Book Review: Glossy-Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier by Marisa Meltzer

When it came cosmetics, you often went to your local drugstore to get your lipstick and eye shadow. Or, if you were feeling fancy and flush with cash, you went to an upscale department store to get your Estee Lauder or Lancome fix. Cosmetics like Maybelline’s Great Lash mascara and Mac’s Ruby Woo lipstick remain iconic. Stores like Ulta and Sephora are an overwhelming mix of cosmetics, hair and skin care lines, and various fragrances (and now can be found within Target and Kohl’s.) And it seems like every other week, and celebrity or influencer comes out with a beauty and fragrance line.

It seems like in the past 10 to 15 years, cosmetics and other beauty products have become more than something we use to adorn our faces or pamper our bodies. They have become brands many women (and maybe some men) have made a part of their identity. Glossier, founded by Emily Weiss back in 2014. And Marissa Meltzer discusses Glossier and its founder in her book Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier. Meltzer does a deep into Glossier’s rise, fall, and rebirth. She also takes a look at its elusive founder, Emily Weiss.

Before there was Glossier, there was one singular Emily Weiss. Born in 1985 and raised in Connecticut, Weiss showed a passion for beauty and fashion from a very young age. She also showed an incredible amount of drive and ambition. She even asked on of the parents she babysat for for an internship at the company he worked for. They company? Ralph Lauren.

Stylish, tall, attractive, and privileged, Weiss was able to make important connections and allies, and thusly, was able to parlay herself into early success. Probably most people became familiar with Weiss when she appeared in a handful of episodes of the reality show “The Hills.” Dubbed the “super intern,” Weiss proved to be smart and capable, and pretty much left cast members of “The Hills,” Lauran Conrad and Whitney Port, in the dust.

In 2011, Weiss launched her website, Into the Gloss. Into the Gloss featured many notable people in the world of fashion and culture in which they shared their beauty routines with the readers of the website. Into the Gloss became a huge hit and ended up quite the profitable media venture for Weiss. Yet, Weiss wanted more.

Weiss was able to parlay the success of Into Gloss (along with two million dollars in seed money) into developing Glossier. Glossier started out with only four products, but that didn’t stop this new beauty brand from taking off and grabbing the dollars of Millennials and older Gen Z-ers. The Millennial Pink packaging may have helped. Within a year, Glossier was selling nearly a year’s worth of product within a three month period.

Glossier added more products and its success was stratospheric. Glossier wasn’t just a cosmetics company and a beauty brand. It became a part of its followers identity. The vibe of Glossier was femininity, inclusiveness, and making it what the consumer wanted. You could use as much product you wanted or as little. Glossier was a fun club and worshipped by its users.

And Weiss became a rock star of CEOs. Sure, it helped she was young and attractive, but she was also hard working, driven, and had her finger on the pulse of what young women wanted when it came to beauty and cosmetics. The media took notice of Weiss, and she was named Forbes magazine “Forbes 30 Under 30” list and Time magazines “Next 100.” What was I doing when I was around that age? Not getting featured in Forbes and Time, that’s for sure.

But soon Glossier started to falter. There was some gossip that things weren’t so rosy amongst the staff of Glossier and Weiss’s leadership, Weiss confused people by claiming Glossier was more of a tech company than a beauty company, and the pandemic didn’t help things either. However, Glossier is having a resurgence and young women remain fans of its products. I even saw Glossier at my local Sephora.

Meltzer has definitely done her research when it comes to Glossier, and she was able to interview Weiss on several occasions. Weiss doesn’t reveal much; she’s probably a very private person. And though I respect Meltzer for her hard work, I did have some problems with Glossy. At some times, Meltzer acts like she worships Weiss, and at other times, it comes across like she’s trying to villainize her. Weiss isn’t perfect, but she isn’t the female, Millennial Bernie Madoff or a brunette version of Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos.

Also, Meltzer gets quite repetitive in Glossy. I kept reading the same information over and over again. I think Glossy might have worked better as a long article in Vogue or Vanity Fair.

But I think my biggest problem with Glossy was, well, me. I’m a Gen X-er. Glossier was never my beauty brand of choice. And I’ve never treated any beauty brand as part of my identity or something worthy of my worship. Though I did have a thing for Bonne Bell Lipsmackers. Its Dr. Pepper Flavor was the bomb!

Still, Glossy does have some interesting aspects, and I recommend it for anyone who is a fan of Glossy, a fan of Emily Weiss, or anyone interested in the world of beauty brands in the 21st century.

Book Review: A Hundred Other Girls by Iman Hariri-Kia

In Iman Hariri-Kia’s debut novel A Hundred Other Girls, Noora has a newly minted degree from NYU and a blog cleverly named Noora York City, which has quite the sizable following. Noora is crashing on her sister Leila’s couch and their Iranian-born parents are now living in Dubai.

Noora wants to be a writer, but for the time being, she’s tutoring spoiled rich kids on the upper east side. However, due to some connections, Noora scores in interview with Vinyl magazine as the assistant to it’s formidable editor-in-chief. Loretta James.

Noora is thrilled with this opportunity. Not only will she be working in media and perhaps get a chance to write, she will also be working for the best magazine ever! Vinyl is a magazine that covers fashion, pop culture, social issues, and politics, kind of a mash up of Vogue, Rolling Stone, and The Nation. And Vinyl has been a touchstone for Noora since she was kid. Vinyl taught her the important things in life, like how to insert a tampon, and she also slept with a copy of Vinyl under her pillow.

Though Noora notices a few red flags while being interviewed by Loretta, but brushes them aside and happily accepts the position as Loretta’s assistant. She thinks working for Vinyl is her ticket to making her dreams of being a writer true. However, there is one caveat. Loretta tells Noora she cannot write for anything but her blog. Hmm? How is Noora going to become a writer if not given a chance to write beyond Noora York City? Noora swallows her pride and takes the job. She figures having work experience at Vinyl is a feather in her cap, and it’s an opportunity so many other people would kill for.

It isn’t long before Noora realizes things at Vinyl aren’t so wonderful. Loretta is at turns demanding and insecure, and doesn’t allow Noora to have a life outside of work. She’s always at Loretta’s beck and call. And to make matters worse, there is a turf war between print and digital at Vinyl. Loretta and Noora work on the print side, and the vinyl side is headed by the fearless Jade Aki who is only 27 and who used to be Loretta’s assistant.

However, there does seem to be some positive aspects to working at Vinyl. Noora befriends Vinyl’s beauty director Saffron who is non-binary and goes by the pronouns they/them. Saffron is a cheerleader for Noora and they show her some of the ins and outs of Vinyl like the beauty closet, which turns out to be more than a place where you can experiment with the latest Fenty lipstick.

Noora also strikes up a flirtation with a hot IT guy named Cal who is also involved with a start up that has to do something with cannabis. Will this flirtation lead to a lovely romance or some down and dirty nookie in the beauty closet?

Noora somehow ends up attending a meeting on the digital side and she is besotted. Everyone seems so cool and welcoming. And Jade Aki just seems so dynamic, the perfect role model to Noora. However, later on, at a Vinyl event outside of the office, some of Jade’s tweets come to light, and they are not pretty. There are calls for Jade to be cancelled and there is also talk that these aren’t really Jade’s tweets. No matter what, it is a scandal for Jade and Vinyl. And Loretta thinks she is victorious in the battle between print and digital.

Through some odd turn of events, Noora ends up writing pieces for the digital side under the pseudonym “C. Bates”. These pieces gain traction, go viral, and become buzzed about around the Vinyl office. Just who is this C. Bates? Noora is thrilled that her writing is getting attention but at the same time she lives in fear that she will be discovered and fired from working at Vinyl (and possibly never working in media again).

And when A Hundred Other Girls reaches it’s sad, yet not surprising denouement, Noora is put in the hot seat and faces a very captivating decision when it comes to her future at Vinyl. However, is it worth Noora selling her soul?

I truly loved A Hundred Other Girls. It was fast-paced and a page turner, and it truly revealed how cutthroat media can really be especially in the age of the internet and the demise of print publications. There’s a lot of juicy gossip, name dropping, and desperation to be seen as relevant as younger generations succeed in the workplace. Noora is a fascinating study on young people trying to find their footing in craziness of work, love, relationships, family, being a first generation American, and a card-carrying member of Gen Z.