by Leigh Stein
“Give us an example of one of the jokes,” John said.
“Oh, I’m not very good at remembering jokes,” Devin said. “Something about pumpkin spice lattes showing up in your DNA from 23andMe. When I tell it, it isn’t as funny.”
“Is your friend white?”
“What?”
“The friend you’re telling us about. She’s white? Or she’s not white?”
“I’m not saying she was hired because of affirmative action, but I knew her when she had only like eight hundred Twitter followers, so you tell me.”
“So you’re saying she’s black,” John said.
I gulped my wine.
“If I don’t want to be seen for only being a white girl, I don’t want to see other people for only their color,” Devin said. “Right, Maren? You didn’t hire Khadijah only because she is black?”
“I hired Khadijah because she was extremely qualified to run our editorial content.”
“And because you didn’t want our staff to be all white,” Devin added, moving the wine bottle out of my reach. “Remember?”
“Did you know that Maren is an intersectional feminist?” John said, through a mouthful of bread. John didn’t believe in labels. He shared a life philosophy with our user @SmokyMountainHeartOpener, whose profile said, “We’re all just humans, being.”
“It’s not a joke,” I said. “What is the point of having those values if I don’t put them into practice? I don’t want the About Us page to be a photo collage of Julies and Emilys.”
“I’m offended,” Devin said.
“No you’re not,” I said.
“And by the way, my friend, the comedian? She’s Indian, the country, but she grew up here.”
“Well, when we raise our next round of funding, we can hire a diversity and inclusion specialist and then it doesn’t have to be just me trying to do my best over here,” I said, trying to hide my irritation. “After dinner, let’s go over the latest version of the pitch deck.”
Devin covered her ears with her hands. “No! No work! You promised!”
“Okay! Jesus. What’s for dessert?”
“Gluten-free vegan carob truffles.”
“What is a carob?” John said.
“It has three times as much calcium as chocolate.”
“I said, what is a carob?”
Devin thought about it. “Let me google,” she finally said.
John gave me a private look meant to indicate Why is she the CEO of your company?
“Let’s talk about something fun,” I said. “Nuclear holocaust?”
“Rhythmic gymnastics!” Devin blurted at the same time. We both laughed. Even John had to smile. We worked so many long hours together that it was easy to forget what made us fall in love in the first place. There was the time we were at a networking mixer and I mentioned I had some discounted Easter candy from Duane Reade in my tote so she impaled some Peeps on the rims of our prosecco glasses as a conversation starter. She was a joyful recipient of presents, like the “Nasty Woman” pencil set I picked up at the Christmas market in Union Square, or anything tiny I collected from swag bags at women’s empowerment conferences: tiny Shiseido Ultimune Power Infusing Concentrate, tiny Bobbi Brown lipsticks, mini bags of mini popcorn, a travel-size Diptyque Feu de Bois candle. When I had to leave the office to go to a psychiatrist appointment, she’d text me little love notes about how our friendship was one of the best things that ever happened to her, proof of the universe’s abundance, and how she wanted me to be healthy enough to share my own sparkle with the world.
More than work wives, Devin and I were sisters.
Khadijah
When I got to the office, it was dark. The heels of my boots clacked against the hardwood floor as I hurried to my desk, hoping to get a head start on email before anyone else came in. Rather than turn on the overhead lights, I opened the blinds over the street-facing windows to let in the sun, but the sky was overcast and threatening rain. That’s when I heard chirping behind me—like a ringtone but louder, more persistent.
Blocking the door to the beauty closet, there was a row of glass incubators with eggs inside. Not only eggs but little yellow chicks that had just started to hatch. They were unfurling their wet selves, fluffing and blinking their dark eyes, shocked at arriving. I opened the lid and took out one of the babies, who weighed less than nothing. She curled up and went right to sleep in my palm.
“You weren’t supposed to do this.”
Maren was standing in the doorway to her office, typing something on her phone. I realized I was wearing a crop top, my bare midriff exposing me.
“I thought you were in Connecticut,” I said.
“Obviously not.” She climbed atop her ergonomic desk chair and held her phone high above her head. Then she closed her eyes and threw it at the floor, hard, shattering the screen into a cobweb of tiny shards.
While I wasn’t looking, the chicks had somehow gotten loose from their incubators, and now they were running around the office. I was terrified I would accidentally step on one, or that they’d land their fragile feet on glass.
The bird in my palm stirred in her sleep and I cupped my other hand around her like a shield.
“I’m sorry,” I told Maren. “I’ll put them all back. I promise.”
But she wasn’t listening. Maren was kneeling on the floor, eating the sparkly black shards like a dog.
“Self-care is putting yourself first,” she said quietly, dark blood rimming her split lip.
When I jolted awake, I checked my Fitbit: 4:52 a.m. Heart rate 107 bpm.
I promised myself I’d talk to Maren last week, but it never seemed like the right time and now she was at a Devin-sponsored healing retreat in the woods. Each passing day gave me another excuse to wait, but my relief sat next to mounting unease, like staring at the subject line of an email you’d rather die than open.
I had two tunics that still fit, one pair of maternity jeggings with a black waistband that stretched as high as my underwire. There were a couple of dresses I once wore with belts that I now wore like sacks, with flat shoes. Most days I wore a headscarf and loud lipstick to draw attention away from what was happening below my neck.
My pitch was practiced. Richual could be doing more to reach pregnant and postpartum millennials. I designed a mock-up for a new content vertical. “This is about teaching self-care to the next generation, building a movement beginning with babies,” I’d say.
But what if Maren was like, How are we going to launch a new content vertical if you’re out on maternity leave? What if you just work from home three days a week?
Or, I thought we were friends. Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to have kids?
I had fucked up. I’d made myself too indispensable.
* * *
...
I met my first boyfriend on BlackPlanet when I was fourteen. Hey girl, just dropping by to show some love, he wrote in my guestbook. It was the summer I listened to “If I Ain’t Got You” on repeat, the perfect soundtrack for catching feelings. I didn’t even care that he’d posted the same thing in a dozen other guestbooks. There was someone out there who wanted to know what I had to say. Little Khadijah couldn’t have seen it then, but she was preparing for her future career as an internet writer, using all her available free time to type her thoughts into little boxes for strangers to read. This is when she first started to look at her life—embarrassing moments involving period blood, totally justified rage over who got the solo in choir, the joy of a major H&M haul on a limited budget—as potential content.
I memorized the boy’s page on the Planet and consulted with my friend Ashley, who could vouch for him IRL because his family went to the same church as hers. Exactly once, I saw him, in the stands at a basketball game. Hey, we said, like we’d been practicing our inflection. But we hadn’t rehearsed any words to co
me after.
It made zero sense that he held the title of “first boyfriend” in my mental archive. More like he was the first guy whose digital attention set too high a bar for future face-to-face contact.
I deleted my page on the Planet once I realized there were other ways to be online, where I could write beyond the borders of a profile. On a blog, you could exist through lists and opinions, ideas about the world and your place in it as informed by Erykah Badu lyrics, good poems by June Jordan, bad poems by you. You could change your avatar. You could stop wearing your old clothes when they no longer fit or went out of style.
I grew up in New Jersey, but I came of age on the internet. I started and abandoned blogs, went through a Tavi Gevinson phase where I meticulously documented my outfits (without ever showing my face because I was self-conscious slash paranoid a family member would find my blog), and then a vegan phase where I made a Tumblr to promote awareness of black vegan celebrities and share recipes and data from PETA.
By the time I was in college, it wasn’t enough to make something online. If what you made was any good, people wanted to know who the maker was: “About Me.” I watched as the self became what you made. You linked your Facebook and Instagram and Twitter accounts. You were the sum of every vacation photo ever taken, the quantity of birthday wishes you received, the amount of followers you could count across platforms. There was no such thing as IRL. Your body might sleep, but your profile stayed up all night like a lit marquee.
About Me: Khadijah Walker, digital girl in a digital world.
For my gender studies class at Rutgers, I started a new Tumblr called The Panopticon, where I documented what I saw to be the prison of personal branding that put women in their own private cells (their social media profiles), under constant surveillance to remain beautiful (but real), strong (but vulnerable), unique (but authentic), vocal about their beliefs (but only the ones that everyone else agrees are worth believing in). We were both the prisoners and the guards.
I posted screenshots of accountability coaches and fitness influencers and YouTube stars and aspiring rappers and moms and women who were “just on this personal journey called Life,” leaving vital information, like follower count, but blurring their identities. I made collections of screenshots of women who were all told stay in your lane. Another series on accusations of being fake. For every mom with tens of thousands of fans for her cute kid photos, there were hundreds of haters who said she was a human disgrace. Being a guard was irresistible.
The Panopticon went viral and that’s when the internet became my job.
By the time I graduated, I was writing about women and digital culture for Jezebel and The Hairpin and The Toast. At night, I waited tables at a vegetarian restaurant in the East Village and wrote weird headlines as they came to me on the notepad I used to take orders. The next day, I’d crank out a couple of thousand words to match. “The Best Worst Time I Had Having My UTI Mansplained to Me on Reddit,” “I Met My First Boyfriend on BlackPlanet and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next,” “Questions I Would Like to Ask the White Women Re-creating the Antebellum Lifestyle on Instagram.” My regular column was called “What I Regretfully Googled This Week.” Lena Dunham DM’ed me in 2013 and asked if I wanted to get lunch, and I kept blinking at the screen, thinking it must be a joke, and never responded. I did screenshot her invitation and made it the header image of my social media profiles. BuzzFeed offered me a job on their social team, and within three months I was a staff writer.
My only hobby had become my career. Every day, I scrolled until my eyes blurred, searching for the next Doge, trying to come up with a hot take about the most highly funded potato salad Kickstarter in world history.
The dudes I met on dating sites googled me before a first date. They had formed an opinion about who I was hours before they asked if I wanted to Venmo them for my grain bowl. “I thought you’d be taller,” one said. “Are you going to write about us?” another asked, as if there was ever going to be an “us” to write about.
I wanted to find a DeLorean that would take me back. Naming myself as the creator of The Panopticon was the mistake that made me known. What would I do once I had plundered every mortifying moment of my youth for a personal essay? What was left for me to say about how women constructed their identities online? I wanted to escape myself; at the same time I wanted to level up. I watched as the girls I was blogging with at twenty-two were offered staff positions writing about pop music and millennial culture at The New Yorker, or about the intersection of race and tech at the Times. What, was my meme beat at BuzzFeed not highbrow enough? Was Foucault, like, over? I knew what Shine Theory was, but I couldn’t help feeling envy and resentment that they had achieved something before I even realized I wanted it.
I was in the waiting room of my psychiatrist’s office, waiting to get refills on Ativan and trazodone, when Maren messaged me.
I’m sure you must get messages like this all the time , she wrote. But I’m the cofounder of a women’s wellness startup focused on self-care. There’s a senior position that I think you might be perfect for. We have funding. Can I take you to lunch?
* * *
...
I texted Adam: I had that nightmare again.
I was too wired to fall back to sleep. On my phone, I googled pregnancy dream baby animal workplace nightmare. I searched anxiety bad for fetus.
I was used to checking email at least once in the middle of the night. I soothed a sponsor who was upset we didn’t use the correct transparent png of their logo, and replied to an aspiring influencer who wanted Devin to give her sponsored content opportunities but Devin was ignoring her emails and wasn’t there anything I could do? I opened her profile @SurvivorGirl96: only 3.5K followers. The proportion of meal photos to full-body shots was all wrong. You have to build your following, sorry, I told her. Try posting less pics of meat/more of you in dresses on vacation, etc.
I scrolled through Twitter: tests revealed the nerve agent that killed Kim Jong-un’s half brother, Los Angeles religious leaders were creating a network of safe houses for undocumented immigrants, Beyoncé was canceling her Coachella appearance. Maybe the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN should have their own rally, said the president.
I woke up like this, by the light of my screen, vibrating with adrenaline.
What I would say to a Richual user in my situation: Take a break. Take a breath. The news will still be there when you get back. But I never felt I had the choice. The only coping mechanism I had was toggling between the news and the stress that was actually within my control.
I had started practicing asking Maren for little things. For our most recent feature launch, a way to sync your Fitbit sleep data with your Richual profile, so you and your friends could compete for best sleep, Maren ordered cases of Chateau Miraval rosé. It was just a small party for the staff and some press. I filled a coffee mug with tap water and watched her work the room, refilling everyone else’s glasses so she could refill her own. A couple of glasses in, she was complimenting my outfit, like she’d just realized there was a human being on the other side of all the emails she sent. By the end of the night, Maren was stage whispering ugly gossip—that she’d already told me at the last party—about the founder of a period underwear company, as I deposited her into the Uber I’d hailed on her phone.
The next day, I Slacked her.
Hey, do you have a sec?
Sure what’s up
I was wondering if I could give some feedback on the party.
There was a pause.
Sure! Always
Maybe next time we could also have some non-alcoholic beverages for the people who aren’t drinking, I typed.
She said nothing. I stared at my screen for ten minutes before finally clicking another tab. Ninety minutes later, Maren posted a thumbs-up emoji.
In bed, I opened the Google Doc called
“Maternity Leave Script.”
OPENING: Hi, Maren, thanks for meeting with me. Thanks for taking the time to meet with me. I know you’re busy so I appreciate you taking this time to meet with me.
Ask her about trip to Connecticut?
Mention lack of HR dept up top: I know we can’t currently afford an HR dept, so thank you for . . . But I hope to use our conversation to . . . I’m sorry to bring this to you directly . . . (Don’t apologize!) I thought this could be a great opportunity to create a feminist parental leave policy from the ground up . . . (Too didactic) As we grow as a company, I look forward to the opportunity to give feedback on what role an HR department might play . . .
I remember during my interview how you took out those neon index cards and had me make a pyramid of my priorities and I put “family” and “health” and “boyfriend” and then you reorganized and put Richual at the top of the pyramid and I always thought that was how you were offering me the job, but now I think you were trying to tell me something else.
Slides for new pregnancy and postpartum content verticals. Before or after I bring up pregnancy/maternity leave?
What would Michelle Obama do?
Due date is July 21. I’m asking for six weeks of maternity leave and another six weeks part-time after that.
Worst-case scenario: offer to livestream the birth, a Richual exclusive (hahaha kill me).
Smile!!!, I typed at the top of the doc.
Last spring, I went on a date with a broke grad student I met on Tinder. We went to see live music at a warehouse in Bushwick. “Honestly I don’t know if this is going to be any good,” he said as we were walking over. “But bad can be interesting.”
