Hang Tight, America: The Redcoats Are Coming | Shag Haircuts Unite

Hang Tight, America: The Redcoats Are Coming | Shag Haircuts Unite

Rule number one of the little bit of grunge, a little rock, rigorously disheveled shag haircut is that the woman should be seriously rebellious and not faking it when choosing to get shaggy. Shags are not for imposters and poll readers. Rather, the shag haircut is for leaders like 70s’s women Jane Fonda and Debbie Harry, who are activists to the core decades later.

‘Shag’ is a 16th-century word, possibly from an Old English term for “rough, matted hair or wool. Men primarily, but some women also, have adopted their own definition of ‘shag’ and it has a strongly sexual connotation, as in “S(he) is a great shag.” There’s typically a ‘but’ that follows, as in “She’s a great shag but a total airhead.”

Shags are generally considered to be nonconforming, sexy haircuts, willfully embraced by their owners. Besides Fonda and Harry, the shaggy bob is also tagged to Meg Ryan and more recently Taylor Swift and Alexa Chung. Vogue Italia breaks down all the shag haircut details and shares celebs with their shags.

Jane Fonda, Still Flexing Shag Muscle

The return of shags — now a year-old trend in the US — gets new cred with female resistance. We all know that American women Democrats, Independents and increasingly, educated Republican women are exercising serious shag credentials.

Jane Fonda Gets Candid On Her 'Woke' History, Celebrating 60 Years Since Vogue Cover

Top Jane Fonda photographed by Irving Penn, Vogue, July 1959; Bottom Fonda in 2018, photo credit Getty Images. via Vogue US

Bridget Read interviews Jane Fonda about 60 years of activism , looking totally fab in her 80s and her first Vogue cover shot by master artist Irving Penn in July 1959.

We learn that Fonda actually worked for Irving Penn for a year, acting as his assistant at age 19. How thrilling! The Vogue cover shoot was a year before the actor’s first film ‘Tall Story’. She was wearing lipstick-color gloves available at Saks Fifth Avenue and a “spice brown” rinse in her hair.

Jane was studying at the time with Lee Strasberg and assigned to the Eileen Ford Agency as a model to pay for her acting classes. “If you had told me at that time that at age 81 I would again be on the cover of Vogue, I would’ve told you you were out of your mind, that that was completely and utterly impossible,” Jane tells Briget Read. Fonda continues:

My image of women was that they were victims and not very powerful, and my dad didn’t encourage me, or make me feel I was attractive. I mean, everything was a surprise to me. I was surprised that I got cast in a movie. I was surprised that I was ever accepted as a model at Eileen Ford’s agency and surprised that I ever ended up on the cover of Vogue. So my life has just been one big surprise for me.

It fact it wasn’t Jane Fonda’s visit to Angela Davis in the Marin Couny Jail that propelled her into activism. Nor was it her ‘radical’ husband Tom Hayden’s state assembly campaign in California. Fonda became an uber progressive in Paris, hanging with American GIs who had served in Vietnam. They had become resistors and gave the blooming model a book to read by Jonathan Schell called ‘The Village of Ben Suc’. There was no turning back after reading that book.

This interview gets better and better, as Fonda and Read discuss what it is to be ‘woke’. Read on at Vogue.

Jane Fonda Chosen For Producers Guild of America's 2019 Stanley Kramer Award On Jan. 19 in Beverly Hills

Jane Fonda Chosen For Producers Guild of America's 2019 Stanley Kramer Award On Jan. 19 in Beverly Hills

Two-time Oscar winner, producer and activist Jane Fonda will receive the Producers Guild of America’s 2019 Stanley Kramer Award at the 30th annual Producers Guild Awards on Jan. 19 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Fonda is the second individual, sharing the honor with Sean Penn in 2010, to receive the recognition. The award is usually given to a film, like  ‘Get Out’ in 2018 and ‘Loving’ in 2017, and its producers as an achievement or contribution that illuminates and raises public awareness of important social issues.

Jane’s contributions are many, but they include celebrating her 80th birthday last December by raising $1.3 million to lower the teen pregnancy rate and improve the overall health and well-being of young people in the state of Georgia, and the Women's Media Center, which she co-founded with Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan to make women and girls more visible and powerful in media. 

This year, Fonda starred in the summer box office hit ‘Book Club’ and was the subject of the HBO documentary ‘Jane Fonda in Five Acts’, chronicling her life and her activism. Next month the fifth season of her comedy series ‘Grace and Frankie’, which she executive produces and stars in, will begin streaming on Netflix.

After Major Award In France, Jane Fonda Heads To Michigan To Get Voters To the Polls"

After Major Award In France, Jane Fonda Heads To Michigan To Get Voters To the Polls"

The pendulum of Jane Fonda’s life swings wide right now. In Lyon, France to graciously accept the 10th Lumiere Lifetime Achievement Award, Fonda used her platform to first thank the french and then to speak on American politics.

Speaking in French, which she masters fluently, having been married to late film maker Roger Vadim in the 1960s, she played on the surname of the inventors of the moving pictures, the Lumière Brothers. Lumière means light in French, and Fonda said her award was a gift of "amour et lumière", love and light.

Preparing to leave France for Michigan, where Fonda is working with Taraji P. Henson to get out the vote efforts in the minority communities, the Oscar-winning actor currently featured in an HBO biopic ‘Jane Fonda In Five Acts’, summed up the concerns of so many progressives heading into the midterms on November 6.

“The elections on Nov. 6 are the most important elections of my lifetime. So much depends on what happens,” she said. “It's hard for me to breathe right now.” 

Fonda maintains close ties to Georgia, her home with former husband and CNN founder Ted Turner. She also operates a Georgia nonprofit GCAPP (Georgia Campaign For Adolescent Power And Potential)  But now, she can no longer speak to extended family and friends there.

“I love them, but I can't talk to them anymore. And I will fight to my last breath to stop what they are trying to do.” Fonda is referring to massive efforts by Republicans in Georgia to disenfranchise minority voters as the state stands on the precipice of electing its first black woman governor — America’s first black woman governor — Stacy Abrams.

Republican candidate for governor, current secretary of state Brian Kemp, is disenfranchising minority voters at an epic rate. To most progressives and Democrats, Kemp has an untenable conflict of interest and presumably Jane Fonda agrees.

The activist also spoke about America’s president Donald Trump. “I believe he suffers from PTSD because like many men he was, I believe, brutalized by his father when he was very, very young,” she said. “And some men … lose empathy for others [and] also totally lack empathy. And he has been very brutal with his own sons. Father son father son, it's very sad. I hate this. I have empathy for him, it's difficult, I try, I work at it.” (Jane Fonda, you are a far better soul than I am!)

“Martin Luther King said, 'I don't have to like you, but I have to love you.' It's not easy at this moment,” she summed up the situation in America. “We live in the patriarchy and the patriarchy makes us think that empathy and love is weak, but it's not. That is where our strength is. We have two strengths — there are more of us, and also we go forward with love and open minds and warm hearts.”

Democrats Launch The Last Weekend As Largest Grassroots Army Ever Assembled For Midterm Elections

Nearly two dozen top progressive groups which include Swing Left, Indivisible, MoveOn, Organizing for Action, Latino Victory, United We Dream and the Working Families Party will launch on Wednesday a massive get-out-the-vote effort aimed at helping Democratic candidates during the last days of the 2018 midterm elections. 

Organizers say the effort, dubbed “The Last Weekend,” is focused on recruiting the largest grassroots army ever assembled before a midterm election — one that will not just vote for Democratic candidates but volunteer for their campaigns.

“The stakes are so high that voting isn’t enough,” said Ethan Todras-Whitehill, executive director and co-founder of Swing Left, which is organizing the effort. “You’ve got to do more. The new bar is not just voting, but volunteering in key races that matter for determining control of the government.”

“I can’t think of another time where you had this diverse array of progressive organizations coming together the last weekend before an election,” said Cristobal Alex, presidential Latino Victory, which is part of the effort. “Not just to get out the vote, but to mobilize an army of super volunteers ahead of the vote.”

Jane Fonda Has a Fierce Tongue On Trumplandia For Town & Country November 2017

Jane Fonda Has a Fierce Tongue On Trumplandia For Town & Country November 2017

Helen Mirren, 72, appeared on the cover of Allure's September 2017 issue, calling for an end to the term 'anti-aging'. " . . . we know we're getting older," L'Oréal's face added to the dialogue. :You just want to look and feel as great as you can on a daily basis." 

Now Jane Fonda, 79 and a L'Oreal spokesperson since 2014, has joined the natural trend, covering the November 2017 issue of Town & Country. Fonda launches into a blistering interview with Brooks Barnes, the day after President Trump's ad-libbed 'fire and fury' threat toward North Korea. 

“I’m almost 80, and so to say that I’ve never experienced this kind of nightmare before in my life is saying something,” the 'Frankie & Johnny' Netflix star tells Barnes. They talk about Trump for a few minutes before the interviewer steers the conversation to Fonda's "latest career resurgence."

“Who gives a rat’s ass?” Fonda exclaims, leaving Barnes off-kilter. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Fonda replies. “It’s just that, with everything going on in the world, our country, it’s really hard to talk about myself or entertainment right now.”

In a nutshell, this is Jane Fonda for her entire life. 

A Defiant Emmy Awards Show Finds Backbone For Women From Handmaids To Victims Of Domestic Abuse

A Defiant Emmy Awards Show Finds Backbone For Women From Handmaids To Victims Of Domestic Abuse

No more listening to talking heads make their Emmy Awards predictions. Boy did those guys screw up . . . and they were mostly guys, if I think about it. Perhaps they got it wrong, because as Joanna Robinson writes for Vanity Fair: "the Emmys raised a surprising middle finger to the patriarchy."

On the same Sunday that America's asshat president was Tweeting a meme of him driving a golf ball into Hillary Clinton, knocking her down as she boarded a plane, it was revenge of The Handmaid's Tale in LA on Sunday evening. Yes, 'Big Little Lies' was expected to take home some statues, but no one predicted that the evening would become a fierce of women's rights under total threat by the Trump administration. 

The night was anti-Trump and the Saturday Night Live wins were not as pro-women as anti-Trump, even if Kate McKinnondid wear a white pantsuit and thank Hillary Clinton. 

Leave it to Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton to go off-script, bringing the sassy tone of their '9 to 5' movie to the stage in Los Angeles.  “Back in 1980, in that movie, we refused to be controlled by a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot,” Fonda said. “In 2017, we still refuse to be controlled by a sexist, hypocritical, lying, egotistical bigot,” Tomlin chimed in to massive cheers from a liberal audience totally Trumped out. The night's first standing ovation for feminism was in the house.  

Then came the night's big surprise, and it wasn't big wins for 'This Is Us', the predictable family drama. 

Jane Fonda Is Never At A Loss For Words in W Magazine & In Cannes

Jane Fonda Says Being A Fashion Icon Is A ‘Hoot’ In W Magazine June 2015

Jane Fonda delivers spectacular images and an in-depth interview with Lynn Hirschberg in the June issue of W Magazine. This is not the only place Jane is talking. 

AOC wrote last night that Jane Fonda was one of two recipients of the first-ever Women in Motion awards,presented in Cannes by  Kering CEO François-HenriPinault. Discrimination against women by the film industry is a major, front burner topic of conversation in Cannes this season. 

Producer Megan Ellison was the other Women in Motion recepient and she delivered terse words to white men in the audience, for which she received s rousing ovation. Never one to be shy with words, Jane Fonda also gave a spirited response about the film industry’s gender gap. 

‘The fact is that most film directors are men, white men. Most major roles are male roles and (it’s) the reason that I’m excited about this award,’ she said. ‘Women have to become part of the very heart of movie making.’

Fonda Stops The Set For Breastpumping

Fonda is currently starring in the Netflix series ‘Grace and Frankie’, playing with Lily Tomlin as two women whose husbands — the couples being long-time friends —  fall in love with each other.  A nice story about Fonda walking her talk in the workplace came to light yesterday when actor June Diane Raphael, breastfeeding her newborn son, joined the comic series. Raphael was late to the series’ first table read, because she was busy pumping reports Huff Po.

It’s very hard in the workplace to get time from your employers to pump and to do it in a sanitary and safe environment, so I found on set that Jane was really an ally for me in terms of getting what I needed — I needed to stop working every three hours and pump breastmilk,” Raphael said. “And that was a women’s issue, that was a health issue, that was an issue for many reasons. So having her, this iconic activist, in my corner and being one of my bosses was incredible and really helpful.

2014 Variety Power of Women Luncheon Winners & Their Activist Projects

2014 Variety Power of Women Luncheon Winners & Their Activist Projects

AOC Smart Sensuality readers want more substance in their celebrity news — who cares that Jennifer Lopez and Reese Whitherspoon wore complementary dresses to the 2014 Variety Power of Women Luncheon Winners. 

Co-hosted with Lifetime TV, the October 10 luncheon paid tribute to Viola Davis and Donna Langley in addition to Fonda, Lopez and Witherspoon. We share details about these five women and the important philanthropy projects motivate them, because — for the most part — fashion bloggers don’t dig below the surface of who wore what.