hackers could find them.

Union calls the hack a “new form of sexual abuse,” and declares that the “violation” is about control over her own body. “People sometimes argue: but you wear skimpy bikinis — what’s the difference? The difference is that you are the one who chooses whether to show your body,” she writes. “When billions of people on the Internet can see you naked without your consent, it’s a crime.”

MORE: How Nudity Became the New Normal

The actress also compared speaking publicly about the hacking incident to when she was raped as a college student, noting that she stood up for herself then by helping the rapist get prosecuted, and she will stand up for herself now. “I was raised to speak up,” she writes.

The Bring It On star also said she was surprised at the outpouring of support, sometimes from places she least expected. “In LA, the photographers were waiting, but not to attack: They actually high-fived me. ‘We’re on Team Gab,'” she writes. “When the paparazzi tell you something is bad, you know it’s really bad.”

[Cosmopolitan]

The reactions confirms we're still obsessed with fairy tales

There was a great wail on Twitter Wednesday morning, and it wasn’t about the midterm elections. It was because Benedict Cumberbatch, the hunky British star of Sherlock, got engaged to director and actress Sophie Hunter instead of you.

The same thing happened when George Clooney popped the question to human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin (although the shock was amplified due to element of surprise because the divorced bachelor had said he wouldn’t marry again). In both cases, there was a immediate gasp — and Twitter despair — followed by fawning over each woman’s considerable accomplishments.

And Sophie Hunter and Amal Alamuddin both have plenty to fawn over. Hunter is an actress (she and Cumberbatch met on the set of the 2009 film Burlesque Fairytales) but she’s better known as a theater director and playwright — she won the Samuel Beckett award for her play The Terrific Electric, and directed operas like The Magic Flute and The Rape of Lucretia. Amal Alamuddin is a well-respected international lawyer who has represented clients like Julian Assange, and specializes in human rights law. In other words, neither is a slouch.

But the initial “gasp” is more interesting. Why is everyone so shocked when movie stars marry non-movie stars? Especially when super-hot, eligible male celebrities marry non-famous women instead of fellow Hollywood royalty?

Because for that first moment, it feels like a modern Cinderella story, especially when the entire Internet is asking “Who’s That Girl?” like gossipy stepsisters at the ball. It’s part of the “beautiful princess plucked from obscurity” thing, an old-fashioned fantasy that manages to co-exist and survive even in a society that’s increasingly skeptical of all things pink and princess-y. The media called the Alamuddin-Clooney wedding a “fairytale,” and the very recent Hunter-Cumberbatch engagement has already taken on its own gauzy romantic aura. And in the 21st century, fame is royalty, so when a movie star pops the question to someone who’s not a red carpet fixture, it’s as shocking as a Prince going around touching people’s feet.

Really, we shouldn’t be surprised at all. All the data suggests that there’s nothing “magical” about either match, and that both actually have a fairly good chance of surviving. Marriages between mature, childless adults with equal status and similar educational backgrounds have the best chances of survival, as my colleague Belinda Luscombe recently pointed out in a piece about Clooney’s marriage. And it seems like the Cumberbatch-Hunter nuptials fit that very same bill.

Still, there’s an embarrassing amount of shock and awe when something like this happens. And if they had had Twitter in those fictional kingdoms once upon a time, there probably would have been a lot of tweets like these:

True, Benedict is dreamy, tall, and looks good in tweed, but this response seems a little extreme. That’s why I think there’s something else going on here: the jealousy isn’t because Cumberbatch is so British and hot, it’s rooted in the fact that Sophie Hunter is a mere mortal, a “civilian.” The same thing happened when George proposed to Amal and when Prince William proposed to Kate Middleton. As Fay Schopen wrote in an essay in The Guardian after Clooney’s engagement, “I, along with legions of others I am sure, have never been able to shake the idea that if Clooney and I happened to meet each other I’d be in with a chance.”

People are jealous because each of these super-eligible bachelors found someone who was “just like us” — but who was not, in fact, any of us. And the fact that we react this way when famous men marry regular women suggests we’re still enthralled by the old fairy-tale of a Prince picking a girl from the crowd and making her a Princess.

It’s also worth noting that there’s not often the same reaction when news breaks that a famous actor is simply dating someone who isn’t famous, like when Clooney dated former cocktail waitress Sarah Larson. It’s the engagement that causes a frenzy. That also ties into Prince Charming narrative — it’s not the love that matters, it’s the “happily ever after.”

So as much as we might think that the Prince Charming fantasy has been injured by feminism and killed by Tinder, he’s not really dead. He’s just back in the movies, which is probably where he belongs.

A glimpse of Olivia Pope and the president was too much

Parents are miffed that ABC aired a sex scene on the show Scandal just moments after the kid-friendly Halloween special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which meant that if kids didn’t change the channel quickly enough, they might have seen some steamy action between Olivia and Fitz.

“Shame on ABC for putting a peep show next to a playground,” Parents Television Council president Tim Winter said in a statement. “In less than 26 seconds, we were taken from the Peanuts pumpkin patch to a steamy Scandal sex scene. Twenty-six seconds, boom. Unless parents had the remote control in their hand, thumb on the button and aimed directly at the TV screen, they didn’t have a chance.”

“The juxtaposition of a reliably classic family-friendly children’s cartoon special like the Great Pumpkin — a huge family draw every year for decades — with such a graphic bedroom scene is unjustifiable,” Winter continued.

So for the kids who got their first glimpse of the Olivia Pope on Halloween: Welcome to Shondaland.

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Not much has changed for women in politics since 1924

Before there was Sarah Palin or Ann Richards, there was Nellie Tayloe Ross. Ninety years ago today, on Nov 4, 1924, Ross was elected governor of Wyoming, and became the first woman governor in the United States.

Ross was elected a month after her husband, Governor William B. Ross, died suddenly of appendicitis. Her supporters thought it was fitting that the first state to allow equal voting rights (Wyoming passed women’s suffrage in 1869) would also be the first to have a woman governor, and Ross was committed to continuing her husband’s progressive policies. Plus, she wanted the job. Ross was the first woman governor by only a few days — Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, who had also been a state First Lady, was sworn in as governor of Texas just over two weeks after Ross took office.

Ross was inaugurated on Jan. 5, 1925. Eleven days later, when she appeared before the Legislature to review the progress of her late husband, The New York Times ran the headline, “Mrs. Ross Wears Hat Before Legislature,” and noted that she “defied precedent” by “wearing hat and gloves.” Other contemporary media accounts noted that she had “not lost her womanliness” and remained “ever feminine, never a feminist,” as noted in her Times obituary when she died in 1977. “Really, I dropped accidentally into politics,” she told the Times in 1926, saying she preferred to taking a stroll along the boardwalk to discussing rumors of a 1928 bid for the Vice Presidency (which never materialized).

Ninety years later, women politicians are still struggling with the delicate balance of femininity, ambition and power. Even though we may have a woman president sometime soon, female politicians must still be attractive but not too sexy, ambitious but not too scary. And as much as we may want to think that we’re past caring how female politicians look, the recent kerfuffle over Sen. Tom Harkin comparing Iowa Republican candidate Joni Ernst to Taylor Swift proves not much as changed in the last nine decades. That focus on looks is bad for women who aspire to politics. “When [a woman]’s appearance is commented on publicly during a campaign, it undermines her; it actually hurts her,” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said at the Real Simple/TIME Women & Success Panel in October. “And it doesn’t matter if the comment is positive or negative. It undermines her credibility.”

Ross also had to dispel the idea that she would use her power to rid the Wyoming government of men, and create an all-woman government ( a 1925 man’s worst nightmare). Here’s what TIME reported in 1925 that she told the Associated Press when asked about her view of women in politics:

“It is most amusing and amazing to me, for example, to be asked, as I was soon after my election, whether I expected to appoint any men to office? This question, telegraphed to me from the East by a well-known metropolitan newspaper, had every indication of being quite sincere, and was apparently inspired by the fear that the elevation of women to executive office was likely to be followed by the dismissal of all men and the substitution of women in their places.”

If Nellie Tayloe Ross were alive today, she’d certainly have some thoughts about #notallmen.

The problem is not that she was called attractive, it's how people react to that

When video surfaced of a Democratic senator calling her “really attractive,” Senate candidate Joni Ernst took full advantage.

In an appearance on Fox News Monday, the Iowa Republican slammed retiring Sen. Tom Harkin, whose seat she’s seeking, for saying in a video that she’s “as good looking as Taylor Swift” but “votes like Michele Bachmann.”

“I think it’s unfortunate that he and many in their party believe that you can’t be a real woman if you’re conservative and female,” she said. “I believe if my name had been John Ernst on my resume, then Senator Harkin would not have said those things.”

Ernst is right that there’s a double standard for female politicians, but she’s not quite right about how it works. For one thing, people say male politicians are sexy all the time. In fact, it’s often an argument in favor of their candidacy.

Obama’s sex appeal won him a fan in “Obama Girl,” who made viral YouTube videos about her crush on the then-Presidential candidate in 2008. Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) rumored washboard abs were the subject of much speculation during his 2012 Vice Presidential campaign. Scott Brown, who once posed nude for Cosmopolitan, was the subject of a 2010 New York Times column called “Bringing Sexy Back.” John Edwards was voted People Magazine’s “Sexiest Politician” of 2000.

It’s not a recent phenomenon either. Some historians argue that JFK won the presidency in 1960 because he looked more handsome than Nixon during the televised Nixon-Kennedy debate.

But while attractiveness is a political asset for male politicians, it’s a liability for women.

A 2010 study from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel found that when female job applicants included a photo with their resumes, more attractive women were less likely to get hired than plainer ones. But references to physical appearance of any kind, flattering or insulting, can hurt a female candidate.

“When [a woman]’s appearance is commented on publicly during a campaign, it undermines her; it actually hurts her,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said during the Real Simple/TIME event on Women and Success on Oct 1. “And it doesn’t matter if the comment is positive or negative. It undermines her credibility.”

That’s why comments about female politicians’ looks are seen as gaffes, while comments on men’s looks are considered funny and flattering.

Earlier this year, Gillibrand revealed in her book that she had been called “porky” and “chubby” by fellow Senators. Last year, Obama apologized to California Attorney General Kamala Harris after he commented that she was the “best-looking attorney general in the country.” Before he was defeated by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2012, then-Sen. Scott Brown responded to Warren’s comment that she didn’t have to take off her clothes to pay for college (a dig at Brown’s nude photo shoot) with an insulting “thank God.” And in 2010, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Gillibrand the “hottest member” of the Senate, while she was sitting only a few feet away. Each of these comments created a minor scandal, and sparked debate about whether the female politicians were being “taken seriously.”

Sarah Palin is a perfect example of this. The former beauty queen-turned politician became a living punchline, thanks in part to her “sexy librarian hair” and resemblance to SNL comic Tina Fey.

So the problem with Harkin’s remarks isn’t that he wouldn’t have made them about a hypothetical John Ernst. The problem is that they would be seen as a problem for the real Joni Ernst.

Oscar-winning actor was inspired by his typewriter collection

Tom Hanks will soon be able to add “author” to his resumé, having secured a publisher for a collection of short stories inspired by his beloved typewriter collection.

Hanks, who recently published a story in the New Yorker, said his hobby of collecting antique writing machines had motivated him to take to the typewriter keys himself.

“I’ve been collecting typewriters for no particular reason since 1978 – both manual and portable machines dating from the thirties to the nineties,” the Oscar-winning actor said in a statement. “The stories are not about the typewriters themselves, but rather, the stories are something that might have been written on one of them.”

The collection, to be published by Knopf-Doubleday, doesn’t yet have a release date or a title.

But if you want 1989, you'll probably have to buy it

Taylor Swift just removed her music from Spotify, and it doesn’t look like they’re ever getting back together. But what now? Where will you be able to listen to Shake It Off? How will you get through your day without Out of the Woods?

Don’t rip your ears off in despair just yet– here are four places where you can still find Taylor Swift’s music online:

Rdio: You can listen to all of Taylor’s old albums here, but nothing from 1989, unfortunately.

Google Play: You can buy the entire album of 1989 on GooglePlay for $12.49, or individual songs for $1.29.

iTunes: 1989 is featured on iTunes and is on sale for $12.99.

Amazon: If you buy 1989 on CD on Amazon, it will automatically download all 13 tracks in MP3 format (and at $9.99, it costs less than iTunes.) You can also just buy the MP3 version for $12.49.

Other music sites like Pandora and Songza also still have Taylor’s music, but it’s not immediately clear whether they have 1989. And besides, you can’t request to hear specific songs through those sites.

Just don’t steal the album illegally, because if you did that, you’d really be letting Taylor down—she wrote a whole op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about how piracy is changing the music industry.

Update: The original version of this story has been updated to remove links from a site that hosts music files without the permission of copyright holders.

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