graphic by gillian kwok
She’s rolling up her pantyhose and tucking in her flip phone to the beat of KT Tunstall, and she’s about to take a cab to her office in One WTC. As a child, my visions of womanhood had been colored by images of hectic cover shoots and cocktail-infused functions, visions that I now can pinpoint to an exact niche born out of late 90s yuppie aspirations and 2000s financial precarity: The New York Magazine Woman.
Few are unfamiliar with the giants of the genre. Movies like The Devil Wears Prada, 13 Going on 30, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days are certified classics; on the TV side, shows like Sex and the City and Ugly Betty need no introduction. Though journalism was the unifying feature, the genre showed clear favor for fashion journalism (or trend-adjacent, such as sex or gossip columns) in particular.
Though I’ve always had a proclivity for writing, the genre propelled the editorial world to another level of aspiration through its portrayals of the glitz and glamour in the lives of the industry’s women. It makes me wonder, why do these films choose to depict journalism at all, let alone fashion journalism? If swank or prestige is the answer, why not depict women in sectors like finance or real estate? The easy answer of course, is the way that industries are gendered. Especially in an era as openly misogynistic as the early 2000s, being a woman in lucrative but masculine-coded industries like tech or, I don’t know, weapon’s manufacturing (god bless America?) wouldn’t have had the same social currency as being a woman in fashion.
But that answer feels too easy. It’s feminine-coded yes, but how exactly? Superficially it can be interpreted that the world of dress has always been tied to the feminine sphere. But despite its countless issues, there’s something oddly liberating about being a woman in fashion, specifically where it intersects with writing. There’s something undeniably public about both fashion and writing. Fashion, in the way that your physical presentation is the first thing people assess about you; and writing, in the way that being published is a clear act of taking a stance. You announce yourself, make your presence known. Not only through your click-clacking shoes (“Are you wearing the Ch—” “The Chanel boots? Yes I am.”) or calf length fur coat, but also through your scorching op-eds about the current happenings in popular culture.
Fashion journalism is presented to be a space where women are allowed to be arbiters. Where for once, our authority on what we specialize in isn’t questioned. But despite the authority afforded to her, The Magazine Woman has to choose, the way all women are made to eventually. She has a wardrobe full of couture and her weekends booked with gallery openings, but she’s always losing some sense of self or the other. She may be an arbiter, but she can’t seem to keep a boyfriend, and half her friends enviously seethe behind her back.
She must make a choice: The Devil Wears Prada’s Andy must choose between excelling at her job and her sanity, 13 Going on 30’s Jenna must choose between her childhood best friend and a litter of envious but glamorous friends and Adonis-with-peas-for-brains boy toys, Ugly Betty’s Betty must choose between her unique but oft-misunderstood personal style and being accepted in her line of work. These decisions are exacerbated with the way that loneliness and the city are inextricable. Is the successful but hyper-individual woman the ultimate aspiration? Free of the inconvenient chains of true love, a tight-knit family, ride-or-die friendships, and overall self-alignment to be able to laser focus on climbing the corporate ladder in her Manolos until she lands at the very top, blisters and all?
Though the genre is more than two decades old, I see the way it’s reflected in the work ethic of those who grew up with it as children and young adults. Though it’s been seeing a steep decline in appeal (and incline in mockery), the 2010s Girlboss culture can be seen as a more recent incarnation of the aughts’ Magazine Woman. There’s something that feels more insidious with The Girlboss because she seems to have it all, whilst though unjustly romanticized, The Magazine Woman appears honest in her eventual undoing. The shit storm of affairs, backstabbing and substance abuse come naturally in the eventual course of her character arc. She falls, and she learns that she cannot be everything, and she gets back to her feet more herself than she was at the beginning. The Girlboss on the other hand, is advertised as a shiny cog in the capitalist machine that moves in tandem with her spotless personal life. She journals, does yogalates, and is incessantly honest about her mental health journey on social media.
Though The Girlboss annoys me, I can’t help but sympathize with her. The Magazine Woman occupied an era of aspirational womanhood before the recession, one where she was able to attach her career to a company or institution. Sure, one of her primary woes is that her personal life becomes badly affected by her work obsession, but there was a clearer delineation between the personal and the professional. The post-crash Girlboss on the other hand has no choice but to hustle. Her work and life are inextricably linked, as the dire state of the economy forces her to monetize almost all aspects of her life. Unlike the way The Magazine Woman has to choose between love and work, The Girlboss has no choice. Her life is her work.
Where is a girl to meet in the middle?
At the end of her spiral, The Magazine Woman sheds her old skin of couture and superficial relationships and finds herself at the foot of something new. Andy breaks up with her shitty ex and starts the journalism job she’d always wanted, Jenna marries the person that always had her back, and Betty leaves New York altogether to make a name for herself in London. Before the credits roll The Magazine Woman learns to choose herself, but she’s only able to arrive by virtue of the lessons she learned in editorial pandemonium. I can only hope that The Girlboss—and whatever generational iteration comes next—will learn to choose herself too.