Working Girl

I quit my job last week.

I gave a months notice. My last day is the day before Thanksgiving. I have a sort of plan about how I’m going to freelance (and how I hope that teaching position comes through with FIT) but mostly I’m swinging between electric excitement and paralyzing fear. I mean, our whole lives we’ve been taught to go to school, get a job, work 9-5, get married, have kids then die. Sweet. There’s no hand book for off- roading and when I’ve told people I’m quitting I’ve been getting looks like I decided to jump off a bridge. In some ways that’s exactly what I’m doing and for once in my life I’m thrilled at the unknown. Geronimo.

I don’t know how many of you have the luxury of working in a field you love. But I do. I design lingerie for a living (which is what I studied in school; yes that is a THING) and I’ve worked with prestigious design houses all over NYC. I love the thrill I get when a new project comes in, when the seasons turn and I have to research colors and trends, when my clients glow with pride at my designs that have sold out immediately. I love all of that. But there’s another side to working in the fashion design industry that people outside don’t know about. A constant, throat slitting struggle to stay relevant and updated, to impress and reinvent and make yourself worth more than the 300 girls who just left Parsons and FIT and look at your job with a manic gleam in their eyes. They’re younger and faster and they’ll take half your salary just to sit at your desk. Your bosses adore them and you want to hate them, but the truth is that was you 10 years ago. The revolving door of the industry never slows down and if you can’t make yourself worth every dime, you’re out. There is less loyalty here than there is between enemies and while your presented with a sugar sweet smile everyday they are slowly tipping poison into your coffee. The unemployment rate among designers is staggeringly high.

The natural reaction of course is “Well, just make yourself more valuable.” Let me explain how that works in fashion. We come in early to impress the bosses. They love it. Can you skip lunch today? Of course! Oh, that project really needs to be done by 9am, will you stay late. Um, sure. I love my job! Would you just be a dear and come in this Sunday to wrap things up? Oh, I have church with my family on Sunday. Yeah..well that project really needs to be done. Oh, okay. Yeah, whatever you need. There is no leaving early for weddings, skipping days for your kid’s soccer practice or calling in sick. You’re a beautiful slave to the industry and being needed because the moment you slip up even a little, the hungry younger hordes are ready to fill your shoes. I’m not trying to come off as bitter because there is good here too. I love my clients and my team members. I love the actual art of designing. I love the way fashion makes me feel (even if you think it’s shallow) and I love the confidence I see in my customers eyes when they look at me. All in all, I do feel like I’ve done a pretty decent job of making myself relevant and because I have a high opinion of myself and my work, I believe they do too. But there is a joke in the industry that if you make it to 30 years old here you’re essentially a superhero. 29 and counting.

A few months ago I woke up early because I had clients coming in at 7:45 for a meeting. I sat up in bed and just thought “What would happen if I didn’t go into work today?” What would actually happen? My clients would be pissed that they flew from LA to meet with me; that’s for sure. My bosses would be mad. They might actually fire me. Was my job worth all of this uneasiness and plight? Was fashion so important to me that I would be a slave to the industry forever? What will I do when I have children? Will they understand that I can’t see their school play because my clients are in town? Bright and loud and neon like a lighthouse beacon the answer was universally no.  I needed to make some changes.

I started with going into work on time and leaving on time, more or less. I took my hour lunch break (most days) and sat outside in the sunshine or met with friends. But most importantly I worked toward a goal of leaving the industry as most people view it. In one year I promised myself, I would have saved enough to quit for a few months and figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. When I tell people I left my job and I get the “Wow must be nice” comments I think, no it wasn’t nice. Crazily, in the midst of an insane job, I took on more work. I took freelance jobs at every available opportunity. I started an Etsy shop selling invitations and logo designs. I created banners and street signs and truck stickers for people. Turns out, there’s always someone who needs something and for the past twelve months I hustled my ass off everyday to find them.

I’m not sure I’m there yet but a few weeks ago, after a particularly painful day at work, I knew it was time to try. I gave my notice for the day before Thanksgiving. It’s funny how once you’re unavailable, everyone needs you. C’est la vie.

Frightening though it is, I am honestly excited to start this next chapter of my life. For once, I feel like I’m making a decision for my own selfish reasons and no one else’s, which is amazing and liberating and terrifying. I’ve been working with FIT as a Design Critic for the students there now and am working towards becoming a Professor as well. December will be a month for me and family and self reflection and cookies. J

Sometimes being pushed off of a precipice becomes a gifted jump into the unknown. I’m not sure I would have ever come to this decision otherwise. I’m sad to leave some of my fashion past behind but also really happy about the direction my career and life is going in. Life is short. Time to make every minute count.

#YesAllWomen

Over the past month it’s come to my attention that there is a serious problem with the lack of understanding of “courtship” between men and women. Sorry, this isn’t a funny post. It’s an actual problem we (as women) face everyday and one that is largely ignored by society in general. Men and women. Please note I am not lumping all men into one expedited fucked up rape culture organism, but I think it goes without saying that knowledge is the key to prevention.

A few weeks ago I overheard some guys in a bar talking about how they hate it when women are instantly “offended” at their friendly advancement. “Like I just want to talk I don’t care that you have a boyfriend” or some such nonsense. Guys, imagine you weigh half your actual weight. Shave 5 inches off your height. Make yourself an instant beacon of glaring brightness in an otherwise dark street, immediately attracting the attention of everything bigger than you. Now, imagine your ENTIRE life, these bigger something’s have shouted at you, grabbed you, followed you to your house and forced their friendly conversation on you. What would you do to prevent them from getting too close?

It’s unsettling to think that other “excuses” will not deflect this unwanted attention but it’s a sad truth and defense move on all women’s part.  Another males “possession” is respected out of respect for that male. I could never simply not want your conversation…I have to be previously engaged with another male and therefore my excuse is a valid one. It’s sad and shameful but I think I can speak for many women that we have played this trump card many times over our young lives. Guys, please take some gentle advice and leave her alone if she says so. She doesn’t need any excuse to not want to talk but if she gives one, heed it.

There is a realistic part of me that does feel badly for many guys who are immediately vilified because of their predecessors. I’m sure some of you are generally nice guys, honestly just wanting some conversation but the next time you approach a woman please think of her side. Our whole lives we’ve been taught to fear men one on one. We’ve been told not to get into strange cars, always carry pepper spray, never walk alone. Don’t talk to strange men (all men), don’t get involved with men you don’t know (most men). Every pinpoint of anxiety has been carefully balanced on this tipping scale between being taught to FEAR everything we have to someday find and fall in love with. Can you blame women who shy from your friendly chit-chat?

A few weeks ago I went on a trip with my sisters and friends for a bachelorette party. 12 girls. A basic wildfire in a pool of darkness to every moth within 6 miles. Except these moths could kill us in 15 minutes if they so chose. We went out to a bar, had a beer and sat down outside. Wouldn’t you know it within 8 minutes a guy saunters up to our table and wearing his most atrocious shit-eating grin and says “Hello beautiful ladies…which of you are married?” Every hand went into the air. Red Flag, but of course, not being so easily deterred, he stayed just to “talk” expounding upon his charming qualities as a human being. Every girl had the tense body language and terse answers that scream, “Get away from us”.  My defense in these sort of situations is to viscously mock everything the man says until his ego is so beaten he limps away. It rarely works. For twenty minutes he endured my abuse tossed at him about his choice of clothes, his weak handshake, his haircut (all of which, I’d like to say were actually fine). Deeming me “a firecracker” he proceeded to stand behind me in our group of girls and talk to my sister about how nice my hair was. Guys, this may sound like a strange scenario to you but you should know THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. It’s not funny, or cute and it does absolutely nothing to endear you to us. It makes us feel defensive and hyper aware that you’ll follow us home, grab our hands, force yourself upon us in every way we do not want. What would you do in this situation?

Please don’t assume I’m a rare case who has come across some mentally disturbed men, and that this doesn’t happen to all girls. I have recently seen the hashtag #ALLWOMEN sprouting up on Facebook and Twitter and I cannot think of two single words more appropriate to describe what is happening in “rape culture” right now. (I hate those words too). Yes. ALL WOMEN. Yes it happens every day. To your sisters, and friends and colleagues. When we walk down the street and are catcalled to, when we are alone anywhere really, unwanted attention is thrust upon us because we are indeed alone. I’m not the only one, but yes I have been catcalled to, approached in bars, chased to my font door on one particularly frightening occasion. I am five foot two on a good day without heels. I weigh 140 pounds. 90% of men who so chose could hurt me. If my husband took it upon himself he could send me to the emergency room with one backhand. (This will never happen as my husband is a strong, intelligent and loving man) But it is the physical truth.

I’m disgusted and hurt by the stories on the news today. She was “sexually assaulted”. Stalked home…killed. Brutalized. He shot her seven times in the head point blank for “leading him on”. Her skirt was short so she deserved it. She should’ve just said no. No. A word. If only she had known when he had the knife to her throat that no would have made him stop. Ignorance breeds acceptance. Stop acting like this is an okay thing to happen.

Please, guys, be mindful of her when she looks at you with fear in her eyes. Let her know you’re walking behind her on your way home. Jingle your keys. Don’t force your conversation on her just because she’s alone. Don’t assume she’s easy because her skirt is short, or that she owes you anything, because no one owes you anything at all. We all earn what we work hard for, not what is handed to us, or worse taken without consent. Be mindful of the long list of things she has been taught to fear and that you are at the very top. Teach your brothers and friends and sons that making women feel like objects isn’t okay. Teach them to respect women. Maybe, someday, knowledge will breed respect.

#Yesallwomen.

Fire

Today is my mothers birthday. I think she would’ve been 52. It’s a sad revelation that I cant even remember her age because those tiny memories have been buried under the stacks of debris that rose to the surface when she died. When she died I was 18, in Mexico with my friends for Winter Break, drinking too many pina colodas and acting like my life was a party- and that she and all her endless problems had no effect on me anymore. The last time I spoke to her was a long distance phone call when she must have wrestled the receiver from my father’s hands the day before she died. She could’ve been high or she could’ve just been worried.  Aren’t all mothers worried when their teenage daughters run off to Mexico with their boyfriends in tow? She sounded sleepy and in love, the way she always did on the phone. So much is lost in the memories we forget and things we said and did that never come back to us. But I remember some of it. She told me to be safe. To have fun for her. I was so mad that she even had the audacity to try to make my vacation anything about her at all. I hung up the receiver with a tired sigh like I had a million times before. She died the next morning.

Am I old enough now to face the problem she was in life in order to make peace with the shade she is now that’s she’s gone? People hear your mother died when you were young and a look of pity and compassion mars their expression like you’re a little dog left in the rain. That made me angry for so long I didn’t know what to do when people asked about her. I fantasized about making up stories for a woman who was so much glamour personified…the woman she would’ve been had the cards not been stacked against her. The romance of trips to Paris and the clothes stacked like magazines in the huge closet. The frilly lace pieces of lingerie she kept in baskets all testimony to a dying star. An ember burning bright then extinguished by her own selfishness disguised as the need to be loved. What do we do with the tangle of pain and hope and love left behind? What does anyone do when you hope in the idea of an afterlife if only to say I wish things could’ve been different. Is it even worth saying after so much time? I hope in the idea of hope, like I have so many times before.

I like to think I’ve come to an understanding of my mother at the very least. That her ghost has hung like a veil over my shoulder since I was young…even while she was alive. She was drowning in her own self pity for so long her fantasies were in fact her reality. When the drugs and alcohol exacerbated the deterioration she was simply sick. Migraines and head colds and insomnia packed up behind towers of prescription bottles like orange beacons on the bedside table. Beacons to light her way home. I want to feel like I am mature enough to see through the lies and pain in order to see the person she saw. Someone sick and in love with love but never having received enough, no matter who loved her in the end. Beautiful but scarred. Mature but naïve. Selflessly kind yet overwhelmingly selfish. A perfect paradox; my mother.

And yet here when I think I’ve come so far I remember her more fondly than anything else, despite the gaping wounds she inflicting with the touch of a finger. The slice of a word she’d hurl into the air like confetti until it crashed down around us like glass exploding. She was still my mother. She was indeed one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever known. She was whimsical and adventurous. She was so giving it crippled people to see kindness on the face of a Goddess. She was set in motion by her own ability to make people believe the things she wanted them to and fueled by the honest to god truth that people would always go out of their way for her. She convinced men to give her presents and women to give her friendship. She was a fire. Both arrestingly beautiful and simultaneously destructive. That is how I best remember her. Burning, burning, burning. But so bright, it was blinding white light.

Happy birthday Mom. I do miss you and in my own way, I love you very much.