Everybody (Else) Is Perfect

by Gabrielle Korn

  Later that day, I ran to a dentist appointment that I’d been putting off for months, followed by a fashion PR meeting, followed by some editing, and then I had one-to-one check-ins with some of my employees. One of them, the newest one, asked if we could capitalize the word “black” in the style guide. The only reason we hadn’t done it was because we were following the industry standard, but I hate following standards and was more than happy to agree to change it. Another employee was working on her own leadership skills, and we went over an email she’d written to a coworker. Later, I reviewed edits that someone else had made on a piece because she was worried she was being too tough. By 4:30 p.m., I remembered to eat lunch, which I did while I checked my inbox, which had filled back up. A little before six p.m., I took all my makeup into the bathroom and tried to make myself look human using a piece of toilet paper as a blotting sheet and reapplying concealer.

  I headed down to Chinatown, where a beauty brand’s launch party was being held at a very chic bar underground. The brand’s two female founders, who were very tall with long, expertly curled brown hair, were wearing matching sequin jumpsuits. They quickly made it clear to me that they were a couple, and suddenly I (a) understood why they wanted me there and (b) was definitely interested in what they had to say. They walked me through the collection; it was makeup, but each piece was tied to a sort of reimagined biblical story that gave agency and power to the women involved. I asked them if they were religious. They were, as it turns out, both Greek Orthodox, from the same island in Greece, though they met on New York Tinder. A queer femme Greek Orthodox beauty power couple! I loved them. Their mission was to infuse feminism into the marketing of beauty products with stories about Lilith and Eve. The whole thing felt a little far-fetched, but compared to the fashion event earlier that day, I was delighted by the effort.

  I then went from Chinatown to Tribeca for the opening night party of Chief. In the entryway I ran into a woman I’d met a couple of years ago at Glamour’s Women of the Year Awards. We latched onto each other as the room filled up with well-dressed women of all ages wearing totally fabulous outfits (though no one was wearing anything as brightly colored as me—oops). I was also wearing a small, gifted Chanel backpack, which kept getting caught on people as they tried to squeeze past me.

  Finally, the founders of Chief emerged, setting up stools in the middle of the crowd of women. They introduced the special guest, and out walked Whoopi Goldberg. We all gasped and cheered. Whoopi talked for about half an hour, giving advice like, “Don’t be afraid to say to your boss, What the fuck did you just say to me?,” with an emphasis on the importance of saying it loudly and cursing. My feet were killing me.

  At 9:30 p.m., I got a car home. I checked my email the whole way home, getting totally carsick. Back in Bed-Stuy, I stumbled in the door around ten and was greeted by Venus, Wallace’s sweet pit bull who was now also mine, who wiggled noisily around me with a stuffed lamb in her mouth, an offering. I kicked my shoes off and discovered that they had actually begun disintegrating, which was probably why I was in so much pain. I promptly threw them out. Wallace was lying on the couch. I took her face in my hands and kissed it all over. Then I ran to the fridge. She’d made pizza the night before, and there were three slices in a Tupperware container, which I took to the couch and ate cold while we told each other about our days. I was so tired that I couldn’t believe I was still alive. We chatted for about an hour, petting each other and cuddling, and then got ready for bed.

  I took a lot of measures to make sure I slept well: sound machine, humidifier, earplugs, expensive sheets, mattress pad, antidepressants, pot. And in that perfect nest with Wallace wrapped around me, I tried to breathe deeply. But I was already stressed about everything that was going to pile up for the next day and inevitably bleed into the weekend. I also didn’t do a great job eating, and I was mad at myself about that. I didn’t exercise, unless you count running up and down the subway stairs in heels. Speaking of which, my feet were still throbbing. My thoughts were a jumble of things that happened: The model on the floor. The pop star promoting self-love and leggings. Queer femme Christian lipstick. All the accomplished women at Chief in their beautiful suits. Did I say anything weird or awkward to anyone? What was I forgetting to do? Should I have thought to capitalize “black” when I made the digital style guide in 2014? What should I wear tomorrow? Eventually, mid–panicked thought, I passed out.

  This, I knew, was unsustainable. I did not think I would be on my deathbed wishing I had worked more. I hated that I was working my butt off to be comfortable in one of the most expensive cities in the world to then only get to spend a couple of waking hours with the person I loved. But I didn’t see another choice. After all, all the things I was busy with were so glamorous. I was meeting celebrities; I was making impactful editorial decisions. Surely I should just be grateful. And surely it was just one busy day.

  But it was not just one busy day. Things got consistently more and more hectic through the spring. In April, I turned thirty, but unlike the previous year, we didn’t take a trip; I didn’t have time. Weeks flew by, and June was so chaotic that I stopped trying to find balance and instead grit my teeth and looked forward to July, which would, undoubtedly, be better. It had to be. It became a refrain—what I said to other people when they asked me how I was, what I said to myself when I got home after nine p.m. every night, so tired I could barely take off my shoes: July will be better.

  Obviously, July was not better.

  But first, June. There was a three-day trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to shoot a cover; the freelance writer dropped out at the last minute, so I stepped in to both creatively direct the shoot and also write the story, which I did on the flight home because I knew that would be my only free time. There were two more cover shoots after that. There was the Nylon pride party, which I was hosting and helping to plan. There was a morning spent guest teaching at NYU, panels to be moderated, an evening featuring a Q&A with me at an art gallery. My lower lip erupted into a cold sore. A few people on my team quit, and I dove headfirst into recruiting mode, filling every spare twenty minutes with interviews. The first draft of this book was due, and as I’d feared, I’d had to write most of it on the subway and in cabs on my phone. I was busy with, objectively, good things, lofty things. Time spent with notable people. Being interviewed for other publications about my work. Invite-only fashion parties and gay pride parties.

  In the middle of the month, Wallace and I moved to a new neighborhood in Brooklyn. I didn’t have time to take a single day off to prepare, so we packed everything up on a Friday evening, moved Saturday, and unpacked Sunday. I was back at work first thing Monday morning.

  And then, about a week later, I got sick. Even though I had planned on just powering through the rest of June, my body said no. I tried to go to work and left early, twice. I had a fever and a cough, and my whole body hurt. I could walk but only very slowly. My head throbbed, and having the lights on made it worse. I was so pale I felt nearly see-through. I had to go to urgent care twice. I had crashed.

  On July 1, there was a last-minute, mandatory company meeting, but I couldn’t get out of bed. My boss—the son of the company’s owner—called me about fifteen minutes beforehand to catch me up to speed, and I managed to croak “Hello” into the phone. My voice was shot, too.

  What he told me was this: They’d made the decision to sell Nylon to one of our competitors. The new owners wanted our editorial, he said, so not only was my job safe, but it would be an incredible opportunity for me. I asked if he’d be staying with us. He said no.

  I was so sick that it was impossible to really feel anything about this news except exhaustion. I was dialed into the meeting where my team was told about the acquisition and then the meeting in which they met their new HR person. And after that I spoke separately to the HR person about what they’d be offering me. Meanwhile, a major publication ran an article about the acquisition, and it said specifically that I would be staying wi
th the company. The story was picked up by multiple other outlets, which ran my name in the headline. I was the news. But none of those reporters had bothered to ask me what my plan was.

  I spent the rest of the day on the phone with my team. I had lost my voice completely and was speaking in a hoarse whisper, but even so, I tried my best to cheer everyone up, to be helpful and inspiring, to show them the positives. But my best wasn’t helpful. I simply couldn’t do it anymore. Nor did I want to.

  I’d always been cognizant of the fact that Nylon wasn’t my company, but somewhere along the way I’d started running it as though it were. Its success became my success. I saw no separation between how I felt about myself and how the public perceived the brand. And to suddenly have this major decision be made without me knowing it was even on the table was like being plunged into cold water. For the first time, I saw the situation very clearly: It wasn’t mine. It was never mine. It would never be mine.

  Leila texted me, “This is some classic Saturn returns bullshit, GK.”

  In the days that followed, I had dozens of conversations with the people who had bought us, and with my coworkers, and with friends in the industry, and I could very clearly see how the next few years of my life would play out if I stayed on. But even though I knew it would ultimately be fine if I stayed and set up shop in the new office and got to know my new bosses and dove into new challenges, the loudest, most powerful voice in my head was saying, over and over again, “No fucking way.”

  I was done.

  When I started telling people in the industry that I was thinking about quitting, their reaction was, “But you’re the brand.” And for a few days that appealed to my ego, and I’d let them talk me out of it. But then I started to realize that while it was a fair point that the brand was me—I’d remade it based on my own values, after all—I wasn’t the brand. I was my own person, one that didn’t want to be bought and sold. One that was burnt-out. I agreed to work until the end of July to help with the transition, and that would be that. I’d end this chapter of my life and move on to the next.

  I had saved a little bit of money, thanks to my book deal—and the fact that living in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan meant all my money didn’t go to rent. I had started to think of it fondly as my “fuck-you fund,” an emergency resource in case I got fired or needed to suddenly quit without a backup plan. I guess I always had a feeling that day would come.

  I was at Nylon for five years in total, but it felt like three times that. As I tried to wrap my head around what it would mean to not have my job anymore, it was impossible not to think about everything I’d gone through while working there. I was hired as one person and quitting as another entirely. I was no longer the quiet, pink-haired, domestic-partnered twenty-five-year-old commuting an hour from Queens every day; the one who could churn out news posts and bounce around the city to events like it was easy; the one with no boundaries, neither personal nor professional; the one who couldn’t borrow designer samples because they were too big; the one who had absolutely no idea how to ask for what she needed, or even that she was allowed to.

  I was ending the job as a thirty-year-old who was tired of working myself to the bone only to not have time to enjoy my life outside of work. I had survived heartbreak and abuse; and most importantly, I had learned what my own limits were. And those limits had been passed long ago. And for what? So that someone else could profit from my work? I was too tired to be angry.

  I felt like without my job, I didn’t know where I began and ended. Who was I if I couldn’t introduce myself to someone without saying my title? What was my value? My relevance? It was like all the resentment and frustration that I hadn’t had time to feel for the past five years bubbled up to the surface at once. It was the same way I felt after all my breakups: sad that I hadn’t spoken up sooner.

  Meanwhile, my new apartment was huge: a two-bedroom with a full living room, dining room, and kitchen. To get so much space, we had to leave the deeply trendy area of Bed-Stuy where we met and venture south, below Prospect Park. When you move to a new neighborhood in New York City, it’s like moving to a new state. Everything was unfamiliar, with its own rhythm and culture. It was humbling to realize that after twelve years living in the city, I still knew nothing about most of it. I had memorized every detail of the neighborhood in Soho where I’d worked, but that was such a tiny strip compared to the vastness of the outer boroughs; and my small corner of Bed-Stuy, which was gentrifying so rapidly you could watch it happen in real time, was not in any way representative of Brooklyn as a whole.

  We had enough space in the new place to turn the second bedroom into an office, with two desks nestled into the corners. Wallace started selling her paintings online, and I started the enormous task of figuring out what I wanted to do next.

  I felt lost. Any sort of pride I’d felt at being someone with an established career was gone. I was angry at myself for not appreciating a regular paycheck when I’d had it. For the first few weeks all I could focus on were the things I missed: little things, visceral things, like walking into my office in the morning, hearing the quiet hum of typing, packages waiting for me on my couch, and interns looking up nervously as I glided by, my heels echoing down the rows of desks.

  But even so, I knew it had been far from perfect. I burnt out before I knew about the acquisition, after all. I felt guilty for abandoning my team, but I knew that the best example I could set for them was taking care of my own self. And even though they often jokingly called me “Mom,” they were not my daughters. I was not their mother. Nor their therapist, or any of the roles I’d let myself disappear into.

  My friends started showing up for me in ways I’d never allowed them to before—literally, showing up to my home. Kat came over and hung all of our shelves. My friend Leah, who I’d known since college, came over and sat on the couch with me. Lindsey flew out from LA and stayed with me, and then Gabby did, too. Other friends said that they would come to wherever I was, and so they made sure that amid my flurry of meetings they could buy me coffee and snacks, and hug me tightly. My phone was consistently blowing up with texts and calls and emails. There were so many people rooting for me. Even though on the one hand I felt used, professionally, on the other hand I felt totally loved and supported. Dozens of people reached out to tell me that whatever I did next, they wanted to be involved. My family called me almost daily to check in.

  I was sick for a few more weeks, and with no job to go to, I could let myself recover fully. I spent a long time on my couch in a nest of cough drops and tissues with the lights off. I only cried once, thinking about all the jobs I’d turned down over the years, wondering what could have happened if I had left sooner. After that, I did a lot of staring off into space, and a lot of accidentally checking my work email, hitting Refresh out of habit, feeling the comfort of my phone in my hand. I did things I hadn’t done in over a decade, like watching TV at noon and not showering until dinner. At one point I went into my closet and touched all my beautiful clothes and shoes, wondering if I’d ever have any reason to wear them again. But for the most part I was completely sedentary. Wallace would leave in the morning and kiss me goodbye only to find me in the same place on the couch when she returned. I couldn’t remember the last time I had allowed myself to just be still.

  * * *

  I wrote a resignation letter that went out in August and used it to talk about everything I’d accomplished over the past few years—my push for diversity, for queer representation, for size inclusivity—and what it meant for me, a young lesbian, to have had the honor of the role. By the end of the day it was published, I had more interviews lined up than I could count. And then, after spending the majority of the month resting, something miraculous happened: I started having ideas that had nothing to do with Nylon, or even with women’s media, for that matter. Ideas that, in fact, would have been impossible to see through at my former job. I also started having vivid, wild dreams that I would wake up from with my heart pounding,
soaked in sweat. I hadn’t realized I had stopped dreaming, both literally and metaphorically.

  Working to disrupt ideas of perfection in women’s media had been equal parts rewarding and disappointing. It’s a paradox, after all—the idea that the people who create content for other people should somehow be experts on perfection, when really we’re all just humans struggling to reconcile what we’ve been told our place in the world is with what we want for ourselves. In reality there’s no one who has the right to dictate how someone’s value should be determined, whether they’re saying it explicitly or implying it with how they choose to depict people.

  But as the media landscape continues to tilt toward a strategy that listens more than it preaches, and as readers realize they don’t have to be passive consumers of content that doesn’t speak to them, I think the next generation of writers and editors will have very different jobs. Jobs that don’t exist yet. The era of heritage brands dictating trends is over, and even the idea of mastheads in general will be discarded and replaced by a more democratic, horizontal system, where everyone’s voice is valued. At least, that’s my hope.

  In truth, I don’t know what the future of women’s media holds. But I don’t think the answer is for larger companies to keep buying up smaller companies, and I definitely don’t think white men should continue to be the ones who own and control everything. No matter how well-intentioned they might be, they have no business making decisions about what kinds of stories will best serve women and marginalized people. It’s an outdated model, and it’s time to move on from it, before the medium renders itself obsolete.