Jezebel's Original Jessica: So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish!

I’ve come to the conclusion that saying goodbye to a beloved and trusted colleague never gets any easier, and such is the case with departing editor Jessica Grose.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Fashion

Sitting down to write my "goodbye" post to you all was really tricky: What to say? What is there to say? I found no easy answers. But the last time I tried to do some meaning-making about my time at Jezebel, I didn't have the opportunity to share it with you all, so I thought I would take this opportunity now to do just that. Back in late March I was invited to speak at my alma mater, Tufts University, as part of a symposium they were hosting on the topic "Fashion And Its Discontents." My talk was, primarily, about you all, our readers, and what I think are the questions we have tried to ask — in particularly about how we choose to dress ourselves — together and what that process has led me to conclude. Starting below, I've posted excerpts from my speech (which was, I hope you will be proud to know, entitled: "'Victoria Motherfucking Beckham Is Here' And Other Stories I Never Thought I Would Write.' I was told by the symposium's organizer, a former professor of mine, that I am the first person to have used the word "motherfucking" in an academic lecture on the Tufts campus). I hope that maybe some parts of it will ring true for you, and that you will continue to share your feedback with me. It's you all who have made this experience so wildly unique and wildly incredible. More »

Pole Dancing, Prada, & Project Runway: A Year In The Life Of Jezebel Jen

It's that time: Jezebel Jennifer's last day of work. Earlier this week, when announcing her departure and upcoming arrival at the offices of Ralph Lauren, I mentioned a little of what I like about her. Now, I'd like to call attention to a little of what I liked that she wrote. For over a year, Jennifer has been writing our "Rag Trade" fashion-industry roundup, and last night when doing a search, I was shocked to find that she has done the column a staggering 300 times. (She's also done thousands of "Snap Judgments", and according to my calculations, over 50 posts on her beloved Project Runway alone.) More »

You Can Take The Girl Out Of Jezebel, But You Can't Take The Jezebel Out Of The Girl

There's no adequately poetic way to put this, so I'll just jump right in: Jennifer Gerson is leaving us at the end of this week. Jennifer, as some of our old-timers know, has been with the site since virtually the very beginning: In early February 2007, she answered an "ad" I put up on our brother site, Gawker, looking for writers for the as-yet-untitled site I was working on, then known simply as 'Girly Gawker'. At the time she wrote me, she was toiling away as an assistant to Elle editor-in-chief Robbie Myers, and although I was intrigued by her pedigree — Elle, Sephora, NBC, the office of Senator Hillary Clinton — it was the intelligent, thoughtful yet energetic tone of her email that had me, if not at 'hello', at this: "I believed whole-heartedly then, and still, in a more idealistic place, believe now, that women's magazines just might be the site of large-scale revolution, if the people who make them ever choose them to be. Why couldn't stories on, say, universal health care run alongside a fashion news piece explaining the most recent grunge revival? As I said in my interview [with Elle], 'I have been reading Maureen Dowd religiously since the 6th grade and I really, really love my shoes.'" More »

"Aspirationalism" Is Just Code For Racism, Conde Nast

Hey guys! More big news! Dodai and Anna have left us. No one is really talking to me. The new owners say they want me to stay, they just want to "edit" me a bit, and by "edit," they are saying, they mean more than my copy. "You may have to shower," is how this Daphne woman put it. Smell ya later, Daph! So anyway, Dodai and Anna were not a "good fit." No seriously, people actually do actually say that, as she did, on a conference call just now. So here is my theory: they were fired because they are black. There is a vain side of me that briefly wondered whether Conde saw in my exquisite internet photos the potential for Total Fashion Aspirationalism. They could give me a makeover, like in the movies! And then I could write a brutally honest tell-all about the process; and that could be a movie! And I would get rich, because the movie would have an excellent makeover montage! More »