| |  | | | | October 17, 2017 | Letter No. 108 | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | | Dear Lennys,
This week, we continue our partnership with Cole Haan and delve deeper into the world of extraordinary women and what makes them tick. I had the not-too-shabby job of interviewing the fashion icons starring in the company's new campaign, Karlie Kloss and Christy Turlington. While I was sure I'd walk away with many top-notch fashion tips, I actually just ended up feeling deeply inspired (and vaguely lazy) because of how completely they've hurled themselves into their respective charitable causes.
Karlie's obsession? Giving young women the skills for coding so they can become a part of the world of STEM through her Kode With Klossy initiative. It's not what you expect when you think of Karlie sashaying down a Milan runway, which makes it even more dope. As for Christy, with her Every Mother Counts foundation, she is quite literally saving lives around the world and giving mothers the resources they need to care for themselves so they can also care for others.
Christy was moved to help other mothers after she experienced childbirth complications of her own. When you go through your own hardship and then can go outside yourself to start a global movement, that's our definition of amazing. This week, let the ingenuity and stick-to-itiveness of these women animate you to start your own movement, big or small, in your community.
Inspired,
Jenni
In this week's Lenny, we have:
—Jenni's motivating interview with Karlie and Christy.
—Jane Cha Cutler's essay about growing up Korean-American and trying to keep her young daughter safe from both Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump.
—Alexis Dent on having an invisible disability and being told she's "too pretty to be sick."
—Our Daily Affirmations to give you some posi-vibes (in a time when those are in short supply).
—And finally, Melissa Chadburn's essay on her very short career as a music video background dancer, and her youthful yearning for acceptance and accolades. | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | | Karlie Kloss and Christy Turlington on the Power of Their Sisterhood | | | | By Jenni Konner | | | | | | |
I'm not exactly the first person they ask to interview supermodels. I'm not privy to the insider news of the fashion world, and I'm also 5'4" — so a lot of my questions would just be "What's it like up there?" But when I was tasked with interviewing two extraordinary women, Karlie Kloss and Christy Turlington, it didn't end up feeling like a task at all. All the classic model stereotypes (cool, unattainable, aloof) were cracked in half as I got to know women whose powerful interests stretch well beyond the catwalk.
I was not only impressed by their individual pursuits — Christy's commitment to Every Mother Counts, an organization trying to make childbirth safe for every woman around the world, and Karlie's involvement with Kode with Klossy, a coding camp for girls — but I was also deeply moved by the mentorship Christy has offered Karlie in a business where sisterhood isn't always the norm. It reminded me of the connection between Lena and me that launched this newsletter, and it also reinforced the idea that lending a hand and a shoulder to cry on will always pay dividends.
Jenni Konner: How did you two meet?
Christy Turlington: I met her the first time at a store in New York City. She was a girl at the time, but I really was drawn to her immediately because I also started working as a young woman. I really don't work very much and haven't for a long time, but I was there to do a portrait, and Karlie came in. I think she was shooting a campaign at the time. I was like, What a lovely girl. Very tall, very pretty, but I really didn't follow and don't follow fashion magazines as a layperson anymore. But after that, I started to see her on virtually everything and everywhere.
Karlie Kloss: The first time we met, I was sixteen, and I burst into tears. I admired Christy as an icon in fashion, but beyond that, I really admired the fact that she broke the rules and continued to pursue her passions beyond her day job [in modeling]. I think that she is an extraordinary woman in every sense of the word and in every facet of her life.
CT: Eventually, she knocked on the door in my office. She was in the same building for a meeting and came over and said, "Hey, is this Every Mother Counts?" I was in the office sitting at the computer, and I turned around, and she was like, "Hi, it's Karlie."
From that moment on, we've gotten to know each other well. We have made time for one another to talk, to share, to connect, and to partner in different ways. She came to Haiti with me on an Every Mother Counts trip a couple of years ago. She's there at any time that I need her to be supportive, and I try to be there as solidly as she is for me in any of her endeavors.
KK: For someone like me who loves to learn and wanted to continue my education after I graduated high school and balance that with my career, Christy was a trailblazer. She was instrumental in giving me the courage to apply to NYU — she actually wrote my recommendation letter.
JK: Both of you have taken unconventional paths for having started in modeling. What made you want to pivot to a new path?
KK: Part of why I admire Christy so much and really learned from her as a mentor is because after graduating high school and before applying to NYU, and before starting Kode with Klossy, [I was] in a middle-of-the-road point in my career.
I was really fulfilled in a lot of ways, professionally very accomplished. But at the same time, I was not feeling fulfilled and challenged in the ways that I knew I was capable of. I had to reevaluate how I was spending my time, the kind of people I was working with. I had to make choices and say no and really be guided by living my life and choosing jobs that I wanted to do based on who I am and what I care about.
CT: I really didn't plan on the career that I had at all. I was thirteen or fourteen years old when I started modeling, and for me the opportunity to travel, and see the world, and have some independence, that was the carrot at the end of the stick. At every stage, I just tried to take as much out of the opportunities that I was given as I possibly could. That led me to live in New York right out of high school. It led me to have some great fashion career opportunities, but then those opportunities really allowed me to take some time and figure out who and what I wanted to be, which always involved going back to school. At 25, I decided to apply to NYU, and started there the next fall.
After I became a mom, I went back to school a second time to get a master's in public health at Columbia in my late 30s. Because of a childbirth-related complication with my first child, my life path went deeply into global maternal health. That led me to go back to school, but also to start production on my first documentary film, No Woman, No Cry.
When I finished the film in 2010, that was when Every Mother Counts was formalized, first as a campaign but then a couple of years later as a grant-giving organization. We're now a 501(c)(3), and we've given about $4 million of grant funds to programs around the world that make sure that women have better access to quality and appropriate care throughout their pregnancies and deliveries and postpartum period.
JK: Is there a specific moment or setback that you ultimately grew from? How were you able to use your experiences to rethink success?
CT: I feel like I'm pretty good at listening to my gut and was by the time I started my charity. But I had never made a film before, for example. To put myself in a space where I didn't have a lot of experience, but I had passion and I had resources and I felt as I was pursuing that endeavor that I was in the right place to get the information that I needed — I think to take that risk was a big learning experience for me and allowed me to have more trust.
JK: Taking on the role of being a mentor and an advocate and starting a nonprofit is an extraordinary act. I would love if you could tell me about some of the other extraordinary women or girls that both of you have met while working with your charities.
CT: We do work in eight countries around the world, and many of those programs are led by women: women who are midwives, or obstetricians, or community health workers who aren't compensated for the kind of work or the quality of work that they do. They do what they do because they care, and because what they offer women and their communities is so essential. On any given day, I just have to conjure up a face of one of those partners and I'm inspired and motivated to do whatever I have to do in the moment.
KK: That feeling of fulfillment and of passion and excitement around doing something extraordinary and helping others — there is no action too small. I'm so excited to see what all of the girls in our Kode with Klossy camps go on to do, because they're the future.
JK: How has your sisterhood with each other inspired you?
CT: I was so impressed with Karlie even when she started Karlie's Kookies early on. She has these endless talents, and she's been seeking out ways to do good from the get-go. I think she thought coming into her career, Look at all the possibilities of what I can do. That came to her much sooner than it did to me.
She figured out in such a short period of time that she has access to smart and inspiring people — people that she trusts, and that she has learned from — and figured out a way to turn that into a nonprofit. She reaches so many young people and gets them inspired.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Jenni modeled once, for a collection of high-fashion leggings. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | Korean Bogeyman | | | | By Jane Cha Cutler | | |
I've been having a recurring dream in which the Big One has happened. North Korea has gotten its Bad News Bears weaponized missile to fly across the ocean and hit Los Angeles. In this dream, I'm dressed in a cozier version of something Mad Max's Furiosa might wear to daringly rescue enslaved concubines. Rather than surveying a desiccated landscape, though, I'm holed up with my family in a bombed-out Starbucks. We're all surprisingly unconcerned about being aboveground, a bit c'est la vie that whatever fallout occurred outside this coffee shop has already done its worst.
The dream probably has taken root because I spend an inordinate amount of time before bed scouring the news and analyses about what might happen in the strange game of chicken between Rocket Man and the Dotard. I wonder about that, too, "the Dotard." I wonder what translator or Babel app came up with that particular word — I try to think of what actual Korean word Kim Jong Un must have sputtered to end up at "dotard."
I marvel at the Twitter tit-for-tat that two nominal world leaders engage in. Even stabs at the roughest sort of negotiation by his own appointed secretary of State are undermined by the Tweeter-in-Chief, as Trump tells Rex Tillerson "not to bother" with diplomacy. So where does that leave us? I find myself asking: Where is Guam exactly? Is LA the closest major city to Pyongyang in the continental United States? But it seems really far still, right? Right?
I'm a Korean-American Los Angeleno by way of Queens and Long Island, and I've had a lifetime of North Korea being the ultimate bogeyman. When I was growing up, people would ask if I was from North or South Korea, and I'd look at them as if they'd asked if I lived underwater or on land. Ummmm, I'd think, if I were North Korean, I wouldn't be here at this bat mitzvah. But I'd just mutter, "South Korea … I was born here, but my parents are from South Korea."
I was told apocryphal stories of the uncle who'd been stuck in the North but escaped in the nick of time across the border by running across a river. When I'd travel abroad, my mother would warn me not to speak Korean too loudly in crowds, or to let myself be kidnapped by North Korean agents, who apparently were posted in European cities to surveil suburban teen tours. But then when I did visit the demilitarized zone on a family trip to Korea a few years ago, led by an understandably firm and skittish tour guide ("No, sir, you cannot take a picture with one foot on each side"), I got chills as I saw up close the dynamited holes and small burrowed tunnels through which the North Koreans had tried to infiltrate the South during the war.
As an adult, I can't deny the not-so-crazy rumors of Kim Jong Un's crazy MO — he had his uncle executed by putting him in a cage with feral dogs (very Game of Thrones); he sent back a brain-dead American prisoner whose only alleged offense was to take down a poster to bring home as proof he'd been to the "hermit kingdom"; he kidnapped American journalists like Laura Ling, forcing an exasperated Bill Clinton to go and negotiate their safe passage home. And he even put a brazen public hit on his own half-brother — using a rare chemical nerve agent delivered by two young Asian girls-for-hire. You truly couldn't make this stuff up, and that last one resulted in the biggest "I told you so" glare from my mother since teen-tour days.
I'm a mother now, too — of a two-year-old daughter. Most of the time, I'm thankful that she's too young to understand anything about this, to know how scary a place the world is, and, even in her short life span, how much scarier it's become. The closest thing my intrepid little girl has to fear is when she insists on coming inside because she can't pinpoint where the sound of crickets is coming from. It breaks my heart because I know she doesn't even know what to be afraid of yet, and that no matter how many times I tell her "You can do anything," when it comes to literal matters of life and death, I can't offer much.
I look up the emergency go bags on Amazon that contain powdered milk, dust masks, and traveler's checks, but they don't inspire confidence to sustain humanity in a major weather-related event, much less a nuclear cataclysm, so I don't add to cart. I read about prefab steel bunkers that cost $40,000 and, more nail-bitingly, a Noah's Ark–esque one run that admits members by invitation only. Applicants must have demonstrable skills in, you know, world-building. The chosen few have checked boxes for "engineer," "survivalist," "scientist," "martial artist." I ask my husband what he could do, and he says he can "put on plays," that the arts are always needed, especially in a close-quarters post-doom communal quarry. That's at least something.
I start to wonder if "survivalist" is a learnable skill, like coding.
So I go about it in my own amateur way — surviving — and more, enjoying life despite the dread that hums along at its own persistent pace. For my two-year-old who may double her age under this scary administration, mustn't I be the one who says everything's going to be just fine, even when I have no idea if that's true? Is it saying "I don't know if everything's going to be just fine, but I sure hope so, since I really hope you don't have to fight to be in the first wave of Mars colonizers escaping a post-nuclear Earth? "
I think a lot about what I could do better before I end up in that bombed-out coffee shop. I can march, sign petitions, set up my robo-calls, give money, and gather with like-minded citizens. Sure, there are those things. And closer to home, there are a lot of ways that I wish I were a better role model to my daughter — being more present; using my spare time to garden or cook stews; learning to crochet rather than cueing up Netflix.
But I won't lie, and I won't scare her. That'll happen on its own. I'll tell her the truth as best as I can make it out but let her know that reason and light, even if they seem far off and unresponsive, tend to win the day. And I pray for the world not to end anytime soon, and that if it does end, I'll have done what I need to do and said what I need to say.
Today, at least, I have the power to teach that crickets aren't scary, and that somehow feels like enough.
Jane Cha Cutler is a producer living in Los Angeles. | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | When You're Too Pretty to Be Sick | | | | By Alexis Dent | | |
I stood outside a sprawling casino resort, shivering as the temperature dropped below 50 degrees. I watched my breath escape my body and wade into the night air, and my service dog nuzzled my leg with his snout. Giant was the peacekeeper in the middle of the hellfire this night had become, my reminder that it would all be okay.
I was hopping back and forth to stay warm when my fiancé approached me. "I went to the front desk and ordered a cab. It will be here in 15 to 20 minutes," he said.
The casino was in the middle of nowhere, just off a country highway. There were no Lyfts around and no cabs immediately available for pickup. We had to wait outside, in the cold, because going inside just wasn't safe.
Disabled is a complex term to use when you look like me: healthy, strong, and able-bodied. But I do have a disability — post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD — and I crave the freedom to self-identify as I navigate the label-obsessed world in which we live. I don't want to have a disability; in fact, I don't think any person with a disability does. But I don't want to be expected to pretend it doesn't exist. Often, it feels as if I am being gaslighted by the world, pressured to claim good health, push myself beyond my limits, and pretend that my life hasn't been saved by a drug cocktail that my doctors have carefully curated over the past two years.
That had been exactly the case earlier that night, leading up to our chilly wait for a cab. My fiancé and I had spent the day in a nearby town, hiking and going to our favorite local restaurant. We wanted to end the evening by visiting the casino in the town over. We used to go to the casino fairly regularly, until we both decided that weekends playing Blackjack and buying diluted cocktails at inflated prices wouldn't help us save for the home and future we wanted together. That night, however, we embraced spontaneity.
I walked into the lobby with my service dog and was promptly told that although my fiancé could go in, I'd have to step to the side and wait for a manager to come verify that I actually needed a service animal. It was a little annoying, sure, but I brushed it off and suggested my fiancé go get some cocktails; we agreed to meet up when I was finished speaking with the security manager. That turned out to be wishful thinking. What unfolded was a prolonged interrogation.
Why do you have a service animal, ma'am?
"I have PTSD," I willingly explained.
What is the animal trained to do?
I cooperated by explaining the four tasks he can perform.
A lot of people come in here faking service animals. We don't allow emotional-support animals.
"I can assure you that Giant can perform specified tasks; he has been trained, and I can answer whatever questions you need to know about his skill set. Also, he is not an emotional-support animal," I said. "Those are two different things, and it is demeaning to insinuate he must be an ESA, because I have PTSD. Psychiatric-service animals are common and valid."
Look at him; he's not even doing anything right now!
This is when my blood started boiling. "Even seeing-eye dogs get breaks when their handler isn't moving or in need of immediate assistance," I responded curtly.
Clearly, the casino staff is unaware of the wide array of service animals and the services they must perform for handlers with invisible illnesses in case of emergency. "Does someone have to have a seizure, or pass out, or have a dissociative attack on command for you to honor their disability?" I shot back.
At one point, the manager on duty told me I was too pretty to have a disability — and that my dog was too pretty to be a service animal.
"My explaining his tasks should be enough, but I'm happy to provide you with additional documentation if necessary," I pleaded. I just wanted to enjoy a night out with my fiancé.
Never mind that I offered to show a copy of a doctor's note on official letterhead detailing the services my dog provides. Never mind that I was willing to relinquish my right to medical privacy and show them the medications I have to keep on me at all times in case of emergency. There was no reasoning with security staff; the answer was a strict NO, and I had to leave the premises.
Disability does not discriminate, and neither does PTSD. There are survivors of physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, combat, and serious injury, and/or survivors of experiences that involved actual or threatened death. Much like other illnesses and disabilities, PTSD has nothing to do with how pretty I am or anyone else is. The disorder — and the havoc it can wreak on your life — is both blind and relentless.
So that's how I ended up outside. Shivering in the cold and hopping from one foot to the other as I awaited a cab. Giant continued nuzzling my leg; occasionally, if he sensed my anxiety rising to a level that could trigger a panic attack, he'd offer a few generous licks. Tactile stimulation, experts call it. It is one of the four tasks that he has learned to do on command. For Giant, licking me isn't simply a show of affection or a desire for sodium; it's a way to disrupt my thought process when I start trembling, feeling faint, and am unable to bring myself back down.
"Let's just go back in," my well-meaning fiancé pleaded. "You're cold, and we still have to wait a while."
"No, I simply don't feel comfortable. Security told me I have to leave, and I don't want things to escalate," I explained. "Black people have been shot for less."
He looked at me with compassion, a look that said, I can't fully empathize, but I'm trying to.
I have to navigate the world a bit differently than my white fiancé. He's a quick learner and incredibly socially aware, but sometimes he doesn't realize that there are small conveniences — like taking shelter in a warm lobby — that seem out of reach for a woman of color like me.
And, sure enough, as the cab dispatcher updated us that the wait for a ride would be at least another twenty minutes, the local police showed up. Not one patrol car, but two. I was being apprehended for being myself.
It was at this moment that I felt less than human. I have long known that I'm a triple minority: black, female, and clinically disabled. But I've never witnessed such a sickening display of power. The casino security guards were punishing me for expressing my civil rights. Not only had they refused my entrance, but they were now devaluing my personhood to the extent that they called the police on me.
I stood in fear, awaiting the officers' approach. Once they reached me, they asked us to hand over our IDs. We both did so willingly, and before they walked away, I had a question. "May I ask what you're running our IDs for, officers?" I was apprehensive but well-versed in my rights.
"We're just going to run your IDs, check for warrants, things like that. The casino called us, and so we want to be sure that there isn't a warrant for your arrest," he explained. "You would be surprised how we catch bad guys sometimes."
I quietly responded that I understood, having two uncles in law enforcement with plenty of tales of criminals who evaded justice for far too long. They walked away, and I stared at my fiancé helplessly. It was just him, me, and Giant … standing in a field near the casino. My fiancé silently reached out and put his arm around me, cradling me as I shook with not only chills, but fear as well.
Within minutes, both officers returned with our IDs. They explained that we were good to go, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was well aware that my fiancé simply had an old speeding ticket on his record and I just had some parking violations, but I was still anxious that they'd find some reason to push this night from bad to worse.
Luckily, something good came out of that interaction: absolution. The officers acknowledged we had done nothing wrong, quickly said a polite farewell, and sped off into the distance.
So there we were. I was humiliated. My fiancé, empathetic. My service dog, at the ready and on watch for distress. The three of us stood there, cold, frustrated, and eager to go home. After almost an hour, a rusty tan van pulled up in front of us, and the driver apologized for the delay. I sat in the back seat, where I had to observe our driver's large, pimply rear end hanging halfway out of his shorts and enveloping the entirety of the seat. It was a long, nine-minute drive back to our car; we had parked it at the restaurant where we'd eaten dinner. When we arrived there, the three of us hopped out and paid the fare: $57, plus tip. A large price to pay for a quick ride down abandoned country roads, but definitely not the biggest price I had paid that night.
Alexis Dent is an essayist and poet whose debut collection, Everything I Left Behind, is available now. | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | Daily Affirmations | | | | By By Amy Rose Spiegel with illustrations by Kati Szilágyi | | | |
Amy Rose Spiegel is a writer, the editor in chief of Talkhouse Music, and the author of Action: A Book About Sex. She likes irises, the Chicago Manual of Style, and meatloaf. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram. | | | | | | | | | | | | Advertisement | | |  | | | | | | | | Becoming Background | | | | By Melissa Chadburn | | |
1992—I worked at the Winchell's Donuts on Robertson Boulevard, across the street from my high school. An old dirty boss smoked cigarettes in my face and asked me out all the time, and some kids came in at night and pulled a gun and donut jacked me. Guys I knew from school. Guys that I woulda been like, "Here, Marcel, take the donuts." But because I had foster parents in the ZIP code with houses instead of apartments, they acted like we were from different planets. Me and these guys had gone to junior high together back when girls left curlers in our bangs and guys sported flat tops: we'd been in dancing crews, bailed in pajamas to school, and filled baby bottles with fruit punch.
The year before, when I'd stayed in the apartment with my mom, I'd be up late night, adjusting the hanger and the foil on the rabbit ears to watch Pump It Up With Dee on the UHF channel. I'd practice all the dance moves and try to memorize the lyrics, because that was my ticket out.
The second I moved to the neighborhood with Heights on the sign, I became presumida, stuck-up, Oreo, jungle-fever-struck ho, slut wannabe, Coconut, bitch. My Cinderella dream machine came in the form of talent scouts. Guys on the sidewalk in baseball caps and clean sneakers, calling us in to do some test tape. Girls my age with work permits and big dreams became extras. Video hos.
When I was around eight, I had a spunky friend who bossed me and dressed me, and she'd stand in her driveway, hand on her hip, taunting me: "How does it feel to want?" It was a line in a film she'd seen.
At that time, outside of wanting to be her, I could not afford to want. I wanted to have her hair, the way her hairspray and crimping iron gave her that perfect Alyssa Milano flair; I wanted her capacity to pick up dance moves, jumping off a chair like Janet Jackson in the "Pleasure Principle" video. I wanted her mom, how she sat with us at night and tickled our backs until we fell asleep, how she gave us health food, wheat germ, and honey. Then, as a teenager, I was nothing but a meat sack of want. And the less I had, the more Want.
Growing up, two things were everything — money and color. My dark-skinned brother was punching his way into solitude in county jail while my bright, light ass looked out the window of a basement room in a group home by the ocean. Ingratiating myself to rich folks was an option reserved for me and my long, wavy hair.
It finally happened, just like the dream, when I was sixteen. I was walking past the Beverly Center, and some friends and I got stopped — asked if we wanted to do a music video. Emily, Athena, and I were play cousins. Light-skinned girls with curves. The guys were Artemus and Colin. Artemus was a tall, chocolate dreamboat with short dreads and a nose ring, a poet. Colin was the Player, light eyes, a gentle voice; he smoked beedis and was endearing like a guy being raised by a single mother.
The five of us reported to an office the next day, walked in front of a camera, made small talk about stuff we knew about, trying to be interesting. We stood against a white wall and had a Polaroid taken of ourselves. Then we got the call. An Alkaholiks video. They were a fairly new West Coast rap group none of us had heard of yet. It was a lesson in what happens to everyday people when the camera turns on. People you've never heard of gain power; they tell you where to stand, what to wear. People you know — even tough bitches — comply.
The set of the shoot was a dusty lot with vacant houses. My girlfriends and I were ushered into one of the houses, the place buzzing with the swish of wardrobe bags and flip of makeup compacts. A short woman with carabiners attached to her belt loop and a clipboard against her chest hollered out, "All right, girls, dress in your sexiest outfits!" Shirts got knotted up above belly buttons, shorts rolled up. Some girls threw off a cover-up, wearing just bikinis.
Meanwhile, I wore my prettiest dress, an ankle-length flower sundress. We were paraded outside in a line, and the guys in the group picked over us. Her, yes; her, no; her, yes; her, yes; her, no. I was a maybe — sent to join my guy friends in a house off-camera. For food, there was a table with a box of Cheez-Its, a big bottle of water, and a bag of apples. There were about a hundred of us. Take after take, we danced. The Alkaholiks walked through the vacant lot, lip-synched into the camera, rolled some dice, threw a basketball into a hoop; we kept dancing. Again and again and again.
Four hours into taping, they announced we were going to a second location. I walked off the set. Someone followed me out and asked where I was going. I said I was done. He said I should be happy with my fine yellow ass. I told him my fine yellow ass was hungry, and I didn't look back.
It wasn't too long after that I got a call to dance in another music video. This was different — Lenny Kravitz, a union set. Good food. A bump in pay every time we had to change clothes and if we were exposed to smoke. Mandatory breaks. On this set, I made the opposite mistake: One of those breaks, I got too comfortable with the talent and asked one of the musicians for a cigarette. He looked past me. I was invisible.
For some girls, videos were the ticket out: They got agents, they did commercials. Not me. There was something too personal and painful about not being chosen.
If you watch the Alkaholiks video, you'll notice two things. (1) My sixteen-year-old play cousin Emily sitting on the lap of one of the guys in the group, wearing a Kangol, her shirt tied up like Daisy Duke, her acrylic nails digging into his thigh; and (2) about halfway through the video, it morphs into yet another video — different location, different song. I'm nowhere to be found.
Becoming background seemed to just feed the Want. That choosemechoosemechooseme desperation ricocheting inside of me is that exact original wound that my system seems too fragile to tolerate.
It's still there today, that dull, achy imprint of Want. I want ridiculous things with no purpose: chrome gel nail polish and lipsticks, nonsensical outfits, jumpers, one-pieces, boots, espadrilles, a certain pair of something, soaps and face creams. I want accolades, acceptance notices from fancy literary journals, fellowships. Underneath it all what I really want is love, to be seen, to be touched, to be held, to be kept, to be possessed wholly with all my good and all my naughty bits, a no-turning-away kind of love. I want to move through the world with ease, and to remember to walk off the set when I need to.
Melissa Chadburn is a fellow for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Her debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. | | | | | | |  | | | | | | | | | | The email newsletter where there's no such thing as too much information.
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