“People who often want to be in fashion magazines love magazines, but they love them to the exclusion of the rest of the culture in the world. They do media programs or communication courses [in college]. I always say, get a real education in a discipline with some history and weight behind it. Be an art history major. Whatever you’re doing, do it to the utmost. People waste a lot of time thinking about the social operations of things and waste a lot of time growing up and half-paying attention to what they’re reading in college or high school. I would say: Whatever you’re doing, pay attention when you’re doing it. Magazines reward wide-ranging curiosity and intelligence. People that want to consume information at a fast and ferocious level do well at magazines. To be really good at fashion, it’s not about what you wear. Looking good in clothes is fairly interesting, but that doesn’t help you.”
—
Sally Singer, editor in chief of T, former fashion news/features director of Vogue, UC Berkeley undergrad, Yale grad (ahem, brilliant)
(via mediabistro.com)
“Someday, sometime, you will be sitting somewhere. A berm overlooking a pond in Vermont. The lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset. A seat on the subway. And something bad will have happened: You will have lost someone you loved, or failed at something at which you badly wanted to succeed. And sitting there, you will fall into the center of yourself. You will look for some core to sustain you. And if you have been perfect all your life and have managed to meet all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be. I don’t want anyone I know to take that terrible chance. And the only way to avoid it is to listen to that small voice inside you that tells you to make mischief, to have fun, to be contrarian, to go another way. George Eliot wrote, ‘It is never too late to be what you might have been.’ It is never too early, either.”
— Anna Quindlen, Being Perfect
I have ambivalent feelings about The Help but this was my favorite part:
- Mr. Blackly [interviewing Skeeter for a job at the newspaper]: Murrah High Editor, Ole Miss Rebel Rouser Editor, double major. Woohoo. Junior League editor. Damn girl, don't you have any fun?
- Skeeter: Is that important?
“We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving… We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins… We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive are our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, “You can be anything,” and we heard, “You have to be everything.”
—
Courtney Martin (via air-light-time-space)
I guess what frightens me, is how much this hits home.
“I fell in love and my eyes couldn’t read.”
—
Columbia University English professor Julie Crawford’s answer to “What’s the craziest student excuse/extension story you’ve heard?”
(via Bwog)
“It is a common practice of young ladies who avail themselves of their college’s Junior Year Abroad program to refer irreverently to the experience as their ‘Junior Affair Abroad.’”
— Dean MacCannell, The Tourist
“The United States makes the rest of the world seem authentic; California makes the rest of the United States seem authentic.”
—
Dean MacCannell, The Tourist
Just one of many choice quotations from my reading for my anthropology of consumption class.
“I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stumped by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, ‘Hi.’ They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.”
— Augusten Burrough
“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
“Do men say you are ‘intimidating?’ Good! Men are not intimidated enough!”
— E. Jean Caroll (advice columnist for ELLE)
“Thank you very much, and this means a lot to me because I’ve always wanted to win a Teen’s Choice Award, and when I was a teen, I was not a teen’s choice. So, all of you teenagers out there, who are not a teen’s choice, look at this [points at self]. It’s never too late. Hang on, and love yourself, and be kind to one another.”
— Ellen DeGeneres at the 2011 Teen’s Choice Awards
“What makes for happiness in the fashion industry?
If it’s happiness you’re looking for, I suggest you try another profession.”
If it’s happiness you’re looking for, I suggest you try another profession.”
— Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside
“In Europe, sex sells. In America, it’s hair.”
—
Glenda Bailey, editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar (via WWD)
I’d add that hair is sex.
