This Week in Gossip (May 17)

Royal drama, Olivia's dress code, a very bitter roast, and RPF-ing gotta stop...

What’s Next for Former Royal and Epstein BFF Sarah Ferguson?

One of the weirder stories of the week was the allegation that Sarah Ferguson, the one-time Duchess of York and now disgraced buddy of Jeffrey Epstein, was once in a friends-with-benefits relationship with Sean Combs, a.k.a. Diddy. She has a thing for sex criminals, apparently. Andrew Lownie, who wrote the scathing biography Entitled, about Fergie and her ex-husband, claimed that sources close to Combs and Ferguson confirmed that the pair had had intimate relations on and off for several years. It’s certainly one of the more outlandish allegations to have come out of the former House of York. A “source” close to Ferguson went to The Sun to claim that it was all false.

It’s not something any of us want to think about for too long, but it did open up the wider conversation of Ferguson. First of all, where the hell is she? She hasn’t been seen in public in months, which is unexpected given her love of the spotlight, and she was forced out of Royal Lodge, which she once shared with the creep formerly known as Prince Andrew. Rumours claimed she was hiding out at Priscilla Presley’s house, which Priscilla denied. Others claimed she was at a wildly expensive spa in Switzerland, with no word on who was footing the bill since Fergie is notoriously broke. There were stories that she was staying with one of her daughters, but neither Eugenie nor Beatrice’s husbands wanted her there.

It’s easy to forget now, but there was a period in the late ‘90s and early 2000s when people LOVED Fergie. They liked that she’d made herself a star post-divorce and was bringing in a solid wage through stuff like Weight Watchers. It was seen as an inspiring comeback story where she dug herself out of debt and became popular as her own woman, separate from the Windsors, who were floundering after Diana’s death. Remember, Fergie was on Friends! Oprah loved her! And that helped to make Andrew seem less awful since they were so close and she kept talking about how they were the world’s happiest divorced couple.

But Ferguson kept sticking her foot in it, and eventually, people grew tired of her. When she was caught in a News of the World sting, offering access to Andrew for a few hundred grand, she had a new image as a desperate and greedy woman. Her inability to save her money became notorious. And yet she still found a way back into the inner royal circle once Charles was in charge and her daughters were married. Despite her obvious selfishness and hunger for money, the British royal press – never one to be all that critical of the Windsors – never wanted to fully write her off. It’s not like she was a Black American actress who wanted people to not be racist towards her kids, right?

AirMail claimed that Ferguson was fielding offers for a tell-all interview, albeit one from a reasonably sympathetic source, which could net her over $1.7 million. She desperately needs the money, but would she want to risk her daughters’ standing with the King? They’re princesses by birth and not responsible for their sh*tty parents’ lives, but they’re also not working royals, and there are a lot of questions around their seemingly endless business trips to the Middle East. Personally, I think Fergie wants to get the rumours going that she’s ready to spill the beans in the hopes that Charles will pay her off to keep her mouth shut.

There’s something so deeply pathetic about Sarah Ferguson, more so even than her gross husband, who bragged about being friends with a paedophile because it was good for business. Ferguson was constantly begging for Epstein’s attention (and money), and she even “jokingly” asked him to marry her in one of the many emails she sent to him. She dragged her daughters to meet Epstein after he was released from prison. Then, when she was forced to condemn him in public, she grovelled to him for forgiveness and said she didn’t think he was an actual paedophile, really!

Her whole story is just gross and sad. She married a prince and has cashed in on that for decades, clutching onto her Duchess title long after it made sense for her to keep it. She blew all her money on dumb shit and had to beg other people to get her out of debt, including Epstein. She doesn’t have a job or any interests. Nobody wants to hear another sob story from her, and we certainly don’t want to hear her try to worm her way out of being an unabashed Epstein friend for so many years. But she also can’t go away because she doesn’t have the funds or home or wherewithal to, you know, be a normal person. It’s like if Valerie Cherish was evil.

You know what we should do, just for funsies? Abolish the monarchy.

Olivia Rodrigo’s Dress is Not the Point

Yup, it’s time for another round of wardrobe police of young women and calling it feminism. Remember when we went through this rigmarole ten years ago? And a decade before that? Everything old is new again, much like the fashion cycle. Olivia Rodrigo is promoting her new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, which will be released on June 12. She's an artist who has always worn her influences on her sleeve, from the riot girl movement to '90s rocker girls like Courtney Love to the emos of the early 2000s. For this era, Rodrigo's wearing a lot of babydoll dresses with bloomers and Mary Jane shoes. It's led to a lot of the expected discourse about whether or not Rodrigo is trying to appeal to the male gaze, but also some really insidious rhetoric about her "normalizing paedophilic imagery." Jesus...