#eboni nichols

[crosseyedcricketart]

MET Gala 2024, "The Garden of Time".

[cozyaliensuperstar7]

Beautiful Women

👑 🌷💐🌹

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

Celebrities in Thom Browne at the MET Gala 2024:

Ben Simmons, Gigi Hadid, Jaden Smith, Rebecca Ferguson, Alton Mason, Eboni Nichols, Queen Latifah, Steven Yeun and Cynthia Erivo.

[jennyboom21]

It was small, minor even. In all of the pageantry, hoopla, stunts and shows that come with the annual Met Gala — celebrities decked in haute couture, multiple costume changes, group chats and social media timelines rushing to outdo one another for jokes. But in the middle of all that, Queen Latifah walked the 2024 Met Gala Carpet with her longtime partner Eboni Nichols.

When I first saw it, well, I screamed a little. Ok, maybe I screamed more than a little. But you have to understand, it’s not that we haven’t seen Queen and Eboni walk a red carpet together before, they walked the Oscars carpet together in 2022 and more recently they walked a different red carpet together for an AmFAR benefit in 2023. She first publicly acknowledged Eboni, and their son Rebel, from a BET Awards stage by thanking them both as her “love” while accepting her Lifetime Achievement. But if you’re a queer person and especially a Black queer person, who has been a part of this community at any point in the last 30 years, I also know that you get it. This is the queen. After rooting for her journey for so long, after she was a queer awakening for so many of us across so many years, every forward step still feels lucky somehow for us to witness. Each one feels like a breath of fresh air.

I posted my all caps emotions to Twitter because for better or for worse, I am chronically online. I thought it would do maybe a few hundred likes. Some love from a few other fans. Again on some level I intellectually know… we have been here before. But somehow still, the Met felt different. Walking the world’s most famous carpet, with every camera trained on you and your partner in your matching black & white gowns felt different. Anyway, it ended up with over 45 thousand likes in a day. And that’s when I knew — I wasn’t alone.

To be very clear here, I do not believe that Queen Latifah owes us Dana Owens. In 2008, after being arguably the most famous woman rapper for nearly two decades and an Oscar-nominated actress, she told The New York Times that when it came to her romantic life, “You don’t get that part of me. Sorry. We’re not discussing it… Nobody gets that. I don’t feel like I need to share my personal life.” And she’s absolutely correct. We are not owed hers (or anyone’s) coming out. We are not owed beyond what she has left for us on stage and screen.

But it’s also hard not to feel this as a homecoming, deep in your bones. And I hope that if Queen sees this joy spreading across the internet as pictures of her and Eboni go viral, that she knows its meant with pride in her and gratitude for all that she already gave us. Everything else is a bonus.

I have loved Queen Latifah since I was eight years old. I loved her longer than I’ve known I was gay. In so many ways, she taught me a lot about strength, and independence, and loving other Black women and not taking any shit and womanhood. So it’s impossible, now, not to gush when Emma Chamberlin interviewed Queen and Eboni together on the carpet and asked, “Is this a date night?”

Queen takes a deep breath and smiles before teasingly calling Eboni “Eb.” Eboni fills in their banter and says that she playfully threatened Queen that this was the year they were doing the Met, and she better make it happen. Like an old married couple who’s been here a thousand times before, Queen Latifah picks up the story there, saying that she wanted to be “the hero of my household.” And so now, here they are.

I’m saying… this is Queen Latifah… being flirtatious and chivalrous to her partner, live and in front of cameras? I am on my knees. We used to dream for days like this!!

(No, literally. Do you know many times I have wished I could be silly and thirsty and overdramatic on the internet for their love story??? To even be able make a joke like “I’m on my knees” in same that’s usually reserved for an umpteenth number of white skinny lesbians in their 20s and 30s. To borrow even more internet speak: I cry 😭)

I think a lot about what it means to be Black and a lesbian or bisexual or queer and a woman over a certain age. In part, I think about it because of this job (writing about gay people on the internet), but also it’s because of this job that I know so many of the queer icons I grew up loving — for whatever reason, they’ve never felt like they could come out. Not fully. Not in such a way that we can openly write about them.

And there are a lot of days where, to be honest, that doesn’t matter. Everyone, even celebrities, is entitled to their own life story. It’s truly probably none of our business. But Queen Latifah did an interview with her longtime partner and after loving her for what feels like my entire life now I get to all caps yell SHUT UP YALL, THEY ARE SO CUTE and they are and it’s perfect. Sometimes, that matters too.

[balimode]

I do not enjoy the poofiness of the dresses going on here in the slightest, but they look happy, so hey.

[opticandmasturbation]

Eboni Nichols and Queen Latifah at the Met Gala on May 6, 2024. PHOTO: JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY

[ads-from-the-past]

Ebony, January 1967 (Nichelle Nichols, 34)

[sonimage1965]

Nichelle Nichols

[mias-playground]

🤎 Out and About in Paris by Nicholle Kobi

There's more here at My Archive

[nakeddeparture]

Barbados: Samuel Adolfus Garnes formerly known as Leo Adolphus Garnes, killed two girls (sisters) in the US (Alabama), NOW he is charged with RAPE of a MINOR in Bim!

LISTEN HERE: https://youtu.be/bOxByI54cFs

He’s tried to erase his past. But, now you know. Naked!!

[profeminist]

"It was small, minor even. In all of the pageantry, hoopla, stunts and shows that come with the annual Met Gala — celebrities decked in haute couture, multiple costume changes, group chats and social media timelines rushing to outdo one another for jokes. But in the middle of all that, Queen Latifah walked the 2024 Met Gala Carpet with her longtime partner Eboni Nichols.

When I first saw it, well… I screamed a little. Ok, maybe I screamed more than a little. It’s not that we haven’t seen Queen and Eboni walk a red carpet together before, they walked the Oscars carpet together in 2022 and more recently they walked a different red carpet together for an AmFAR benefit in 2023. Queen first publicly acknowledged Eboni, and their son Rebel, from a BET stage by thanking them both as her “love” while accepting her Lifetime Achievement Award. But if you’re a queer person, and especially a Black queer person, who has been a part of this community at any point in the last 30 years, I also know that you get it."

Read the full piece here: https://www.autostraddle.com/queen-latifah-walked-the-met-carpet-with-her-partner-eboni-nichols-it-matters

ALL HAIL THE QUEEN

[weclassybouquetfun]

Holy Photoshop, Batman!

Team Thom Browne Class Photo: Ben Simmons, Gigi Hadid, Jaden Smith, Rebecca Ferguson, Alton Mason, Eboni Nichols, Queen Latifah, Steven Yeun and Cynthia Erivo.

Team Loewe: Taylor Russell, Greta Lee, Jamie Dornan, Josh O'Connor, Dan Levy, Ambika Mod, Ayo Edebiri, Alison Oliver, Omar Apollo

TEAM PRADA :Sarah Paulson, Harris Dickinson, Amanda Seyfried and Damson Idris

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Met Gala Thoughts

Best in "I thought you were someone else"

(L) Sydney Sweeney as not-Billie Eilish (R) Kendall Jenner as not-Kim Kardashian

Honestly, Kendall looks more like Kim than Kim does at this point.

Best in "Live from Broadway"

Usher, giving Phantom. I hope someone asked him about the Drake/Kendrick beef.

Best in "One Outfit, Two Looks"

(L) Rebecca Ferguson (R) Demi Moore

Best in Technology

Ambika Mod. It's a 3D print of a dress on top of a dress.

Best in "You Could've Done Something Really Meta"

Nicholas Galitzine, whose character in his new film "The Idea Of You" is based on Harry Styles.

Best Rihanna 2.0

Cardi B, who needed 9 assistants to lay out her train.

Reminds me of Rihanna's omelet dress.

Best in "New Look, Who Dis"

Zendaya in her second outfit of the night. Very Blake Lively-ish.

Somewhere inside The Met, Jennifer Lopez was screaming at her assistant for not preparing a second look.

Best in "Couples Who Slay Together, Stay Together"

(L) Eddie and Hannah Redmayne (C) No idea (R) Queen Latifah and Eboni Nichols

Best Cinderella

Quannah Chasinghorse

Best in "Get These People a Career Revival"

L-R. Jude Law, Meg Ryan, Charlie Hunnam, and Michelle Williams

Best of the Gents

(L) Jonathan Bailey (C) Barry Keoghan (R) Colman Domingo, in a tribute to Chadwick Boseman and Andre Leon Talley.

Best in "I Don't Know What You Were Going For But I Guess It Works"

(L) Harris Reed. No idea who that is. (R) Uma Thurman

Best in "Better From The Back"

(L) Tommy and Dee Hilfiger (R) Mindy Kaling

Best "Where Can I Get This I NEED One Yesterday"

A relative is obsessed with dachsunds. I would win Christmas if I got my hands on this. Or a cheat knockoff.

Best in "The More I See Them Appear Together Because They're Contractually Obligated, The Less I Want To See Their Movie"

Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (Galinda), who've been joined at the hip for the last year to promote Wicked, which comes out in November so there are still six more months of this to go.

Best in "Celebs, They Get Peckish Just Like Us"

Michael Shannon, with a Balenciaga bag. So disappointed it wasn't a party bag of chips. The Balenciaga retails for $1,850 or 115 party-size bags of Lays potato chips from Walmart.

Best in Vintage

(L) Nicole Kidman (R) Lana Del Ray

I was so happy to see a McQueen antler dress show up.

Best in "Oh Dear God Why Are You Here Go Away"

Ben Platt

Kardashians

Jerry Seinfeld and Jimmy Fallon

Lea Michele

Lauren Bezos (though I didn't actually mind her dress)

My Top Looks of the Night

L-R: Karlie Kloss, Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, and Gwendoline Christie.

Ultimately...

It was an underwhelming red carpet. The Met Gala serves an incredible purpose, but they've moved too far away from fashion and costume. There are too many actors and people-famous-for-being-famous involved now that have really watered down the fashion, the themes, and the cultural significance of the event. It needs to go back to being the New York elite and High Fashion - people who know how to wear clothes instead of posing with their hands on their hips, sticking out their butts, and pouting.

[dbmars]

New Fic Alert!

Excerpt:

If Jack notices that Will makes eye contact with me – an anomaly for an alleged first meeting, to be sure – he makes no indication. If he notices my smile is laced with a petty sort of satisfaction — one that says, perhaps, this is what happens when you refuse to acknowledge what we mean to one another — he again masks any sign. I’m surprised at myself. Up until this moment I hadn’t realized I was harboring resentment regarding Will’s insistence on discretion. Keeping our affair a secret has benefited me in several ways, the least of which is ensuring I wouldn’t be a suspect, should Will disappear or be found in another of the Ripper’s tableaus. 

But I do resent it, with a strength that borders on fury. 

I slam that particular door in my mind and force my heartrate back into a comfortable zone, chastising myself. This meeting is the culmination of what began a year ago on this day. I am now a friend of the FBI and privy to its secrets. Jack already said he’d show me the Chesapeake Ripper’s file, a scrapbook of my treasured memories. 

“Will Graham. Meet Dr. Hannibal Lecter. He’s a friend of Alana Bloom’s. I asked him to join us today to look at this case – add another layer of insight.”

Will strips off his jacket, tossing it on one of Jack’s office chairs near the door. He fiddles with the collar of his shirt, deliberately not looking at me. How I long to see him in something that fits him well and wasn’t selected from Lands’ End or Eddie Bauer. His figure would be devastating in tailored trousers. Jack glances at me apologetically with a miniscule shrug. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. 

Jack’s administrative assistant pops his head in. “Mr. Graham, can I get you a coffee?”

Black, with two sugar packets.

“Black,” Will says over his shoulder as he pauses in front of the board Jack’s assembled, surveying the bland faces of the victims. I’m sure they all would have made lovely real estate agents or business majors. “Sugar. Two of ‘em.” 

The assistant returns with an ebony mug, placing it on the front of Jack’s desk in reaching distance from the empty chair that Will must soon occupy. Across from Jack and right next to me. As Jack begins the meeting, he takes the seat reluctantly after a time, unable to avoid proximity any longer. “I’ve filled Dr. Lecter in on the details, and your observations at the Nichols house. We were just getting to all the false confessions coming into the tip lines.”

“Maladjusted teens and the mentally ill,” Will grunts, emptying sugar packets into his mug and stirring them with the red plastic stick provided. “Influenced by the media coverage.”

I get to my feet just to pass behind him, get a lungful of his scent, clean and crisp like the woods around his home, carrying soft traces of his dogs and the remnants of engine grease under his fingernails. Delicious, now that I’ve gotten him to stop wearing that abominable aftershave. I lean toward the board, Jack at my side; I pretend to study the map and its connecting lines. I can feel Will’s eyes on me, burning into me with the heat of agonized betrayal. I’ve certainly knocked him off balance – good. “Tell me then, how many confessions?”  

“Twelve dozen, last time I checked. None of them knew the details. Until this morning. Then everyone knew the details.” Jack resumes his seat. I stand at the board, looking at him, feeling the waves of irritation as they roll off Will like smoke. “Some genius in Duluth PD took a picture of Elise Nichols’ body with their phone and shared it with their friends. Then Freddie Lounds ran it on Tattlecrime.com.”

“Tasteless,” Will mutters half under his breath. He might mean Ms. Lounds’ journalism practices, but I think he’s referring to my surprise appearance at his place of work. Again, I feel the base satisfaction of having rattled him. Forcing him to reap what he’s sown, give him a taste of what I’ve endured — his own shame and discomfort transferring to me by proxy when he insisted we keep our affections secret, hiding them like our relationship was something rotten that needed to be buried, decomposing out of sight, out of mind.

“Do you have trouble with taste?” I ask, softly benign. My therapy voice. Will hates it. 

“My thoughts are often not tasty.” I do love watching him squirm. But my enjoyment is clouded by sudden images of comforting Will in the wake of his bloody investigations, holding him through his suffering, waking him when I knew he was having nightmares so vivid they dampened our sheets with terror sweat. 

“Nor mine. No effective barriers.” He knows this. I told him about Mischa. He’s the first person I’ve told, save Bedelia du Maurier. He doesn’t know that I ate her but understands how she was taken from me. 

“I make forts.”

“Associations come quickly,” I say. This may appear to Jack like some brilliant on-the-spot psychoanalysis, but I know because Will’s told me his traumas in return. 

“So do forts,” he insists, looking down into the sweet blackness of his coffee cup with a petulant little turn to his lip.

I continue to twist the knife. “Not fond of eye contact, are you?

Will turns to me. “Eyes are distracting. You see too much. You don’t see enough.” As in, he’s scolding himself for not anticipating I’d do something like this. He looks directly at me now. “And it’s hard to focus when you’re thinking those whites are really white or they must have hepatitis, or is that a burst vein?” Cheeky, yes, but also a jab – I did burst a vein in my left eye during our time at the cabin on the ranch in West Virginia due to a particularly powerful orgasm. He chided me then for my vanity as I lamented the bloody speck marring my sclera.