Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes

Description: Everybody (Else) Is Perfect by Gabrielle Korn From the former editor-in-chief of Nylon comes a provocative and intimate collection of personal and cultural essays featuring eye-opening explorations of hot-button topics for modern women, including internet feminism, impossible beauty standards in social media, shifting ideals about sexuality, and much more. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description From the former editor-in-chief of Nylon comes a provocative and intimate collection of personal and cultural essays featuring eye-opening explorations of hot button topics for modern women, including internet feminism, impossible beauty standards in social media, shifting ideals about sexuality, and much more. Gabrielle Korn starts her professional life with all the right credentials. Prestigious college degree? Check. A loving, accepting family? Check. Instagram-worthy offices and a tight-knit group of friends? Check, check. Gabrielles life seems to reach the crescendo of perfect when she gets named the youngest editor-in-chief in the history of one of fashions most influential publication. Suddenly shes invited to the worlds most epic parties, comped beautiful clothes and shoes from trendy designers, and asked to weigh in on everything from gay rights to lip gloss on one of the most influential digital platforms. But behind the scenes, things are far from perfect. In fact, just a few months before landing her dream job, Gabrielles health and wellbeing are on the line, and her promotion to editor-in-chief becomes the ultimate test of strength. In this collection of inspirational and searing essays, Gabrielle reveals exactly what its truly like in the fashion world, trying to find love as a young lesbian in New York City, battling with anorexia, and trying not to lose herself in a mirage of womens empowerment and Instagram perfection. Through deeply personal essays, Gabrielle recounts her struggles to reconcile her long-held insecurities about her body while coming out in the era of The L Word, where swoon-worthy lesbians are portrayed as skinny, fashion-perfect, and power-hungry. She takes us with her everywhere from New York Fashion Week to the doctors office, revealing that the forces that try to keep women small are more pervasive than anyone wants to admit, especially in a world thats been newly branded as woke. From #MeToo to commercialized body positivity, Korns biting, darkly funny analysis turns feminist commentary on its head. Both an in-your-face take on impossible beauty standards and entrenched media ideals and an inspiring call for personal authenticity, this powerful collection is ideal for fans of Roxane Gay and Rebecca Solnit. Author Biography Gabrielle Korn is a journalist, digital media expert, and the former editor-in-chief of Nylon Media, an international lifestyle publication focused on emerging culture. Under her editorial leadership, Nylon became a fully digital brand with an ever-growing audience and original, politically-driven, thought-provoking beauty, fashion, music, and entertainment content. She spent three years working on Nylons digital presence before her promotion to editor-in-chief, working across platforms and growing traffic. Prior to that, she was an editor at Refinery29, overseeing beauty content during a period of explosive traffic growth and working to expand the brands concept of what beauty means to the millennial reader. She graduated from NYUs Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2011 with a concentration in feminist/queer theory and writing. She lives in Brooklyn. Review "A captivating page-turner that feels exclusive without resorting to cattiness or cheap gossip. . . . She simultaneously digs below the surface of an industry that often feels skin deep, while divulging integral parts of her own history along the way. Granting front row access to an exclusive world many of us will never experience firsthand, she makes feminism and fashion feel like cohorts in her compulsively readable book." Review Quote "I first got to bear witness to the brilliance of Gabrielle Korn through her beauty writing, where she taught me (and, the internet at large) that something as seemingly trivial as lipstick or a face mask could actually be an antidote to reality and a tool for self-preservation. Gabrielles commitment to taking fashion and beauty seriously--in ways that presaged much of womens media at the time--has been a true through-line of her career, and watching her ascent has been an honor. I have learned so much just by getting to hear Gabrielle speak, and I am so excited that readers will get to hear her voice--in its unadulterated, sometimes comical candor--with this book. By the end, youll be calling her your friend, too." Excerpt from Book Prologue Prologue Dear Readers, For two chaotically busy, gloriously productive, high-profile years, I was the US editor in chief of an international, independent publication called Nylon --a promotion I got when I was twenty-eight, younger than any Nylon editor in chief before me, and definitely the only lesbian whod ever been at the top of the masthead. I was, in fact, younger and gayer than all the female EICs at competing publications in New York City, which was a point of pride for me but also made me an outsider. People like me were not supposed to get promotions like that. Whats more, I was promoted on the same day the print magazine, which was in many ways beloved and iconic, folded. It was a terrifying task, but being put in a position of power meant that I could pour my idealism into something concrete: institutional change. I loved the brand but saw its flaws very clearly, and I was committed to building an editorial strategy that prioritized racial diversity, that welcomed all bodies to the table, and that didnt limit the idea of coolness to a certain economic class. Speaking of coolness: Growing up, I had been, in many ways, the kind of person for whom Nylon magazine was created, but I never felt like I was cool enough to read it. Like other magazines, it was so exclusive that it barely included anyone. As a teen in the early 2000s, I was an art kid who loved fashion but not in a popular-girl way, who self-identified as a music snob at fifteen, who dated skaters, who went to emo shows and played guitar in a punk band. Nylon was sold at Urban Outfitters, where I shopped; it partnered with Myspace, on which I spent my free time. It had always been in the background of my life. But as a queer woman, I also didnt see myself reflected in its pages, or really, any glossy magazine pages at all; even before I had words for my deepest desires, I felt that there was something inherent that rendered me other . Maybe because of that, when I was younger, working as a magazine editor didnt even occur to me. I fluctuated between vague ambitions. Sometimes I wanted to be a painter or a photographer, other times a poet. But I also wanted to write articles, and as I tried to make a career around online journalism in my early twenties, the lifestyle publications were the ones that paid me. And as someone who cared a lot about my own physical appearance, I also turned out to be good at writing about aesthetics in a compelling way. I found myself pulled toward the vibrant, bustling world of New York City fashion media, as though it werent a choice but an inevitability. In my early days as a beauty editor, I was confronted by how a womens industry could be so obviously centered around, and controlled by, a straight, cisgender, white male gaze. I was astounded to watch my inbox fill every day with pitches from publicists about how to groom my body hair to please "my man"--Id then watch as competing publications that had clearly gotten those same pitches would run stories using the same language. So, in turn, I began to churn out work about not shaving your body hair, among other things, and in general I became a very vocal, probably annoying, voice for change. What was the point, I asked myself, in working myself to the bone for big, fancy publications as a dyke if I wasnt going to try to make the content accessible for other queer people? Eventually I went to Nylon , where I was a digital editor for three years before my final promotion to the top spot, which meant the people in charge were finally starting to listen to alternate viewpoints. It was a huge win not just for me but for everyone like me who didnt see themselves represented in mainstream media. Behind the scenes, though, a very different story had unfolded. Id achieved something majorly shiny and glamorous, but along the way, it hadnt been so pretty. At various times, I was underpaid, discriminated against, and sexually assaulted. And despite my fancy day jobs, in my personal life, I consistently behaved like a typical twentysomething: I was dating women who didnt treat me well, I was sleeping with women I shouldnt have, and I was struggling to figure out how to identify my own needs, which in turn made me a shitty person to be in any kind of relationship with. I smoked too much pot and didnt get enough sleep. I alienated people who loved me with my inability to ask for help and my tendency to self-isolate. I was also trying, and failing, and trying again, to recover from anorexia, a secret struggle that impacted every single aspect of my life. In contrast with my personal brand, the hypocrisy of my diagnosis wasnt lost on me, and that was just one more reason for me to be filled with self-loathing. Once I had big, "important" jobs, I was more than happy to hide behind the busyness that came with them, rather than face my own demons. I wanted so badly to show the world that an iconic fashion-based publication could become a beacon of thought leadership if you just let young women steer the ship. And we were very successful. I prioritized diversity within everything we made, and the brand evolved. Young readers called us "woke Nylon ." My junior editors called me "Mom." Eventually, I made a name for myself as a champion for inclusion. Work was still crazy, but by the end of my twenties, I was starting to get my emotional life together, falling in love with a woman who treated me with kindness and respect. I felt I knew myself. And then, in July 2019, two months after my thirtieth birthday, Nylon was suddenly acquired by a much larger company. I was caught completely off guard. I hadnt realized how burnt-out I was until that moment. I felt like I had nothing left to give, and so I resigned. I had thrown myself fully into the work of making womens media safe for all kinds of bodies but had become almost disembodied in the process. I could power through exhaustion and starvation and high heels that tore up my feet, and justify it with how important the work would be to other people. Id been led to believe that notoriety is the ultimate aspiration, but the truth of the matter was I had been running a company as though it were mine when I didnt own a single piece of it. I had made positive change, but when you strip all the pretense away--the things our culture says make you an empowered woman--whats left? Who are we, as contemporary feminists, without capitalism? I realized that without my fancy job title, I didnt know how to describe myself. And really, the question for all of us is this: As a new generation of women, how do we recognize ourselves and each other without the pressure to be perfect--however thats currently being defined? I learned the hard way that professional success is not a good indicator of well-being. And I believe that is a deeply relatable phenomenon, though its usually spoken in whispers, especially for women. So when I quit my big, fancy job, after spending a few weeks moping, I got to work. But it was a new kind of work, and the first step was returning to my own body. The second was remembering what it felt like to have ownership of my time. The third was deciding what to do with it. I also, immediately, had a book to finish--youre holding it. In the yearlong period between pitching the idea and finishing the manuscript, my life had been turned upside down. And I came out the other side stronger, and more self-aware, and with a clearer idea of what I needed. Suddenly, I had a much bigger story to tell. This is a book about what happens when you put your own well-being on hold to achieve a version of success that you think youre supposed to want, and how I finally was able to see--and then escape--the confines of perfection. I hope you enjoy the ride. Gabrielle Details ISBN1982127767 Author Gabrielle Korn Short Title Everybody (Else) Is Perfect Pages 272 Publisher Atria Books Language English Year 2021 ISBN-10 1982127767 ISBN-13 9781982127763 Format Paperback Imprint Atria Books Subtitle How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes Publication Date 2021-01-26 UK Release Date 2021-01-26 DEWEY B Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! 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