Five-year-olds are now contouring like Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian is so used to being criticized for letting her 5-year-old daughter North wear makeup that when she posted a video on Instagram of the little girl wearing red lipstick last month, she preempted the backlash.
“Relax Mom Shamers it’s coming off in a few mins,” the makeup mogul captioned the clip, helpfully identifying the shade as No. 6 in her new Classic Blossom collection. “I needed a bribe to get [her] out of the door . . . you feel me?!?!?!”
Kardashian was called a “horrible mother” for allowing North to walk in a runway show in LA wearing a crop top, sunglasses and lipstick, and her parenting skills were once more called into question when North rocked a bright orange eye look (artfully drawn by one of Kardashian’s makeup pros) to go see her dad, Kanye West, perform on “Saturday Night Live.”
But while the spotlight is shining on North’s famous face, like it or not, little girls across America are troweling on the eye shadow and blush and pouting for the cameras. Aged just 5 to 12, these mini divas are social-media savvy, hip to the latest techniques, obsessed with the coolest cosmetic brands and fans of beauty influencers. With professional makeup brushes clutched in their tiny hands, these darlings are copying sophisticated online makeup looks with grown-up powders and potions at home. And they’re even making money doing it.
Take 7-year-old Molly, who carefully contours her forehead, cheeks and button nose with two shades of concealer and a drop of oil, then blends a shimmery eye statement. She stands to earn $12,000 this year from her makeup tutorials on YouTube (Courtney McCutcheon) and Instagram (@lipgloss_and_crayons).
“My favorite products are lipstick and glittery eye shadow,” Molly tells The Post. “And I really like blush because it makes my cheeks stand out.”
Then there’s Zara (who goes by Yoshidoll online), a second-grader who is sometimes recognized on the street, even outside of her hometown of Atlanta. She has 208,000 Instagram followers (@yoshidoll) and over 132,000 subscribers on her eponymous YouTube channel.
“My daughter has her own Caboodle full of stuff she gets to wear at the house,” says her mom Ellarie Noel, a beauty influencer. She says she restricts her daughter’s cosmetic use to home and doesn’t let her wield a mascara wand herself.
Zara makes sponsored videos featuring hair-care products — and can easily pocket $20,000 a year from those deals, according to her mother — but her most popular videos involve makeup. “Transforming Into My Mom!” which shows Noel tracing winged eyeliner and slicking red lip lacquer on her baby-double has racked up more than 3.4 million views on YouTube.
“I look like Beyoncé!” announces Zara after the ruby gloss is on. “Girl, don’t push it,” responds her mom.While tweens and teens have always played with makeup, experts say that iGen is particularly informed and sophisticated. “With the proliferation of technology, smartphones and access to information at ever-younger ages, you have an incredibly knowledgeable and discerning consumer,” says Natasha Cornstein, CEO of Blushington, a chain of beauty lounges with seven locations across the country. She estimates that 20 percent of her clientele falls in the 12-to-18 age group, with a notable number of under-12 customers.
Cornstein reports that girls as young as 6 years old have birthday parties at Blushington and $150 “Makeup 101” classes are particularly popular with budding face-painters. “Color matching is a top request,” she says, referring to the process of picking complexion-flattering shades.
Several of 11-year-old Pippa Locke’s Manhattan middle-school friends already know their foundation shades and worship teenage beauty influencer James Charles, CoverGirl’s first male spokesmodel and a proponent of full-on red-carpet glam. The classmates enjoy hanging out in small groups, experimenting with colors and looks. “They like the selfie aspects of it and the how-tos,” says Jenny B. Fine, Pippa’s mother and WWD’s executive beauty editor. “Overall, it’s a positive form of self-expression.”
Not everyone agrees.
Molly’s mother, store manager Courtney McCutcheon, has been viciously slammed online. “It was awful, people were calling me a child abuser,” says the Missouri-based amateur makeup artist. “They were saying it’s going to ruin her skin and she’s going to have acne. People were telling me I should be arrested or I’m going to go to hell, or that she should play with Barbie dolls or she should be outside.”
McCutcheon dismisses these charges, saying Molly and her 5-year-old sister June lead perfectly normal, age-appropriate lives and only occasionally are permitted to wear a little glitter and gloss outside of their home. “Molly begs me to do videos and likes creating content. It’s innocent and she’s having fun.”
McCutcheon also notes that her daughter is earning good money and learning about work. “She can make off one video what her dad or I can make in one week.”
But experts warn that modeling adult behavior can come at a price. “The risk is that little girls focus on appearance, buying the right things and looking the right way, instead of developing a broader range of interests and skills,” says Diane E. Levin, professor of applied human development at Boston University’s Wheelock College and author of “So Sexy So Soon.” “Developmentally, they’re objectifying themselves.”
Posting such content online amplifies her concerns: “One of the dangers is interacting on the internet with trolls and escalating problematic sexualized behaviors,” Levin says.
Other critics worry that girls are being exposed to toxic chemicals, such as phthalates and parabens. Danielle Maguire, a mother of three in Haddonfield, NJ, and a Rodan + Fields consultant, solved that potential problem last Christmas by investing $100 in organic makeup from Anthropologie for daughters Estella, 12, and Wynnie, 10.
“I want to teach them early that they need to be aware of what they’re putting on their skin,” she says.
Eftiola Fundo’s niece Jenny Ana Sofia may be the most precocious primper of all. When the tot was 1, she picked up a makeup brush and started waving it around in front of her face.
Last year, Fundo, a South Florida-based dental hygienist posted an Instagram beauty tutorial (@facebyeftii) with the then-3-year-old moppet that went viral. “It was so much fun for the both of us,” says Fundo. “She loves it. She’s like, ‘Can I watch it again?’ ”
The proud aunt didn’t bother responding to the inevitable flurry of fault-finders.
“If you don’t have trolls,” says Fundo, “there’s something wrong.”
via: https://nypost.com/2018/10/12/little-kids-are-wearing-grown-up-makeup-is-it-ok/
photo credit: Ellarie Noel
Stacey Dash secretly weds
“Clueless” actress Stacey Dash has a secret husband she married in Florida on April 6, just a few days after she withdrew from her campaign for Congress in California.
The groom, lawyer Jeffrey Marty, is best known as the creator of the fake Rep. Steven Smith of Georgia, the first “congressman” to endorse Donald Trump and a tea party gadfly who generates outrage in the Twitterverse, despite constant reminders that he is fictitious.
Sources say the couple got married just 10 days after they first met, but Dash’s manager Kerry Jones couldn’t answer how or when they met or why the wedding was so secret.
“They wanted it on the D.L. [down low],” Jones told me.
The Bronx-born actress, a cousin of Damon Dash, filed on Feb. 26 to run in California’s 44th congressional district. Dash said she wanted to “free people from the shackles of a plantation mentality.”
Dash, author of “There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative,” dropped out a month later, citing “the overall bitterness surrounding our political process.”
Since she lives in Los Angeles and Marty lives in Florida, it seems they have a long-distance marriage.
But the pair are on the same political wavelength. He told a reporter two years ago, “There are a lot of people that have died mysteriously around [Hillary Clinton]. When they were supposed to testify against her — three or four different people. Within a week.”
photo credit: FilmMagic
Missouri Man Angered Over Ex-Wife Dating Firefighter Sets Own Home Ablaze
A Missouri man has been charged with lighting his own home on fire, grabbing a rifle and waiting outside because he was upset that his ex-wife was dating a firefighter.
The Springfield News-Leader reports that 35-year-old Jason Hawkins, of Republican, pleaded not guilty Wednesday during his arraignment on charges of arson, unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest.
His attorney didn’t return a phone message Friday from The Associated Press.
Charging documents say Hawkins admitted to setting the fire in July. The home was engulfed in flames when authorities responded. Hawkins is accused of initially ignoring commands to drop his rifle and then struggling with officers who tried to arrest him. He told police that his “business” was with the firefighter.
He’s been jailed since then. Charges were refiled this week.
‘What’s Happening!!’ co-star Danielle Spencer is ailing
NEW YORK — Danielle Spencer, who played the tattletale little sister Dee Thomas on the 1970s TV series “What’s Happening!!,” is home in Virginia recuperating from emergency brain surgery after a series of health setbacks.
Spencer, who had been working as a veterinarian, was released from a hospital Oct. 4 after surgery for a bleeding hematoma, a result of a 1977 car accident that killed her stepfather, Tim Pelt, as he shielded her from harm.
She can speak just slightly and must use crutches to walk, said a spokesman, Jason Hardy.
The 53-year-old Spencer began suffering symptoms in 2004, when she was confined to a wheelchair and did a long stint in rehab to learn how to walk again. In 2014, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy, Hardy said.
The ABC sitcom, which aired from 1976 to 1979, followed the lives of three working-class teens in the Los Angeles neighborhood Watts. Spencer played the sister of one, Roger “Raj” Thomas. She also appeared in a sequel, “What’s Happening Now!!”
Friends of Spencer, who lives in Richmond, have begun an appeal for financial assistance on her behalf at GoFundMe.com.
via: https://pix11.com/2018/10/12/whats-happening-co-star-danielle-spencer-is-ailing/
76-year-old tries to attack son with chainsaw, son runs him over with lawn mower
BRISTOL, Tenn. – A Tennessee man lost one of his legs after his son, trying to fend off the 76-year-old’s chainsaw attack, drove over the older man with a lawn mower, according to the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office.
The father, identified as Douglas Ferguson, of Bristol, now faces a charge of attempted second degree murder, according to the Bristol Herald Courier.
The incident happened June 28, but, because of the severity of the injury, authorities weren’t able to serve the arrest warrant until Tuesday.
Officials say Ferguson’s son was mowing the front lawn when his father went after him with the chainsaw.
“The son defended himself against the attack by running over the suspect with the lawn mower,” according to an SCSO press release obtained by the Kingsport Times-News. “The injuries that the suspect (Ferguson) sustained were as a result of the lawn mower striking and running over him.”
Ferguson, who was found bleeding from his leg and head, was taken to the hospital where doctors amputated his leg.
Investigators with the sheriff’s office said the two men have a long-running feud.
Ferguson was jailed on the attempted murder charge and for violating parole related to a previous aggravated assault, according to the Times-News. Bond was set at $25,000 for the attempted murder charge.
Bodies of 11 infants found in ceiling of shuttered Detroit funeral home
DETROIT – Construction workers found the bodies of 11 infants inside a defunct Detroit funeral home Friday, police say.
The crew was working on the Cantrell Funeral Home on the city’s east side when they found the bodies just before 5:30 p.m., according to The Detroit News.
Police say the bodies had been hidden in the ceiling of the Mack Avenue business – eight inside a cardboard box and three others in individual bags inside a casket.
In late April of 2018, state inspectors ordered the funeral home to close after finding “deplorable” conditions that included moldy, unrefrigerated bodies in various states of decomposition, according to MLive.com.
Michigan State Police and the Wayne County Medical examiners responded to the former funeral home Friday.
LARA shut down Cantrell Funeral Home in April for multiple violations. These violations included improper storage of embalmed bodies, two of which were in an advanced stage of decomposition, according to a press release from LARA.
CNN attempted to contact the funeral home, but the number led to a call center at a different company.
A police investigation is ongoing.
CNN contributed to this report.
Michigan man found guilty of shooting at teen who asked for directions
A Michigan man who fired a gun at a teenager asking for directions was found guilty Friday of assault with intent to do great bodily harm in the April incident, which was captured on video in vivid detail.
The jury at Oakland County Circuit Court also found Jeffrey Craig Zeigler, 53, guilty of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Zeigler had been on trial on a charge of assault with intent to murder for shooting at 14-year-old Brennan Walker, who was not hurt.
Brennan was walking alone to school on April 12 after he missed the bus. As he trekked the 4 miles to Rochester High School in Rochester Hills, about 20 miles north of Detroit, he got lost and knocked on the doors of several houses, he said.
The teen went up to Zeigler’s home and knocked on the door a few times.
A woman came to the door, yelling at him, he told CNN affiliate WDIV.
“I was trying to explain to that I wanted to get directions to go to my school,” he said. The man eventually came out with a shotgun and fired one shot at the teen who was running away.
Brennan said he fled when he saw the man with the shotgun.
Color footage of the shooting, which WDIV said was from home security video, was played in court this week. It showed Brennan walking up to the door, wearing a backpack.
The video, which had no sound, shows him waiting a few moments, then running away toward the street. Out of the right hand side of the frame a man emerges, shirtless and in jeans. He is carrying a shotgun.
As the boy escapes at the top of the frame, the man raises the weapon. A few seconds pass, and he fires, the recoil knocking his torso backward.
He lowers the gun, steps out on to the porch, and looks in the direction the boy fled before turning back toward the house.
Zeigler told police the gun went off after he fell backward, causing his finger to inadvertently hit the trigger, according to court testimony from an officer.
In April, Brennan’s mother told WDIV that she believed there was a racial component to the case. Zeigler is white. Brennan is black.
“It definitely was a hate crime,” she said at the time.
Zeigler’s attorney, Robert Morad, told CNN after Friday’s verdict that the conviction of the lesser charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm “showed that the jury believed that my client wasn’t trying to kill Brennan Walker, which was obviously one of the things we argued.”
Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 13, Morad said, adding it was too early to say whether they are considering an appeal.
via: https://pix11.com/2018/10/13/michigan-man-found-guilty-of-shooting-at-teen-who-asked-for-directions/
Kanye West returns to Twitter with a ‘mind control’ rant after one-week hiatus
Kanye West’s break from social media lasted all of seven days.
After a bizarre week that included a highly publicized meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office and a spontaneous trip to Uganda, West returned to Twitter to talk “mind control.”
The controversial rapper opted out of social media last week after catching heat for an equally peculiar pro-Trump rant following his appearance on the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live.”
In a series of Twitter videos shared Saturday, West gave his unfiltered thoughts on the negative effects of social media in a nine-minute live video of him talking directly to the camera.
“I just want to talk about mind control,” West began. “You know, when people try to influence you through social media and try to tell you what to do, or if you post something that’s, like, positive on Instagram, it gets taken down if it’s not a part of a bigger agenda.”
He continued: “That’s like mind control. That’s the echo chamber. That’s trying to control you based off of incentivizing you and based off of you getting enough likes. That’s the poison that’s happening with social media.”
West discussed his self-proclaimed genius-level IQ score (“Straight up Sigmund Freud, Tesla vibes”), his dislike of people telling him what to do (“Feel like they’re touching my brain”) and compared the policing of his thoughts to a woman’s right to consent (“She wants to be in control of her body and choose who she wants to give it to. … I feel like that with my mind”).
“Imagine you, like, cut your skull open and somebody like touched your brain with their hand, how that would hurt you,” West asked. “That’s how it hurts me when people try to tell me what to do when I’m going from my heart. Try to tell me what to say. This ain’t programmed.”
Article via USAToday
Video shows autistic child dragged through school hallway by teacher and nurse
Jo Grayson said she was alarmed when her son, Thatcher, came home from his middle school covered in cuts and bruises.
Earlier in the day, Thatcher’s teacher texted Grayson to alert her to an incident involving him. But it did nothing to prepare Grayson for what she saw hours later when Thatcher came home and she discovered the marks on his body.
After she obtained surveillance video that explained the marks, she became appalled. The footage shows Thatcher, who is autistic and mostly nonverbal, being dragged down a school hallway by his teacher and the school nurse.
“I just don’t understand how someone can do this to a child, let alone to a person with disabilities,” Grayson told CNN. “I want the school district to take action and not just install cameras in every room of each school, but also train their staff accordingly so they know how to handle children with disabilities, or rough situations with children like Thatcher.”
Thatcher is a sixth-grader at Tates Creek Middle School in Lexington, Kentucky. Because of his condition, he’s not able to tell his parents when something is wrong. But the photos Grayson posted to her Facebook account speak volumes.
Grayson initially didn’t make much out of the incident when she received the teacher’s text in mid-September.
“The nurse and I had to physically help him get up off the gym floor,” the text read. “He wouldn’t move and other kids were trying to play. I apologize if he has marks on him.”
Grayson says she thought the behavior sounded a little strange for Thatcher, but replied by thanking the teacher for informing her of the incident.
The situation changed that evening.
“We were getting ready for bed, and when I pulled his shirt off, I saw cuts and bruises on his body. That didn’t look like marks of someone helping him get up,” Grayson said.
Concerned at this point, Grayson rushed to the school the following class day to get clear answers on what exactly had happened. She was able to request surveillance video of the incident through an open request filed by her lawyer.
“I saw both his teacher and the school nurse just pulling and dragging my son, along with his service dog, all throughout the hallway,” Grayson said.
Grayson confirmed with CNN that she in fact filed a report with the county district attorney. However, at this time, the report is under the review of the DA and no warrants have been issued.
According to Fayette County Public Schools, the teacher involved in the incident is no longer employed at the school as of October 2.
Officials with the school district provided a statement.
“Incidents of this nature — in which an employee is acting outside of the district’s expectations and out of line with the training provided — are isolated. Our training is very explicit that physical restraint is a last resort only to be used when a student is a danger to themselves or others. The training also shows employees the proper ways to hold or transport students. In this case, neither of those standards were met,” Lisa Deffendall, a spokeswoman for the school district, said in the statement.
“There is absolutely no tolerance for the conduct of the employee in this incident, and while we cannot discuss specifics, we do want to reassure our families that we take any situations of this nature very seriously,” she added.
When asked what the district would expect of an employee if a child who is nonverbal refused to move, the school district said the following:
“It is difficult to generalize the district’s expectations for responding to a situation like this because every child with special needs has an individual plan outlining the best evidence-based strategies to support their success. However, we can say that some recommended strategies would include use of wait time, visuals, a student’s individual communication system, and system of least prompts.”
As for the nurse, the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department said she has been placed on paid administrative leave “pending investigation.”
“We continue to work with Fayette County Public Schools to investigate the matter. We cannot comment further at this time,” Kevin Hall, a spokesman for the department, said in a statement.
Thatcher returned to school once his mother learned the teacher is no longer employed there, and she said she hopes the incident encourages other parents to speak up for their children.
Aaron Hernandez was sexually abused as young boy, report says
An investigative series by The Boston Globe revealed that former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who killed himself in prison last year, was sexually molested as a young boy.
The previously undisclosed information came from the Globe’s “Spotlight Team” from interviews, thousands of court and government records, and text messages, emails and images Hernandez sent and received while in a Massachusetts prison, where he was serving a life sentence without parole for the 2013 slaying of onetime friend Odin Lloyd.
The newspaper’s six-part series, the first installment of which was published Saturday, included details about Hernandez’s childhood, sexuality and drug use. Among them:
• Hernandez and his brother, Jonathan, were often beaten by their father, Dennis, while growing up in Bristol, Connecticut. The beatings were sometimes related to Dennis Hernandez’s drinking.
• Aaron Hernandez started smoking marijuana in high school with a teammate before school, before football practice and after games.
• The teammate, Dennis SanSoucie, told the Globe that he had a sexual relationship with Hernandez in junior high and high school and that the two tried to hide it.
• Jonathan Hernandez told the Globe that Aaron Hernandez disclosed later in his adult life that he had been molested as a young boy. One of Aaron’s lawyers in his criminal case also said Aaron spoke to him of sexual abuse as a child. Neither was willing to identify the perpetrator to the Globe.
• Aaron Hernandez was close to a cousin, Tanya Singleton, and he was crushed when he learned that his mother, Terri, was in a serious romantic relationship with Singleton’s husband, Jeff Cummings.
The report Saturday included information gleaned from recordings of nearly 300 phone calls Hernandez made from jail over a six-month period.
Hernandez was found hanging from a bed sheet in his cell on April 19, 2017, just days after he was found not guilty of two counts of murder in the killing of two men in a drive-by shooting outside a Boston nightclub five years earlier.
Article via ESPN
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