Chelsea face Manchester United at Old Trafford in another huge match this afternoon, also kicking off at 3pm BST. Sarah Rendell is keeping tabs on that one in our other WSL live blog.
Patrick Grant says rise of low-cost retailers means new clothes ‘haven’t got cheaper, they’ve just got worse’
While filming The Great British Sewing Bee, the presenter and clothing entrepreneur Patrick Grant found himself in need of a pair of black socks.
The production team bought a pair from the Marks & Spencer shop close to where the popular BBC show was being filmed. Grant said: “They went to everybody’s favourite high street store, that used to sell on the basis of quality and value, and they bought me their Autograph socks, which are supposed to be their best socks.
We’re going backwards: a football player can say hateful things from a university podium while students are being arrested
Imagine for a moment that that you are a young woman who has spent more than $100,000 on your university degree. After four years of hard work it’s your graduation and Harrison Butker, a kicker with the Kansas City Chiefs, is the commencement speaker. During his speech the NFL star, who has made millions by kicking a ball, kindly informs you that your hard-earned degree was a waste of time and that your true role in life is supporting your husband. Imagine what that would be like.
“IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.” (This doesn’t make any sense, I know, but the entire speech is incoherent.)
Joe Biden has been “vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies”. (Which is certainly true if we’re talking about Gaza – but Butker was talking about abortion rights.)
Pride month is a “deadly sin”.
You can’t spread the antisemitic talking point that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus any more or you’ll end up “in jail”.
Women have been subject to “the most diabolical lies” and, while some women in the audience may go on to have successful careers the majority should be “most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world”.
His wife would be “the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother”. (This sparked long applause from the audience.)
We should fight against “the cultural emasculation of men”.
Manager determined to depart on a high while Manchester City aim to spoil leaving party on what could be a dramatic final day
Emma Hayes is not having to work hard to keep emotions in check as she prepares for her final game as Chelsea manager – Saturday’s mouthwatering match-up with Manchester United at Old Trafford – because she is used to doing it.
The last drive into work, the last coaching session, the final away trip with the team, watching her family mourn the end of her working relationship with Chelsea as much as she does – there is time to take in the poignancy of these moments properly later.
My own traumatic experience shows why we must push back against those who try to chip away at our freedom of choice
As the criminal justice bill stumbles through parliament this week – beset by delays and controversies, and picking up amendments as it goes – another woman, Sophie Harvey, is on trial for an alleged illegal abortion, after taking pills to end her pregnancy when she was past the 24-week legal threshold. She was just 19 at the time. She faces a sentence of up to life in prison.
Anyone who cares about women’s rights should be alarmed not just by this trial, but by two new amendments to the bill put forward, targeting abortion in England and Wales. The first, from Caroline Ansell, a Conservative MP, aims to reduce the abortion limit to 22 weeks. The other, tabled by Liam Fox, another Conservative, would stop women’s choice over whether to abort a pregnancy where Down’s syndrome looks likely, up to birth. Currently, she can choose to do so for the entirety of her pregnancy, under ground E of the Abortion Act, which allows for termination if there is “substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”.
What seemed like another lazy nostalgia cash grab became a favorite, with lessons that Marvel’s universe could learn from
It should have been what Magneto refers to as a “nostalgic parlor trick” – reviving the X-Men cartoon that aired on Saturday mornings throughout much of the 90s for the Disney+ streaming service. Isn’t this what all streaming services do? They comb through their back catalog to see what IP can be exploited, promising both nostalgia and, of course, a fresh new spin on whatever thing you’ve already seen before. So while it was a given that a certain number of X-Men fans would be on board for X-Men ’97, which just completed its 10-episode first season with a second already on the way, it’s still a bit surprising that a revival of an ambitious, sometimes-clunky 90s-kid object of obsession would become one of the year’s most beloved TV shows.
Some of it may be hunger for any kind of ongoing X-Men series outside of the comics, which remain, as ever, a relatively niche interest. (For every restart at issue no 1, there’s several volumes of backstory that must be summarized to even begin to understand what the hell is going on.) After the Fox network aired the X-Men cartoon, the live-action movie studio adapted the characters into the first major superhero movies of the new millennium, helping to kickstart a major cultural trend. The Fox X-Men movies ran for an impressive 20 years, but Disney’s purchase of the studio coincided with a couple of box office flops in the form of Dark Phoenix and the much-delayed, pandemic-released The New Mutants. A curtain call of sorts is coming this summer with Deadpool & Wolverine, but that movie will also integrate the wisecracking Ryan Reynolds mercenary (who spun off from the X-Men movies) into the broader MCU. As such, it’s been four years since there was an X-Men movie in theaters – and longer since the last one that really connected with audiences, 2017’s Logan.
The forward on growing up fast in Bristol, her surprised delight at World Cup call and the lure of new challenges
The Brighton forward Katie Robinson has had a big 12 months, but it has not always been straightforward. There was the huge high of making Sarina Wiegman’s England squad for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, but there have also been lows, as Brighton have dealt with managerial upheaval.
Despite this tumult, the 21-year-old has caught the eye of several clubs and, with one game remaining in the Women’s Super League season, against Arsenal, a big summer lies ahead.
Macarthur FC has said it is “shocked” after three of its players were arrested and charged in Sydney in relation to an international investigation that uncovered an alleged betting corruption scandal.
New South Wales police said on Friday they had arrested and charged the three A-League footballers in early morning raids across the city following an investigation by the organised crime squad which began in December and was assisted by the UK gambling commission.
‘They can score three or four in five or six minutes’
Manchester City manager upbeat before Villa showdown
Gareth Taylor has backed his side to score enough goals to overhaul Chelsea on the final day of the Women’s Super League season. Manchester City are level on points with the champions but their title rivals have a better goal difference of two. City make the trip to Aston Villa while Chelsea visit Manchester United.
Taylor, however, is confident his side can recover from the disappointing 2-1 home defeat to Arsenal 11 days ago to turn on the style against Carla Ward’s Villa side, despite the absence of Khadija Shaw, the WSL’s top scorer, through injury. Lauren Hemp is fifth in the scoring charts. “You’ve seen with this team, they can score three or four goals in the space of five or six minutes,” he said. “They are more than capable. That doesn’t mean you’re able to go and do it on the weekend, there are many factors that go into that. It’s about me constantly realigning them with what we have to do. The more we’ve done that this season the better we’ve been.”
Manager, who is leaving Chelsea after 12 years, remains a fearless advocate of the women’s game but never lost her human touch
It was a rainy Saturday evening a few weeks ago and Chelsea were playing Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final. I made the journey from east to west London and emerged out of Fulham Broadway station to join my friends outside the Kona Kai cocktail bar opposite a busy Stamford Bridge.
Once we had squeezed past some punters and climbed up to assume our position in the Matthew Harding Stand, it hit me: I was sitting in a sold-out stadium. All around me fans were chanting and waving blue flags in support of Emma Hayes and the Chelsea team she had built brick by brick. If ever there was a moment when I fully appreciated her impact, it was then.
One female director hides that she has a child; younger women face a 39% gender pay gap; and harassment is widespread. Insiders say it’s a wonder the television industry has any women left at all
‘When is the good time to be a woman in TV?” asks Michelle Reynolds, a former TV producer and director. “In the start you get molested and infantilised, in the middle if you have babies they won’t let you work flexibly, then when you get past 45 you’re too bloody old.”
Now is not the best time for women in TV. According to recent research by the Creative Diversity Network, whose Diamond report collects data from the UK’s big broadcasters, the gender gap is widening. The number of women in senior roles fell 5% between 2019 and 2022. One in three directors are women, yet they get only a quarter of director credits. Contributions from female writers fell from 43% to 32% between 2016 and 2022. Behind these figures, women are less likely to be employed on peak-time shows,which are generally more prestigious and have larger audiences, than men.
Emma Hayes was philosophical after Chelsea’s 1-0 win against Tottenham, glad that her side had grasped its “second chance”, to keep them level on points with Manchester City going into the final day of the season. “I love the saying: ‘When someone gives you a second chance in life, make sure you don’t need a third,’ and I love that we take it to the last day,” she said.
Only a win would do, and the bigger the better to improve their goal difference. Manchester United await Chelsea at Old Trafford on Saturday, while City play Aston Villa needing to better Chelsea’s result. If they both win, Chelsea’s goal difference is better by two. Maika Hamano’s goal ensured the teams remain neck-and-neck.
Speaking at Cannes, the actor said that before more women got greenlight jobs in Hollywood, executives had struggled to see themselves in female roles
The cruel and unwelcoming fashion magazine editor at the icy heart of 2006 comedy hit The Devil Wears Prada may not strike many viewers as Meryl Streep’s most relatable role.
But in a stage interview at the Cannes film festival the veteran film actor revealed that her turn as Miranda Priestly, the boss from hell, was the first role she played that caused men to come up to her afterwards and say they knew exactly how she felt.
Sarah Thornton had dismissed them as ‘dumb boobs’ until a double mastectomy changed everything. Her new book, Tits Up, explores what our beliefs about breasts mean – from feeding babies to bra design and Baywatch
Throughout her life, Sarah Thornton hadn’t given much thought to her breasts. They were there, of course, and they’d fed two children. But they had also attracted unwanted attention, and latterly they’d become a source of concern – with a history of breast cancer in her family, and after years of vigilance and tests, in 2018 Thornton was about to undergo a preventive double mastectomy. Preparing for the operation, she realised she still hadn’t given them much consideration, nor what it would be like to have “new” breasts in the form of implants. When they turned out to be bigger than expected, she was shocked, “but in the end,” she says, “it wasn’t the aesthetic form as much as the feeling. It was like losing sentience. And it put me on a quest to understand these things that I’d never thought too much about. These things I’d kind of dismissed as dumb boobs.”
Thornton’s new book, Tits Up: What Our Beliefs About Breasts Reveal About Life, Love, Sex and Society, is a deep dive into the bosom of our fixation with boobs.Writing the book, she says, has transformed how she views her own breasts. “I really did go from dismissing them as a kind of shallow accessory, to thinking of them as a really important body part – one we wouldn’t have a human species without,” she says. “Our top halves have beeninvaded by male supremacy and I did not realise how deeply patriarchal even my own view of breasts was. I was dismissing them as dumb boobs, partly because they’re positioned primarily in culture as erotic playthings and I didn’t want to just be an erotic plaything.”
In her essay 'The Double Standard [PDF] of Aging,' Susan Sontag explores how a "visceral horror felt at aging female flesh" is entrenched in our visual culture, manifested in caricatures of viragos and witches. "Rules of taste enforce structures of power," she wrote, "the revulsion against aging in women is the cutting edge of a whole set of oppressive structures (often masked as gallantries) that keep women in their place." Reclaiming elderly sexuality is an act of defiance, a rebellion against a youth-obsessed culture, fuelled by misogynistic gender norms. from The Untold Lives of Mature OnlyFans Performers [Huck] CW: NSFW language, it's about OnlyFans and has pictures of women in lingerie.
Manchester United’s Aoife Mannion joins Faye Carruthers and Suzanne Wrack to discuss her team’s 4-0 FA Cup final win over Spurs and more
A big weekend of football calls for a star guest. This week, Faye Carruthers and Suzanne Wrack are joined by Manchester United’s Aoife Mannion to discuss her team’s 4-0 Wembley win over Tottenham. Then Chris Pauros joins Faye and Suzy to preview the final weekend in the WSL and the league’s record scorer, Vivianne Miedema, saying goodbye to Arsenal. They also look at the England squad announced by Sarina Weigman.
Login
