On Monday, Riverdale co-stars Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart were caught kissing—KISSING!—on the streets of Paris, the city of lights/love/whatever random monikers they come up with next. In case you haven’t been reading my weekly Riverdale recaps (for shame), I’ve been speculating about Lili and Cole dating for literal years. Like, ever since The CW took on the incredible challenge of turning the twin who dressed up in drag on The Suite Life into a certifiable snack and the reason I want to start* dating guys with trust issues.
*I always date guys with trust issues.
Lili and Cole were rumored to be dating after their characters, Jughead, the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks (lol) whose defining characteristics on the show include trying to capitalize off his classmate’s murder for his novel and wearing a weird hat, and Betty, the virgin who can’t drive, started over-the-clothes groping in the first season. I hope that’s the story they tell their grandkids one day. Despite the fact that I and the Instagram fan accounts that I troll have been watching their every waking move for two fucking seasons, Lili and Cole have kept things quiet about their real-life relationship and have neither confirmed nor denied the dating rumors. Which is fucking rude, because I thought that we were closer than that. Whatever, I’m over it. And while they can pretend denial is just a river in Egypt all they want, the paparazzi in Paris confirmed what we all already fucking knew by capturing a photo of the two of them making out on the streets like it’s last call at happy hour.
To those of you who tried to tell me that Bughead wasn’t real and that I that all the fake relationship fan accounts I follow are “creepy” and a “violation of privacy,” all I have to say is: I fucking told you so.
Tbh I haven’t felt this smug and self-righteous about something since jean skirts came back into style. And while normally I’d be basking in my own ego for the next 3-5 business days for being right about something, there’s like, a lot to unpack in this photo. Like, why Cole Sprouse’s outfit is saying “I only drink expensive red wine and I consider other people’s garbage the perfect addition to my found art project”? So let’s give these damning photos a second look, shall we? Take a look at the third photo in the carousel above. Stare at it for at least 10 seconds so it’s burned into your memory. Ok, ready? Let’s discuss.
Jesus. That doesn’t get any easier to look at, does it? Let’s talk about the body language for a second. On the one hand we have Lili, who is looking at Cole like she has Stockholm syndrome Dark Betty looks at her own reflection before she turns on her webcam.
Then we have Cole: His body is turned away from Lili and his eyes are saying he regrets not adding his favorite line of poetry to his Instagram bio. Sad! Perhaps the most concerning part about this entire photo is that it looks like Lili hasn’t brushed her hair since the damn plane landed and she’s wearing the ugliest effing jacket I’ve ever seen, an obvious sign that she trusts Cole enough to love her at her worst. So sweet. Meanwhile, Cole is sporting the beginning wisps of a mustache the likes of which only To Catch A Predator has ever seen, which means she definitely shouldn’t trust him, especially around any woman who asks him to explain his “craft” to her.
Tbh I could be all wrong here. He could only be leaning away from her because she decided to practice an upcoming Dark Betty scene with him in the bedroom and shit got a little too weird. The look in his eyes could be less about a missed poetry opportunity and more of a desperate cry for help, which I’m ignoring for the sake of this article. I mean, who am to judge? Jk. I tune into this bullshit every week and follow all of these kids on Insta. I’m absolutely qualified to judge.
Anyway, here’s hoping their off-screen sex translates to some more on-screen chemistry, forcing the Riverdale writers to write more scenes about that and less about Hiram Lodge’s business dealings. I’m not watching this show for tips on local city planning schemes, okay?
Images: Giphy (2); @justjared /Instagram (2)
Do you ever forget that Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid are dating, and then when you remember it ruins your whole day? Well, you might want to be sitting down for this. It appears that Zayn got a tattoo of Gigi’s eyes on his chest. Like, as in, it looks like there’s a photograph of Gigi’s upper face but instead of a photo it’s permanent ink. Ew.
The speculation over the tattoo started over the weekend when Gigi posted a boomerang for Zayn’s birthday. On a first look, it just looks like Zayn dancing with his shirt unbuttoned, which we have absolutely no problem with. Zayn is hot AF, it’s a fact of science. But upon closer inspection, people started to notice something, um, interesting about one of Zayn’s newer tattoos: it looks exactly like Gigi.
Now, we know that it’s a thing to get pictures of people tattooed, and sometimes it can be tasteful. (Not usually, but sometimes. Whatever.) But this isn’t just a picture of Gigi on his bicep or something, it’s her fucking eyes staring into our souls from smack dab in the middle of his chest. Like, what? It looks like one of those weird wolf T-shirts you can buy at Walmart, except it’s a tattoo on his actual human body. We have so many questions.
So, um, happy birthday Zayn, and we hope you enjoy your new *permanent* ink. We hope these two never break up, because honestly they deserve each other and we don’t need their kind of nonsense reintroduced into the dating pool.
We’re only a little more than a week into 2018, but the endless cycle of celebrity relationships has no chill. Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff are over after more than five years together, marking the first big breakup story of the new year. In case you’re not up to speed, Jack Antonoff is the cute but dorky-looking guy from Fun. and Bleachers, and Lena is, of course, the star of Girls who basically has a second career in saying problematic shit about everything.
Their breakup is surprising, considering that they always seemed like a pretty normal, happy couple. Back in October, Lena posted an Instagram of them together, saying they had just celebrated five and a half years together, and that she was “still working hard to impress him in surprising ways.” We’re not sure if that’s supposed to be like, a weird sex thing, but clearly she still felt invested in the relationship.
But shit can change quickly, and obviously something wasn’t working between Jack and Lena. In the past, Lena had publicly said that they were waiting to get married until gay marriage was legal, but obviously that came and went a couple years ago. In November, Lena tweeted “5.5 years, no rock and you know what? It’s real nice.” Again, we obviously don’t have full context, but it’s probably not a great sign if you’re like, thrilled that your man hasn’t proposed to you after almost six years. Also if you have to tweet that you don’t care that your boyfriend hasn’t proposed, you definitely care. A lot.
So now it’s January and there are two more single people in the world, but we have a feeling they’ll both be okay. Lena can keep tweeting tone-deaf things about race and gender, facing no consequences for her actions, and Jack can go back to making music that no one really cares much about. We don’t know who either of them will end up with next, but we do know Lena’s next boyfriend definitely won’t be Odell Beckham Jr. We don’t know why they broke up, and their sources say it was “mutual”, but I like to think it was because Jack Antonoff finally woke up from his five-and-a-half-year hypnotism and realized he was dating Lena Dunham.
If you thought love wasn’t dead, think again. Yesterday, we got the news that Fergie and Josh Duhamel are getting a divorce, and it hurts. They had been married for over eight years, and they always just seemed normal and happy together. Here’s the statement they released to the press:
“With absolute love and respect we decided to separate as a couple earlier this year. To give our family the best opportunity to adjust, we wanted to keep this a private matter before sharing it with the public. We are and will always be united in our support of each other and our family.”
Okay, that’s nice, but we’re a little confused why we weren’t the first people they told? Whatever, I guess it’s the best thing for their son Axl, besides maybe getting a new name. Seriously, that name needs at least one more vowel, he’s not a Black-Eyed Pea.
The timing of the announcement probably isn’t a coincidence, because Fergie just happens to have her first solo album in 11 years coming out next week. It’s called Double Dutchess, and if it can provide us with even one banger on the level of “Glamorous”, “Fergalicious”, or “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, we’ll be very happy. Meanwhile, Josh is busy doing Transformers movies or something.
We hope everything works out for Fergie and Josh, and as long as John Legend and Chrissy Teigen don’t break up we’ll still hold out some hope that love isn’t terrible.
Close your eyes and think back with us to early 2015. It was a gentler time in the world. Crop tops weren’t played out. We thought Jeb(!) Bush might be the next President. And Taylor Swift still seemed like kind of a cool person (emphasis on the kind of.) Then one of our fav couples, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, announced they were divorcing and we were all like, “There’s nothing that could be worse than this. Not even Donald Trump being president, which would never happen anyway. Now please excuse my while I enroll in Obamacare.”
If, for some reason, you don’t already have every detail of the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Garner relationship memorized, here’s a refesher: Jen and Ben got together in 2004. They were both fresh out of long-term relationships. Jen had broken things off with the dude who plays Jake Ballard on Scandal, and Ben had ended a v high-profile engagement with J Lo, probably after discovering that she was going to use the giant engagement ring he bought her as the cornerstone of a spell to stay young forever. Which totally worked, BTW. While immediately trading one Jennifer for another is kind of a shady move, they were a great couple together. It seemed like happily ever after, with three beautiful children and a fairly low-key life. Kind of boring, but aren’t all healthy relationships? Sadly, in 2015, everything fell apart. The divorce went public, and before long Ben was fucking nannies on TMZ.
Only thing is, it never really seemed that over. Any betch whose ever been in an on-again-off-again thing could spot all the telltale signs of not really being broken up. First off, they never stopped spending time together, always saying that they were doing what was” best for the kids.” Because living in a big-ass house and going on lavish vacations with someone who you publicly claim you’re not into anymore is a totally standard environement for children. #RichPeopleThings.
Now reports are surfacing that the divorce has been called off, and that Bennifer 2.0 are trying to work through their issues. Honestly, we’re just exhausted at this point. Like, I already spent the last year and a half going over on data trying to get my sister and her ex to admit they’re still together. I can’t go through that all over again with celebs. And while we obviously hope for their sake they can work things out, how does it take two years to get to this point? Hollywood divorces usually take a long time, but really? Whatever happens, Jennifer definitely won’t let Ben get anywhere near a hot nanny this time. That’s for fucking sure.
So, what do we think? In a world of celebrity divorces, will this one just be a false alarm? Maybe, maybe not. But if Beyoncé and Jay Z made it through whatever she was singing about on Lemonade, Ben and Jen should be fine.
