She’s a slut. A homewrecker. She’s basic. She’s a guy’s girl, damaged goods. Oh, she’s asking for it dressed like that. She’s crazy; a lonely spinster; a drama queen. An angry Black woman, a nasty woman. A stupid bitch.

The list of casual everyday insults hurled at and between women and girls is vast; it’s almost impossible to calculate exactly how much our cultural vernacular has been poisoned with misogyny and misogynoir. But within the last year or so, an entirely new insult began to take shape amongst girls, going viral on the internet. It’s manifested everywhere, from public opinion deeming certain women homewreckers without insight into the inner workings of their relationship to even being cross-referenced in the Tate McRae song, “we’re not alike.”

The insult? “She’s not a girl’s girl.”

Almost unanimously, 2023 was declared the year of the girl. Or at least, the year girlhood was sold to us. Insert short-lived -girl trend aesthetic and trendy cultural phenomena here, and then give it a tombstone. Put bows on it, make it Barbie pink, put it in a Stanley Cup, and then add more ribbon and lace. Didn’t you hear? Girls are the box office. They make up a $31 trillion economy. Girls overall, are now more college-educated, and narrowly, single women own more homes than their male counterparts. Young women and girls are responsible for top-grossing tours, and films, and record beauty sales. All while we live in a dissociative post-Roe era.

Girlhood is understood as a personal bildungsroman, legally ending once a girl turns eighteen, but lately, more and more, girlhood is being adapted into something more conceptually expansive and financially potent, especially for young women online who are living through their 20s, 30s, and even past the time of menopause. Girlhood is being collectively celebrated and subsequently mourned by young women as a stage of life that we chronically self-mythologize upon with nostalgia. Especially when we call women girls.

So, what’s a “girl’s girl”? And could this insult be another form of girl-shaming?

“A ‘girl’s girl’ is a girl who prioritizes her female friendships, or she’s more girl oriented—it’s a priority rather than a ‘guy’s girl’ or a ‘pick-me girl’ [who] is the girl who is not like other girls,” says Dr. Kate Phelps, a sociology professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of a forthcoming book researching digital girlhood. The problematic “pick-me girl” trope (a.k.a. the cool girl monologue from Gone Girl), is a label that reeks of internalized misogyny. The insult “‘she’s not a girl’s girl’ is the latest reiteration of slut-shaming,” Dr. Phelps tells ELLE.com.

It is undeniable how the insult distinguishes said girl as “anti-girl,” while also veiling itself as an all-encompassing term that embraces girl power and sisterhood as a whole. The insult is an oxymoron for how it empowers the plaintiff as a pure pro-girl while disempowering the defendant as a party already proven guilty as a dirty anti-girl. As if there is a perfectly moral girl who exists as a proprietor of intersectional feminism for all. On TikTok, #girlsgirl has garnered over 1.2 billion views and counting and is the ultimate compliment of a perfected female allyship. There’s nothing wrong with girls supporting girls, but there is a component to this particular insult that feels eerily exclusionary, by deeming which kind of girl is allowed access to the sisterhood, depending on what kind of girl she happens to be.

The “girl’s girl” and “guy’s girl” cultural phenomenon is not new, and if we take a walk down memory lane to grade school, these were often identity signifiers used to describe whether a girl was a “girly girl” or a “tomboy.” But it’s problematic when stereotypical gender expressions become a rigid social binary that defines an individual’s ethical character and personality, because it discounts the nuanced complexities that are innate to girlhood altogether. “Girls are quite dangerous. [If they weren’t] we wouldn’t attempt to control them as much as we do through all of these different mechanisms.We wouldn’t try to control their bodies, their behaviors, this idea that their reputation is at stake, or your worth is attached to your body and what you look like. Girls are constantly navigating, and sifting through these competing demands, and trying to figure out who they are,” says Dr. Phelps.

When “she’s not a girl’s girl” is thrown around, it’s used to reference a woman or girl who seems to prioritize male validation at the expense of other women and girls. Frequently, the insult further perpetuates the idea that said girl is “anti-girl” because she will steal your boyfriend, she doesn’t respect boundaries, and she’s looking to compete with you. And in some cases, there really are some girls who put down other girls for male attention; I myself am guilty of participating, and hope there’s repentance for my much younger self who didn’t know better.

But would we ever collectively attribute the same social tag onto young men and boys, and determine “he’s not a boy’s boy” as a judge of individual virtue and a measure of gendered loyalty?

Most recently, in the viral rap feud between Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion, Minaj has been labeled as “not a girl’s girl,” and a “mean girl,” as she advocates and defends her brother, who was convicted of predatory sexual assault, and husband, a registered sex offender, while simultaneously poking fun at Megan for being a victim of domestic abuse.

There’s a distinctive difference when the phrase labels someone who condones and encourages behavior that puts women and girls at risk within the patriarchy versus labeling someone who simply might not express their girlhood in the stereotypical feminine sense.

The problem is that this difference gets lost in the cultural lexicon, especially in the zeitgeist of social media, when there’s new girl-related vernacular going viral daily. In this seemingly post #MeToo era, girls are the vanguards of online culture. In the “digital epoch that we are existing within, our meanings around who a girl is and what a girl is cannot be separated out from digital culture—they are embedded and constitute each other,” says Dr. Phelps. In an essay for Vox, Rebecca Jennings recognized these very online “-girl” trends as the repackaging of womanhood. She argues that these aren’t trends, but marketing campaigns, where “women on TikTok are…analyzing the data and determining which cute name for an otherwise uninteresting habit or aesthetic has the most likelihood of going viral.” Similarly, what if saying, “she’s not a girl’s girl,” is just the repackaging of internalized misogyny at its worst, and haphazard hashtag female solidarity at its best?

Last year, Sara Youngblood Gregory wrote for Jezebel about The Unsettling Rise of the Anti-Pick Me Girl, writing about the sweeping online critique of the ‘pick-me girl,’ “The critique has morphed so much that it has led to the strange, meta rise of the ‘anti–pick-me’: a girl who insists she is definitely not like other ‘pick-mes’ but still revels in the same put-downs against other women. Except this time, it’s in the name of feminist empowerment rather than male attention.”

It seems the “pick-me” to “anti-pick-me” pipeline is a familiar parallel to the anti-girl critique in the “girl’s girl,” stratosphere. It’s just modified and restyled in how we further brand girlhood to each other with #empowerment while simultaneously punching down on other girls.

“She’s not a girl’s girl,” is a cautionary tale that shrinks the paradoxes of girlhood into a narrow, and limiting moral code. As much as it’s a warning, and expression of support between certain girls (especially in cases where girls are receiving the brunt of internalized misogyny and put downs), it’s become the worst insult for how it can also enable rampant girl-shaming while treating girls as two-dimensional either-or caricatures.

Maybe that’s why Greta Gerwig’s monologues continue to resonate us into tears, as America Fererra put the impossible and contradictory task that’s asked of women and girls in Barbie, “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.” The “she’s not a girl’s girl” insult is another complicated knot within girlhood, that twists and tangles us together, while also pulling us apart.

Maria Santa Poggi is a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Teen Vogue, Rolling Stone, InStyle, and Harper’s Bazaar, amongst other publications. She currently is an MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College.

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My first job

My first job was working for my family. They have a plumbing and lighting business in Vancouver—it’s a very immigrant-family business story. On the weekends, my sisters and I would have to go and help out. On some days, I would answer the phone, take care of orders, and call customers to let them know their toilets were ready for pickup—things of that nature. And then I would clean the showroom, so the products wouldn’t get dusty.

My worst job

I was rebelling a lot in high school and just didn’t want to work for my parents, so I decided to work at the mall for a Canadian women’s clothing store. I just didn’t love doing that. I didn’t love folding all of the clothes; I didn’t love cleaning out the changing rooms or cleaning stained clothes. I quickly realized that I had a great opportunity working for my family and that I was learning a lot, so I decided to go back. It was a great lesson.

What led me to start Venus et Fleur

My then-boyfriend, now-husband—who was a very new boyfriend at the time—sent me flowers for Valentine’s Day. I was living in Vancouver, and he was living in New York, and what I received wasn’t what he ordered. He was disappointed with the experience, of course, and his gesture couldn’t get across. We realized there was not a lot of transparency in the floral industry and that you didn’t know where things were coming from, so we decided to do it ourselves. We wanted to create a brand—not just be a florist.

How we stumbled upon our Eternity Roses

It’s kind of a funny story. We were buying flowers from the New York flower market through a broker and were trying to figure out ways to have our classic, long-stem roses last longer, so they could ship to the customer in great quality. That was out of the broker’s wheelhouse, so he said, “Let me connect you with the farm and see what they can do for you,” and the farm was working on a new sector where they were preserving roses. We had never heard about that, so we went down to meet with them in Ecuador and convinced them that we should take over the rights and the exclusivity to bring them to the market. It was all very serendipitous and fell into our lap. That’s how the Eternity Roses were born.

On running a business with my husband

We have completely different strengths and weaknesses, and we complement each other really well. In the beginning, we made an agreement that we wouldn’t cross each other—we would collaborate without taking over the other’s decision-making process, and that still works for us today. Another reason this is such a great partnership is that it’s really lonely being an entrepreneur. Having someone next to you who also believes in the same vision and dream just makes it that much more exciting and fun. I’m really grateful that I get to do what I love and do it alongside him.

What it’s like to come from a family of entrepreneurs

It’s been super inspiring to watch my parents build their business. They started with little retail stores, and now, they manufacture their own bathtubs, sinks, and more. They didn’t know anything about their industry and paved the way. That instilled a level of courage in us; if there’s something we want, we have to go out there and get it. That’s been a guiding light for me.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned since launching my company

There are many things we want to do as entrepreneurs, and you never want to take “no” for an answer. That said, I think it’s better to do less and do it really, really well than to do a lot in a mediocre way.

When the Kardashians first posted about us

It was such an insane experience, but at the time, we did not plan properly. We didn’t have the right amount of units in stock, and when they posted about our brand, our site was not shoppable. We had nothing to sell, so we weren’t able to capitalize on it. It did, however, build the legitimacy of the business. At that moment, we realized we had a true company on our hands, and we needed to bring on talented people to help us scale it.

Where I see Venus et Fleur going next

I see our company as a luxury lifestyle brand, and there’s a lot more we’re going to do now that we’ve launched our home category. I think we’re also going to go global soon—we’re taking our time with it, but it’s definitely in the works.

On manifesting Forbes’ “30 Under 30”

I’m a big manifester. I love to journal and watch things come to fruition. One of the things I used to write in my journal was that I wanted to be listed on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list. So when it happened, it was really emotional for both me and my husband. For my parents, they couldn’t even grasp how incredible it was. It made me feel like I was doing something really well.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dale Arden Chong is the Senior Fashion Commerce Editor at ELLE.com. Previously, she was an editor at MensHealth.com and has written for Who What Wear, GLAMOUR, The Coveteur, and more. She loves fashion, food, and art, among other things—but her greatest love is K-pop idol V of BTS. 

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At 7:48 P.M., I texted a friend who asked me how my first day of work went: No time to even pee.

I thought it was the best job in the world.

I was the sole assistant to the billionaire founder of the hottest hedge fund on Wall Street. My boss, let’s call him James, said he cared about ethics. My recruiter had told me that by all accounts, James was the nicest, and I was to manage his life.

I had spent much of my first day sitting across from James in his office, listening to him explain things to me and nodding my head. One nod after each of the ninetysomething responsibilities listed in my job description, which demanded that I be kind, proactive, sensitive, and efficient—above all, positive!

Could I be a lion in ambition and a gazelle in poise?

Three years before, I had dropped out of Wharton, worried that I’d been wasting my life. I grew up with very little—my parents were graduate students from China, working odd jobs to pay for tuition. In college, I’d majored in math and finance; I craved financial independence. After graduating, I worked as an analyst and was soon making over $300K a year. Yet the more I was surrounded by wealth, the more I found myself recoiling from it all. I couldn’t pinpoint why. But I knew I wanted to change careers. I started taking classes in philosophy, literature, creative writing. While I was in New York taking a summer fiction workshop, a recruiter reached out to me.

That’s how I ended up back in finance, although in a different capacity than before, at a job in which there were tests, more tests, and even more tests. Could I get Michael Bloomberg on the phone? Could I find a mansion on the beach for James and up to seven of his friends so they could go surfing next weekend? Could I have anticipated that, for this trip, he wouldn’t want his default ground transportation—a chauffeured SUV—but rather a rental truck? Could I read his mind?

These questions weren’t rhetorical. Answering them was my job. I succeeded more than I failed, guessed right more than I guessed wrong. But the hardest part of my job was being responsible for what was not enumerated in my job description.

For instance: energy.

One day, I interrupted a meeting to pass James a note. Someone had called with an emergency. As soon as the meeting ended, James summoned me into his office. “Carrie,” he said. “So. Your energy.” Apparently my walk was all wrong. “I need you to walk with more confidence, but also be more easygoing, relaxed, and chill.”

You can imagine my stress level when, a month later, my energy was put to the ultimate test: meeting James’s friend, let’s call her Emma—a style icon, It Girl, and fashion entrepreneur, who sat front row at fashion shows. I was in charge of giving Emma a tour of our offices. I had about 15 minutes.

I have no idea what I did or said in those 15 minutes; the whole time, I was trying to walk with more confidence, sucking in my stomach, my cheeks. After circling the floor, I arrived at our main conference room with a sweeping view of Central Park. Emma stopped. She handed me her phone. “Can you take a photo of me?” she asked, smiling.

I worked. I strove. I tried. I cared. My constant efforts—the financial markets never slept—seemed to be paying off. Emma posted the photo I took of her on Instagram. James gave me increasingly important tasks: writing his speeches, prepping him for meetings, scripting his fireside chats. Three months into the job, around the holidays, James gave me a bonus and a raise. He also gave me a $2,500 gift certificate to SoulCycle, a large Balenciaga tote, and a virgin wool and angora coat from Derek Lam. The most special gift he gave me was tucked inside one of the gift bags, a card with a handwritten note: He believed in me.

I loved my job.

But there were signs. I’d make plans with friends, then cancel at the last minute because something came up at the office. When I didn’t have plans, I’d plop down on my couch, sit in the dark (I had no energy left to turn on the lights), and scroll through Seamless for upwards of an hour, unable to decide on a cuisine. Many nights, I would not eat dinner.

The more out of control I felt in my life, the more I dove into my work. James never yelled. He never threw things at me or made me cry. He once suggested I do an extra week of a juice fast after I told him I had already completed six days of the liquid diet (because I had fallen off a treadmill at work, answering an email while running—I couldn’t exercise and felt unlike myself). James was always pushing me to do more, work faster, be better. He said he wanted to help me succeed.

Private Equity: A Memoir by Carrie Sun

Private Equity: A Memoir by Carrie Sun

And so I was sure my burnout was because of me and not my job. I told myself my job was perfect, I loved my job, even after I spent an evening helping him helicopter into MetLife Stadium from the Hamptons so he could take his daughter to a Taylor Swift concert. I told myself my job was totally doable by one person, I loved my job, even after I noticed how frequently I’d be talking to someone on the phone, with someone else on hold, as a coworker would walk by asking to get in to see James—an emergency!—and I’d check James’s calendar and whisper a new time for the coworker to come back. Seamless was not just our corporate meal solution but a way of life for James. The infrastructure of his days was seamless because we—his COO, his staff at the office and at home, and I—focused on the one and only thing that mattered: work. Faster work. Work that triaged his life and removed all friction for him.

But my work? It was great, so great that I was rewarded with spa days, shopping sprees, and luxury vacations. It was so great that James gifted me an investment in the fund. It was so great that when I, at last, told James about my overwork, about how I felt underwater and couldn’t last another day—this was around my two-year work anniversary—he did not believe me. “Have you tried taking breaks?” he asked.

About the superrich—or at least those like James, who was the hardest-
working person I knew: Their moral rectitude can be genuine, I realized, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. No number of spa days or handbags could turn my job into a sustainable one, because no amount of gifts or perks could satisfy a need that wasn’t being met: to have some control over my days, and thus of my life.

The hardest part of my job, not in the job description: to be superhuman.

Two months before holiday bonuses, I quit.

This article appears in the February 2024 issue of ELLE.

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Carrie Sun was born in China and raised in Michigan. She holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School. She lives in Jersey City with her husband. Private Equity is her first book.

The post Was Working for a Billionaire Worth It? appeared first on NY Fashion Review.

I’ve witnessed plenty of weddings this past year. I’ve seen vows exchanged beneath sprawling live oaks and bridesmaids gliding down flower-strewn aisles under the twinkle of outdoor lights. I’ve witnessed one bride wearing Margiela, a soon-to-be husband in happy tears. I’ve even heard the chatter of reconnected families echo through grand corridors, laughter flowing just like the cocktail hour wine consumed.

Except I wasn’t present at any of these events. Instead, I found myself deeply immersed in a handful of strangers’ wedding days, all thanks to the work of wedding content creators. A fairly new addition to the wedding industrial complex, these vendors produce videos and photos often meant for the couple’s social feeds. One creator, Nina Franco, the visionary behind @thebridalgirly, says the goal is to make anyone—friends, family, strangers scrolling past—feel like they were there on the big day. For couples, it can also be a way to ensure they get the kind of content that Instagram and TikTok algorithms prioritize—and users crave.

Franco is a luxury destination wedding content creator who’s worked on dozens of ceremonies, including Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles’ wedding. But before she started sharing those behind-the-scenes moments from well-known nuptials, she began like any other excited bride: documenting her own engagement and wedding planning process on TikTok in March 2022. At that point, virtually no wedding content creators existed, and when Franco got married in December that same year, it was something she wished she had.

“There were specific TikToks or Instagram shots I wanted to get, and rather than making someone in my family take them, I did it myself by scheduling time on my wedding day to shoot iPhone content,” she explains. Franco’s wedding content quickly gained traction, racking up millions of views; in about half a year, she acquired more than 100,000 Instagram followers, including Biles, who reached out after seeing her on the platform. “People were DMing me like, ‘How did you do that?’ ‘Can I hire you for my wedding?’” She booked her first wedding in Fort Lauderdale in March 2023. Soon, it became her full-time gig, attending and capturing weddings across Italy, France, and the United States. “Every weekend since then has been booked,” Franco says. Along the way, she’s filmed the kinds of videos that feel native to her platforms and her chronically online customers: short-form, viral shots of pasta being cooked in a parmesan wheel at cocktail hour, a couple sharing their first dance, or bridesmaids lip-syncing a scene from Bring It On.

And Franco isn’t the only experiencing this shift in the industry. Emma Haggerty, a New York City-based wedding photographer, says she now feels pressure due to the rising demand for expedited photos and videos. She notes: “While the demand for traditional photography hasn’t necessarily decreased, many brides now desire both or anticipate creatives to work at a rapid pace.”

Nowadays, brides are also looking for something more traditional photographers or videographers might not provide: unedited and unprocessed content. As social media feeds become less curated, users are treating Instagram more casually, using their profiles to highlight small, messy moments, i.e. the kind that wedding content creators record. Think of it like this: While a photographer might snap something that goes on your mantel, a content creator shoots something that goes in your group chat.

“Photographers and videographers usually have a plan for what they’re capturing, and you end up with a set of specific shots,” says Lauren Ladouceur, a wedding and lifestyle creator based in New York City. “But some of the coolest stuff happens unexpectedly, and those are the moments I love to catch.”

Ladouceur also points out that this slice of the wedding industry has remained largely unchanged since the advent of videography, which gained popularity in the 1980s. In an era dominated by online interactions and instant updates, it’s no surprise the industry is finally catching up.

While traditional videographers and photographers can sometimes take up to 12 weeks to send the edited photos and videos, Ladouceur and Franco can serve up their content, which can be thousands of unedited photos and videos, within two days or less. Everything is just a text or an AirDrop away. Sometimes, they even provide content immediately by logging into a bride’s account and posting as them on their wedding day.

To achieve this, wedding content creators will bring their own equipment, including lighting, backdrops, and, Ladourceur jokes, plenty of portable chargers. And just as a caterer or a wedding planner may execute your vision, these creators also want couples to be involved behind the scenes. Ladouceur says some of her clients provide references or creative input, whether it’s asking her to grab candid, natural moments or filming choreographed dances for TikTok.

Pricing for a content creator is usually comparable to a standard wedding photographer, which costs, on average, $2,600; according to The Wall Street Journal, most couples are spending “just over $1,000 to north of $3,500” on a content creator. But, like the content, packages are typically flexible and customizable, tailored to each bride’s needs.

Kristina Rodulfo, a beauty and lifestyle influencer (and former ELLE.com editor), saw hiring a content creator as invaluable, because it granted her the ability to be “100 percent present” with her husband and their loved ones on their day. “As a content creator, I am typically the one always whipping out my phone to capture everything,” she says. “While it comes with the job, that also means I’m sometimes pulled out of special moments instead of fully experiencing them in real-time.”

Rodulfo brought up the idea of hiring a wedding content creator to her now-husband, who was completely on board: “He understood that I’d want to create wedding-focused content, sharing takeaways and favorite details afterward.”

When they got married in April 2023 at Kualoa Ranch (famously a filming site for Jurassic Park, Lost, Jumanji, and more), Rodulfo was able to get all the content she wanted via Stacey Moran of The BTS Bride—including clips of her lip-syncing to Beyoncé and her bridal party reenacting a scene from The Princess Diaries—while still enjoying time with her friends and family.

Those were also the types of videos Zoe Hoffman saw on #WeddingTikTok while she was planning her own party. She stumbled upon Franco’s page, @thebridalgirly, and loved her work’s romantic and natural feel. Though she’s not an influencer like Rodulfo, she admits that she wanted to feel like one—but assumed that kind of content would come with a hefty price tag.

Hoffman had a more intimate wedding with about 75 people in Hot Springs, Arkansas. She wanted to capture the closeness of having her family and friends together for the weekend, and she desired something organic—candids that felt authentic and expressed raw emotions and interactions, much like a friend snapping blurry and spontaneous photos during a night out. “But I didn’t want a family member or friend to have to do it,” she says, noting that she wanted her guests to enjoy the day and feel unplugged. So when she discovered Franco’s services cost $1,800-2,600 for wedding day content or $4,200-5,000 for a wedding weekend, she thought it seemed entirely reasonable.

To some, budgeting thousands of dollars for something that exists primarily on the internet or your device might seem outrageous. For Hoffman, who says she gets to now relive her wedding over and over again, it was priceless.

Because of Franco, Hoffman has photos—both on her phone and on her profile—of the grand estate where she got married this past October. There are snapshots from her rehearsal dinner, an intimate affair adorned with mirror balls and chandeliers. A toast was given, and a tear was shed. When I go to her page, I can feel the anticipation in the short, spliced videos she posts from the evening. “I couldn’t have been happier with how they turned out,” Hoffman says. “I’m just so grateful.” I give the post a “like” and keep scrolling for more.

Morgan Sullivan is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer covering everything from health and relationships to fashion and beauty. Her work can also be seen in The Cut, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and more. She’s a big fan of these things (in no particular order): vintage silk slip dresses, giving unsolicited life advice, and Taylor Swift’s entire discography. 

The post Here Comes the Bride, Followed by Her Content Creator appeared first on NY Fashion Review.

This was a deeply confusing sensation because, like most people, I hate burpees. But for three years, I’d been cautious about how I moved my body: I’d navigated a miscarriage, fertility struggles, a healthy pregnancy, breastfeeding complications, diastasis recti, and a pregnancy that included an ultrasound scare at 20 weeks. For three years (and really, a lifetime before that), it felt as if everyone except me—parents, friends, teachers, fertility doctors, lactation consultants, random strangers on the street—had some mandate for how I needed to move. It would take me another year to realize it, but a desire to recklessly slam my body into the floor was the initial hint that I’d arrived at a life stage where—when it came to my body—the only opinion I’d care about was mine.

Like most women, I’d received a litany of instructions throughout my pre-teen years and well into adulthood. Some were subliminal; others were direct:

• Plug the bleeding.
• Contain your breasts.
• Shave the hair.
• Stay thin.
• Have curves—but not too many curves.
• Work out, but only do cardio or lift 3-pound weights. Anything more and you’ll get “bulky.”
• Don’t do anything sexual. But don’t be a prude.
• Wow, you’re almost 30? Have you thought about having kids?
• You don’t want kids? You’ll regret that.
• You do want kids? You should get on that.
• Your egg reserves are low? Maybe you should have had kids sooner.
• Oh, you had a miscarriage? It just wasn’t meant to be.
• Should you be doing that while pregnant? Or that? Don’t eat that! Or move that way!
• Have a natural birth. Have an epidural. Get a midwife. That’s dangerous!
• Breastfeed your baby. Hire someone to help with the baby. Buy better baby products. Why would you spend your money so recklessly?
• Lose the baby weight. Lose it faster. Here, wear this waist trainer. Fit back into your pre-baby jeans. Don’t be so vain; you’re a mother now. Go to the gym. How selfish of you to go to the gym. You should be home with your kids.
• Go back to work. Wow, you seem career-driven. How does your husband feel about that? Do your kids miss you?
• Your entire identity can’t be “mother.” But wait, who’s watching the kids?

So when my body initially failed to accomplish its prescribed adult job of supporting a pregnancy, I wondered what was wrong with it—what was wrong with me. My body felt foreign, weak, and broken. I invited a team of fertility doctors and nurses to tell me how to use this body as a tool to conceive, and I followed their instructions. I became pregnant twice and delivered two children. After each pregnancy, I tried to “bounce back,” because I’d been told to do so.

Then, the year I turned 40, my youngest daughter reached the end of her infant phase. I started to notice that—while everyone now had an opinion about how I should control my daughters’ bodies, from magically halting public tantrums to forcing them into winter coats on the first chilly day of the season—the mandates on what to do with my body had slowly dried up. Or, perhaps, I’d simply stopped paying attention: I only had the bandwidth to weigh the opinions of two people, and they only cared about whether I had the strength to push the swings to their exact specifications.

I began to realize that, after decades of worrying over whether my body looked or acted the way it was “meant” to, I no longer wanted anyone else in charge. I can’t pinpoint the exact turning point; maybe it was the realization that I’d spent nearly half my life bending to the input of others, or the fact that I was suddenly gifted the chance to stop my children from making my mistakes. If I was so focused on someone else’s beliefs, if I only moved my body the way someone else told me to, what message would I be sending to my daughters? By changing my own perception of myself, could I somehow stop the cycle?

One morning, as I watched my daughter struggle to carry a heavy box of Magna-Tiles across her play mat, I fought the urge to swoop in and help her. And I thought, Well, fuck that.

Because what I wanted for myself, in this new stage of life, was actually what I wanted for her: to become strong. I craved strength in every sense of the word: the power of confidence—mental strength—and the pleasure of kindness—emotional strength. But I wanted to be visibly strong, too, my muscles sending the clear message that I no longer gave a shit if I fit into societal tropes of “femininity.” Physical strength would allow me to take up space in the world, and to be capable of caring for my kids for that much longer. I could pick them up when they needed comfort; carry them over that last hill of a hike when they were too tired; keep up with them when they decided our casual stroll was now a sprint. Strength and endurance training would become my own private protest.

I was thinking of this newfound mission when I reached out to Amanda Thebe—author of Menopocalypse and co-founder of Nyah Health, a virtual health platform for menopausal women in Canada—whose perspective on this time of life I admire. In addition to being a fierce advocate for removing the stigma attached to menopause, she’s also a firm believer in the power of lifting weights, especially as women get older.

“I was reading something recently about the way our brain changes through perimenopause, and it sort of rebounds and regrows into this big, fat, juicy state, post-menopause,” Thebe says. “Our brains see this change in empathy and resiliency, and they’re literally saying, Fuck that noise. I’m going to lift heavy shit. I don’t care what anyone thinks. I don’t care what I look like or what anyone thinks I should look like. I just think it [induces] a calmness. I can’t even describe it any other way.”

While I was likely a few years away from perimenopause, “calmness” (mixed with a healthy dose of ire) was the perfect way to describe how I’d started to feel. In the year following my youngest daughter’s birth, my strength training was focused on “losing the baby weight,” a goal I hated even as I desperately reached for it. Now, when I stepped into the gym with the new goal of, simply, strength, I found that I felt more at ease in my body than ever before. I was discovering the power of what author and personal trainer Laura Khoudari wrote about in her book, Lifting Heavy Things: interoception, the way we feel sensation and movement inside our body (versus proprioception, the sense of where our bodies are in space).

“In order to use your muscles, you have to feel them,” Khoudari says. “Interoception is the key to being good at lifting, but also cultivating a relationship with yourself where you begin to understand your wants and needs—from very basic things, to things that we think of as more abstract, like boundaries and feelings.”

I could suddenly sense all my body might be able to achieve. I could see the world less as a collection of threats that might mock or judge or reject me, and more as a series of beckoning challenges: Could I lift that giant rock over there? Could I save someone in danger if I had to? My muscles started to grow, and I looked for ways to show them off. Dresses that had once zipped easily now fought a battle against my lats. Only a few years ago, that stuck zipper might have destroyed my self-confidence, sending me into a dieting cycle. This time, I just chose to buy something that fit.

Now, I try to use words like “strong” and “powerful” to describe myself, and my daughters have begun to echo that language. (The other day, I caught them flexing their biceps at the breakfast table.) When I offer to help them move something heavy, they brush me off by insisting, “I’m strong enough, Mommy.” That language filters into who they are as people, too. They understand that strength doesn’t start or stop with their lifting prowess. Nor is their value tied to their physical ability. But autonomy—how they choose to use their bodies, and whose opinions about them matter—is theirs to wield. I know that, as they get older, outside opinions about how my children should look or act will begin to eclipse my own. But I hope I’ve built a foundation of confidence that allows them to stand firm in all their radiant strength.

Leaning into this pursuit of strength, in its many nuanced forms, showed me that no one’s perception would ever matter more than my own. And for the first time in my life, I know exactly how my body is meant to exist.

The post I’m Done Apologizing for Being a Strong Woman appeared first on NY Fashion Review.

This reading was somewhere between Marriage Number One (in which, two years in, my husband realized he was gay) and Marriage Number Two (in which, 14 years in, my husband realized he was just not that into me).

Apparently I’d been a woman in every lifetime (rare) and I could have children if I wanted (I’d had plenty of children over the centuries)—but my job in this lifetime was to learn to love and be loved.

That reading was a gift…only in that it was gifted to me by a friend. Otherwise, it was a curse, because as I waded through the rubble of yet another breakup—deleting travel plans from my calendar, putting photos in a folder I won’t stumble upon daily—I am coming to terms with the idea that this lifetime might be a wash.

That’s hard for an optimist to admit.

I am also coming to terms with the idea that I might no longer be qualified to be an optimist. Because here I am, in my fifties, after writing two books about relationships, having my own relationship column in both Glamour and O, The Oprah Magazine, and writing five seasons of Sex and the City, reeling from a breakup that caught me so off-guard it might have put me off dating forever. I feel like I’m going back to square one.

And I was going back to square one. I was about to spend a week in ancient Greece.

“I care about your toe, but I care more about your heart.” That’s what the sympathetic female orthopedic doctor said when I tried to explain why waiting to go to Greece until after my broken toe healed was not an option.

It wasn’t easy to explain. I felt as if the friends, family, and Facebook community who’d been watching the Cindy Chupack show for the past three-plus years about a recently divorced fiftysomething who met a great guy on a plane from New York to L.A. right before the pandemic would be left feeling confused and shortchanged, kind of like the people who made it all the way through Lost.

My relationship had become a success story that friends told other friends who were divorcing (“You’ll be fine! Just look at Cindy!”), mostly because of its Nancy Meyers-esque aspirational rom-com trappings. A bicoastal romance full of weekends at his penthouse Brooklyn apartment, weeks at the 1865 country house he bought upstate, Pinot Noirs from his wine cellar, fresh flowers from his garden…

“He might be the first grown-up relationship I’ve ever had,” I’d announced gleefully to my therapist. “It’s so nice to be with someone who takes care of me!”

And he did. He made travel reservations, cooked delicious dinners (and cleaned up afterward!). He even had an architect drawing up plans for a writer’s studio for me in one of the old barns on his property.

And then there was a sad side I only shared with my closest friends. Over the past year, I’d supported him through the sudden death of one of his children. It wasn’t my tragedy, but seeing someone you love endure pain of that magnitude is probably the hardest, saddest thing I’ve ever experienced. It was impossible to imagine that there would be anything we could not survive as a couple until the unimaginable became reality, and our relationship ended as suddenly as it began.

“I just found out my boyfriend of three-plus years was sleeping with his housekeeper for the last two and half of those” often raised more questions than I wanted to answer. (His housekeeper? How did you find out? Did you confront him about it? Did you have any idea? Was she still cleaning his house?!)

On the other hand, saying I was dealing with something I didn’t want to discuss had a group of my friends certain that I had cancer.

The fact that I was going through a breakup didn’t seem to capture the shock and awe of the situation, like the texts the woman had shared when I’d asked for proof of their romance, which included a picture she’d taken of the two of them in the vintage convertible he’d recently bought—the one in which I pictured us driving off into the sunset, the one I hadn’t even had a chance to ride in yet, the one that prompted me to say, “I’m so glad you’re doing something for yourself.”

There were other texts, but I think I blacked out.

And now I was in an orthopedist’s office because in the fog of those first few days, I missed the bottom stair and broke my toe.

I felt like a walking Cathy cartoon by this point. I had a broken toe, a broken heart, and a full calendar for the rest of the month that included, among other things, figuring how to break this news to my 12-year-old daughter, Olivia, without making her distrustful of men for the rest of her life. I decided to tell her the breakup was mutual, to which she replied, “So you were calling him to break up and he was calling you?” It’s a fair question. (“I couldn’t help but wonder,” Carrie Bradshaw would type, “is any breakup really mutual?”)

Then there was the trip to Dallas to help my aging parents. An emotional breakup that you’re trying to avoid can help you be very dispassionate about other things you might normally avoid, like talking to your parents about the cost of long-term care, and their feelings about cremation versus burial.

Our dirty family secret (until now, I guess?) is that my sister and I have been supporting our parents for decades, because my dad (who was ironically an accountant) seemed to have “Buy Lotto Tickets” as his retirement plan. Supporting the men in my life and somehow being resented for it was a pattern I’d repeated up to and including my last marriage, and it was something I was thrilled about not doing for the first time with this last boyfriend. He’d even offered to pay for half of the breast reduction I was considering…so, I guess, for one boob?

That was another thing I had to do. The breast-reduction consultation.

I’d waited four months for this appointment, but immediately after I took my “Before” pictures, I broke down and said I wasn’t sure what breast size I wanted since the boyfriend I thought I was getting old with was no longer in the “After” picture.

Somewhere between that and my high school reunion (yes, I had a high school reunion too!), I found myself just wanting to be quiet. To be someplace where I didn’t need to answer questions, or put on a brave face for my daughter, or disappoint my four-month-old puppy who just wanted to play.

Did I mention the puppy? Even fully grown, she would still be small enough to travel cross-country with me to see the boyfriend I no longer had. Sigh.

My heart, and my toe, just needed to heal.

That’s how I found myself on a website called Healing Hotels of the World (which is full of places so beautiful it makes you want to have a tragedy every three months). And the hotel that spoke to me, called to me really, was Euphoria Retreat.

Not only was it gorgeous, but they had a new program called Inner Emotional Harmony specifically for traumatic life experiences that, according to their website, “allows for the release of negative emotions and bitterness whilst leaving you armed with greater resilience to deal with whatever difficult trials you may be facing.”

It wasn’t until after I’d started to book the trip that I realized Euphoria Retreat was in Greece, where 3,000 years ago, I had my last good relationship.

When I arrived at Euphoria (a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Athens) and was greeted in its beautiful, airy reception area by warm smiles and cold, oregano-infused water, I wondered if I was already healed.

Then I discovered the indoor Sphere Pool, which had a sliding glass door in the pool to the outdoor pool, and a central sphere where you could float, looking up at a skylight, while listening to the underwater sounds of dolphin and whales. I spent so much time floating there that, if I had another week, I think I’d be able to understand what they were saying.

Around the central sphere were all different kinds of hot tubs that, to me, were like a metaphor for the entire Euphoria experience, because you have no idea what is going to happen when you push a button in this funhouse/Russian roulette of water jets. One hot tub is like a chaise lounge, and bubbles rise up and surround you. One button activates a powerful shower that, if you don’t turn around immediately, pelts you in the face. But the one that really caught me off guard was the standing hot tub where, upon pressing the button, a geyser explodes underneath you.

That geyser was one of many things I didn’t see coming on this healing-while-reeling trip. But unlike my breakup, I started to look forward to the surprises that every room, treatment, pool, and person seemed to have in store.

Although the Inner Emotional Harmony program was described in a notebook I was given, the combination of ancient Greek, Chinese, and modern medicine was so new and mysterious to me, I was never sure whether what I had scheduled required me to be in a swimsuit, regular clothes, or a robe, and whether I would be talking, floating, getting massaged, or just relaxing while my chakras were being cleared.

Despite this constant confusion about what I was doing next (or maybe because of it), I have never felt more relaxed. I couldn’t anticipate or control anything. All I had to do was show up.

The only treatment I felt like I survived rather than enjoyed was the Hydrotherapy Multi-Sensory Experience. That was partially my fault, because when the therapist asked if the water temperature was good before she started this high-tech treatment, I said it was (I like hot showers), but I didn’t realize what a hot shower would feel like if you were horizontal and the water went on and off unpredictably for 20 minutes. There was no changing the water temperature once it started—believe me, we tried—but I kept thinking I’d get used to it, or that it was about to get better. Which is my problem in relationships! In fact, I found myself thinking about all of the men in my life who had disappointed or hurt me, thoughts that had not come up during my more relaxing treatments (which would be any other treatment), so maybe even my least favorite treatment was useful because I will now relate that horizontal hell with people who make me feel unwanted pressure, helpless, and trapped.

On my last day at Metaphoria (as I started to call it), I finally had my “Anger Release” session, which, disappointingly, didn’t involve yelling or breaking anything. It was a treatment more generally for the “release of trapped emotions,” which turned out to be part talk therapy, part guided meditation, part tapping a magnet on my spine and seeing which way I leaned (toward or away) from certain ideas.

My guide was Mary, a lovely presence, who told me the trapped emotion I needed to release, it seemed, was my fear of being alone.

That didn’t resonate with me at all. I explained that I was relieved to be alone for the moment, that this last breakup had leveled me in a way that even my divorces had not, and that I was tired, and hurt, and tired of being hurt. I said I couldn’t seem to express anger, or even feel anger on a gut level, even though intellectually I knew I was angry. I said my anger always came out as sadness. Then I started to cry, as if to illustrate the point.

And I said I didn’t know how to mourn a relationship that I’m not sure I had with a person I’m not sure I ever knew. And I was worried that what made him so different from every other man I’d ever dated—the fact that he didn’t need me for financial support—was why he felt entitled to be so reckless with my heart. Was it male privilege at its worst?

That was all painful to admit. But the hardest thing to say aloud to Mary was how I felt like he stole my hope, and I didn’t want to do this again.

I didn’t want to try again.

Which meant I might spend the rest of my life alone.

Mary was right. I was afraid of being alone.

And the guided meditation she gave me to put on my phone and take home was so comforting that I still think of it (and sometimes listen to it) almost every day.

She said, in her calming Greek accent, that there was a star above me, shining light down, and a little earth below me, shining light up, and this formed a bubble of light, like a sphere (like the Sphere Pool!), and I could decide who to let in, and I didn’t need to do anything. I could just be.

That hadn’t occurred to me, that I didn’t need to “try again,” that I could just live my life and see who came along. I felt myself exhale for the first time in a month.

I started to imagine everyone who was making my life hard outside of this bubble, talking as if they were on mute. Their mouths moved but I couldn’t hear them. They could reach for me, but couldn’t get in.

And then I imagined gently bouncing safely through the air in this bubble—over mountains, over waterfalls, underwater—and I realized that, of all of the people in the world, my daughter Olivia was the person I would want next to me on this ride. We would laugh at the same things and be in awe about the same things, and maybe that’s all love is: It’s who you would want with you on the most amazing ride you can imagine—and that ride is life.

I was afraid I’d forget that idea as soon as I left Greece, so in the airport on the way home, I bought a bracelet with a glazed ceramic charm that looked like a bubble inside a bubble to remind me I get to choose who to let in. And that whether I’m alone, or with Olivia, or with someone else one day, I still get to be on this ride, and it’s beautiful and breathtaking, and full of wonder. And like Metaphoria, you don’t know what will happen, and that’s part of the fun.

Cindy Chupack is best known as an award-winning writer/producer of shows including Sex and the City, Everybody Loves Raymond, Modern Family, and Fleishman is in Trouble.

The post He Slept With the Housekeeper, and I Woke Up in Ancient Greece appeared first on NY Fashion Review.

We met just before lockdown, sharing a croissant and a walk along the L.A. River. I reveled in how kind and quiet he was, how different from the toxic men I’d chosen in the past. He is the first good man I fell in love with. I fell with my whole heart.

Three years in, though, we’re in a rough patch. More accurately, it feels like taking 60-grit sandpaper to skin. In our one-bedroom apartment, where we live and work, I often feel more isolated with him than when I’m alone. I tell him I’m unhappy. He finally acknowledges he needs therapy.

The week of his first session, I sit, arms crossed, in my own therapist’s office, evaluating our chances of survival. Because of a dark period in my late twenties (and said toxic relationships), I’ve been doing a trauma therapy called EMDR, cognitive behavioral therapy, Al-Anon meetings, seated meditation, walking meditation, intuitive eating, and more self-care rituals than I’d care to count. None of it makes my current reality any less lonely or disorienting.

My therapist interrupts with a deceptively simple suggestion: Stop. “He’s just starting therapy, so what if you leave him to it?” she asks. “For a month. Stop thinking about it, stop talking about it for 30 days. What if, instead, you spend the time meeting your desires—the ones he can’t or won’t?” “So more than textbook self-care, sort of passion anarchy,” I joke. “Radical pleasure.”

“Exactly,” she says.

Recent headlines scream: We are at the height of a loneliness and isolation epidemic, which is increasing mental health issues and causing premature deaths. Aggravators are everywhere: smartphones, urban sprawl, political polarization, a years-long pandemic. It’s hard to imagine a more alienated and alienating world. Could unapologetic indulgence be the antidote? Would it lead me back to this good man, someone I’ve loved and want to continue loving?

Day 1

I start a list of pleasure pursuits in my Notes app—masturbate daily, sex between meetings, spend the weekend naked, finally watch Fifty Shades of Grey—then text my most sexual friends for ideas. “Have sex exactly the way you want the whole way through. Get your back blown out,” one of them replies.

I masturbate twice, then think about sexting my boyfriend but don’t feel up to it—notable. Instead, I order takeout and open “the good wine” we’d talked for our next dinner party.

Day 3

I’ve started asking friends to describe their ideal day of radical pleasure. When I ask my boyfriend, he says the question is complicated, then reconsiders. “I would have plenty of time for everything.” “You have time now,” I say.

Day 6

I’ve already given up on daily masturbation because, shocker, it feels forced. Worse, I’m sore. And confirmed: Fifty Shades of Grey is a hair-puller, not in an erotic way. Today’s experiment: exploring the pleasure of being seen.

I put perfume on my hip bones, get dressed up, and meet a friend at a new restaurant. When we step out, buzzed and exhilarated, I lock eyes with the man who took my virginity. We talk and I get high off the feeling of condescension. I am sexier, wittier, and freer than this man, now a father with bags under his eyes, who broke my heart. I tell my boyfriend the story, confused but openhearted. I’m grateful he’s the one in my bed.

Day 8

A weekend with no plans. I spend the morning alone on a five-mile walk, then initiate afternoon sex, verbalizing exactly what I want and when. The sex is good but not great. My takeaway: Epic sex, for me, means losing control. In an effort at full communication, I share my thoughts and ask for more surprises. (He hears me. Sex a few days later will include a few spanks and an orgasm.)

Day 9

My 35th birthday is two weeks away. As a gift to myself, I buy a vintage Vivienne Westwood dress, by far the most expensive item I’ve ever purchased. Since it arrived, I’ve been treating it like it belongs to someone else. Growing up, my family was often financially anxious and occasionally unstable. The Westwood dress still scares me.

I pour some wine, put on Sade, and slip the dress over my head. The layers of silk feel like an ice-cold dry martini. the mirror, I’m entirely here. Pleasure floods my nervous system as “Kiss of Life” starts playing. I’m feeling myself so much, it’s carnal.

Day 19

I go to my favorite Italian spot solo, with a plan to flirt with a stranger. That sexual zap of banter with someone and you’ll never see again has always filled me with pleasure. Tonight, though, a blind-drunk man latches on as soon as I sit down. The bartender cuts him off, and he leaves in an inarticulate fury. The night ends somewhere unexpected: I eat a grilled artichoke and lemon icebox cake in the profound pleasure of silence.

Day 25

My boyfriend and I have sex in a hotel shower in Santa Fe. We fought last night, so it’s makeup sex, but it’s something else, too. Like we’re both trying to push further into each other. I don’t orgasm, but it doesn’t matter. We spend the afternoon lounging by the pool even though it’s too cold to swim. I relish the feeling of goose bumps on my shoulders.

Day 30

I open the door to flowers and a card with no name. A text reveals they’re from my boyfriend. I’ve asked for more effort, presence, and gestures. There’s simple pleasure in that surprise bouquet, but I’ve tasted deeper feelings and am thirsty for more—the deep kind that exist beyond checking the boxes.

We break up on a Tuesday night as I let a peppermint tea get cold. “No one should be blindsided by a breakup,” he says, his eyes desperate. I feel sick. I’ve spent the last month discovering what it is to feel and want, often without him, and now I feel certain that our relationship is not enough.

If I were to distill the 30 days into one takeaway, it would be this: There is simple pleasure—erotic flings, tropical getaways, spa days—and then the radical kind. Reaching that requires moving through pain, rebelling against limits: personal, social, political, romantic. It isn’t the Westwood dress; it’s recognizing that, for 30-plus years, you believed you were unworthy of it. Much like an orgasm, radical pleasure requires pushing past discomfort for potential transcendence. It means seeing yourself for who you are, erotic and defiant, and forcing yourself to take up more space.

When the end comes, it’s not black and white. There’s just no more us. What’s left is heartbreak and loneliness latent pleasure—the promise of an unknown future.

I pack a bag, tell him he’s the best man I’ve ever loved, and head for a friend’s. It’s a radical act, choosing yourself.

A version of this article appears in the November 2023 issue of ELLE.

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Kit Warchol is a writer and editor living in Los Angeles. 

The post Could Radical Pleasure Fix My Relationship? appeared first on NY Fashion Review.

Mari (left) and Laura (right).

Growing up in the 1990s in the Jura region of eastern France, Laura Herbst knew by elementary school that she loved fashion, but she didn’t know where her passion came from. There was almost no social media back then, and she had no knowledge of clothing trends in the vast world outside her town. Her French village was known for its vineyards, lush rolling hills, Montbéliarde cows, and locally made cheese. There were no chic boutiques, not even an H&M. Her mom took her shopping at a cheap local clothing outlet. The plain outfits bored her.

Born in 1988, Laura was adopted as a toddler from South Korea. Her parents also adopted another child from South Korea, Laura’s nonbiological sister, who is five years older. “My older sister and I are Asian, and everybody was white. So it’s not that it was hidden,” Laura says of the adoptions. Their father was a carpenter, their mother a homemaker. Laura always knew she had been born a twin. Her parents never kept that part of her adoption story a secret, and they kept a file of adoption papers in the living room. “We were always able to open it,” Laura says, “and we had a couple of pictures.” She and her twin had been separated when they were infants. Laura and her adoptive parents did not know where her twin had ended up, and they didn’t try to find out. Laura liked the idea of having a twin, but didn’t know where to start. “Back then, we didn’t really have internet. I didn’t think I would be able to find her,” she says.

Instead, fashion preoccupied Laura’s thoughts. Each weekend, when the Sunday newspaper arrived at her house, Laura would pull out the thin fashion insert and trace the models and their clothing. Her mom bought her a secondhand sewing machine, and she used it to make a handbag out of a pair of jeans. When the machine broke down, Laura sketched manga characters and their outfits. She bought copies of Jalouse, a French fashion magazine. Her adoptive mom supported her design ambitions, even though no one else in their family had such aspirations. She always told her daughter she was a unique and creative soul, living on the edge. Her style influences certainly had not come from anyone in Jura.

Laura also loved art class, and whizzed through other subjects, graduating from high school a year early. She longed to attend fashion school, but her mom thought she was too young to live in a big city by herself. She ended up at a traditional college campus, which she hated. After six months, she finally convinced her mom to let her relocate to Lyon, two hours south, where she enrolled in École de Condé, one of the largest design schools in France.

On her first day, an instructor asked the students to go outside and sketch a river. Laura remembers thinking to herself, “I can’t believe I finally am where I’m supposed to be.” She dyed her black hair blonde, and wore glasses with no lenses. She leafed through her roommate’s copies of French ELLE.

Midway through her first year at design school, in 2007, her family told her they were planning a spring break trip to South Korea. By now, Laura was 19. She had never been back to her birth country or contacted the agency that had arranged her adoption. But her older sister had connected with a group of adoptees in France called Racines Coréennes, or “Korean Roots,” and she planned to search for information about her biological family while they were there.

During the period when the Herbst sisters were born, intercountry adoption from South Korea was at its peak. In 1985, more than 8,800 South Korean adoptees were placed in other countries, principally in the United States and western Europe. There are now over 200,000 Korean adoptees worldwide. In the 1990s, many began forming support communities, like the one Laura’s sister found.

Laura had always felt content with her life in France. She told herself she had come from a loving home, with a simple, country life. When she agreed to go on the 2007 trip with her family, she had no plans to search for her birth family. But when she arrived in Korea, the reality of the trip washed over her. “I’m so close,” she thought. “Maybe I can find my twin sister.”

Laura (sitting) and Mari (laying).

She and her family met with a representative from the adoption agency. Her older sister’s file, it turned out, was empty. There was no trail to follow to her birth parents, or anyone else. She was devastated.

But then the woman next turned to Laura and gave her an unexpected piece of information: The agency had a contact phone number for one of her biological aunts, who lived locally. “If you want, we can call her,” she said. Laura said yes.

An hour later, the aunt, a glamorous dancer who had her own ballet studio in South Korea, arrived at the agency in tears. She brought her own daughter with her, who was three months older than Laura, and explained: “Your mom lives in Los Angeles. She’s a fashion designer. She lives with your twin sister, who is in art school.”

A fashion designer? Art school? Laura thought, “Oh my God.”

Laura’s aunt showed her a photo of her twin. “I was just so shocked,” she says. “I kept looking at it, because it was like me, but somebody else.” Then her aunt called Laura’s birth mom.

Laura’s twin, Mari Lee, was raised by her biological mother, Amy Lee. Growing up, Mari never knew her biological father, and she was also never told she had been born a twin.

Mari grew up in the bustling cities of Pusan and Seoul with her mom, who worked in costume design and the wholesale fashion industry, buying and designing items and selling them to distributors. Amy owned a retail clothing store in Pusan and a wholesale store in Seoul. Mari remembers gorgeous window displays in the store and her mom’s designs: floral prints and Korean motifs made with natural dyes on handmade cotton. Amy collected back issues of American Vogue and kept a shelf full of vintage fashion magazines from the 1920s to 1950s, which Mari loved flipping through. Her mom worked long hours, from morning to midnight. “She wasn’t able to take care of me,” Mari recalls. “So I was always living with my aunt and other people.” In 1995, when Mari was seven, Amy decided to move with her to Los Angeles, where she had a friend and hoped to find a new job. She had dreams of working in avant-garde high fashion.

It was difficult in America at first. Mari had to learn English. “I remember having trouble in class,” she says. “I went to five or six different elementary schools. We moved a lot.” They lived in Silver Lake, then Koreatown, before settling in La Crescenta. Along the way, her mother remarried and bought a home, and Mari became a sibling to her new stepdad’s two children. Over time, Mari adjusted to life in L.A., steadily growing her circle of friends. As a teenager, she loved going to Little Tokyo and sifting through the Japanese and Korean fashion magazines. She spent hours hunting through bins in thrift shops, finding red cowboy boots for $2 and shiny leather pants that she wore to school.

Two of her best friends were identical twin girls, and Mari remembers hanging out with them and admiring their twinship, while also feeling like a third wheel. She also befriended a pair of identical twin boys. Her mom joked that she kept bringing home twin friends. Mari didn’t yet understand the irony. She also loved a fashion blog about Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen—this was during their big sunglasses and Balenciaga bag phase—and watched the Lindsay Lohan version of The Parent Trap, about 11-year-old identical twin sisters separated at birth, over and over. She used to beg her mom to watch the movie with her. Sometimes, Mari would say she wanted to be a twin. Her mom would change the subject. “I thought that it would be cool to have a twin,” Mari recalls. “I never thought, ‘Oh, there is a twin out there.’ ” Mari assumed it must be normal for everyone to wonder whether they had a twin, or how life would be if they did.

Once, when she was a little girl, Mari remembers finding a photo of herself as a baby, next to two other infants. She knew one of the babies was her cousin, but who was the other?

Laura (left) and Mari (right).

After high school, in 2007, Mari enrolled in ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena to study illustration. She remembers it was finals week of her first year when she received a call from her mother, telling her to come home right away. Mari thought to herself, “She must have found out I’ve been smoking cigarettes.”

She expected to be scolded. Instead, her mom looked at her and said, “Don’t ask me questions, don’t say anything. Let me just tell you the story.”

Mari listened as her mom began to explain the story of her birth. At the time of her pregnancy, Amy said, her sister was also pregnant. But Mari’s aunt had been pregnant for three months longer than Amy, yet Amy’s belly was much larger. Mari sat quietly, wondering where the story was going.

Ultrasounds were not common in South Korea back then, and Amy did not know until the third trimester that she was pregnant with twins. A doctor heard two heartbeats. Mari was stunned. “You have a twin sister,” Amy told her daughter. “She is waiting for us in South Korea right now. And we’re going to get a red-eye flight tonight.”

Amy Lee, whose Korean name is Aeran, came from a family of creatives in the postwar era of the 1960s, when choosing an artistic career in South Korea was not encouraged. Still, her siblings would grow up to be dancers, designers, and performers. Amy remembers how much she enjoyed sewing class in middle school, earning perfect grades for learning to stitch traditional Korean garments by hand.

Soon, she began designing clothes that broke fashion molds in South Korea. Plain, neutral colors were the norm, but Amy crafted harem pants, flowery blouses, and fluorescent dresses. She worked in wholesale, but her fashion career was starting to take off when her mom got ill from severe asthma. Amy took care of her mom for the last decade of her life, putting her dreams of attending fashion design school abroad on hold. Her mom died in 1986, and Amy married that same year; the following year, she got pregnant. The surprise twin pregnancy nearly killed her, she says. She was in labor for 17 hours. One baby was breech and had to be rotated inside of her uterus. The twins were born on January 19, 1988, seven minutes apart. Amy was in a wheelchair for over a week. She named them Yaeryn and Chaeryn, after characters she read about once in a novel.

Life at home was overwhelming. Her marriage wasn’t working out, and she wasn’t getting the help she needed. Chaeryn was a calm, easy baby. But Yaeryn had constipation, skin irritations, and fevers. She was always crying and needing constant comfort from her mom.

Amy knew she couldn’t care for both babies on her own. And she was unaware of any social services that would help her keep the children together. It was a time when she was still running her clothing shop and trying to care for Yaeryn, while facing a potential future of being a stigmatized single mom without any support. So when a family member suggested adoption, she agreed, although it was a difficult, wrenching decision.

In the aftermath of the Korean War (fighting ended in 1953), the earliest adoptions generally involved mixed-race children born to South Korean mothers and non-Korean fathers—American or United Nations soldiers who had been stationed in the country. Many Westerners viewed adoptions as patriotic and pious acts, “rescuing” children from war-torn or impoverished countries, and perhaps assuaging their own guilt about their nation’s involvement in the conflict. Single mothers in South Korea also faced intense discrimination. Driven by Western demand, adoption became a multimillion- dollar business for Korean agencies. Intercountry adoption would continue at a swift pace through the 1980s.

Before she and Yaeryn left South Korea for Los Angeles in 1995, Amy visited the adoption agency and asked if she could have contact with Yaeryn’s twin. She knew Chaeryn had been adopted by a family in France. But the agency informed her it was a closed adoption, and she could not reach out to her yet. The agency advised her to wait to reconnect when Chaeryn became an adult and could consent to a reunion herself. Amy told herself she would try again, when the twins turned 19.

From left: Laura, Amy, Mari.

In Los Angeles, Amy found herself working in wholesale again, to her disappointment. She eventually also worked as a distributor and buyer for Forever 21, as the company tried to expand to South Korea and other countries. She enrolled at California Design College, graduating in 2000. But then she got pregnant with a son, and she put her fashion design aspirations on hold once again.

Amy says she did not tell Yaeryn, now called Mari in the U.S., about her twin because she did not want to upset her. She would tell her the story of her sister, she thought, after she found her. But before she could do so herself, Chaeryn found them.

“Someone is here for you,” came the call from the front desk. Laura was staying with her family at the Doulos Hotel in Seoul, a day after meeting her dancer aunt. She got into an elevator and headed to the lobby. When the doors opened, she got out. Laura took one look at the 19-year-old standing before her and had to take a step back. Her twin took a step back, too. “It was like a mirror,” Laura recalls.

Laura had bleached blonde hair. Mari had black hair. Mari remembered that on the plane ride her mom had complained that she was wearing dirty Converse sneakers to meet her sister. But she looked at Laura’s shoes—also dirty Converse sneakers. And both had on black entwined rubber bracelets, the kind you might buy at Hot Topic. “When we met, we were wearing the same thing, without planning,” Mari says. “We just kept staring at each other.” Everyone bawled, their faces soon puffy from tears. Amy kept speaking to Laura in English, though Laura spoke French. “I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry for abandoning you.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Laura tried to tell her birth mother. “I am so happy with my life.”

It has now been 16 years since their reunion, and Laura and Mari are as close today as twins who grew up together might be. Laura now lives in Bons-en-Chablais, near Geneva, while Mari still lives in L.A., now in Chinatown. But they talk every week and see each other several times a year.

After their initial meeting, and as Laura’s English improved, they grew closer, in part, because of their shared devotion to fashion. They sent each other links to fashion blogs.

Both sisters pursued careers in the fashion industry after college. Laura worked for Phoebe Philo at Céline, as a designer creating garments through sketches and 3D mock-ups. She later took a job as a collection director at MM6 Maison Margiela, a French luxury fashion house, where she had previously worked as a senior designer. Mari was the head of design at CO, a Los Angeles–based womenswear brand where she’d worked for over a decade, until leaving at the end of 2022.

They also both married and became mothers. Laura welcomed a baby girl in March 2022, and she is currently pregnant, due in February 2024. Mari gave birth in January 2023 to a boy who is about nine months younger than Laura’s daughter. Now they share tips about baby gear and clothing.

Laura’s adoptive mom died of cancer in 2009. “We always talk about her,” Laura says. “I think about her all the time.” But Laura has also built a relationship with her birth mother over the years. Amy has traveled to France to help Laura with child care, and she will do so again when the new baby comes.

Recently, Laura and Mari achieved a new milestone in their careers and sisterhood: They spent three years designing a fashion line together at CO Collections, coming up with concepts, choosing fabrics and colors, and styling lookbooks. “It was my dream to work with my sister,” Laura says, adding that they hope it will be the first of many collaborations. Amy says her daughters have already achieved the high-fashion dreams she never had a chance to reach herself.

For decades, researchers have studied twins to better understand nature versus nurture. Identical twins at conception share 100 percent of the same genes. Fraternal twins, on average, share 50 percent of the same genes, like biological siblings who are not twins. Scientists have studied twins separated at birth to try to understand how much genes shape who we are, in comparison to our environments. Mari and Laura have not yet been DNA-tested, but believe they are identical.

Today’s twin researchers also understand that a person’s interests, personality traits, and habits are a result of both genes and environment, interacting with each another in a mysterious, intricate kind of choreography.

But for Amy, the story of her twin daughters and their shared love of fashion, so reflective of her own, feels like their fates have been shaped by forces beyond environment alone. She thinks of this especially when it comes to Laura, who grew up with no fashion influences or surroundings, yet found her way into the field anyway.

“It is,” Amy says, “in the blood.”

Styling by Mari Lee and Laura Herbst; hair by Jasmin Pak; makeup by Megumi Asai.

This article appears in the November 2023 issue of ELLE.

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By the time the medium kicked off the online séance in late 2021, more than 120 people had signed on in hopes of making contact with the dead. One assumes that each had lost someone close to them—a parent, sibling, child—and there was a shared sense of pain, grief, and confusion. The medium told the group that if he succeeded in reaching their loved one, they should let him know in the chat.

Some people would find a mass séance, conducted via a mass video chat, impersonal, even callous. But the attendees seemed hopeful that their friend or family member could make their voice heard through the spiritual noise. They lit candles; they asked for what any of us would want. “Did he suffer?” one mom asked of her son’s drowning. “Or was it quick?”

It is difficult to describe what the loss of a family member does to a person. While some people mourn and recover, others have nightmares or develop PTSD. When a loss is particularly brutal—a suicide, for example, or the death of a child—traditional methods of coping, even extreme ones, can fail. “They torture themselves…with every single thing they might have done so that it wouldn’t have happened,” says Camille Wortman, a grief expert who works with bereaved families. And when that happens, it is not uncommon for the bereaved to call on the help of a group of strangers for solace who have what you might generously call a mixed record on honesty and ethics. They hire mediums.

Perhaps you have also seen a medium, for fun or for relief or because it’s 2023 and they are absolutely everywhere. A 2021 market analysis by research group IBISWorld found that psychic services, which includes mediums, “was one of the few discretionary industries that weathered the economic downturn,” and its 2023 analysis found revenue, growing at 1.5 percent annually over the past five years, is expected to reach $2.3 billion this year. Mediums are given starry-eyed credence all over morning news shows and streaming services. The Four Seasons in Baltimore hosted a séance at its five-star spa. Many mediums have flashy websites and long waiting lists for private readings that can cost hundreds of dollars per hour. Online group séances serve those who can’t afford or don’t want to wait for a one-on-one.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Susan Gerbic says of such séances. Gerbic is a skeptic who runs a crew of internet researchers, based all over the world, who bust mediums by creating fake Facebook profiles, attending live shows, filming inaccurate readings, and pointing out where the information likely came from (typically online obituaries and GoFundMe pages). She got into the debunking business as a hobby after reading Skeptical Inquirer magazine and attending events run by famed psychic medium disbeliever James Randi, and says she continues this work because she receives emails constantly from women (and it is almost always women) who have been retraumatized by the mediums they hired to help them grieve. The emotions Gerbic sees again and again are shame and guilt. “It’s like somebody breaks into your house and touches everything, moves things around,” Gerbic says. “That’s the feeling, that you’ve been violated.”

Wortman agrees with this assessment. She calls the work of unscrupulous mediums “a second betrayal” to parents who have lost children. “It’s horrible,” she says. “I don’t want to underestimate the impact that that can have.” But later on, she adds something I didn’t expect: She says she would like to see more people go to mediums, speculating that then the government would be prompted to fund research on the industry.

Wortman was not the only well-respected expert I encountered who admitted mediums could help people process loss, even if they weren’t telling the truth. There are studies—not great studies, but peer-reviewed studies nonetheless—that show that some people report a reduction in emotional pain after seeing a medium. One study found that 35 percent of parents who had lost a child found mediums “very helpful” in relieving grief, versus 26 percent of those who visited mental health practitioners. Wortman has seen it herself, in a client named Joan who struggled for five years with her son’s murder, and was revitalized after a single session with a medium.

How could speaking to someone who gives you a few random facts about a person you once loved help you process death? According to a theory called “continuing bonds,” people often need to maintain a connection to those they’ve lost, rather than let them go. Speaking to a loved one through an intermediary could help that. There may be additional benefits from talking openly with a group of people who have experienced similar painful life events. Visiting a medium may offer the bereaved an opportunity to apologize, or receive forgiveness, almost like playacting.

Evidence to support this idea can be found in a pattern to the types of messages mediums provide to their clients (called “sitters”): Often, mediums say the loved one still exists, that they didn’t suffer, that they still love or are watching over the sitter. “There’s no negative messages because they’re in that vibration, where they’ve left the earthly life and the ego behind,” according to a New Jersey-based medium. Another way to look at it would be that there are no negative messages because perhaps that’s not what sitters want or need.

But what about lying or misleading or repeating information found on the internet? Does that matter? “In my opinion, 85 to 90 percent of all the medium practitioners out there today cannot do what they claim,” Robert Ginsberg says. “That doesn’t mean they’re all fraudulent. Some are, but the vast majority are not.” Ginsberg is a believer, cofounder of the Forever Family Foundation, which provides support and information, as well as “evidence to support the premise that our consciousness survives past physical death,” to the bereaved. He was once more skeptical about the afterlife, but then he became someone who needed, with his entire being, to believe that people could speak to the dead after his youngest daughter, Bailey, died in a car accident in 2002. And some time after that, he came up with the idea of giving mediums a test.

Anyone can hang out a shingle offering to certify people in the largely unregulated discipline, but Ginsberg notes that no money changes hands in the foundation’s certification process, and mediums cannot pay the foundation to be listed on its website. Its test for mediums consists of an eight-page application, a 45-minute interview, and five sample readings. About 10 to 15 percent of the mediums pass. “Even for seasoned mediums, it can be very stressful,” he says.

This certification is the closest thing the psychic industry, including mediums, has to ethical governance. It’s based on the belief that some mediums can actually talk to the dead, which is, to put it mildly, in debate. Wortman would like to see real data, from a full-scale, well-funded, and serious academic research center, that shows what about mediumship is helpful, for whom, and when. She also believes it’s not going to happen. “Are you kidding? You put in a grant to the National Institute of Mental Health, you think they’re gonna fund stuff on mediums? No, they’re not,” she says.

In stories like these, people wonder which tribe the author belongs to, so I’ll admit here that I do not personally believe anyone can speak to the dead. I think if anyone found decisive proof of an afterlife, 15 new research institutions would pop up in Bethesda, Maryland, before anyone could blink. However, I also believe humans are built for storytelling, and that the placebo effect is monstrously powerful. When my best friend died in 2012, I talked to the ceiling and saw signs on the sides of trucks. When I stumbled on a sticker in my new apartment that matched my bestie’s tattoo, I felt a sense of calm and protection that stuck with me for days.

And so, even though the medium I watched conduct the online séance had the bedside manner of an old shoe, was performing for a group the size of a marching band, and probably got his information from the internet, I couldn’t be sure the grieving parents had a bad experience. Several of them ended their interactions visibly moved, crying or choked up, reassured or immersed in memories. And the mother of the man who drowned, the one who posted the video? “That’s my son,” she sobbed as the medium recounted random details about his life. “Thank you so much. Thank you.”

This article appears in the October 2023 issue of ELLE.

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Jacqueline Detwiler-George is a contributing editor to Popular Mechanics who writes about science, technology, travel, and adventure. Her work has appeared in Esquire, New York Magazine, and Best American Science and Nature Writing. She is currently at work on a book about the vagus nerve for Avid Reader Press. 

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“Who let those dykes in here?” a sorority sister asked, pointing at me and Alissa from across the dining room. Earlier that day, we had become the unwitting targets of a “dyke” rumor that spread like wildfire to the entire sorority. As we shoveled baked spaghetti onto our plates in shame, another sister assured us she didn’t believe it. The irony of that moment is that Alissa and I weren’t even dating yet. We hadn’t had our first kiss or held hands, but the chemistry between us was palpable enough that our sisters could sense it. Guess I wasn’t hiding my feelings well enough.

I can do better, I thought, berating myself and making a mental list of guys to publicly kiss the following weekend.

In another lifetime, maybe our sorority sisters would have teased us to “get together already.” But in our Southern sorority in the late aughts, it was unacceptable. Despite being submerged in the pain and humiliation from the original rumor and subsequent ones to follow, Alissa and I fell in love.

For the past decade, I’ve recounted our origin story with levity. I tell people we initially found having a secret relationship thrilling. Some of that is true, but in reality, we were hiding. Feeling like you need to conceal who you are—and the person you are falling in love with—is scary and dehumanizing. It’s also heartbreaking to fall in love for the first time with no one to witness it.

By the time I rushed in the fall of 2007, my sophomore year, I knew I preferred kissing girls, but I had convinced myself I could tuck that truth away until graduation. Radford University, my undergraduate alma mater in Virginia, is a small state school nestled in the New River Valley near the Blue Ridge Mountains, less than 200 miles from the West Virginia border. The town was predominately white and conservative, both in religion and politics. While the campus contained pockets of left-leaning organizations, it wasn’t a place known for its highly visible or diverse queer scene.

At an off-campus party during my first week of freshman year, I overheard a boy casually, and extremely comfortably, call someone a “kike.” I had grown accustomed to being one of just a few Jewish students at my high school outside of Richmond, but I had never encountered emboldened hatred toward Jewish people. While the culture shock in college made me uncomfortable, I didn’t let it show. I learned to shut up, smile, and keep my otherness to myself. At 19, I more or less looked the part of a typical southern college girl. And aside from hiding my sexuality, I was generally enjoying being on my own for the first time.

When I was initiated, I promised myself that I’d stop kissing girls when I got drunk. I promised myself that I’d focus on fitting in and having cool frat guys think I was hot. At the time, I hadn’t examined why I thought I wanted that attention; I hadn’t learned about compulsive heterosexuality, which can cause people, especially women, to assume they are interested in male attention.

For a few weeks I made friends with the older sisters, snorted cheap cocaine, binge drank, and took on hazing like it was my sport. I fucked frat guys without catching feelings, as only dykes can, and was rewarded with emotional high fives from my sisters along the way. For a moment, I was the embodiment of the “cool girl” monologue from Gone Girl. The fake version of myself felt like she belonged.

But the rules I thought I understood quickly turned against me. When Alissa and I started hooking up, I kept seeing random guys to save face. She accepted it, which allowed us to pretend our feelings weren’t as serious as they were. Looking back, I hate that I felt the need to push against my natural feelings of attraction.

During my spring semester, I hooked up with a boy from a popular fraternity. I assumed it would earn me social credit. In a not-so-shocking turn of events, he announced our hookup at his next chapter meeting, which was met by roars of approval. Not one older sorority sister comforted me or even asked about it. I was humiliated, but I welcomed the reprieve of being called a slut instead of a dyke.

Shortly after that, I stopped forcing myself to feign interest in guys. It became harder to fake it after Alissa and I started saying I love you. The two of us began spending most of our free time together, locked away in her bedroom making out as girls fluttered throughout the sorority house around us.

One night, Alissa and I crashed a random house party with a group of our friends. The seductive boom of ‘90s R&B, and memories of middle school dances lured us inside. Unlike the sweaty, grinding basement parties we were used to, everyone here danced in an almost juvenile way. The energy reminded me of being 13 years old at a Bar Mitzvah after-party. Our friends disappeared inside, getting drinks and flirting with the onslaught of new guys. Alissa and I found our way into the middle of the room and started dancing together.

Nothing about us that night would have raised an eyebrow, but to me it felt electric. We stayed on the dance floor for over an hour. Alissa twirled around me and rapped every word to Notorious BIG’s “Juicy,” while I laughed, astonished at the juxtaposition between her jean skirt preppy style and ability to seamlessly rap. Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” played, and she grabbed my hands, twisting me back and forth. This moment was what I wanted my life to feel like. A desperate part of me hoped someone might notice we were in love.

After graduation, Alissa and I separately battled our own coming-out journeys. It took another three years for our relationship to be fully public. Alissa’s best friend from the sorority came to visit us a few months after we confided in her. We knew it might initially be awkward, but we weren’t expecting her to say that she didn’t accept it or announce, while we were all drunk at a club, that she would pray for us.

Queer people are master survivors, and a large part of that survival is storytelling, specifically how we craft our own narratives. It has been easier for me to spin our origin story, to myself and others, as a lighthearted, even funny tale. But the truth is that falling in love secretly is daunting. The good thing about stories is that they are ongoing, and luckily there are now parts of ours that are wholly joyful.

In 2015, the year we got married, I found myself thinking about happy queer endings that have been lost to history—generations of gay love stories gone, all because queer people haven’t historically had families that were acknowledged by their own families and communities. It is a hole in this country’s history that I was determined to fill with flowers, good wine, music, and lots of dancing.

During cocktail hour, guests joked about how the rabbi pronounced the word huppah, which has turned into a lasting family joke. Our DJ, who was supposed to play us into the ceremony, was late, taking a phone call and smoking a cigarette outside the venue while we stood inside. Alissa cried during the entire ceremony. In every photo from our exchanging of vows, she is wiping her eyes or has tears on her cheeks. During the reception, Alissa and I were one of the last couples on the dance floor, and this time I knew everyone could really see us. Our wedding day is woven into history.

A story for everyone to remember.

Freelance Writer

Samantha Mann is a Brooklyn-based essayist. She has written for Vogue, The Cut, ELLE, The Huffington Post, and others. She is the author of Putting Out: Essays on Otherness and the editor of the anthology, I Feel Love: Notes on Queer Joy. Find out more about her work: www.samantha-mann.com

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