Not Only Skinny Bitches Work in Fashion Fashion for Beauty

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Not Only Skinny Bitches Work in Fashion

Posted June 29th, 2011 by Alana Strange No Comments »

You don’t have to be a skinny bitch to work in fashion

Much has been made of female relationships both in and out of the workplace. Women have been called bitches for being assertive and ambitious and a recent survey reveals that most of us prefer having a male boss to a female boss. But even the most staunch tomboys among us can’t deny the value of the bond of female friendship and camaraderie. So why the attitude girls?

After graduating from journalism school a few years back and landing my first internship on a monthly teen magazine, I was extremely excited. Imagine my disappointment when not a single woman on the fashion and beauty desk barely gave me the time of day. They chattered with each other all day long, gossiped and made faces at other people’s outfits (god knows what they thought of how I was dressed). I know I was just a lowly intern but they barely acknowledged my existence except to ask for tea. When I said goodbye after work, it was barely acknowledged with a grunt or two. I was relieved when my time there came to an end.

At my next women’s magazine internship, I again felt out of my element. Even the other interns were super slim, pretty and cliquey. I have always been a bit on the shy side, self conscious about my weight and also much too poor to be able to afford designer clothing or bags. One intern in particular lived in her own flat in Chelsea, carried a Miu Miu and YSL bag and went to Ibiza on her summer holidays. Very glam compared to my tin of beans on toast while watching the Eastenders omnibus with my flatmate.

One of the fashion editors used to just throw bags of clothes on the floor at my feet without saying a word, silently just expecting me to return them to the PR without even a word of acknowledgement. Simple manners went out the door, to her I was just her servant, off to fetch her lunch and pick stuff up off the floor that she dropped while I got paid £30 a week to cover my travel card.

I began to wonder if it was worth it. Did I need to have a thicker skin. have loads of confidence and a certain “look” to make it in the industry? I wondered if I had to be blonde, beautiful and of a certain personality type to make it and considered throwing in the towel. Most people told me that the norm was to be an unpaid intern for an average of about one year at different magazines (completely unpaid – travel expenses if you were lucky) before landing a job. And that’s if you’re lucky. I met someone who went to Central Saint Martins who told me that she knew someone who interned at Vogue for three years before landing a job. Eek.

I fared better at my next internship and then was offered a job at the previous magazine I interned at – no one was more surprised than me. I now work as a junior fashion editor at a weekly magazine and although most of the people I have worked with have turned out to be perfectly nice and normal, I’ve learned to recognize and avoid working with a certain type of back-stabbing catty woman l have noticed that is specific to the fashion industry.The type that only cares about who you know, is only nice to you if you have connections and is obsessed about designer labels while looking down on people who wear high street labels.

What these women do not realize is how quickly things can change in this industry. Being fake, snobby, and always out to stab other people in the back so she can get to the top isn’t going to cut it for very long. This type of woman is mean to interns, arrogant, pushy and talks behind your back to try and make you look bad to your boss. What I have noticed is that usually her true colours usually come out eventually no matter how hard she tries to suck up to the editor. No one wants to work with someone like that for long.

Of course there will always be unpleasant people in the work place regardless of which industry you work in. But the world of fashion journalism is small and today’s intern could be your future fashion editor so playing nice is your best bet – not because you have to but because it’s not nice to be the woman that no one wants to work with – fashion industry or not. I may not be a super successful person in the fashion industry but the fact that I’m even working in this competitive field shows that you don’t have to look a certain way, be thin, rich or have connections to get a job working in fashion.

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