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A sexist casting call provoked a furious tweetstorm from actor Jamie Denbo.

Actor Jamie Denbo has played attorneys, nurses, prison inmates, reporters, and corporate executives.

Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images.

But there's one quintessentially Hollywood role she's apparently not qualified to play: the much-younger wife of a middle-aged man.

The reason? She's not much-younger enough, according to a salty-AF tweetstorm she dropped earlier this week.


This is a thing, and it's been a thing for a really long time.

It's no secret that male movie stars continue to play the same types of roles as they get older and older, while their female romantic partners rarely age past 35.

Liam Neeson and Olivia Wilde. Photo by Dario Cantatore/Getty Images.

That's why Denbo can be over a decade younger than her prospective male counterpart but still be considered "too old" to play his wife.

A Vulture analysis from 2013 starkly demonstrates the trend. 57-year-old Denzel Washington's love interest in "Flight"? 35-year-old Kelly Reilly. 49-year-old Johnny Depp's wife in "Transcendence"? 30-year-old Rebecca Hall. 61-year-old Liam Neeson's on-again, off-again mistress in "Third Person"? 29-year-old Olivia Wilde.

Who cares about what happens to some rich Hollywood actor anyway?

While top-line stars can and do pull down millions of dollars per film, few actors are rich. Far from it, in fact.

The median hourly actor makes less than $40,000 a year — and that's if they're working, which, for women in Hollywood, becomes less and less likely as they age precisely because of experiences like Denbo's.

Maggie Gyllenhaal speaks at the Berlinale International Film Festival. Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images.

"I’m 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55," actor Maggie Gyllenhaal told The Wrap in a 2015 interview. "It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh."

Meanwhile, these casting trends send a pretty messed-up message to audiences.

If all you did was watch movies and TV, you'd probably walk away with the idea that men are valuable for however long they can break arms, fire rocket launchers, and body-check terrorists, while women are only valuable as long as they remain attractive — a dynamic captured brilliantly in this NSFW "Inside Amy Schumer" sketch.

Hollywood already has the tools to do something about this — if they're willing to use them.

Melissa McCarthy. Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

Aside from making more Tom Hanks movies (his love interests tend to be much closer to him in age), the industry could take a cue from its own recent success and make more movies and TV shows featuring female leading characters of all ages.

That seems to be happening — slowly — with the ascendance of Melissa McCarthy, breakout TV series like "The Handmaid's Tale," and pretty much everything in the Shonda Rhimes universe.

It's a start, but it's not parity — and producers, filmmakers, and executives can and should continue to do more to get there, not just because it's right but because it clearly helps the bottom line.

For now, however, actors like Denbo can be forgiven for not quite being ready to make nice.

To fix things, we might just have to get that amount of mad.

A Korean mother and her son

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches."

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Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash

Let's talk about what makes people read articles.

The adage, "If it bleeds, it leads," refers to the media's tendency to headline stories involving death or violence, but it can also be used to point to people's negativity bias. Simply put, people tend to pay more attention to negative news stories than positive ones.

A new study seems to reinforce this idea. And much to our surprise, it's centered on headlines used in Upworthy stories.

Using a public archive of Upworthy headlines and traffic data from 2012 to 2015, two separate teams of researchers analyzed whether people's click tendencies changed with negative or positive words in headlines. In those olden days of Upworthy, a handful of headlines for a single story were tested on the website to see which one would receive the most clicks. The research teams analyzed those results and found that negative words in headlines led to more people clicking on a story (2.3% more), and positive words in headlines led to fewer clicks (1.0% fewer). They also found a preference for headlines that express sadness over those that express joy, fear or anger.

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Woman was mocked online for calling an $80 purse a 'luxury item.' Her response went viral.

"I'm so grateful that my dad was able to get me one. He worked so hard for that money.”

@zohtaco/TikTok

Zoe Gabriel, showing off her new purse from Charles & Keith

Insults of any kind are painful, but jabs towards someone’s financial status are their own breed.

In January 2023, Singapore-based Zoe Gabriel was on the receiving end of this particular flavor of mockery when she posted a TikTok about a purse from local retail brand Charles & Keith—a gift bought for her by her father.

In her excitement, the 17-year-old called the bag, which costs around $80, a “luxury” item as she unwrapped it. Her excitement was sadly cut short by some of the negative comments she received.

One comment seemed to stand out above the rest and prompted Gabriel to post an emotional response video.

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Parenting is the most important job that most people will ever have in life. Your decisions as a parent will be some of the most important determining factors in whether your child becomes a happy and productive adult or not. It's a huge responsibility.

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RuPaul's Drag Race 'Footloose' parody gets high praise from Kevin Bacon himself

When the OG Ren McCormack approves, you know you're in for something good.

RuPaul's Drag Race/Youtube, Wikipedia

Loosey LaDuca performing as Heaven Bacon for "Wigloose: A Rusical"

Fans of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” are well acquainted with the “Rusical” segment, but in case this word seems like something out of Dr. Seuss, here’s a brief explainer: A Rusical is a challenge on the show where contestants put on a live parody drag musical. Since debuting in Season 6, the Rusical has become a beloved staple of the series, with some of the most popular titles being “Madonna: The Unauthorized Rusical,” “HERstory of the World” and “Moulin Ru: The Rusical.”

For Episode 12, the queens drew inspiration from the 1984 movie “Footloose” to tell a story about a small town that prohibits drag rather than dancing. The performance got a sweet seal of approval from the OG Ren McCormack himself.
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