moves like... levine??

gossip as praxis dirtbag edition

Happy Saturday dear readers, and Happy Autumn to those of you who enjoy the nights getting longer and the weather getting worse. To everyone else, I’m standing in solidarity with you and looking forward to hibernating until May and mainlining vit D supplements :))

Before I dish this week’s dirt I just want to say up top that I’ve never had more sustained interest/engagement in a topic than the DWD mess. Even people who typically don’t care about this stuff were invested. It truly broke the internet (my whatsapp group chats). I can’t promise that we’ll ever have an Emotional Speculation as juicy and universally interesting again, but I’m going to keep pushing them out regardless. You’ve been warned!

The biggest news of the week is, of course, Adam Levine’s leaked DMs. In case you’ve been fortunate enough not to see them or you’re like, hold on, Adam Levine?? from Maroon 5? is he relevant now?? let me do a little recap for you.

September 2022’s most googled man after King Charles

Adam Levine is a man in his early 40s who, along with his band Maroon 5, made one (admittedly) seminal album in 2002 and has since then made music best suited to lifts, doctors’ hold lines, and gyms. A while ago he married a Victoria’s Secret model, and the two of them have often featured in publications like Architectural Digest talking about being hot, rich and happy. To be honest, I had happily forgotten about him and was as shocked as the rest of you when his name was everywhere this week, but you know, a scandal’s a scandal. Basically, a woman in her 20s on TikTok claimed that she had had a year-long affair with Levine and she had the receipts to prove it. She showed screenshots of her insta DMs with Levine, and since the video went viral more women came out the woodwork with yet more screenshots of their own DMs with him. Some of which were cringe enough to inspire a whole generation of women to simply never talk to a man again, in case he says something like “i may need to see the booty again”. Powerful stuff!

Where it gets even grimmer is that Behati, the aforementioned VS model, is currently pregnant with their third child. Not only that, but Levine told one woman he was cheating with that he wanted to name said unborn child after her… icky!! icky icky icky!!! According to People’s magazine, a “source close to Levine” (which we can of course take as gospel) says he did all this because he “craves female attention”… full respect to this source for not even trying to come up with a less beta male reason for his shitty behaviour and instead leaving him with no choice but to look not only Bad, but Lame too!

Clearly this is a terrible situation for all women involved, but this should also - hopefully - be a lesson for male celebrities the world over to stop using Instagram to attempt to hook up with women you shouldn’t be hooking up with. I mean ideally, don’t attempt to hook up with women you shouldn’t, full stop, but clearly it’s baby steps here. And really: how many times do the intimate musings of a man of waning relevance need to be put on blast for them to get the message? Honestly, what exactly are they teaching the men of Hollywood if not the art of discretion?

And from one overplayed Hollywood hand to another, next up: it’s Brad Pitt! Specifically, his genderless skincare line! Okay look, I try not to pass judgement (mostly) but this need to be said: Brad Pitt is many things - blond! an actor! famous ex of Jennifer Aniston! - and chief amongst amongst those things, he is also… kinda leathered looking, right? This is a man who did not wear a lot of SPF in his 20s! To illustrate my point, here’s his GQ cover story from earlier this year where he literally looks embalmed:

You too can look like this!

Look, call me old fashioned, but I miss the days of an Olay campaign and a shoehorned mention of a moisturiser in “what’s in your bag” interview. I don’t - we don’t - need yet another celebrity beauty brand. Why do they keep trying to make this happen? Literally every week a new one crops up (indeed, mere days before Brad announced his, Travis Barker aka Mr Kourtney Kardashian announced one of his own. I can’t keep up!). None of them even seem remotely convinced of the product they’re slapping their name on, least of all Brad Pitt, who has actually refused to slap his name on it. Do they all need the cash that badly? Or are they all just deeply unsatisfied with their lot in life and want to diversify their skill set? Either way, enough, please - the people are begging.

And, to round off this week’s unusually male-focussed edition, I’d like to offer you some Cultural Commentary with a review of Baz Luhrmann’s latest epic, Elvis… JK, I’m gonna talk about Austin Butler, Kaia Gerber, and Jacob Elordi, a topic brought to my attention by Rosie last week.

So, Caitlin and I went to go see Elvis recently which, career-low performance from Tom Hanks aside, was a complete riot. We left the cinema with whiplash and a newfound appreciation of both Elvis and Austin Butler, who I had previously only seen in the short lived SATC prequel The Carrie Diaries and on Vanessa Hudgens’ Instagram. Obviously he’s a revelation in this film, but that’s not what I’m hear to focus on, so let’s instead kick this topic off with this IMO perfect tweet:

KVee @KNVee

@writtenbyirene His ex meeting his new gf 😶

So Austin, 31, used to date former Disney star and dancing advocate Vanessa Hudgens, who is the young adult woman in this image. The pair broke up basically as soon as he got cast in the Elvis film, and now, he’s dating Kaia Gerber, 21 year old model, daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford and the small child in the above image. Anyway, before she dated Austin Butler, Kaia Gerber dated Jacob Elordi, the really tall guy from Euphoria (who also used to date Zendaya in between Spiderman films). And you’ll never guess what role Jacob Elordi has just been cast in…. the role of a lifetime… that’s right, he’s playing Elvis! In a biopic of Priscilla Presley, who Austin Butler took to the Met Gala this year after his stint playing her late husband in the Baz Lurhmann film!

I know it’s a bit confusing, so I drew this sophisticated diagram to explain:

The red line is a little bonus connection between Elvis/Austin Priscilla/Kaia on account of the jarring age gap between each member of the couple <3

Obviously I find this absolutely fascinating and can’t get enough of the idea of Priscilla Presley and Kaia Gerber teaming up to play Jacob and Austin off against each other. But also, isn’t this an absolutely perfect illustration of how Hollywood has run out of both ideas and hot young men? We need some fresh blood in that place!! This can’t be all there is!

Okay! That’s probably all for now. Please know that I’m aware Leondardo di Caprio is now dating Gigi Hadid, but it’s a pairing I find so deeply dull that I simply have nothing to say about it. But if there’s anything else you think I should’ve covered, let me know. Until then, have a glorious weekend and, as ever, thanks for reading!

xoxo