She's Having Her Baby

by Lauren Sams

  I had started to type a response to @cupcakes4life when I saw that more tweets with the hashtag #Joliecovermeltdown were flooding in. Fucking shitsticks. Thanks for the free publicity, Lucy.

  Alright, I thought. I would tell them the truth. Why not? If they were right and mags really were dying, what was the point in sugar-coating things?

  The reason you see the same cover stars each month is because they are the ones who sell.

  And then:

  Last time we ran a plus-size model on the cover (PS we don’t use the term plus-size, the modelling industry does), the issue tanked.

  And then:

  My job is to sell mags. I have to put the most saleable star on the cover. And the ones who sell are slim, pretty and white.

  I remembered what Lucy had told me about hashtags, and as a final, triumphant flourish, I added one of my own:

  #Jolierealitycheck

  I gulped as I saw the words hit the screen, never to be taken back. Meg was going to skewer and roast me over a fire made of pulped issues.

  I sat back, waiting for the flurry of replies. Sure enough: ping, ping, ping. In they came.

  @GeorgeJolie When was the last time you ran a cover girl who wasn’t blonde and skinny, huh?

  I glanced at the wall behind me, which was covered in Jolie covers. I was only directly responsible for the last twenty. A quick check confirmed what I already knew – our April cover girl was a jaw-droppingly gorgeous plus-size model named Simona Davis. She was the first Australian, plus-size or not, to land a French Vogue cover. It was a risk for me to run someone different on the cover – after all, Simona was brunette and a size 12, the horror! – but I had faith in our readers. They’d asked for diversity and I’d wanted to deliver it to them.

  The issue had undersold by 30,000 copies. My arse had been on the line. The next issue, I’d put Kate Hudson on the cover. It sold like petite blonde hotcakes.

  Hi @gamergurl – we ran Simona Davis on the April cover. Beautiful shot of an amazing woman. But the issue didn’t sell well.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Lucy walked in, her eyes wide with panic. ‘George, you’ve gotta shut this down now.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘It’s just a very vocal minority. Nothing to worry about.’

  I was trying to put on a brave face.

  Truth be told, I was very worried about what was happening, mainly because I had no idea what exactly was happening.

  ‘No, George. There’s no such thing as a vocal minority anymore. People are seeing this right now. Media Watch, the papers, Confidential – they’ll all be reading this and loving the hate-tweets. Shut it down.’

  I threw my hands up. ‘If I shut it down, I won’t be able to answer their questions. I’m not going to hide behind this. I can handle it, Lucy.’

  I saw her mouth set. She shrugged. ‘Alright. If you need a hand …’

  I cleared my throat. I was getting a little tired of Lucy appointing herself Jolie’s digital director. ‘Uh, I think I’ll be fine, Lucy. Can you just focus on that features meeting this afternoon please? I don’t have time to be there so you’ll have to handle it yourself.’

  She nodded. ‘No problem.’

  I gathered my thoughts and tried to focus on what I told Lucy I’d do: handle it. I clicked on the #Joliecovermeltdown hashtag like Lucy had shown me and saw hundreds of tweets.

  Haven’t bought a mag in yrs. What’s the point? All full of same rubbish. #Joliecovermeltdown

  The only time I read magz is waiting at dentist. Waste of money I say! #Joliecovermeltdown

  Isn’t Jolie for teenagers, anyway? #Joliecovermeltdown

  Print is dead! The writing’s on the wall, guys. Ha! See what I did?! #Joliecovermeltdown

  Later, I would see the irony in the fact that Jolie inspired hundreds of tweets within minutes, but had failed to post a single sales increase this whole year.

  As I filtered through the responses, my heart sung a little when I saw the few (very few) noble attempts by loyal readers to defend Jolie. Sadly, these tweets were rarer than fresh prawns at a regional RSL.

  I love Jolie! Back off, haters. #Joliecovermeltdown

  Hi @GeorgeJolie. Love the mag and love you. Keep up good work. Always look forward to Jolie! #Joliecovermeltdown

  Jolie fights the good fight! Bet all you haters haven’t even READ the mag! #Joliecovermeltdown

  I’d heard all of this before and I knew that it was impossible to change most people’s minds about Jolie because they’d already decided – based on outdated clichés and sexist stereotypes – that women’s magazines were, at best, trivial and vaguely ridiculous, and at worst, actively attempting to dismantle feminism and all of its achievements. I wanted to throttle people who told me that magazines were silly and unimportant, that all they did was advertise lipsticks. It wasn’t true, particularly when it came to Jolie; we’d successfully petitioned the federal government for maternity leave pay, run the first, exclusive interview with the recently sacked first female prime minister and uncovered a massive story about sexism at one of the country’s biggest law firms, all in the past two years. I was beyond feeling angry about our bad press, but I still twitched with frustration when I heard blanket bitchiness about women’s magazines, or was told that a male writer at our brother publication had won a Magazine Award for the very same story we’d covered. If it was in Duke, it was serious. If it was in Jolie, it was for women, and therefore as fluffy as a duck. It was such blatant sexism that I was actually sick of pointing it out to people. It was astoundingly obvious.

  @GeorgeJolie why do you run stories about loving your body but then put women like Gisele on the cover? I’m never going to look like Gisele.

  I rolled my eyes. Not even Gisele looks like Gisele, I wanted to say. About three hours of hair and makeup, countless shots and a day’s worth of retouching goes into making even the most genetically blessed among us look cover-ready. And as for the hypocrisy of empowering women about their bodies while running ads for weight-loss supplements, well, I wished I didn’t have to run those ads, but I was running a business, not a community outreach program. I typed as much into my little box and waited for the storm to hit its peak.

  Instead, my phone rang. Meg. Fuck.

  I picked up on the third ring. I was too nervous on the second but I knew waiting for the fourth would be trouble.

  ‘Hi, Meg,’ I answered, injecting as much light into my voice as I could.

  ‘Hello, George. How are you?’

  I breathed out a little – just a little. She hadn’t seen it. Thank Christ. She was probably just ringing about the Jennifer cover. Which, now, I obviously couldn’t run.

  ‘Good, thank you. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, good. Well, I was good until a minute ago when my assistant alerted me to your little Twitter tirade. What is going on?’

  I could have lied. I could have lied and told Meg I was hormonal, stressed beyond belief and ready to snap if someone didn’t bring me a deep-fried Bounty bar. I wanted to tell her I was homeless, best-friend-less and oh, by the way, a little bit pregnant to a man who had already moved on and was ready to ‘be supportive, either way’. I wanted to tell her that I hated all the ways she wanted Jolie to change. I wanted to tell her that my life was imploding, that I could see the debris falling down around me as I tried to salvage what was left of my sanity. I wanted to tell her that, yes, I knew I was committing career suicide, but only because it seemed like the best option.

  I wanted to tell her that I wanted to be honest with our readers. I was sick of caving in to every advertiser’s demand. I wanted to tell her that the print edition was just fine, as it always had been, thank you very much. I wanted to remind her that Jolie was about smart, cool, worldly women who longed to know more about the things that interested them. They came to Jolie for beautiful photography and witty writing, not lists of the best and worst Mary-Kate and Ashley movies ever made.

  I didn’t. I sighed and said, ‘They asked me honest questions, M
eg. I felt like they deserved honest answers. That’s all.’

  ‘Georgie!’ She sounded as over it as I felt. I could basically hear her shaking her head. ‘This is so unprofessional of you. You’re the editor. We are running a multi-million dollar business. I can’t have you belittling us to our readers. It makes us all look like idiots.’

  She was right. I had made them look like idiots because I didn’t want to be one anymore. I was so sick of trying to think of new ways to talk about red lipstick, or lazy, cheap advertisers who wanted my writers to think of clever ways to sell laundry detergent for them.

  I was sick of feeling too old for the industry I loved, the only one I’d really ever known, at the ripe old age of thirty-four. I was sick of trying to think of gimmicks to sell magazines, when I was positive the product could sell itself.

  I was sick of it all.

  ‘You’re right, Meg. We do look like idiots. I think we need to talk.’

  20

  Week 22

  I knew he was looking at me, judging me, but I was intent on ignoring him. Stop policing me. Leave me alone. You can’t judge me. What would you do in my position?

  I turned my body away so I wouldn’t have to see him. He was cute – actually, he was handsome, the way a man should look – but that was beside the point. He was being a jerk. Facial symmetry or no, he was a douche.

  It was only one drink. I wasn’t even going to finish it. Probably not. Not that he would know that, and not that I should even have to justify myself to him, but … it was only one drink. And I needed it. I’d been dry for weeks. And weeks. I’d had enough. I wanted a silky, peppery, relaxing glass of shiraz. The most expensive one on the menu, please.

  After the day I’d had, I needed it. That, and a lobotomy, so I’d never be able to remember all the awful things people said about my hair on Twitter.

  Besides, what the hell did French women do for nine months? Not drink wine and smoke Gauloises and be all-round fabulous? I didn’t think so. And everyone knows French babies are among the cutest in the world.

  ‘One more chance, George. I am giving you one more chance,’ Meg had said when I’d gone up to her office after my Twitter meltdown.

  I had no idea how to respond, so I didn’t.

  ‘I’m giving you another chance because you mean a lot to me, George. We’ve known each other a long time. But this – this refusal to change, this stubbornness – has got to stop.’ Meg stood over her desk, palms flat on the latest issue of the mag. ‘I made you editor because you’re smart, George. I knew you could do it. And I know you can do this digital stuff. You need to get out of your own head.’

  ‘Meg, I – I feel like I was ambushed back there.’

  ‘Of course you were! What did you expect? You opened yourself up to the crazies of the internet – what were you waiting for, a cup of tea and a big group hug?’

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out. It suddenly occurred to me that Lucy might have set me up to fail. Would she? Could she? It was almost unfathomable that a colleague would do this, and yet … there was something entirely too plausible about it.

  ‘Regardless, what were you thinking?’ Meg had asked. ‘Do you know how hard I’m working to keep Jolie relevant?’

  I stood there, facing her, my heart beating far too fast. It was all fun and games to have an opinion until you got in major trouble for it. It was time to switch my game face on.

  ‘Meg … I’m sorry. I behaved unprofessionally. However –’

  ‘No. No “however”. I don’t care what your reasons are. Never do that again.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  Meg stared at me, lowering her gaze until her head was almost parallel to the ground. ‘No, George. You were abusing the readers. They’re our clients, just as much as the advertisers are. They pay our bills. They pay your salary!’

  I nodded, ever so slightly. ‘Yes, I know. But Meg, let me finish. I think that maybe this is actually a really good thing for us. Maybe –’

  She held up her hands, like ‘stop’. ‘George. Enough. This is not good. Believe me when I say that this is not good. I’ve already had Linda from Beauty Savers on the phone. They’re threatening to pull out of the video deal and their print ads.’

  ‘They can’t do that. We go to print in two days. It’s all booked.’

  ‘Well, they’re going to unbook them, Georgie. Have a think about what you’ve done,’ she said, as if I was a teenager pulling a prank.

  Fuck it. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  ‘No, Meg, I really think that it could be good for us. Don’t you always say that we need to find our point of difference? Well, this could be it. We could be the ones who tell the truth. Who put it all out there. We don’t sugarcoat things like other magazines do. When readers challenge us, we give them proper answers, not the bullshit ones other mags do. We can be real.’

  I tried to kid myself that my battle-scene pep-talk would work, but I knew in my heart that my relationship with Meg, and therefore Jolie, was flailing wildly.

  Meg crossed her arms. Her lips had almost disappeared, they were so tightly pursed.

  I went on, despite knowing for sure that I was in for it.

  ‘And hey, isn’t it true that all publicity is good publicity? You taught me that, Meg.’ I smiled as wide as I could manage, laying it on thicker than makeup on a Kardashian.

  ‘I need you to fix this, George. First of all: no more Twitter. Let Lucy handle that side of things. Second: that fortieth anniversary issue had better be the best-selling issue you’ve ever produced, alright? Seriously, George, I want to see sales up.’

  Her tone was so final, I didn’t really need to say anything more.

  So I’d nodded and headed straight to the bar around the corner for a drink.

  Where some d-bag who clearly hadn’t read the actual science about it was now giving me the evil eye for drinking during pregnancy. Even with my back turned, I could feel his eyes on me. Stupid condescending fuckwit. Leave me alone. This was strictly medicinal. Not to mention none of his business.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I heard someone behind me say.

  Him.

  I whipped around with enough force to power a Gulfstream. ‘Yes?’ I asked, emphasising the ‘s’ and jutting my jaw so he would know to Back The Fuck Away.

  But he didn’t. He motioned to the chair opposite me, like, ‘May I sit?’ I did nothing. So he sat.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. His tone was warm.

  Great. He was probably a Mormon or something. And not like the cute ones on HBO. He’d reel me in by being friendly and then – bam! – before I knew it, I’d be in a cult.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, trying not to be completely done in by his near-perfect face. He looked like a prettier version of Gerard Butler. It was all I could do to calm my beating heart. It was hard to remember that he was a grade-A d-bag when he had the sexual magnetism of Jack Donaghy.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good. Why?’

  He wasn’t taken aback by my abruptness. He just smiled. ‘Sorry, I haven’t even introduced myself. Colin. Colin Bennet. Two ns, one t,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘Firm,’ he said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Your handshake. It’s very firm. I like that.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t asking for your approval, Colin. It doesn’t really matter to me if you like my handshake or not. Now could you just get your judge-y speech over and done with so I can tell you to go fuck yourself?’

  ‘What?’ he asked, laughing. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t you want to tell me off for drinking? Isn’t that why you came over?’

  ‘Uh, no. Why would I tell you off?’ In Colin’s defence, he did look genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Because … because … because I’m pregnant,’ I finally managed to splutter. It was the first time I’d said it to anyone I didn’t know. God, I was fairly sure it was only the third time I’d said it at all.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, actually taken ab
ack this time. ‘No. God, no. I didn’t even notice. Sorry … I’ll, ah …’ He glanced at my ring finger. ‘I thought you were single. Sorry, I’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. Sorry. I thought … I thought that’s why you were looking at me.’

  He shook his head, smiling. Good grief, he was attractive.

  ‘Oh.’ Well, wasn’t this something? A man who was attractive – so attractive he didn’t need a filter – had chosen to sit next to me. ‘Uh, well, stay then.’

  ‘OK. What are you drinking? I’ll join you, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sure. Uh … it’s the Craggy Mountain. This one,’ I said, pointing to the menu. Colin reached for it at the same time and our hands touched lightly, briefly. It had that first-date-electricity feel. Which is to say: incredibly hot. I tried to shut my too-fast mind down before my too-fat mouth caught up with it and said something stupid.

  ‘Righto,’ he said. ‘Would you like another?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Just one for me.’

  Colin walked to the bar and I sat back in my chair. I realised that, apart from my weird dream about Jase, I hadn’t thought about sex for an inordinately long time and suddenly missed it ferociously, perhaps even more so than gin martinis. I was sure Colin was hitting on me and wondered if by outing myself as pregnant I’d completely missed my opportunity for any horizontal mattress-dancing.

  ‘Should we start over?’ Colin asked as he sat down again, this time with a glass of wine in hand.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘So, “Hi, I’m Colin,”’ he said. ‘Colin Bennet. Accountant. Single. Into long walks on the beach, et cetera, et cetera.’

  An accountant? This guy was way too pretty to be an accountant. He should be an architect or an indie playwright or have some other job that only 0.000002 per cent of the population has.

  ‘Georgie Henderson. George. Magazine editor. I guess. For the time being. Single. Pregnant. I am definitely into pina coladas but not for the next few months.’