What parts of writing this book came really easily, and then was there a part that you found difficult to write for any reason?
Everyone wanted to talk and loved to talk about Camp Glossier, which was their annual employee off-site. It seemed like it was so much fun and wholesome. That was easy and a delight to talk about. Honestly, the hardest part was just Emily [Weiss] and our relationship and her ambivalence to the book. She felt, I believe, that she was a bit blindsided that the book was about Glossier, that her name was in the subtitle.
I felt like I was being pretty open about the process over email and that they just weren’t really taking it seriously or paying a lot of attention. I think she felt more like I was being a little shady or duplicitous and tried to do a little of the “I thought we were friends” thing. That’s when I really had to be like, “We’re not friends. We don’t hang out socially.”
I had to have this moment of standing up for myself in a way and saying, “I have a job, and it’s a writer, and it’s important, and I want to tell this very nuanced story that I think is rooted in feminism and power.” That was hard for me to say about myself. We’re in this environment where being a journalist is easy to be hated because of it.
Also, I respected this woman so much. I’m not a sadist. Causing someone pain isn’t something that I’m particularly fond of. But also there were previous versions of the book that had probably too much hand-wringing about that and too much of my own inferiority complex. That was the hardest part. It was an emotional journey of acceptance for probably both of us.
Madeline Hill
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