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S2E19: Glossy Author Marisa Meltzer
238 Plays1 year ago
Whoa ho ho. This is a big one. 💄 👀
Today on Content People we chat with Marisa Meltzer - the best-selling author of Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier.
Glossy - an instant best-seller - is a deep dive into the work of Emily Weiss, from her industry-changing blog Into the Gloss to her billion-dollar empire at Glossier.
If you’re interested in business, girl-boss analysis, or the beauty industry as a whole - it’s un-put-downable.
Marisa and I covered:
- Why she wanted to write this book.
- How she feels about Emily Weiss.
- What it’s like to have an ongoing, complex relationship with a public figure like Emily.
- And if she and Emily have talked since publication.
If you’re wondering (since Emily seems to be somewhat of a polarizing figure): I’m team Emily. There are elements of her story that many, many women in leadership positions might empathize with - and I find her to be very inspiring.
LINKS:
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Meredith’s LinkedIn
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GUEST LINKS:
Buy Glossy
https://www.amazon.com/Glossy-Ambition-Beauty-Inside-Glossier/dp/1982190604
Follow Marisa on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/marisameltzer/?hl=en
Check out her website
https://www.marisameltzer.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Glossier's Marketing
00:00:00
Speaker
When you're leading a company of people who are relatively young and a company that is made by and marketed towards women for the most part, likeability is going to be part of your promise as a brand and Glossier certainly market themselves as literally smiles and likeability.
Podcast Introduction by Meredith Farley
00:00:25
Speaker
Hi and welcome to Content People. I'm your host Meredith Farley. I'm a former chief product officer turned chief operating officer turned CEO and founder. My agency is called Medbury. At Medbury we work with founders, execs, and companies who want to tell their stories and grow. But Content People is not about me or Medbury, it's about the creative leaders and professionals that we interview every week.
00:00:49
Speaker
We'll delve into their journeys, unpack their insights, and ask them for practical advice. If you like it, please rate and subscribe. Let's get started.
Meet Marissa Meltzer, Journalist and Author
00:00:59
Speaker
Marissa, thank you for joining Content People. I want to give you a little bit of an intro. For folks who don't know her, Marissa Meltzer is a journalist based in New York who for over a decade has covered beauty, fashion, wellness, and celebrity industries for publications like
00:01:15
Speaker
The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. She's the author of the bestseller, Glossy, Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier. And she's also the author of three previous books, This is Big, How Sassy Changed My Life, and Girl Power. I'm exhausted reading that paragraph. Marissa, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm so happy to have you.
Reception of 'Glossy' and Ongoing Discussions
00:01:40
Speaker
It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
00:01:43
Speaker
I love glossy. I was obsessively, I listened to it. I didn't read it. I was going on. Oh, you did? It was so good. I went on really long walks just to keep listening. It was addictive. It's had such a warm reception and it's a bestseller. I was curious,
Impact of 'Glossy' on Girl Boss Narrative
00:02:02
Speaker
has there been anything about the coverage and the buzz around the book that has surprised you or has been different than what you expected? That's a great question.
00:02:13
Speaker
I, it sounds coy, but I have avoided, I read like the headlines for coverage. And of course I've done many interviews, but I don't actually, I've read one or two reviews of the book and I stay out of the rest for my own sanity. So I feel like the reception has been very warm, but I haven't gotten so much in the weeds of it.
00:02:40
Speaker
I think that things like the amount that people still want to talk about girl bosses interests me. For me, you can get really caught up when you're writing something and you do so much research and you think about it so much that it feels redundant or second nature. And so I had thought so much about girl bosses that I had gotten to the point of, is this of interest? Is there any of this analysis new to anyone? And luckily it wasn't, but yeah.
00:03:10
Speaker
It's funny you say that because I feel like the dialogue around girl boss has resurfaced in recent weeks. There was a glamour article, I think it was last week or two weeks ago about like soft girl versus girl boss. And I've seen more social media posts about it. And I thought, I think it's all because of your book. I feel like that's what's slightly reigniting the discourse that we had a couple of years break on maybe. What do you think about that? Do you think that could be true?
Interest in Emily Weiss and Glossier's Story
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, it could be that's really interesting. I would love it if the book was starting things. I also just think there's just enough distance from the girl boss moment with the added issue of the pandemic so it feels if it's even longer ago that people
00:03:55
Speaker
feel maybe like they're ready to talk about it. And that could be one thing. I also just think there has been so much interest in like women led and
00:04:10
Speaker
things like, I don't know how to explain it, but like the Barbie movie and Taylor Swift's concert and Beyonce's concert. And even to some extent, this book that maybe also people are ready to like think critically about things that are marketed towards women or with that in mind. That's really interesting. For listeners who haven't read the book yet, why did you become so interested in Emily Weiss and what compelled you to write glossy?
00:04:41
Speaker
One of the last articles I had written before the pandemic lockdown was a big profile of Emily Weiss and Glossier for Vanity Fair. And that came out right before all of that happened. So I was
00:04:58
Speaker
at home, as we all were, just thinking about topics I was obsessed with and the beauty world with one of them, Glossier was still really fresh in my mind. And at the same time, I was forgoing fashion for
00:05:16
Speaker
sweatpants and spending all this time like looking at myself and in the mirror and on Zoom and thinking and doing like elaborate skincare routines and I thought about how you know there really wasn't a book about beauty or the beauty industry and I thought that I had a lot to say.
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, the book, it's so in depth. It's so well researched.
Research Process for 'Glossy'
00:05:41
Speaker
It's so thorough from a content creator perspective. And I think there's a lot of writers that listen to this podcast. I wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about what was your process like? How many hours per week and for how many months were you working on this?
00:05:59
Speaker
Let me see, hours per week probably varied because there were some times when I was working on like other freelance pieces and other times when I worked on nothing else and I worked for 12 hours a day, seven days a week on the book. It probably ends up being full time, no matter how you try to do it, but my research process is
00:06:24
Speaker
It's the favorite part of the process for me. Like writing is satisfying, but I think like most writers, I don't really like the act of writing itself. It can be frustrating or painful or at the very least exhausting. And I love researching. I tend to take no, no road is a bad road to go down because you never know what is going to be really helpful.
00:06:49
Speaker
Reeves Weidman, who wrote the book Billion Dollar Loser about WeWork, had given me great advice that one of the best sources he had for that book was someone who had done like AV for WeWork and was just in the room a lot and had a great memory and was just like there all the time. And I try to keep that in mind in my own reporting in which some people
00:07:20
Speaker
don't think in anecdotes well. A lot of times people who are interns or it's their first job are great interviews because it's so vivid for them because it is their first job or they had such expectations. I always like to talk to
00:07:36
Speaker
experts and cultural critics, not too many of them because you want your own voice to be there. Just situate things in time and place. I read back issues of magazines. I read books about other female founders. I read history books about beauty.
00:07:56
Speaker
I read, listened to every podcast and YouTube clip and hunted down your books and all of it. But I love doing that part. There is a certain point when you have to tell yourself to stop researching because you could be chasing people down really for the rest of your life and start writing.
00:08:15
Speaker
That's so interesting.
Insights from Emily Weiss's Yearbook
00:08:16
Speaker
Were there any kind of wormholes you went down that you were like, I don't know where this is going, but it ended up being incredibly fruitful or relevant. I actually loved finding Emily's yearbook because I got it just as a kind of, I always get people's yearbooks if I can for research.
00:08:37
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Sometimes it can be helpful. Sometimes it's not, but it's something that's in the age of digitally scanned your books. It's something that you do somewhat easily. And for her, it ended up being this kind of unlocking things in a way because she had these wild senior quotes that were from Graydon Carter and Calvin Coolidge, which was,
00:08:58
Speaker
such, such a stark contrast to like the Winnie the Pooh and like song lyric quotes that all of her classmates had, which were, which is no way to look down on them. I also had song lyric quotes from my senior yearbook. Emily was a different breed and she always, it showed me that she always knew who she was in this way that it's very rare.
00:09:23
Speaker
It's really interesting.
Professional Relationship with Emily Weiss
00:09:25
Speaker
One thing I wanted to ask about is, it seemed to me that between you and Emily, there was consistent mutual respect and a bit of familiarity, but also a shared weariness, which totally makes sense based on the dynamic. But as I read it, a couple of times I wondered what it was like for you emotionally and personally.
00:09:48
Speaker
to have an ongoing relationship like that in your life with someone who was such a prominent public figure.
00:09:55
Speaker
I think I always saw our relationship as very grounded in the reporter subject kind of relationship. And it was in moments where I felt like manipulated into sort of her trying to convince me maybe more that we were friends or that I was somehow betraying her. But I always have a pretty
00:10:23
Speaker
good idea of who my friends are and who they who is not and so I respected her a lot I think she did for me as well and I think we both could situate ourselves in each other's lives because we had friends and acquaintances in common but at the same time I think that there were pretty firm boundaries there on both of our parts
00:10:47
Speaker
So it didn't at any point cause you like emotional turmoil necessarily just because it's such a part. Oh no, it absolutely caused me emotional turmoil. For sure. Because I'm not a sadist. I don't want to think that I am unduly stressing someone out. My kind of worst nightmare always is that I'm going to wake up to some kind of long angry email from someone. I don't love confrontation.
00:11:12
Speaker
And yeah, no, that stretched me out a lot. And I had to just keep telling myself that.
00:11:18
Speaker
This was my job and that it's an important job and it's a job that I care about and that I wasn't working for her, but also the depiction of her in Glossier was one that I felt to be very true and nuanced and that I would be doing her, the world, the readers, a disservice if I oversimplified anything. Makes sense.
Emily Weiss's Ambivalence and Glossier's Brand
00:11:42
Speaker
I'm really interested in the concept of likability when it comes to women at work and I really love
00:11:48
Speaker
Alicia Menendez's book, The Likeability Trap, which is how likability is so hard won for women in the workplace, but they also often need to be likable to be accepted and successful. And as I read the book, it seemed, and correct me if I'm wrong, it
00:12:07
Speaker
I didn't get the vibe that Emily was considered especially likable, which I do not fault her or anyone for. But I wondered, do you think that she wanted to be liked? Do you think that it mattered to her?
00:12:22
Speaker
I think she was extremely ambivalent about being liked. I think, of course, she wanted to be liked by her employees, by the press. She wanted to be seen as
00:12:41
Speaker
kind person with her the right priorities. But she also really wanted to be judged the way that kind of any man would be judged, which is part of why she resisted things like doing her personal relationship or anything like that. And I think it's something that she probably wrestled with a lot because
00:13:01
Speaker
being liked is a trap for women and it is something that is gendered in the way that people are judged and unfairly. And I think that she was well aware of that. But then at the same time, especially when you are young, especially when you're leading a company of people who are relatively young and a company that is
00:13:25
Speaker
made by and marketed towards women for the most part. Likeability is going to be part of your promise as a brand and Glossier certainly market themselves as literally smiles and likeability. There were smiley faces. There was, you can sit with us, all this kind of branding. She had to embody that to a certain extent. Um,
00:13:50
Speaker
And I imagine that kind of ratio was one that she was always calculating and correcting for in her head. Yeah.
00:13:59
Speaker
After all that time together, do you like
Objectivity in Writing about Emily Weiss
00:14:02
Speaker
Emily? I don't know. I often don't really think about people that I write about in terms of whether I like them or not because also it's hard to know someone that you're writing about because like to me is so much about knowing someone personally. And it would be hard for me to do my job if I felt like I knew any of these people personally.
00:14:28
Speaker
So I think that Emery is complex. I think she's a cipher. I think that there is probably a world in which we would like each other if I wasn't a writer and wasn't also profiling her, but I don't know if we would know each other that way otherwise. Is it like too high? Is it?
00:14:52
Speaker
almost, would it be problematic for you to let yourself say, I do or don't like her? Do you feel like as a journalist, you have to let someone live in the gray area or just not even let that be a consideration point for yourself? Yeah, I think it would be really hard for me to judge them in that way of likability. Also, I try not to let my
00:15:16
Speaker
I don't know, personal instincts or something get in the way. I think that obviously there are people that I've written about that I didn't enjoy spending time with them, that they seem distracted or
00:15:30
Speaker
I could tell we would have nothing in common in the real world. And so maybe it's not so much that I dislike them, but it's very cut and dry of why you're spending time together. And I think for someone like Emily, it's less cut and dry because I do think there are things we would probably like about each other, but also it never factored in because our relationship was always around business and
00:15:56
Speaker
because of that it's transactional by nature. And I think if you're going to be a good journalist, you have to remember that you are part of that transaction and that they, especially in the age of social media, someone like Drake or Taylor Swift, not really having to do any of their own, not no longer having to do like a magazine.
00:16:16
Speaker
cover story for something that they have so many social media followers, they can just be their own PR mouthpiece. And if someone is getting pressed through your writing, that's something that they're opting in
Public Reaction to Emily's Wedding Prep Post
00:16:31
Speaker
for. In this vein, I wanted to get, I wanted to dig in a little bit about the Little Wedding Black book.
00:16:39
Speaker
Am I getting the name right of the block list that Emily did? I want to say 2016. Do you want me to explain it or would you rather explain it? No, please, please go ahead. I would love to hear you explain it. Correct me where I get it wrong. If you're a listener and you're like, what are you talking about, Emily?
00:16:59
Speaker
just after I think her wedding did a post that was covering the very extreme and expensive wedding prep routine she did in the months leading up to it, which was like,
00:17:13
Speaker
all kinds of treatment, all kinds of exercises, all kinds of a really strict beauty regime. And it got an incredibly vitriolic response. People really lit into it about my sense, though, maybe you'll have a better sense, Marissa. The feeling was people were like, this is so out of touch. This is so much money. This is ridiculous. And also at some point in it, she said,
00:17:38
Speaker
After all that work, I felt like an eight out of 10, which was pretty good or something to that effect. So she was saying, even after all that, I still didn't feel like perfectly beautiful, but I suppose I felt content with it, which I understand what she was saying, but a lot of people had a problem with. And I thought it was so interesting because Gwyneth Paltrow is posting stuff like that all the time and does not seem to generate the same ire that Emily's posted.
00:18:04
Speaker
And I felt curious about that. And I wanted your take on it, Marissa. Why do you think that...
00:18:11
Speaker
Someone like Gwyneth can post something like that, and it's fine. Emily posts it, and she gets torn down. And I was like, is it about success and revenue? Because Goop is only about $20 million per year, which is a lot, obviously, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to Glossier. Or is it a mismatch in selling accessible products, Glossier, while actually living a more luxe life or something else? I felt really interested in this and wanted your thoughts.
00:18:38
Speaker
I think age actually has something to do with it. Gwyneth Paltrow is in her early fifties and Emily Weiss at the time was, I don't know, probably like right around 30, early 30s.
00:18:53
Speaker
And so I think that might be part of it is that there's this sense maybe that like Gwyneth earned it, that she's never pretended to be anything but like a rich white lady from a rich family. Whereas Emily has done a lot to deflect class and her brand is so much about inclusivity. I think also there's the big difference is that
00:19:16
Speaker
whether or not it's genuine or true, a lot of the marketing for goop or similar kinds of treatments.
Lessons from Glossier's Business Expansion
00:19:25
Speaker
is around self-care and doing these things, even if it's something like getting hair lasered off, that it's somehow taking care of yourself and making yourself feel better and, I don't know, advocating for yourself somehow. And Emily was weirdly direct about it where she was getting these treatments to look good for her wedding day. And at the end, she said, I felt eight out of 10, which
00:19:54
Speaker
It's deeply sad and tragic in some sense. We should all be putting in that much work and feeling the best we've ever looked, but also I think incredibly honest and very true to what it is to be a woman chasing the eternally elusive beauty myth. Yeah. One thing I'm curious about is what do you want readers to take away from the book?
00:20:22
Speaker
And I think there are so many things that I like to take away. I would love for them to be forming their own opinions about Emily and Glossier. I love that people talk about it like a thriller and that they were constantly changing their
00:20:40
Speaker
I don't know, allegiances or whether they thought that Emily was brilliant or lucky or this or that. And I think that's something that, you know, they can take away with and debate with people. I hope those are happening. I also think there's a lot of lessons to be learned about just like the real cost of money and growth and wanting to start a large company and all the kind of
00:21:06
Speaker
purse strings that come with it. Even you can be the founder and CEO of a unicorn company like Glossier and you still very much have people you're answering to.
00:21:18
Speaker
And I think that is a lot of the lesson, especially if some of the latter chapters. And I also just think it can help people put, you know, the last decade or so of like finance and feminism and tech and beauty and all of these things in culture into maybe greater focus for people. Yeah. I think that.
00:21:45
Speaker
accomplish all those things for me. Definitely. I loved it. Really. I'm like partway through my second read. Oh, wow. Yeah. So have you and Emily talked since the book was published? Do you think you'll write about heaven? Oh, no, you haven't. I put in a formal request for comment from either her or the glossier communication team and never heard back.
Future Projects: Jane Birkin and TV Adaptation
00:22:12
Speaker
Do you think that you'll write about Emily or Glossier again? I don't know. I could see myself writing about Emily again if she comes out with a new business or something like that. I would be a little bit doubtful that she or Glossier would give me great access to do. Even though I think the book is ultimately great for their profile as both her as person and the brand, but I don't get the feeling that maybe they
00:22:40
Speaker
entirely gray or that I would be their journalist of choice. So I don't know. I imagine that people might want to hear from me, but I also think people have heard so much of what I have to say about them that maybe they'd want some other writer to weigh in on things. Somewhat related, I saw the news about Glossy being turned into a TV show on Amazon. Congratulations. Thank you. How involved are you going to be?
00:23:08
Speaker
I don't know. It's so in the early stages that I haven't even had the official, the news, basically the contracts have just been signed. It's not my great dream in life to become a screenwriter, TV writer. I'm not opposed to it, but basically I already have my next book project lined up. I'm leaving
00:23:29
Speaker
not long from now to go to parents to go report it. I am pretty involved and busy with what's next, but I hope to be consulted and I want to weigh in on everything and hope to be involved. But I don't know that I will be formally in the writer's room or anything like that. But I think that's a good thing. I often think that adaptations that are done by the original writer of a book can be
00:23:55
Speaker
maybe a little overly faithful or something. So I think it would really benefit from someone else.
00:24:01
Speaker
interpreting that world, but oh God, I can't, I hope it happens. I really wanted to see those set. Yeah, I'm so excited when I saw that. I have to, I want to give a shout out to Kirby Johnson, who's a beauty editor. She's co-host of the gloss Angeles podcast and she's been on this show. I love following her on TikTok and she did, but I thought it was a really fun TikTok this morning, reporting on this and then brainstorming who would be a good actress to play Emily. If it's all bad, yeah.
00:24:29
Speaker
So who would you want to play Emily? Do you have any suggestions? Someone said Alison Williams to me and I can't get her out of my head. Plus they have a certain physical resemblance too. I love that idea, but really anyone, I would love nothing more than to see some audition tapes for that.
00:24:51
Speaker
Oh, man. Well, you mentioned you're writing a new book.
Upcoming Biography on Jane Birkin
00:24:54
Speaker
I was wondering, could you tell us a little bit about it and when it might be out? Yeah, it's about Jane Birkin. It's a biography of Jane Birkin.
00:25:02
Speaker
I think of it as also like the way that Glossier is a lot about the culture surrounding Glossier and Emily Weiss and the creation of Girlboss, that this book will have a lot about Paris in the seventies and the kind of creation and export of the myth that's the sort of perfect French girl that we're so still enthralled with. And it's coming out between January and April or May of 2025.
00:25:32
Speaker
They have me on a pretty tight schedule. Yeah. And that's what you're going to Paris to research for? That's what I'm going to Paris to research to go do interviews and archives and all that kinds of stuff.
00:25:44
Speaker
Oh my God, sign me up. That sounds so good. I'm in. I know. I'm excited. It's the beginning of a slightly untethered chapter in my life. It'll be good. My apartment building is being sold. So I already knew that I was going to Paris, but now I'm moving all my belongings into storage while I'm there and then dealing with finding a new place in New York, which is never fun when I get back. But I think it'll be good for me.
00:26:14
Speaker
Oh my gosh, do you know how long you're going to be there for? Is it a set period of time?
00:26:19
Speaker
I'm gonna be there at least two months, but I have the option to stay for another couple months and finish writing the draft of the book. I think it's just gonna depend on do I need to come back to New York for things? Am I missing New York? Did I find an amazing apartment? All those sorts of boring things. Otherwise, it'll just be me and my dog and a giant suitcase. Well, that sounds awesome. Is there anything you wish I'd asked that I didn't?
00:26:48
Speaker
No, I feel like we really covered it. Thank you so much, Marissa. It was such a privilege and a pleasure to talk to you. I really appreciate your time and I really love the book. I think it was such a cool artifact and awesome thing. I'm glad it's out there. Oh, thank you. I'm so happy that you're reading it twice and I can't wait to come on again soon.
00:27:09
Speaker
Oh yeah, please do. As soon as you've got your French girl book out, we need to... I just have to write it first. No pressure. Thank you. All right, folks. I hope that you enjoyed that episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe or review us. And if you want to check out our newsletter, Content People, it is in the show notes. See you next time. Bye.