#whitney houston interview

[creativelycomplex]

Which 90’s diva does Lestat prefer, Celine or Whitney? My money is on Celine cause she’s French and he cannot be impartial.

[nashvillethotchicken]

Louis Claudia and Lestat really are iwtv's respective Whitney Houston, Bobbi Kristina and Bobby Brown

[whitneyehouston]

“I have nothing to prove , I give myself and that’s it’s . That’s all I have to give”

[ky1echristian]

[hollywoodoutbreak]

The idea that I Wanna Dance with Somebody would reintroduce the world to Whitney Houston's music, at first, seems preposterous. After all, Houston's collection of hit songs -- 11 No. 1 songs and 29 that hit the Top 40 -- have never left the airwaves, playing on a wide variety of radio formats. But have we taken Houston and those songs for granted? That's certainly a possibility. And Naomi Ackie, who plays Houston in the new biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody, hopes that seeing and hearing some of Houston's hits on the big screen will restore those songs to a prominent place in the public's consciousness. I Wanna Dance with Somebody is now playing in theaters.

[dewitty1]

Barbara Walters, the intrepid interviewer, anchor and program host who led the way as the first woman to become a TV news superstar during a network career remarkable for its duration and variety, has died. She was 93.

Walters' death was announced by ABC on air Friday night.

“Barbara Walters passed away peacefully in her home surrounded by loved ones. She lived her life with no regrets. She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists, but for all women,” her publicist Cindi Berger also said in a statement.

[247liveculture]

Whitney Houston drops a gem!

[musicshelfwithmustard]

The Artist Known as 37735i6

Mustard had the pleasure of speaking with Giselle, or better known on the internet, as 37735i6. Together we discussed their relationship with music, their radio show, nature, and so much more!

Mustard had the pleasure of speaking with Giselle, or better known on the internet, as 37735i6. Together we discussed their relationship with music, their radio show, nature, and so much more! 1. Mustard is thankful to have you join them at Music Shelf. How are you doing today? Hi 🙂 I’m doing just fine as I write this! Thanks Mustard! I love your character! 2. Mustard wonders what your…

[youremyheaven]

Astrology & Voice : A Quick Study

1. Prominent 3h placements can give you a very distinct voice

2. People who have a deeper/huskier voice often have Mercury aspecting Pluto. Ex: Miley Cyrus & Whitney Houston (both have mercury conjunct pluto)

3. Mercury in a water sign can give the native a very sultry voice. They probably sound a lil intimidating and their voices will always be slightly low pitched (Zoe Saldana, Lana Del Rey, Pamela Anderson, Adriana Lima, Gisele Bundchen)

if Mercury is in Cancer, the voice tends to be soft and calming to hear. Ex: Margot Robbie, Elsa Pataky, Kate Beckinsale etc

Mercury in Scorpio gives the native a certain, almost nasally twang to their voice, it's not exactly nasally but i cant think of a good way to describe it, its deeper and fuller sounding but there's a certain twang to it.

Ex: Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, Julia Roberts, Madonna, Kris Jenner, Demi Moore, Gabrielle Union & Miley Cyrus

especially Miley & Demi have this very gravelly cigar smoking kinda voice

Mercury in Pisces gives a very intimidating, richer or fuller vocal timbre

Ex: Mariah Carey (her speaking voice), Sharon Stone, Liz Taylor, Alan Rickman, Lucy Lawless, Juliette Binoche, Fergie (her speaking voice)

4. Mercury in Fire signs gives a rather shrill voice, unless there are other aspects involved

Others may find their voice/talking irritating; they often have "vocal fry" esque tendencies

Mercury in Leo: Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Demi Lovato, Lindsay Lohan

Mercury in Sagittarius can give you either a very husky, sensuous voice or a very "loud" one, there's no in between

Ex: Scarlett Johansson, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Vanessa Paradis, Carla Bruni, Bjork etc

Mercury in Aries natives have a very tonal pitch, their voices have a very "radio announcer" quality, idk how to describe it 😭😭

Ex: Diana Ross, Jessica Chastain, Madison Beer, Carmen Electra, Jennifer Garner etc

5. Mercury in Earth signs

Mercury in Taurus also gives natives a very soulful, deep-ish husky voice. They're very sexy sounding

Ex: Gigi Hadid, Uma Thurman, Brooke Shields, Selena Quintanilla, Renee Zellwegger etc

Mercury in Virgo: these natives have a very "sing song-y" voice, they speak in a very rhythmic way and modulate their voice very well. if you listen to any of their interviews, they always speak like they're telling a story, if you know what I mean.

Ex: Madonna, Kylie Jenner, Hugh Grant, Monica Bellucci, Amy Winehouse, Salma Hayek, Dakota Johnson etc

Mercury in Capricorn gives natives a raspy voice, their voices tend to be very low pitched and some of them kind of sound like they have a perpetual cold

Ex: Taehyung, Zayn Malik, Shakira, Alex Turner, R Kelly, Alexa Demie

Sometimes however it can give the native a very "sugary girly" voice

Ex: Milla Jovovich, Taylor Swift, Zooey Deschanel, Ellen Degeneres

6. Mercury in Air signs

Mercury in Gemini natives are very verbose; they're articulate but they're very wordy; they also speak in a rather expressive manner; usually they're very well spoken

Ex: Angelina Jolie, Elizabeth Hurley, Helena Bonham Carter, Courteney Cox, Stevie Nicks, Cate Blanchett etc

Mercury in Libra natives often speak in a very expressive and animated way, its so cutee🥰

Ex: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Zendaya, Brigitte Bardot, Bella Hadid, Kate Winslet, Emma Stone, Gwen Stefani, Sophia Loren etc

Mercury in Aquarius: ive often noticed that these natives can sound a bit clueless or zoned out when they're speaking 🤭

Ex: Harry Styles, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Aniston, Paris Hilton (in the 2000s at least)

[vimbry]

*if you've heard a couple songs but don't really know much about them, or haven't listened in a long while, you can play!

update: the highest votes went to gudetama. but was it correct? here are the full titles and albums.

❌ "put your hand inside the puppet head" - they might be giants

the opening verse makes reference to leaving one's job and how "it's sad to say, you will romanticise all the things you've known before. it was not, not, not so great". according to flansburgh, "the lyric revolves around the idea that looking back on anything colors it in sentimentality".

❌ "I'll sink manhattan" - they'll need a crane (ep)/miscellaneous T

this is a flansburgh song, but linnell explained its meaning in a 1989 interview with NME as "a song about a guy who somehow figures out how to sink the island of manhattan just to kill his ex-lover, so it's his apology to the other people he's gonna kill in between. he's just gotta do it!"

❌ "meet james ensor" - john henry

it's about james ensor (belgium's famous painter).

❌ "wicked little critta" - mink car

from the tmbg unlimited collection: "forged in the crucible of an eastern massachusetts junior high, this song expresses the dreams, fears and hopes of a new england young adult" the lyrics seem to suggest said young adult fantasising about being a sports star alongside bobby orr and john havlicek while goofing off outside.

❌ "working undercover for the man" - mink car

from flansburgh: "it's more a meditation on the "mod squad" [a 1968 crime series about cool undercover detectives] than anything else. the idea of the narc just seems... like, those episodes of "dragnet" where they have the young undercover dress in a hippie suit."

✔️ "talent is an asset" - kimono my house

the lyrics illustrate an overly-cautious family shielding their very gifted child from others, to keep him studious and soak in all the glory, and is heavily implied to be little albert einstein through puns on relatives and relativity. it's not by them, tho. it's by the band sparks. it came 2nd, so I think many of you recognised it (or really wanted to see the results!)

❌ "bee of the bird of the moth" - the else

"this is a song about a creature called a hummingbird moth, which imitates another creature, which imitates yet another creature. it's completely fucked up, and can only be explained in song!" so they did.

❌ "2082" - join us

thewrap's review of the album describes this song as, "a science-fiction short story (...) a protagonist who travels into the future, finds himself hobbled but still unhappily alive all the way into the next millennium, and travels back to the title year to smother himself with a pillow in a mercy killing". fun!

❌ "call you mom" - nanobots

referred to by linnell as an "oedipus pan" song, the lyrics follow an unfortunate young man beginning a relationship with a woman, getting dumped due to his behaviour of treating her like a mother figure, then infantilising a possibly younger woman in a different relationship and in turn leaving her, who goes on to experience the same issues. fun! (altho, the final chorus actually still refers to her Mom leaving, not her dad, I got the details wrong there in the poll).

❌ "gudetama's busy days" - dial-a-song / my murdered remains

yes, that's a real song. quote flansburgh: "(...) it is really just about feeling isolated from the world, even if you are in a crowded place and manically trying to keep up with your life. the character of gudetama appealed to me because he is such a mopey sad sack."

❌ "marty beller mask" - album raises new and troubling questions

this is real, too! it's just about how marty beller was actually an alter ego of whitney houston the whole time. he's not, but wouldn't that be interesting. the song name-checks multiple of her own in the lyrics. it was temporarily retired out of respect following houston's death (4 months after its release), returning to live performances ten years later in 2022.

[weclassybouquetfun]

Jacob Anderson released his series two playlist for Monsieur Louis de Pointe du Lac.

His playlist includes The Backyardigans (Jacob is a cultured man, a man with taste!), Mitzki, James Blake, Whitney Houston's "Exhale (Shoop Shoop) from the classic "Waiting to Exhale" soundtrack and *the* breakup anthem "Kill Bill" by SZA.

-You can watch a compilation (with a bit of new footage) of the AMC+ aftershow featurettes in AMC+'s "Show Me More".

Until then some of the Jam Reiderson moments from the array of interviews that have dropped.

-From Jacob’s IG.

Plant Lestat.

With all of these vampire laws there should be one against Crocs.

[ky1echristian]

[ninelivesastrology]

Charts I would like to look at:

MH370 departure

Aron Lee Ralston (him getting stuck is a besiegement I'm so serious)

The event chart for Robert Downey Jr being cast as Iron-Man

Destiny's Child

The premiere for euphoria by Kendrick Lamar

The premiere for Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar

The event chart for the Game of Thrones Season 8 script (LOL)

The event chart for the LEGO thief being arrested

Mariah Carey's real natal chart

The event chart for Twilight being published

The Whitney Houston/Diane Sawyer 2002 interview (I hate Diane)

Ms. Rachel's Youtube

Ms. Rachel's natal chart

The Nintendo Company natal chart

The event chart for the elevator ride between Hashimoto Shinji and that Disney executive that lead to the creation of Kingdom Hearts

The event chart where Nomura Tetsuya walked in on them talking about Kingdom Hearts and was hired as director

The event chart for the finished recording of Simple and Clean by Utada Hikaru

All the charts for the cancellations of Young Justice

[247liveculture]

Whitney Houston 👑🕊️

[twopoppies]

Would you have a rolling stone subscription or any of your followers please? https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/american-idol-lgbtq-contestants-1235027350/

It doesn't seem to be behind any sort of paywall for me, but I tend tp be cautious when reposting entire articles because blogs have been taken down for it before. Here's most of the worst of it, though. DM me if you want more and can't access it.

Travis wasn’t aware that he couldn’t carry a tune until his audition aired on TV a year later, in January 2006. Seated in the living room of the same halfway-house counselor who had driven him to the audition, he thought to himself, “God, I do suck.” But the realization was too late. His phone was already being blitzed with calls, first check-ins from friends and family members and then requests for interviews with People and Us Weekly. Soon after, Travis says the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD (which did not respond to a request for comment on this story) telephoned with the offer of taking action against Idol on his behalf. He thought to himself, “What the fuck did I just do?”

The public reaction to Travis’ off-key rendition of Whitney Houston’s 1993 single “Queen of the Night” is perhaps most succinctly summed up by the title of a YouTube video of the tryout: “American Idol Audition Boy or Girl.” Travis wore bell-bottom jeans in a feminine cut and a white tank top to his audition, pulling his wavy blonde hair behind his ears. Simon Cowell, infamously the harshest critic among the show’s original trio of judges, appeared horrified by the sight of Travis, his mouth agape. After Randy Jackson, the panel’s swing vote, kicked things off by asking the contestant to say “something interesting” about himself, Cowell asked, “That’s necessary, is it?” Cowell proceeded to stop Travis in the middle of his performance, which he called “confused.”

Travis has come a long way since Idol. After pivoting to a successful career in gay porn under the name Kirk Cummings, he retired from the adult entertainment industry and now works as a dog groomer, a profession he finds peaceful. But even 19 years later, he finds the footage of his audition tough to watch. As he left the studio in tears, editors added the theme music to The Crying Game, the 1992 film that uses the sight of a trans woman’s body to shock viewers. Today, Travis presents as male and uses masculine pronouns, but at the time of his audition, he had hoped to someday transition. He even had his new name picked out: Kelly. When he was incarcerated, others would try to dissuade him from pursuing a future as a trans person by telling him that it’s a “really hard life,” and Idol seemed to prove them all right. 

“I thought, ‘Wow, if this is how my life’s going to be, then I don’t want any part of it,’” he says. “My experience is not the normal experience of a trans person, but because I had chosen to be on a television show, I saw the worst of it.”

Open cruelty is no longer part of the Idol brand, now that the show is in its second run on ABC after Fox canceled the long-running program in 2015. The series, like much of contemporary reality TV, now trades on positivity, and the annual tradition of airing bad auditions has long been discontinued. But during the height of its popularity in the 2000s, schadenfreude was a major part of the show’s appeal. While launching the careers of instant household names like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, Idol was also the show where tens of millions of viewers watched Cowell tell Season Three contestant Heather Piccinini that she’s “ugly” when she sings and belittle Season Five’s Crystal Parizanski for overtanning; he even pulled Parizanski’s mother into the room to humiliate the contestant further. The show’s June 2002 premiere, in which Cowell advised a young woman to sue her vocal coach, made it clear what Idol would be selling.

That feed-them-to-the-lions approach made Idol the number-one program on TV six years running, the longest stretch at the top in broadcast history — but the show tended to prey on its most vulnerable contestants, perhaps unwittingly. Idol producers were forced to issue an apology after Cowell compared Season Six hopeful Kenneth Briggs, who has facial malformations due to Aarskog Syndrome, to a “bush baby.” Season Five’s Paula Goodspeed took her own life outside judge Paula Abdul’s home in 2008 after Cowell criticized the contestant’s metal braces following a performance of the Creedence Clearwater Revival/Ike and Tina Turner standard “Proud Mary.” Goodspeed was reportedly an obsessive stalker who changed her given name in tribute to Abdul, and the contest judge publicly criticized Idol’s producers for not doing more to protect her, saying she alerted them to Goodspeed’s behavior prior to the audition. (A spokesperson for the show did not comment on Abdul’s accusation at the time.)

Among those most targeted by Idol’s alleged abuses were anyone who was outside of the norm, as defined by the extremely narrow standards of Bush-era popular culture. This often included contestants who were experiencing mental health issues, individuals with disabilities, people of color, and plus-size singers like the late Mandisa Huntley, the Season Five contestant of whom Cowell infamously asked: “Do we have a bigger stage this year?” But Idol enjoyed a particularly contentious relationship with the queer contestants who hoped that the series would offer their big break into an unforgiving industry, many of whom had only started to come to an understanding of their LGBTQ+ identities. In another exchange condemned by GLAAD, Cowell told Travis’ fellow Season Five hopeful Charles Berry, who now is an out gay man, to shave off his beard and “wear a dress,” saying that he would make a “great female impersonator.”

Keith Beukelaer, whom Cowell famously called “the worst singer in the world,” knew immediately after his Season Two audition that it would end up being broadcast. “It’s something that I don’t know if I ever fully recovered from,” he says. “I remember it as if it was yesterday.” A devoted Madonna fan, he performed “Like a Virgin” in a green mock-turtleneck sweater, gyrating his body in sync with the song’s suggestive lyrics. Beukelaer has come to understand himself as having Asperger’s Syndrome, although he didn’t have the language for it at the time, and he came out as gay a few years after appearing on the program. He still struggles with the notoriety that his brief appearance on Idol brought, the decades of mockery that followed six minutes of air time.

Cowell did not return multiple requests for comment for this story. Neither did Jackson, longtime host Ryan Seacrest, or Idol creator Simon Fuller — who based the show off his own U.K. series Pop Idol, which aired from 2001 to 2003. But a source close to the production, who requested not to be named in this story, defended the show by affirming that “every single person who came on Idol, whatever their race, color, creed, or sexual preferences, was placed squarely in the firing line for Simon’s barbed critiques.”

[...]

What was a queer paradise for some, however, was a nightmare for others. Of those who spoke on the record, many say that Idol effectively forced them into the closet, and they believe it’s because the show was fearful that an openly queer contestant would alienate the show’s largely conservative viewership.

[...]

There was no rule saying that queer contestants couldn’t discuss their personal lives, but some singers say that Idol made it clear that some things were best kept secret. R.J. Helton, who uses they/them pronouns, went back into the closet and started dating a woman before they auditioned for Idol’s first season, hoping to make their family happy. Helton’s parents always envisioned that they would become a pastor or a Christian music artist, and when Helton’s boy band, the Soul Focus, went their separate ways, competing on Idol felt like a logical next step. Having recently broken things off with their fiancée, not wanting to live a lie, Helton began seeing their Idol stand-in during the season. Although they kept the romance a secret from producers, Helton says the other contestants knew. “None of them cared,” they say. “It was the first time that I felt accepted by a group of people.”

Idol producers never found out about the relationship, but the stakes were nonetheless made clear when executive producer Nigel Lythgoe, the show’s most influential creative voice, pulled Helton aside after seeing them exchange a friendly peck on the cheek with a male member of the crew. “Listen, we love you,” Helton says the producer told them. “We think you’re great, but let’s continue on the sweet side, with the Christian boy thing.” In their on-camera interviews and stage performances, Helton says they tried to tone down their natural ebullience, “butching it up” and staying as quiet as possible. A team of publicists, they recall, followed Helton everywhere “because they didn’t want me to break character.” 

In an email to Rolling Stone, Lythgoe asserts that he “never stopped any contestant from coming out” and says he “never would have done so.” “I did work with a number of individuals who, sadly, were struggling with issues around coming out, and I provided feedback that was very common at the time: that they should let their talent do the talking and not allow others to denigrate them based on their personal lives,” he says. “If anyone was hurt by my advice on those issues, I can only apologize, but I only ever wanted to help and support the wonderful young people who competed on the first seasons of Idol, several of whom, tragically, were torn between a desire to live their truth openly and a great fear about how they would be treated on returning home by their families, by their communities, and even by God.”

Helton, now with the clarity of hindsight, wishes they’d had the confidence to present their full self to America. After being dropped from their record label following a 2006 interview in which they came out as gay, Helton recently came to the realization of their nonbinary identity. “I know it was a different generation, but there are parts of me that think: ‘If I could have worn a gorgeous evening gown with a full beard, I could have won,’” Helton says. When producers would tap them on the shoulder to remind them, “Hey, we don’t talk about this,” it made Helton scared of losing the only affirmation they’d ever had. “As a young person, that really plays with your psyche, especially when you’re not used to the spotlight, loads of fans, or the money. You just do what you’re told. I don’t know if that’s selling your soul to the devil, but it did feel like that. They lifted me up, put me on a pedestal, and told me that the pedestal will only be there as long as I play this part.”

Helton’s fellow Season One cast member Jim Verraros has spent years in therapy working to unlearn many of the unfortunate lessons he says Idol taught him, namely that it wasn’t OK to be himself. That education began with the Pygmalion-esque makeover given to the show’s aspiring superstars: Idol immediately traded in his nerdy aesthetic — wiry glasses and jean jackets with the collar popped — for a generic rock look, sleeveless vests with leather cuff bracelets. He got contacts, lowered his voice half an octave, and put away what he calls the “theatrical and stage part of me that comes also from having deaf parents and being expressive.” “It comes at a cost,” he says. “When you’re told that you aren’t enough — or that this version of you doesn’t work — you spend a big part of your life taking parts away from you so that you can achieve those dreams.”

Although Verraros made the Top 10 of his season, he struggled with the role created for him, and the miscasting of a nebbishy gay Midwestern boy as a conservative-friendly heartthrob led to friction with the show’s creative team. Former co-host Brian Dunkleman, who emceed Idol’s first season alongside Ryan Seacrest, says he overheard Cowell and Randy Jackson discussing plans to directly target Verraros, hoping to get a strong reaction out of him that they could film. “We’re gonna nail Jim,” he recalls the judges saying as they were having coffee in an Idol break room. Cowell tended to reserve his harshest critiques of the show’s inaugural cast for Verraros, and following that discussion, he told the contestant live on air, “I think if you win this competition, we would have failed.”

Idol did get the emotional reaction it sought from Verraros in a scene that ultimately landed on the cutting-room floor. Prior to the announcement of the season’s Top 10 finalists, Dunkleman says that Cowell informed the contestants they would be using the “judges’ veto” to oust one of them from the show. “Jim, you’re out of the competition,” Cowell told Verraros, prompting the young singer to burst into tears. (That’s when Dunkleman recalls that Lythgoe came over and instructed everyone to sing a modified version of the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” to brighten Verraros’ spirits. “Cheer up, sleepy Jim,” fellow contestants sang together in unison.) For reasons that are unclear, Lythgoe opted to backtrack on the judges’ decision, Dunkleman says, allowing Verraros to move forward to the next round after all. “Later that night, I was at dinner and I got a pretty frantic message from Nigel saying, ‘Look, there’s been a change. Jim is back in the competition. Just please don’t tell anybody about anything that happened today,’” Dunkleman remembers. “And then the next night he made the Top 10.”

Those incidents, Dunkleman adds, played a major role in his decision to part ways with Idol, calling the program “evil.” He also recalls that a judging panel needed to be refilmed so Cowell could call Helton a “loser” instead of a “monkey.” “That’s what it was,” he says of Idol. “It was about how mean they were. It was about how shocking this was and how much they were making fun of these singers.” He isn’t sure, though, why the show singled Helton and Verraros out in particular. “Is it conscious targeting or is it subconscious? That kind of undertone, maybe they weren’t even aware of it.”

[...]

AMERICAN IDOL often strained to fit queer contestants into an instantly recognizable mold that producers could market for the widest possible audience. Simon Cowell declared that he would quit the program if Sanjaya Malakar, an affable Season Six hopeful with a perpetual smile, won the competition. Malakar, who is half Bengali and performed with the Hawaii Children’s Theater during his time living in Kauai, was unlike any singer the show had ever seen. He was earnest and goofy, striding up to the judges’ table to dance with Paula Abdul during a performance of Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek.” He also straddled the lines of gender, flat-ironing his chameleonic locks for a winsome cover of John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World To Change.” After weeks of all but begging viewers to vote Malakar off the show, Cowell commented regarding the latter song: “Maybe it’s your hair that’s keeping you in. I don’t know.”

Malakar came out as bisexual many years after Idol was over, finding himself after taking a job at a karaoke bar in New York where he found freedom in anonymity. What was hardest for Malakar to navigate, he says, was not the constant scrutiny from Idol’s judges but the vitriolic reaction from fans. A MySpace blogger vowed to stop eating until Malakar was sent home, although the contestant outlasted the hunger strike, which ceased after 16 days. The website Vote for the Worst, which urged fans to subvert the Idol system by keeping on its quirkiest and most divisive contestants, took up Malakar as a personal cause.

Looking back, Malakar believes that it’s the ambiguity of how he presented that bothered people so much. The judges and viewers just couldn’t figure him out because, as a 17-year-old kid who hadn’t graduated high school yet, he hadn’t figured himself out. “There was no way to really understand how to define me,” he says. “They didn’t know what culture I was. They didn’t know what sexuality I was. They didn’t know what genre I was. I was this anomaly that made people uncomfortable.”

The queer singers who had the most painful time being reshaped by the Idol system were those who stood out the most, whether they were flamboyant and over-the-top in their performance style, like Malakar, or their gender presentation skewed toward the effeminate. Season Eight runner-up Adam Lambert — who declined to speak for this story, citing his shooting schedule for The Voice Australia, on which he is a judge — has said that queer contestants who didn’t have the ability to hide were used by Idol as “comic relief.” “Anytime someone came on the show that was perceived to be gay or it was obvious enough that they were gay, they were a joke,” he remarked to the British music magazine NME in a 2018 interview. He added: “To be fair, some of them weren’t great singers, but there were a couple of really good singers that came on. And they weren’t taken seriously.”

To illustrate his point, Lambert noted the example of Adore Delano from Seasons Six and Seven, who would later contend on the reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race. Delano declined to participate in this story, but in a 2023 Instagram video publicly announcing her transition, she said that she went back into the closet to compete on Idol. Appearing on the show led her to suppress her transness in order to present herself as “something that was so uncomfortable,” she recalled. And yet her effervescent femininity couldn’t be contained: During her second appearance on Idol, she performed a sassy rendition of “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis Presley that Cowell deemed “hideous” and “verging on the grotesque.” Delano was ultimately eliminated from the Top 16 after a performance of Soft Cell’s queer anthem “Tainted Love” that Cowell declared “absolutely useless.” She dyed her silky hair purple for the number.

Like Delano, Atlas Marshall auditioned for Idol twice, making it to the Top 36 in Season Eight and then trying out again for Season 16. Both experiences were extremely fraught. Following a performance of Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” during her first appearance on the show, Cowell looked at Marshall and remarked, “I think you probably would.” Even as a guileless 18-year-old with frosted emo bangs and angel-bite piercings, Marshall realized it was a “loaded comment.” “The joke around that song is that it’s about anal sex,” she says. After the audience booed Cowell’s remark, Ryan Seacrest, then the show’s sole emcee, invited Marshall to come sit on the judge’s lap, but Paula Abdul intervened and beckoned the contestant to rest on hers instead. Marshall was voted off Idol the next day.

[...] Marshall’s mother, who recently passed away, was a lesbian, and she raised her child in a queer household where it was OK to be “open, flamboyant, and fabulous,” as Marshall recalls. Being taught by Idol that the outside world might mock the parts of herself she was taught to embrace was a rude awakening. “For so long, there was a lot of shame around it,” she says of her first Idol experience. “I felt gross. I didn’t like myself.”

[...]

While the team behind Idol’s current iteration did not offer a comment on the record, the source close to the Fox production contests the idea that the show stopped contestants from expressing their most authentic selves, while adding that “coming out might have damaged certain contestants’ chances for success.” “No one ever prevented anyone from doing so, but there was often a sense — right or wrong — that it would be better if the American public’s vote was based more on their judgment about the performers’ talent rather than their sexual orientations,” the source says.

[...]

Although it would feel convenient to point the finger solely at Idol, the show at its peak reflected America’s culture as much as it defined it. When the series premiered in 2002, polling from Gallup showed that 43 percent of the U.S. populace still thought homosexuality should be illegal; Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court ruling that struck down sodomy laws in the 14 states where gay sex was still illegal, wouldn’t be issued for another year. A majority of Americans wouldn’t support the right of same-sex couples to marry until 2011, during Idol’s tenth season on the air. That was also, coincidentally, the first season not to feature either Paula Abdul or Simon Cowell on the judges panel. Abdul, hailed by sources as a major supporter of queer contestants behind the scenes, parted ways with the program after Season Eight. Cowell left the following year to launch the U.S. spinoff of The X Factor, the British singing competition he created in 2004.

[...]

For all the troubles that some queer contestants say they had on the show, many argue that Idol’s missteps paled in comparison to how cruelly they were treated by the rest of the media, the music industry, and even America at large. Idol voters eliminated Season Seven’s David Hernandez the week after an Associated Press story revealed that he had previously worked as a dancer at a Arizona strip club that catered to a “mostly male” clientele. By that time, photos that allegedly showed Hernandez bartending at a gay nightclub had already been published on Vote for the Worst, although Hernandez says the pictures weren’t even of him. He says that Idol was already well aware of his work history by the time the reports surfaced, as he disclosed the information in the extensive questionnaire the show required contestants to complete; spanning over 100 pages in length, it also asked singers to name their past sexual and romantic partners.

[...]

The media persecution of queer Idol contestants was so de rigueur during the show’s imperial era that few even questioned it. Jim Verraros’ coming out in 2002 prompted a two-page spread in the Globe, a U.S. supermarket tabloid, asking: “Who’s Next?” Chatter surrounding Adam Lambert’s sexuality made the New York Times after photos circulated of the singer, eyes covered in makeup and glitter all over his face, locking lips with another man. Following the Season Two finale, Clay Aiken says that the first question that he was ever asked by a reporter was: “Are you gay?” He wouldn’t formally come out until a 2008 People magazine cover story coinciding with the birth of his son, and for years, he says, confirmation of his sexual orientation “was the only thing that anybody in the press wanted” from him. “I never did an interview where somebody was not trying to ask me if I was gay,” he says, later adding: “Everybody wanted to be the one who got it.”

Aiken says that speculation regarding his sexuality reached such a fever pitch that, for a time, he stopped leaving his house. Even then, there was no hiding from it: “If I heard anybody setting up a gay joke on a sitcom or a late-night show, I held my breath because I knew my name was coming. Eighty percent of the time I was right.” The topic was a frequent punchline of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who frequently booked Aiken to appear on his show, and comedian Kathy Griffin spent a full 15 minutes discussing Aiken’s sexuality in a 2005 stand-up special on Bravo. “I do find him to allegedly be the gayest man in the free world,” she said in the routine, calling him “Gayken” to hearty applause from the crowd. Even two years after he had actually come out, a Season Eight episode of Family Guy saw Stewie, during a parody of Family Feud, being asked to name a “popular fruit” and responding: “Clay Aiken.” “I laugh at them now,” he says of the jokes, noting that he calls Griffin a friend. “I find them hilarious now, but at the time, it hurt a lot.”

Full article here

[youremyheaven]

Ashlesha & Toxic Relationships

Tw: abuse, incest, rape, death, domestic violence

I feel like Ashlesha's mommy issues have been covered by others before but I really wanted to explore how Ashlesha nakshatra natives often find themselves in toxic relationships, be it in their own homes or in romantic relationships. I think many of the patterns many people repeat in adult relationships has its roots in their childhood relationships with their family and I see this very evident with many Ashlesha natives. They're often abused at home and later suffer abuse at the hands of partners.

Halle Berry Ashlesha Sun

Halle's father was a violent man who abused her mother repeatedly. He abandoned them when she was 4 and she's been estranged from him since.

She moved with her mother and sister to an all-white neighbourhood where she was exposed to racial discrimination while attending school. Halle admits that these struggles motivated her to succeed. Later in the ’90s, when she moved to New York to pursue her acting career, she was forced to stay in a homeless shelter for a while because she couldn’t afford accommodations.

In 2011, Halle said: "It was only when I was in an abusive relationship and blood squirted on the ceiling of my apartment and I lost 80% of my hearing in my ear that I realised, I have to break the cycle."

Halle is divorced from Gabriel Aubry (in photo with her above) who, she accused of being a racist (he used racial slurs towards her and their daughter), refused to acknowledge their daughter as biracial and court documents revealed that Berry accused him of having been in an incestuous relationship with a family member, abusing their daughter and even revealed the couple only had sex three times a year, with Aubry struggling with the effects of his incestuous relationship.

Charlize Theron- Ashlesha Sun, Moon & Mercury

One night, when her verbally abusive alcoholic father came home with his brother after drinking heavily, he threatened her mother with a gun. He began shooting and Theron's mother grabbed her gun and shot back, killing Theron's father and wounding his brother. Police later determined it was self-defence. They later moved to America so Charlize could pursue an acting career.

Lily Collins, Ashlesha Moon

Lily Collins says she was once in a toxic relationship where she faced "verbal and emotional abuse" that made her feel "very small." Looking back, Lily says her then-boyfriend silenced her feelings and even fuelled emotions of "panic" and "anxiety" -- and it's something that still affects her even though she’s now in a healthy relationship.

"He would call me 'Little Lily'…and he'd use awful words about me in terms of what I was wearing and would call me a whore and all these things," she said on the "We Can Do Hard Things" podcast. "There were awful words and then there were belittling words. I became quite silent and comfortable in silence and feeling like I had to make myself small to feel super safe."

Tina Turner, Ashlesha Rising

Tina’s violent marriage with Ike Turner is well known, largely thanks to the film based on her life, What’s Love Got To Do With It. In the film the singer suffered severe beatings, was raped and had cigarettes stubbed out on her body. Her husband Ike is portrayed as a violent, controlling sociopath, and when Tina’s autobiography was published Ike actually admitted that the book was largely accurate. The pair were married for 16 years before Tina had the courage to leave. Ike is now dead.

I found something she said in an interview to closely correlate to Ashlesha:

"Part of my spiritual practice is to “change poison into medicine,” to take negative situations or roadblocks and transform or remove them through positivity. The force of my positivity pushed all the discriminatory “isms” standing in my way right out the window."

Whitney Houston- Ashlesha Sun & Venus

Their turbulent relationship is well documented, but even though the rumors were that Bobby used to hit Whitney, she actually claimed it was the other way round. In an interview with the Associated Press over 10 years ago, the singing star said: “Contrary to belief, I do the hitting, he doesn’t. He has never put his hands on me. We are crazy for one another. I mean crazy in love, love, love, love, love. When we’re fighting, it’s like that’s love for us. We’re fighting for our love.” Brown, however, was later arrested in 2003 for misdemeanour battery, several years after Whitney said this. The pair eventually divorced after 15 years of marriage in 2007.

Unfortunately, Whitney passed away in 2012 and I firmly believe Bobby did it. Her daughter, Bobbi Brown also passed away in the exact same way in 2015 and there's just no way those 2 deaths were a coincidence. Anytime I hear news of anybody dying in their bathtub after overdosing on a cocktail of drugs, I just know they were murdered. Its very easy to write off deaths as suicide or to make it look like one. Its all the more convincing if the person has a history of drug abuse.

Sridevi, Ashlesha Sun & Rising

Sridevi was forced into acting by her mother (who aspired to be an actress and had failed in her pursuit) when she was 2-3yrs old. Sridevi never received formal education and appeared in 200 films by the time she was 25 years old (she did 300 films total). Her mother and stepfather had another daughter whom they favoured. Sridevi was the cash cow of the household. It was once reported that Sridevi would come home from a long day of filming and spend many hours massaging her mother's feet at night instead of sleeping. Her mother once locked up Sridevi in a dark room and starved her as a 5-year-old because she was too scared to do a scene that involved fire. She became a heroine at the age of 11 years and was paired opposite men who had played her grandad onscreen when she was a child star🤮🤮🤮she was sexually assaulted by many of these men as a child and teenager. Sridevi's mother managed all her finances and did not permit her to go out or meet others and she did not even know how to do virtually anything by herself as her mother kept her under lock and key.

Her husband Boney Kapoor is a movie producer who was married to another woman and had 2 kids when he first met Sridevi. He creepily wooed her for 10 years but Sridevi paid him no mind. In 1995, Sridevi's mother passed away and Boney took full advantage of her vulnerability because even though she was 32, she was basically a child due to the way her mother forced her to live. Sridevi had no one to rely on (her stepfather had died many years prior and her sister sued her for properties and since she was so isolated, she had no friends despite being such a huge star) and Boney took her in. She lived with Boney and his wife and kids but before you knew it, Sridevi was impregnated by him and he soon divorced his wife and married her. In 2018, Sridevi was found dead in a bathtub in Dubai under suspicious circumstances. The case was wrapped up pretty quickly and no one really knows what happened. She allegedly "drowned" but like I said, I dont think all these celebs drowning in their bathtubs is a coincidence.

Zsa Zsa Gabor- Ashlesha Moon

She was married 9 times and many of those marriages were hella toxic. She was married to Conrad Hilton (Paris Hilton's great-grandfather)

She said of the marriage:

"Conrad's decision to change my name from Zsa Zsa to Georgia symbolized everything my marriage to him would eventually become. My Hungarian roots were to be ripped out and my background ignored. ... I soon discovered that my marriage to Conrad meant the end of my freedom. My own needs were completely ignored: I belonged to Conrad."

Gabor's only child, daughter Constance Francesca Hilton, was born in 1947. According to Gabor's 1991 autobiography, One Lifetime Is Not Enough, her pregnancy resulted from rape by then-husband Conrad Hilton.

Marilyn Monroe- Ashlesha Rising

Marilyn had a very difficult life. She grew up in foster homes, her mother was schizophrenic and her father was an alcoholic. Her marriages were unhappy and she was treated like shit by the industry. I don't want to elaborate too much because I feel like everyone already knows about her life story but its truly tragic how things were for her :((

Lucille Ball- Ashlesha Sun

She was married to her onscreen husband Desi Arnaz and they had a horrible toxic marriage where he cheated on her repeatedly and emotionally abused her. He was also an alcoholic.

Bella Hadid, Mars in Ashlesha atmakaraka

"I constantly went back to men -- and also, women -- that had abused me, and that's where the people-pleasing came in," Hadid said on the Victoria's Secret podcast, "VS Voices."  "I started to not have boundaries, not only sexually, physically, emotionally, but then it went into my workspace….I began to be a people-pleaser with my job and it was everyone else's opinion of me that mattered except for my own, because I essentially was putting my worth into the hands of everyone else and that was the detriment of it."

Everybody already knows that Yolanda is toxic as hell, made Bella get a nose job at 14yrs of age and in Bella's own words she was made to feel like the "uglier sister".

Viola Davis, Ashlesha Sun

She and her sisters were sexually abused by their brother. "Sexual abuse back in the day didn't have a name. The abusers were called 'dirty old men' and the abused were called 'fast' or 'heifers,'" she wrote in her memoir.

Davis wrote about the volatile relationship between her empathetic mother and her violent, alcoholic father. With brutal candidness, she channels the unrelenting terror of living in a household of domestic abuse: “There are not enough pages to mention the fights, the constantly being awakened in the middle of the night or coming home after school to my dad’s rages and praying he wouldn’t lose so much control that he would kill my mom.”

Lil Kim, Ashlesha Moon

When she sat down for a candid interview with Newsweek back in 2000, the rapper revealed that she developed a complex about her appearance thanks to a string of unsavory suitors. "All my life men have told me I wasn't pretty enough — even the men I was dating," she revealed. "I'd be like, 'Well, why are you with me, then? I have low self-esteem and I always have," she admitted. "Guys always cheated on me with women who were European-looking. You know, the long-hair type. Really beautiful women. That left me thinking, 'How can I compete with that?' Being a regular black girl wasn't good enough."

It wasn't just the men she dated in her early days that messed with Lil Kim's head — according to the rapper, her own father added to her issues. Her parents divorced when she was 8 and, despite the fact that she wanted to remain with her mother, her dad won custody. When she spoke to Newsweek ahead of the release of her second studio album, The Notorious K.I.M, she revealed that her father would regularly make her feel as though she wasn't good enough. "It was like I could do nothing right," she recalled. "Everything about me was wrong — my hair, my clothes, just me."

Ella Fitzgerald, Ashlesha Rising

At a young 15 years old, Fitzgerald was left motherless and fatherless. To make matters worse, she began being abused by her stepfather. The beatings were physical, but they scared her emotionally as well. She was a beaten and battered child. Her grades fell to be nearly unrecoverable, and she began skipping school regularly. It was an era of racial segregation and Ella is also believed to have been physically abused by her teachers along with some other black students.

Ella and Marilyn were good friends and are said to have bonded over their similarly traumatic lives.

Katie Holmes, Ashlesha Moon & Rising

She escaped an abusive marriage with the sociopathic Tom Cruise and his cult??? need I say more?? I am so happy she is alive and well and that she has managed to protect her daughter as well. Scientologists are insane people who absolutely destroy the lives of anybody who tries to leave their system so its a miracle that Katie is alive and doing well.

Glenn Close, Ashlesha Rising

I don't know what it is about Ashleshas and being trapped/escaping a cult but I've noticed several Ashlesha natives all have this experience

Oscar-nominated actress Glenn Close, for example, was part of a cult called the Moral Re-Armament, from the young age of 7 all the way up to 22. “If you talk to anybody who was in a group that basically dictates how you’re supposed to live and what you’re supposed to say and how you’re supposed to feel, from the time you’re 7 till the time you’re 22, it has a profound impact on you,” she once told The Hollywood Reporter.

Patricia Arquette- Ashlesha Moon

Oscar winner Patricia Arquette wasn’t just raised in Virginia’s Skymont Subud cult, but her parents were the founders of it. The so-called “spiritual movement” was known for not allowing access to bathrooms, electricity, or running water in the name of “inner guidance.” 

While still living with her family, she and her family left the commune to return to a more conventional life. Per ABC, however, the Arquette family wasn’t any better at that time either. “There was a lot of drama in the house,” Arquette said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. “There were a lot of chairs flying around.”

Brie Larson- Ketu in Ashlesha

Brie starred in two movies, The Glass Castle & The Room that both deal with abusive relationships (she is the one stuck in them)

Our Ketu placement is where we draw our creativity from, so its interesting that Brie has played so many characters who have to deal with toxicity.

According to Hindu mythology, Ashlesha nakshatra is associated with the story of the Naga King Vasuki. It is said that Vasuki and his wife were cursed by a sage to become snakes. In order to lift the curse, they sought the help of Lord Vishnu, who advised them to perform a penance in the ashram of a sage named Jaratkaru. After performing the penance, the sage granted their wish and they were able to regain their human form. Since then, Ashlesha nakshatra has been associated with transformation and the power of penance.

In the list of celebrities I have mentioned, many of them survived their abuse and went on to live good lives but many others met with tragic ends. Being "cursed" is part of Ashlesha's mythology, which is why they receive an unfair share of bad experiences and abuse but to perform penance is very very important and something not many are going to be able to do. When so many terrible things happen to you, you're bound to think "why me? I'm a good person, I don't deserve this" and that's absolutely true, no one deserves abuse but the ones who can outlive these negative circumstances are the ones who can in Tina Turner's words "turn poison into medicine". Penance literally means inflicting punishment upon oneself but what it actually means in this context is to turn all your negative experiences that feel like you're being punished into something you can rise up above against. Poison is also part of Ashlesha's lore and while this does make Ashlesha natives rather malicious and manipulative towards others, they need to be able to use this poison as medicine to heal themselves. Otherwise, they end up succumbing to it.