Tis The Season to Gift A Teen Earth Hates Me

Our new boss had arrived. Male, of course, white, privilege oozing out of every follicle on his pasty body. He was a savvy ad agency guy, flowing dark hair and tweed jacket, scuffed brown shoes; my previous boss, also male, always wore Prada on his feet, disciplined by his moneyed upbringing. Not this guy. Fancy title, rude demeanor, his background displayed in his feet. I knew who he was, who was trying to be, just by looking at his shoes. My colleagues—seasoned broadcast veterans—were annoyed by the hire. Snobs we were about ad agency hires into our broadcast world, this inner sanctum, clique-y and privileged, working in the creative field, unveiling a narrative in thirty seconds or less on a shoestring budget. We built our industry, so many of us hanging onto our roles, knowing only this, how to make something boring be something watchable. Ad agency people had “secretaries” deliver their Starbucks at 3pm everyday; not us broadcast worker bees. Our new boss pontificated about the truisms in advertising, waved his arms about, name dropping always a sign of insecurity, about what, I did not know, this new boss of ours sauntered into a role not made for him, snatching it away from the more qualified women on staff. Those of us who didn’t get a promotion into a coveted role were bitter. Those of us who weren’t bitter, were frustrated, knowing we would have to teach our new boss how to do his new job. The nuances so spectacularly divergent in these industries. We rallied, though, as we always did. We were a tight team; not friends outside the office, but close knit within its confines. Our new boss arranged a meet and greet. He stood in the center of a conference room, surrounded by so many of us, of various backgrounds and talents, from myriad departments, all wanting to get a glimpse at this new Emperor. I wondered if he was nervous, I wondered why he left the comfort of his ad agency world, I wondered whether he would be a fair supervisor that I would learn so much from. Well, really, I hoped I could. I sat in a chair, within punching distance from him, listening to him brag about this ad campaign or that one, not keeping track or the way the words swallowed themselves up, not until he said the word, “blow job.” That, that I heard. I looked to my left, to one of the women who worked for me, who I mentored, who I laughed out loud with, who I enjoyed so very much. In our silent gaze, we knew there was a dark shift, a “WTF?” We looked at our other colleagues; everyone’s expression reflected whatever ours must have been, this utter disdain, this bellowing disappointment. Our new boss, not reading the icy room, rambled on with his story, repeating the word “blow job.” If texting and Twitter were a part of our lives at that point, this would not have been something that existed only in that room. It would have gone industry-wide viral. Right now, it’s part of the trajectory, of the tenuous line between professional and personal space. It’s another emblem in my scar tissue.

The news of Kamala Harris’s leaving the race for Presidency is not very welcome to my ears.

Lena Waithe: “I can’t tell someone what to take away from my art. That’s not my job.”

Alanis Morissette: “I mean, I was just writing about what I was thinking about and mulling over and ruminating, what I was tortured by or yearning for at the time.”

Jamie Lee Curtis: ” I’ve been doing this for a long, long time, and I’ve been successful at it since I was nineteen. There’s not a day I don’t walk down the street and somebody goes, “Hey, I love you. You’re fantastic.” And I appreciate it. I get it. It’s been my gig.”

Bernardine Evaristo: “There’s the woke young woman and then there’s the 93-year-old farmer; the black lesbian activist feminist theater maker; there’s a banker, a school teacher and cleaner — you know, it’s just a spectrum of who we are. And I love the fact that because I’ve won the Booker Prize, more people will encounter these women.”

Where do you sit on the issue of pistachios?

Sex stuff.

And now, have a laugh with Erin Jackson.