Legacy outdoor brand the North Face crossed into a new frontier of exploration early this week with the launch of their latest line of winter gear, a collaboration with Skims, the intimates and shapewear brand headed by Kim Kardashian. The 14-piece collection includes a mixture of baselayers, puffer jackets, hats, gloves, balaclavas, and footwear and has already sold out in stores and online since the Dec. 10 release.

A main piece of the collection includes a jacket reminiscent of retro North Face style but in the neutral colorways that Skims fans will instantly recognize. “Kim Kardashian has a love of skiing. She also has a love of the North Face’s archival design,” says Sandra Clark, director of global brand marketing at the North Face. “You may have seen her in one of our Nuptse jackets [named for the Himalayan peak]. She’s got a few of our iconic pieces and she’s even tailored some, so we used that input in our design.”

The collection includes a range of winter gear, including insulated jackets, performance-oriented base layers, and essential accessories for skiing and cold weather. It emphasizes warmth, functionality, and iconic styles, with pieces suited for both casual and technical use. Prices range from mid-range to luxury, from $60 to $1,200 (Skims brought in $713 million in 2023, ).

The Refina is a baselayer capsule within the collaboration collection, featuring a quarter-zip top, leggings, and a one-piece. Designed for performance, the Refina pieces use a material brand-new to the North Face, combining Skims-esque Lycra with their FlashDry technology. This innovative fabric wicks moisture away from the skin, keeping you dry, cool, and comfortable during high-intensity activities. The pieces blend Skims’ body-conscious design—evident in features like the high neck and cinched midsection—with the North Face’s technical expertise, delivering both style and functionality. “It’s all about stretch and compression, giving you that secure fit you would expect from Skims,” says Sandra Clark, director of global brand marketing at the North Face. This material will also feature in future North Face products, including their Spring ’25 collection.

Other pieces in the collaboration feature the North Face’s DotKnit moisture-wicking fabric, also used in their Summit Series line. The leggings and top fit are slightly looser than the Refina, making it ideal for high-intensity activities like touring. The Skims-inspired design includes a high-waisted legging and a top with a signature neckline, combining functionality with modern style.

Social media posts teasing the collab went live last week, featuring skiers in tidy formations atop snowy peaks in the Chilean Andes at El Colorado. By featuring a mix of professional models and skiers, including , and, the two brands aimed to highlight a message Clark hopes is evident to consumers: This collaboration promotes exploration for everyone and invites more women into snow sports.

The public response, however, has been mixed. While some consumers praised the aesthetics, others criticized the collaboration for prioritizing fashion over function, questioning its utility for serious skiers and its alignment with the North Face’s sustainability values.

One Instagram user commented, “North Face disappointing again. This is a fashion collab designed for women’s bodies to be looked at, but the functionality is useless. Where would you actually use this beyond the bunny hill or aprùs?”

Amid the critiques, commending comments also appeared, such as one user who enthusiastically wrote, “Damn, ima figure out how to board for this.” One Reddit user wrote, “As a Seattle Native, North Face is like our designer brand. I have friends who have never once mentioned the Kardashians to me, and they talked about this [collection] today.” The mixed responses underscore the polarizing nature of blending fashion-forward designs with a traditionally performance-driven sport.

Cassie Abel, founder of the sustainability-focused , who designs with backcountry and freeride skiers and riders in mind, acknowledges the market for women-led resort outerwear brands to lead the way in style.

“I think there is a place for all of us, and I’m thrilled to see other women taking the lead in making products we want and need, no matter the style or skill level,” says Abel. “I don’t believe there is a right or wrong here—it all comes down to personal preference and use cases.”

However, when it comes to attracting more women to snow sports, Abel, who founded , an annual holiday encouraging everyone to shop from , is skeptical that a collaboration between the North Face and Skims hits the mark.

“I’m disappointed in this one. As a leader in the outdoor space, I’d expect the North Face to have better filters in place to ensure they’re working with brands with aligned values,” she says, referring to the low scores Skims has received on many human rights and environmental policies. A report by advocacy group Remake gave Skims a zero score in its 2024 accountability report, citing issues with transparency, wages, and environmental impact.

“At this stage, I would expect every outdoor brand to uphold the highest levels of respect for people and the planet,” Abel added. “If not from a values standpoint, because our industry depends on it.”

This is not the first time the North Face has received mixed attention for their collab projects. The brand has a history of collaborations with pop culture and mainstream brands, often in the designer sphere, like Gucci, Supreme, Comme Des Garçons, Maison Margiela, Timberland, and Vans. However, the partnership with Skims represents a new direction for the company. Dave Whetstone, the North Face’s director of global collaborations and energy, says this collaboration pushes the brand’s boundaries by integrating Skims’ body-conscious designs and neutral color palettes with the North Face’s technical performance wear.

“Skims has a price point that’s more accessible than other fashion collab. This one felt more unexpected but also more accessible,” Whetstone explained.

He says this collab is about an inclusive introduction to the North Face and exploring new possibilities, especially as Skims is innately feminine, something the North Face hasn’t explored as much with other projects.

“We are always looking for brands that are innovating and in tune with culture, and Skims is doing that, especially for women when it comes to fit, function, and style,” says Clark. “We are proud that we were able to honor one another’s DNA.”

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The camp chairs are set up. A cracked clipboard rests under my arm. I’m stuffed into my mom jeans. It’s showtime.

June gloom blankets Encinal Canyon in a lush mist. I could be in Narnia instead of Malibu, but I barely notice. My body stands in front of a marooned Airstream, waiting. But my mind is back home, wondering if my 14-month-old is napping as I review the research on my clipboard. Tonight I’ll camp in this patch of Eden with Shailene Woodley, the 33-year-old actor and environmentalist known for her lead roles in The Fault in Our Stars, the Divergent trilogy, and the series Big Little Lies, instead of sleeping at home with my daughter. It’s the first time I’ve been away from her overnight.

“There she is,” a member of our six-woman crew says. An electric sedan with a mint green surfboard on top crunches to a stop. A luminous creature in a pastel silk shirt emerges and wraps me in a hug. My mind freezes. My clipboard is blank on basic human greetings.

“I had to stop at REI and get a new sleeping pad,” Woodley says, rolling her eyes. “I left my old one with my ex.” The actress is no stranger to camping, and remarkably at home in the outdoors. From a young age, she’s felt a kinship with and responsibility toward the natural world. Her lifelong commitment to environmental work started when, as a freshman at Simi Valley High School, she rallied her fellow students to petition for a recycling program. Since then she’s become an outspoken advocate for the climate, working with various nonprofits and NGOs and participating in the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

We sit under an ancient oak tree in collapsible chairs. If Woodley has a phone, I don’t see it. When I ask about it she says, “I guess I’m addicted to real interaction.” She glimpses mine and coos at the wallpaper photo of my baby. When I tell her I met the love of my life at 39 she says, “You give me hope!”

Woodley radiates something I can’t place. Youth and beauty? Sure. But that’s everywhere in Hollywood. Later, when I play back the recording of our conversation, I hear how rushed I sound, so determined to ask all the questions, to get somewhere. But she’s in no hurry. She’s right here.

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“This was one of the first recipes I brought home from France,” Alecia Moore says, offering me a pour of rosĂ©. “In 2015, I went to Scamandre, in the south. It’s fully sustainable, regeneratively farmed. It’s beautiful. It’s wild.”

While she was at the vineyard, a grower named Franck Renouard gave her a glass of delicately colored, aromatic grenache rosĂ©. “I did not want to put out a pink wine,” Moore quips. “Though Costco would’ve really liked that!” She asked Renouard about his process. “ ‘Well, you’re American, you’re a woman, and you’re a pop star,’ ” he said, skeptical of her ability to master it. “ ‘Absolutely!’ ”

“So he gave me the recipe,” Moore says. “I’m like, ‘OK, fucker, watch this.’ ”

We take a moment to go through the steps of tasting the wine: tilting the glass in the sunlight to assess color (not pink, but more like white with a blush of peach); swirling to release aromatics from the liquid (basil, citrus peel, and piecrust); and then taking a small sip while inhaling, to experience the acidity, body, and flavor passing over our tongues. One sip and I’m stunned. Alecia the winemaker is not messing around.

Moore and I are sitting under an outdoor pergola, next to a small reservoir on her 25-acre vineyard, which is situated on rolling land just outside Santa Ynez, California, in Santa Barbara County. She’s on a two-week break from her world tour, , and she’s come home to throw herself into the September wine harvest. “Winemaking is not as physically grueling as performing, but it’s still laborious enough to be fun,” she says.

If you’re one of the millions of people who attended a concert in 2023, you know that she’s physical onstage, and that she makes singing upside down—while being hurled through the air, attached to a harness, over a stadium full of fans—look easy. The appearance of effortless grace requires an enormous amount of conditioning and grit. Being home at the vineyard means decompressing from that intensity, even if doing so involves waking up before dawn to pick grapes with the crew. “I don’t remember to breathe until I get to the end of the driveway,” she says. “This place reminds you to just stop.”

“We’ll start picking Block 2 tomorrow,” Moore continues, pointing to a defined, hilly section of neatly organized sauvignon blanc vines that are always the first to ripen. Moore bought this place in 2013. She’s kept most of the 17 acres of certified organic grapes—including cabernet sauvignon, grenache, graciano, syrah, petit verdot, grenache blanc, and cabernet franc—that were planted here before she arrived. She’s since added eight acres and introduced sĂ©millon and merlot to the mix; in all, her crew will harvest over 55 tons of grapes, yielding about 2,500 cases of red wine and 500 cases of white.

Moore opens a 2022 graciano, made from an inky Spanish grape that typically produces a rich, tannic, almost savory wine. As an experiment, she fermented the grapes in whole clusters, using a process called carbonic maceration. The result is fresh and bright, with notes of crunchy tart cherries.

“I got demo-itis on this vineyard,” she says, borrowing a term from her musical life. “As a musician, when you make a demo, if you listen to it more than five times, you’re never going to record the actual song, because you’re now in love with the demo.” She takes a sip. “If you listen to some of the acoustic deep cuts on my records, sometimes I’m not saying the right words. The person doing the harmonies is drunk. I think it’s perfect, because it’s a vibe.”

She tries to bring a vibe to her wines, which are all single varietals. “Why blend?” she says. “I don’t care what the French say. Grapes have their own personalities. They don’t necessarily play well with others.”

“This is my home, this is my place,” she laughs. “This is how I express myself in plants.”

The graciano goes perfectly with a panzanella salad Moore made. She came to this interview from her home garden on a Polaris UTV, with two kids along for the ride and a large ceramic bowl cradled in her lap. Her husband—professional motocross racer Carey Hart, who helps with winemaking tasks but mostly leaves it to her—is also on hand. Their son, six-year-old Jameson, harvested the salad’s heirloom tomatoes; their daughter, 12-year-old Willow, picked the sweet basil. Moore made sourdough bread using freshly milled flour from the famed baker Josey Baker, of the in San Francisco. (They became sourdough pen pals during the pandemic.) She used a starter named Quarantina, which is kept going by wild local yeast.

Over time, Moore has gotten intimate with the land and its microclimate. “We wake up in a cloud every morning,” she says. The vineyard is next to the western slope of the San Rafael Mountains, whose 6,800-foot peaks trap moisture from the Pacific, and the fog hovers until the sun burns it off.

Makes sense. If I were a mist, I’d want to stick around here, too.

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Is Taylor Swift an elite endurance athlete? On the Eras tour, the singer-songwriter is performing three nights a week, singing and dancing for as long as it takes most people to run a marathon.  When ultrarunner and șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű editor ZoĂ« Rom read about the six-month fitness program Swift used to prepare for the tour, she decided to give it a try—and quickly learned that being a pop star is harder than it looks. But training like one may change the way you think about fitness.

Check out trainer Brookelynn Miller’s  and the .

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Last week, Taylor Swift released her training regimen for the Eras Tour, her three-and-a-half-hour stadium extravaganza, and the running internet went wild.

Swift said she began training for the tour six months before the first show, saying, “Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud. Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.”

That’s three and a half hours on a treadmill, singing the entire time. Swift would also increase the incline for songs that required more movement during the show. Keep in mind that during the actual show, she’s romping around in sparkly boots with three-inch heels. In an interview with Time—in which Swift was named Person of the Year—Taylor said her feet often make crunching sounds the day after shows from hours in those boots, a feeling relatable to any runner flirting with plantar fasciitis.

I’m an ultrarunner. I’ve knocked off 50- and 100-mile races and won them on occasion. I haven’t been this excited about a specific training regimen since , and the principles behind this workout are solid. It’s essentially a controlled fartlek workout with alternating intensities. The singing while training will keep you honest, ensuring you never wander too far outside your aerobic threshold lest you lose your breath.

First of all, this workout is a behemoth. Even ultra legend Courtney Dauwalter usually caps her long runs at three hours. But not T-Swift. To prepare for a career-spanning show with ten costume changes (depending on the acoustic set, give or take an additional costume) and upwards of three guest appearances and bonus tracks, Taylor dropped miles like they were scarves at Jake Gyllenhaal’s house. Not only did she likely log as many miles as many marathoners (I propose we now measure time in “Eras,” or 3.5 hours. As in, “I’d like to run a sub-Eras marathon this year.”), but she did so while singing. Well.

The Workout

I approached my own workout with the strategy and prep that I’d usually put into a marathon. I planned my fuel and liquid breaks. I assembled the playlist. Showtime!

Each era in the show is between seven and 42 minutes. The Lover set is fairly uptempo but manageable. Infused with pre-pandemic pop-timism, it moves and shakes at a lightly aerobic effort. I’ve got this! I thought to myself, singing at the top of my lungs to the songs I love. At least you’re not wearing heels! Then Fearless (Taylor’s Version, obvi) kicks in, with driving guitar bridges and epic crescendos. But still manageable. It’s a tempo run, baby, just say yes!

Thirty-two minutes in, the downbeat Evermore set begins. A folksy 23-minute respite. I took a gel and a swig of water. When did Taylor have time to fuel during the Eras Tour? Was there a bottle of Maurten just out of view or a Clif Bar tucked into a brazier? What was her electrolyte strategy? You can’t do this show in Nashville or Brazil without a dialed-in electrolyte plan. Taylor, if you’re reading this, we recommend between 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour for this level of activity.

At this point, I’m feeling the miles but reasonably well recovered from Tay’s first pandemic album. My bangs are plastered to my forehead, but I’m glad I don’t have to wiggle into a sequined leotard.  No sooner had I brought my heart rate back down to baseline than the Reputation set blasts on with (somewhat regrettable and very 2017) bass horns. Every song on this album is a banger of a sonic middle finger to anyone who has ever crossed Ms. Swift, and it shows in the BPM. This was likely the crux of the workout, leaving me more or less part gasping, part belting over “Look What You Made Me Do.” Then, Speak Now offered a brief but necessary reprieve before I dove into the steady-state effort of Red. (Break-up albums are great to run to; it’s just science!) There is no catharsis quite like screaming and running on a treadmill.

The Folklore set offered another brief rest of slower and middle-tempo hits. I drank. I fueled. I prepared myself mentally for what was to come. The 1989 and Midnights sets are back to back, offering a double-whammy of Taylor-in-her-prime-pissed-off-about-Harry-Styles magic—42 minutes of dazzling, danceable, near-threshold effort.

Beyonce–if you’re reading this, please don’t tell us how you got ready for Renaissance. I don’t think my soft tissue and joints can handle it.

I Got Swiftied

I’ve done one-mile repeats. Hill workouts. Track workouts. Long runs with tempo efforts. This is the hardest workout I’ve ever done. I was wrecked. My trachea felt like I had swallowed Taylor’s bejeweled duster. I was soaked in sweat and fighting the urge to lie down on the gym floor (lest I lose favor in a gym that had already so kindly lent me a private room to sing to myself as I ran on the treadmill). Is it possible to get DOMS in your feels?

But it wasn’t just hard. It was fun. Constantly varying efforts help you stay engaged, and focusing on remembering the lyrics helps you stay more present with the effort, rather than hyper-fixating on how far you’ve gone, or time elapsed. Though I’ve had the set list nearly memorized since it dropped at 3:31 P.M. EST on March 18th, the unpredictability in song length and intensities is a nice mental challenge. It’s tough but flexible. Demanding but fun. Much like the singer herself.

I could say that I like the Taylor Swift workout because it made time pass more quickly on the treadmill or because it made otherwise dreary winter running fun, or because it helped me hone in on my aerobic effort, and all of that would be true. But the thing that I really liked about Taylor Swift’s treadmill workout is that it makes not shrinking your body but growing your capacity the focus.

So much fitness and workout advice aimed at women is premised on minimizing our ability to show up in the world, sapping us of time, energy, and the stuff of our very bodies. They tell us how to run to make ourselves smaller or lift to make certain acceptable and desirable parts of our bodies bigger. But Taylor’s workout is different. It doesn’t claim to make you thinner or faster. No part of it will help you look better in a swimsuit, or a dress, or even a cardigan. But it has a vital purpose. It’s about owning your strength so that you can own your voice and own your story. And that’s a fitness trend I can get behind.

, the editor-in-chief of , is a host on the new șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Show, on which you’ll see more of her Taylor Swift treadmill workout soon. 

The post I’m an Ultrarunner. Taylor Swift’s Treadmill Workout Wrecked Me. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Last week, Jared Leto top roped on the Empire State Building. Yes, top roped on it. In a high-vis jumpsuit reminiscent of a Santa costume. Leto did it legally, too, which means that someone, somewhere, took the time to approve permits for this internet-breaking “feat.”

His climb began on the 86th floor (not street level), concluded on the 104th, and took approximately 20 minutes. Today, when you Google “Jared Leto Empire State Building,” there are 9,610,000 search results.

Ostensibly Leto’s childhood dream, the televised ascent was also a way to promote the fading rockstar’s upcoming band tour. A press release from the Live Nation wrote: “Having always been fascinated with the incredible landmark since he was a child, Leto said, ‘The building is a testament of all the things that can be done in the world if we put our minds to it, which is largely the inspiration behind our most recent album, It’s the End of the World But It’s a Beautiful Day.’”

Don’t bother re-reading that. Considering Leto’s climb, the distilled takeaway is a familiar one—if you’ve got even a modicum of talent, anything in this world can be accomplished if you’re wealthy. Which is so obviously the state of the modern world that I sometimes think problematizing publicity stunts like this is a waste of my time. Furthermore, why highlight mediocrity? (Sorry Leto
 those edges are, what, 30 millimeters? Basically huge hand holds mixed in with no-hands stances.) And as the dilettante’s morning TR-session was shockingly above board, safe, and seemingly offenseless—predictably, the morning’s Today Show article led with “Jared Leto got about 30 seconds closer to Mars”—what’s really the harm? 

As it happens, climbing’s greatest problem is its incomprehensibility. I’ll excuse you if you don’t climb and think that everyone who does should be referred to as Spiderman. Or if Free Solo and The Alpinist have formed the basis of your understanding of our seemingly simple yet in fact elaborate sport. As one hiker once asked my friend who had just finished the hardest multi-pitch of his career: You realize you could have just walked up the back, right? The varied interpretations of climbing illustrate that there are rules to this sport’s game, and those rules are entirely self-directed. Climbing, in other words, gets to be what you choose to make it. The catch: the sport really only thrives in the context of explanation.

Nascent enthusiasts, inaccurate media, and false idols like Leto shock and confound the masses rather than further climbing as a sport. The more eyes the better, right? But the result is further misunderstanding about what climbing is—what’s cool and what isn’t, what’s hard and what’s, by the looks of it, 5.10—which darkens the fog. 

Consider this: Our biggest traffic drivers last year had to deal with Alex Honnold, an auto-belay accident which led to an unfortunate anal impalement, and six-pack abs. If I title this article “Alex Honnold, Who Has a Great Six Pack, Was Impaled Anally Due to an Auto Belay Accident” I imagine it would also drive a lot of people to the site. But that doesn’t make it good for the sport. 

I have no problem acknowledging that Leto is in fact a decent climber. His footwork is precise enough, and he clearly has some endurance. But if news outlets worldwide are talking about someone who climbed something, shouldn’t it be because their feat is worth talking about? Just this past week, Frenchman Charles Albert claimed the first ascent of another boulder which could be among the hardest in the world. He did so barefoot. may have just become the first women to flash V13 boulder problem (depending on how the grade solidifies over time), Adam Ondra established yet another difficult sport climb, and Laura Rogora sent “Lapsus,” another immensely difficult route. Each of those involved far more work, dedication, and soul than Leto’s 20 minute session.

Plus, well, Leto top roped it. I feel I needn’t say more, but allow me to state—for the record—that Leto’s ascent of the Empire State Building does not count.

Also Read:

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Chloe Abbott admits that she loves performing on a stage as much as she loves performing on a track.

Turns out, the Los Angeles-based professional sprinter is equally talented singing a wide range of pop songs as she is running the 200- and 400-meter events. Since growing up in Detroit, her two biggest dreams she’s been working toward are the opportunity to sing in a competition on TV, and to run on the track with legendary American sprinter, Allyson Felix.

Last year, when she joined Bobby Kersee’s high-level post-collegiate training group, Abbott trained alongside Felix during her final season of the legend’s historic career. Now Abbott is realizing her second big dream coming true, with a recent appearance on NBC’s The Voice.

Last October, Abbott earned the chance to perform on the 23rd season of the talent-uncovering reality TV show by in the show’s blind auditions at NBC’s Universal City studios, near Los Angeles—a performance that was eventually broadcast on March 14 .

Next up are the pre-recorded Battle Rounds of the show, which will be aired on NBC beginning on March 27. After that, if Abbott keeps advancing—she’s not able to give out details—it’s the Knockout Round, and then the Live Playoffs.

The winner of Season 23 will earn a $100,000 cash prize. But Abbott, whose long-term goals on the track are focused on competing in the 2024 and 2028 U.S. Olympic Trials for a chance to run in the Olympics, feels like she’s already won.

“I’ve had this dream for so long and it just came full circle, watching it on TV with all my friends and my family,” Abbott said. “It really makes you wanna cry. I’ve had friends and family say things like, ‘I always knew this was gonna happen,’ but I’ve just kept working hard toward my goals. No matter what the circumstances, no matter how many races I win or lose, I still have these desires and I still go for them with everything I have in me.”

During the auditions, singers perform solo with the show’s four coaches—Kelly Clarkson, ​​Niall Horan, Blake Shelton and Chance the Rapper—initially turned around in their chairs, facing away from the singer so they can focus only on the performer’s voice. If one of the judges likes what they hear, they turn their chair around and claim that performer for their team.

Prior to beginning, Abbott had a good feeling Chance the Rapper was going to choose her. And sure enough, about 20 seconds into her song, he turned his chair around, signaling he wanted Abbott on his team.

“It’s not even that you’re nervous, it’s more that you just want to scream! But you’re in the middle of a lyric, so you have to just keep your composure,” Abbott says. “I just knew that he was going to choose me. When it happened, I pointed right at him even though I was in utter shock. It was a moment I will not forget. I will say I didn’t remember when he turned until I watched the audition back on replay.”

Abbott says she gets immersed in the moment while singing on stage, much the same way she does on the track.

“It’s almost like when you go back and watch the film of a 400 with your coach, and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s what happened at 300 meters?’” she says. “Typically, when you have a bad race, you’re aware of it. You know what’s going on at all times. But on those really good days, you kind of wake up when you finish and are like, ‘Wait, what just happened?’ That’s kind of what happened to me during the audition.”

Singing and Sprinting

Abbott has been balancing her running with singing and acting since she was a young girl. She was an All-American sprinter for Purdue and later Kentucky, and in 2019 finished second in the 400 at the NCAA Championships for the Wildcats. She also helped Kentucky’s 4 x 400-meter relay team finish third at the NCAA indoor championships and sixth at the outdoor championships.

Since turning pro, she signed a sponsorship deal with On and has competed in numerous domestic meets—including the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2021 and last summer’s U.S. championships.

Kersee and Abbott agreed it would be best for her to skip the indoor season because of her singing obligations, but she’s still been training hard on the track and in the gym. She’ll open her outdoor track season in May at the Mt. SAC Relays and compete in several meets leading up to the U.S. championships July 6-9, in Eugene, Oregon. She’ll also be singing the National Anthem and a few other of her favorite songs at the meet on May 6, in Los Angeles.

Kersee’s training group includes Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Jenna Prandini, Athing Mu, and others. Felix, the most decorated athlete in track and field history, retired at the end of the 2022 season, but not before making a huge impression on Abbott.

“Allyson Felix has been the only woman I’ve ever wanted to meet and just hang out with. She ended up being my teammate for the whole year,” Abbott says. “Not only that, she was a sounding board for me, to really help me through some of the tough meets last year and just normalize the fact that being a professional athlete includes losses, too. She told me, ‘you’re not always gonna be on top. You’re not always gonna feel healthy. You’re not always gonna be happy to be on the track.’ That really helped me keep things in perspective.”

It was that input that galvanized Abbott’s confidence, both on the track and heading into the tryouts for The Voice. For her audition, she chose The Bee Gees 1977 hit, “How Deep is Your Love,” from a list of possible songs, but sang it in a soulful rendition similar to how Yebba Smith and PJ Morton performed it.

“I went up there very confident,” she says. “I thought, no matter what happened, I feel really good about this song and where it’s at. But getting to that point of peace was not easy. When it happened and it all came to fruition and Chance turned his chair around, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this couldn’t be more perfect in this moment.’”

Abbott admits she’s still working hard to make it at the pro level on the track, but if there’s something her singing has taught her, it’s that being diligent to her craft and having considerable patience are the keys to success. Before earning a spot on The Voice, she went through numerous auditions for America’s Got Talent, The X Factor, and American Idol, only to get rejected each time.

“You can’t allow those things to determine how far you’ve come and how long your journey is gonna be,” she says. “Sometimes things don’t go right, but you have to realize there are so many things that happened on the way that did go right, so all you can do is be thankful. There are moments when you just want to quit, when you just feel unworthy, and yet, it teaches you so much. That’s the best part.”

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0Some of us watch the Oscars for the fairytale-like fashions. Many tune in to end the obvious suspense. Maybe a few turn to it for the comedic banter.

Probably no one attends expecting a reminder of what it is to be, well, human. Yet that’s what we all were privy to as we witnessed Lady Gaga’s subdued appearance at the Academy Awards on Sunday evening.

The songwriter, singer, and actress walked the red carpet in Versace and diamonds along with eyeliner artistry and hot red lipstick. Later, Lady Gaga quietly appeared onstage to perform sans make-up, wearing a black t-shirt, ripped black jeans, and Converse. Her tattoos were her most outlandish accoutrement as she sat and delivered a soulful and acoustic rendition of “Hold My Hand,” prefaced with a musing about the need to show up for others as well as yourself in life.

It was a gutsy move to emphasize emotion over glam. To appear almost nakedly herself on a night where is anywhere from $1.5 to $10 million is, quite simply, an exhibition of feminine vulnerability and strength. Cinderella in reverse.

The Moment

Even though the moment seemed to take place with grace and ease, there was considerable thought and effort that went into the making of it. Prior to Sunday, it had been widely reported that Lady Gaga wouldn’t perform at the Oscars due to scheduling conflicts with the filming of the Joker sequel Folie à Deux. “It didn’t feel like she could get a performance to the caliber that she is used to,” said Academy Awards executive producer and showrunner Glenn Weiss in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

That changed late last week. “Thursday, at four-something, we got a text that she wanted to try something, didn’t have time to put together a big performance, but wanted it to be raw and people to see the real Gaga,” said executive producer Ricky Kirshner.

That seems to define the contemporary female we all aspire to be. Knowing her boundaries, needing her space, and making the decision to show up selectively. And on her terms.

That is wellness—staying true to yourself even when it means changing your mind, shattering some people’s idea of who you should be, and perhaps even questioning your sanity as you do so.

The Message

When the cameras unexpectedly cut to Lady Gaga on a darkened stage, she was sitting on a stool accompanied simply by a guitarist, bassist, and drummer. Before playing “Hold My Hand,”

“I think that we all need each other,” she said. “We need a lot of love to walk through this life, and we all need a hero sometimes. There’s heroes all around us, in unassuming places, but you might find that you can be your own hero, even if you feel broken inside.”

The song, which Rolling Stone describes as a “power ballad,” was co-written by Lady Gaga and is featured on the soundtrack for Top Gun: Maverick. Her performance was a tribute to the late Tony Scott, director of the original Top Gun, who died by suicide in 2012. It was nominated for Best Original Song.

Her reiterate the inherent vulnerability of being human. They reassure us that being an individual doesn’t need to mean being isolated. And they remind us that wanting someone to stand alongside you while you face your demons is not a weakness.

"You might find that you can be your own hero, even if you feel broken inside." Lady Gaga introduces her performance of "Hold My Hand" at the .

— Variety (@Variety)

The Woman

Whereas some saw an insufficiency in the seeming nothingness between her and her audience, it was everything that was right about the moment. That Lady Gaga, known for her outlandish fashions, slipped into a less ostentatious version of herself as a performer seemed aligned with the solemnity of the tribute.

More importantly, she seemed aligned with herself as a human. She’s someone who detoured on the red carpet Sunday night to help a photographer when he stumbled. Someone who has spoken out about the chronic pain and psychological breakdown she experienced as a result of experiencing sexual assault. Someone who has mentioned on the role plays in her life, citing that it helps her stay calm and feel safe in her body. Someone who has been more and more real in her portrayal of herself so that others might feel compelled to do the same.

“I love authentic people,” said Lady Gaga in an interview for several years ago. When asked what she would say to her followers, she replied, “To my young female fans, I would say, your body belongs to you, your mind belongs to you, your emotions belong to you, and just always be true to yourself.”

And perhaps most revealingly, Lady Gaga expressed that she has “a very emotional reaction to fashion. I like that fashion can both be a form of expression and a form of hiding.”

In a 2020 interview with Oprah, she expressed that creating “Lady Gaga” allowed her “to create a superhero for myself.” Who we saw on stage may not have been Lady Gaga but rather a glimpse at Stefani Germanotta. And that might have been the most appropriate lesson we can take away from Sunday night.

In response to disappointed Oscars watchers voicing their complaints on Instagram, one supporter of Lady Gaga cited her Netflix documentary, .“She expressed that someday she wants to try stripping back the costumes and theatrics, and that she’d hope her fans would appreciate that she’s still the same Gaga without it.”

Another woman silenced further critiques by defending Lady Gaga’s look with a statement as strong and understated as her appearance itself. “This nothing is everything.”

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When Jason Momoa was 15 or so, a group of adult climbers invited him on an ice-climbing trip. Momoa was working at an outdoor shop in Des Moines, Iowa, and after he agreed, the crew packed into vans and headed off. He was thrilled. Growing up in the small town of Norwalk, on the outskirts of Des Moines, he imagined journeys into the mountains. He studied climbing knots and hid books on alpinism inside his math textbook so he could read them in class. On the ice during that outing, Momoa learned some real skills, but he also experienced the downside of risk. Given the chance to lead a section, he fell, and one of his ice tools slit the side of his leg. “I was bleeding all over the place,” he says. He got patched up, then caught giardia. “They built a snow cave for me and stuck me in there. All I could see was the exit. It was horrible.”

But not that horrible. It was, he tells me via Zoom call, the trip that really stoked his passion for the sport. It’s a Sunday afternoon in November, and Momoa, 43, is drinking a Guinness tallboy and recounting his path into climbing. He owns a home in the hills of Los Angeles, but today he’s on the North Shore of Oahu. (“I’ve been consistently a vagabond forever,” he explains.) He’s seated on a covered lanai overlooking the ocean and wearing a yellow T-shirt, his massive arms folded in front of him.

Long before he became a Hollywood superhero, Momoa says, he was a climbing bum. It all started when his mother, Coni, took him to the Needles, in South Dakota, when he was about 13. There a guide introduced him to bouldering. “I just became obsessed—my body felt beautiful,” he says. “I suck at walking and running, but when he put me on a wall, I could move.”

In his home garage, he built a campus board—a tool climbers use to develop upper-body strength—and tied anchors into the rafters so he could work on clipping in. He practiced lead climbing in a tree in the yard. Coni got her belaying certification and drove him to a climbing gym four hours north, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He took trips to Wild Iowa, the best sport-climbing wall in the state, about three hours east.

As a high school junior, Momoa made a pilgrimage to , the state park in Texas that was the epicenter of the booming mid-1990s bouldering scene. There he met fellow teenager Chris Sharma, already considered the best rock climber in the world. Momoa recalls watching Sharma on a route called —“He was a freak of nature”—but his stronger memory is of Sharma staying inside a Quonset hut above a country store that had become a refuge for climbers, while he camped outside. “All those guys were watching South Park religiously, and I was dirtbagging it in a bivy sack,” he says. “Then it snowed. I got so wet.”

Not long after, Momoa showed up in Arizona for the Phoenix Bouldering Contest, at the time the biggest climbing competition anywhere. “I wanted to take down Sharma,” he says. It was an outlandish dream: nobody was beating Sharma. But Momoa had the advantage of being tall (he’s six foot four) and was confident in his explosive energy. “I loved dynoing,” a move that involves lunging for the next hold. “It was something I knew I could hit.” He never got his chance, though. He hadn’t registered for the event, and the organizers wouldn’t let him jump in. Instead, he hung out with Sharma and other rising stars of the sport.

Momoa was born in Honolulu and lived there briefly before his parents split up and he went to Iowa with his mom. As a teenager, he visited Oahu to spend time with his dad, who is of Native Hawaiian ancestry. At 19, he was living back in Hawaii when he auditioned for Baywatch: Hawaii and landed the part of lifeguard Jason Loane. It was an enormous break, but it wasn’t the life he wanted, so after a two-year run, he took off.

“I got into this weird business of acting, yet I didn’t want to do it,” he says. “I didn’t want to have a fucking phone. I didn’t have an agent. I spent all my money and just bought an Airstream and traveled the world climbing.”

Momoa eventually landed in Tibet, and shortly after decamped for Bishop, California, a climbing mecca in the Sierra Nevada where Sharma had moved into a house with Brett Lowell, a talented young videographer. Sharma was in a contemplative mood, struggling to make sense of his extraordinary athletic success as a kid. Now entering his twenties, he embraced meditation and Buddhism to “discover who I was outside of climbing.” When Momoa arrived, Sharma was reading, the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman’s account of leading a group of trekkers on a spiritual quest through the Himalayas. The two young men had a lot to talk about.

“Jason and I didn’t quite fit the mainstream mold,” says Sharma. “Climbing back then was for really freethinking people. So we dove deep into life, and the meaning of all these things, and discovering ourselves.”

“He was fighting something and I was fighting something,” says Momoa. “It was just a nice moment to sit and talk about what we were going through.”

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The Parent Trap handshake. The guitar solo in Freaky Friday. Every scene of Mean Girls. For a certain generation, Lindsay Lohan’s acting is peerless, and Lohan is an enduring figure in the pop culture zeitgeist. The “” meme (which is based on a Mean Girls scene for the uninformed) was still circulating online on the date in question of this year, 18 years after the film came out.

If Lohan’s films have stood the test of time, her own path has been much rockier. But after a fall from grace that was mercilessly documented in the tabloids, and a long stint out of the public eye, Lohan is once again making movies. Her new Netflix rom com, Falling for Christmas, was released on Thursday.

To be honest, we’d watch Falling for Christmas for the nostalgia alone. But as an extra cherry on top, the movie has skiing scenes. I watched the film and enjoyed it—it’s a fun plot, and longtime Lohan fans  can look forward to supernatural situations reminiscent of Freaky Friday, and “Jingle Bell Rock” makes an appearance, too. The skiing-obsessed will appreciate the accurate portrayal of backcountry hazards and the tension between a megaresort and a mom-and-pop hill that underpins the storyline.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know whether or not Lohan herself can actually shred, since all her character’s scenes sliding on snow are done by a stunt double: 25-year-old , a Salt Lake City-based former competitive mogul skier and sponsored freeskier.

Zetzer got the gig when a producer for the film looking for an approximately 5’4” mogul skier contacted her former coach. “They basically just asked me, “Are you competent at mogul skiing, skiing switch, and rolling around?” said Zetzer.

Lohan’s character is a novice skier, and Zetzer only filmed a couple of scenes. In one, she ricochets through a mogul field, barely staying on her feet, before collapsing into the arms of her love interest. In the second, she slides backwards off the crest of a hill (the long fall leaves her with amnesia, setting off a cascade of cheesy, charming events you’d expect from a rom-com). In real life, Zetzer is a former mogul skier—she competed in the U.S. Freestyle National Championships—who started making a name for herself in the freeskiing world with videos of herself hucking backflips off of cliffs. Stunt work, especially for Lindsay Lohan, “just sounded like too good an opportunity to pass up,” said Zetzer.

So we called her up to talk about her time on set, stunt doubling, and Lindsay Lohan. 

Responses have been edited for clarity and length.

OUTSIDE: OK, first things first—did you get the chance to meet Lindsay Lohan? 

RIAN ZETZER: We were both on set at the same time, but I didn’t actually say anything to her. I didn’t want to be the annoying double who was like, “oh my god, I’m your biggest fan.” But it was cool to see her doing her thing and acting up close. It was funny, too, because one of the outfits I had to wear was this ridiculous hot pink head-to-toe skin-tight outfit with a big fluffy pink hat. So I didn’t talk to her, but I stood like five feet away from her in the exact same outfit just thinking like, this is cool. 

That’s quite a look.

I wish I could have kept the outfit more than anything, it was so iconic.

Obviously we all know her, but how much of a Lindsay Lohan fan would you say you were going in? 

Oh my gosh, her early movies are some of my favorites. Like, I could probably recite every word of Freaky Friday. She’s awesome, I’m a big Lindsay fan. 

The movie’s plot revolves around Lohan’s character being bad at skiing. Was it hard to pretend to ski poorly?

It went against my instincts, because mogul skiing is super precise, and the acting involved purposefully flailing and falling. But for all the scenes I was on a pair of little rental skis, the same kind Lindsay’s wearing [in the movie]. And the DIN was on, like, two. Which was helpful with making it look like I could just fall out of the skis at any moment, which is about what they wanted.

Do you know if Lohan is able to ski?

I don’t know if she does, I never saw her actually make any turns. I know it’s a big liability thing for them, and it’s so expensive to pay her for anything but the talking and acting with her face. There was one scene where she’s on skis and she and the male lead were talking and then she kind of falls back a little bit. But there were like eight people a couple feet behind her, ready to catch her. So I only saw her slide a couple of feet. We didn’t get to just go freeskiing together, unfortunately.

Was there anyone else on set you were excited to meet? 

Well, Chord Overstreet is the male lead. He used to be a character on Glee, and I loved Glee when I was younger. It was pretty exciting to see him, and funny to see him in ski gear. 

And it was fun to see , who was the stunt double for the male lead. He and I ski for the same ski company, so I know him and have skied with him. But I didn’t know he’d be there until I showed up. He’s a professional skier who’s done X Games and is very accomplished, but he was dressed up in this outfit that made him look like a very beginner skier. And he’s just ripping around the mountain. It was pretty comical.

You don’t look much like Lohan.

Yeah, they had another double for her who did all of the other random stuff like running, jumping, cooking, whatever—scenes without her face. And then I did the skiing. But there was one moment when a couple of guys out skiing on the mountain mistook me for Lindsay Lohan. And I took a picture with them in costume, and I don’t think they ever realized that I wasn’t actually her. So these guys have this picture with me, thinking I’m Lindsay Lohan. They came up and they’re like, “is that Lindsay?” And I was just like, “I guess?” And they’re like, “Can we take a photo with you?” It felt too late to back out so I was just like, “Sure.”

What was it like skiing for a broader, non-skiing audience?

It’s funny to me how people’s perception of skiing is so different outside of the ski industry. I remember our very first take, I was supposed to flail down this field of moguls and then fall into Tom [Wallisch]. And I felt like I did it horribly, like it was way too slow and looked really fake and staged. And then as soon as we cut everyone was clapping. They were so excited. I thought it was so comical, because my perspective from within the ski industry has made me way harder on myself.

Any moments on set that have stuck with you? 

I filmed for two days and the second day was the last day of filming and they wrapped right after our scene. So all the main actors got up then and did a little speech, thanking everyone for being here. And Lindsay started crying, and saying how she was so grateful for this experience and thanking everyone for their hard work. It was really heartfelt and sweet. I think a goal of this movie is to make a wholesome comeback. I hope that’s successful for her, she seemed very kind and down to earth, which I thought was cool, because you never know with big celebrities like that. 

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