Halle Berry vs. Drake
In one of the most unexpected celebrity feuds of the year, Halle Berry (star of the iconic Catwoman and nothing else) is beefing with Drake for allegedly using her image without her consent for his newest single “Slime You Out” (gross).
^To be clear, this is the image, which by itself is perfectly innocuous — it’s from the 2012 Nickelodeon Choice Awards (a bygone era #RIP). That being said, it’s EXTREMELY easy to see why Ms. Berry would take umbrage with the picture being used within the context of a Drake single. Like…why? What did Halle Berry ever to do deserve this treatment? Couldn’t they have just “slimed” (so f*cking gross) some random non-famous person using CGI or something? And if it HAD to be a public figure, couldn’t it have been someone a little more current? Someone who hasn’t been off minding their own business for the past decade or so? I mean, for the love of God!
After Drake dropped the cover art, Halle Berry responded by dropping the following cryptic message on her instagram:
This is how you know Halle Berry is in her fifties even though she looks like she’s 28 fucking years old lmao. Who else is sharing these quotes? Especially with the nonsensical ellipses and exclamation point, that’s the dead giveaway.
Anyways, Halle Berry has been on a bit of a social media rampage, asserting that Drake’s team called her team requesting use of the image, which she denied for reasons that are now clear to us all. On the other side, commenters have pointed out that, even though it’s a picture of Halle Berry, she’s not the owner — the image actually belongs to Getty, so Berry really had no right either way to deny its use.
(Sidebar — this can also be tricky in the meme world, Like obviously Sofia Richie doesn’t give a crap if we use her image in memes, but the company that actually owns the image might send you a cease & desist. Y’all don’t know what we go through!)
Where do we land in this debate? Yes, it’s true that Drake had every legal right to purchase the image from Getty and go through that avenue etc. HOWEVER, it was extremely disrespectful to feign going through the motions of asking Halle Berry for permission when he didn’t actually care about that in the first place, and imo a little unethical (if not illegal) to use the picture in this heinous suggestive way.
Catching Up With Taylor
Don’t worry y’all, this won’t be a recurring column (although don’t tempt me) but I just felt like there was a lot going on with Taylor this week:
Taylor & Sophie Turner stepped out on the town together! Both looked amazing, although I must say I’m intrigued by this Lower East Side rich girl aesthetic Taylor has been feeling lately. But slay. This is obviously Taylor’s way of saying f*ck you to Joe Jonas, who broke up with her 300 years ago in a 30 second phone call that we all know she never got over. There is nothing she does better than revenge!!!!
1989 Taylor’s Version is coming out in October, and she just dropped the titles of the vault tracks. One of the tracks is a song called “Slut!” which sounds kind of fun and scandalous but I feel like will end up being an annoying girlboss anthem. We all remember how 1989-era Taylor thought she was the first person to discover the “when a man has sex, he’s a player; but when a woman has sex, she’s a slut!” school of feminism lol.
Travis Kelce’s (Taylor’s rumored paramour) brother said in an interview that he “believes 100%” that Taylor & Travis are dating. However, Taylor’s camp has denied it. Who can say?
Katy Perry Sells Her Catalogue
Remember when Katy Perry’s music was inescapably popular? I wonder what happened to her…
Hard to say. But anyways, Katy Perry has sold the rights to her music for $225 million, making her one of the wealthiest self-made women in America. Slay! I think people who are slightly younger forget the absolute chokehold that Ms. Perry had us in for a good three or four albums. Teenage Dream was a MASTERPIECE, and she was up there with Taylor, Beyoncé, Rihanna, etc. for quite a while there. Also, even after falling out of popularity, Katy has shadily stayed super rich with that $25 million/year American Idol gig. Good for you KP!
Don’t Tell Anne Hathaway She Looks Good For Her Age
In this week’s iteration of Brave & Empowering Famous People, Anne Hathaway gave an interview in which she pushed back against people who tell her she looks great for her age:
"I don't really think about age. To me, aging is another word for living."
Okay. I’ll concede that this “you look good for your age” is an obnoxious thing to say — obviously, you can just say “you look great!” without that least little “for your age” qualifier. If you absolutely must get that exact aging point across, you might say something like “you look EXACTLY THE SAME” or what have you. ‘For your age’ implies that you don’t look good in general.
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