CANR

• Outdated: Why Dating Is Ruining Your Love Life Seal Press (Berkeley, CA), 2011
• Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America Picador (New York, NY), 2017
• The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning Random House (New York, NY), 2023

1. The myth of making it : a workplace reckoning LCCN 2024009819 Type of material Book Personal name Mukhopadhyay, Samhita, author. Main title The myth of making it : a workplace reckoning / by Samhita Mukhopadhyay. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Random House, [2023] Projected pub date 2406 Description 1 online resource ISBN 9780593448106 (ebook) (hardcover) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 2. Outdated : why dating is ruining your love life LCCN 2011016197 Type of material Book Personal name Mukhopadhyay, Samhita. Main title Outdated : why dating is ruining your love life / Samhita Mukhopadhyay. Published/Created Berkeley, CA : Seal Press, c2011. Description 238 p. ; 21 cm. ISBN 9781580053327 1580053327 Links Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1212/2011016197-b.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1405/2011016197-d.html CALL NUMBER HQ800.2 .M85 2011 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER HQ800.2 .M85 2011 LANDOVR Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 3. Nasty women : feminism, resistance, and revolution in Trump's America LCCN 2017027142 Type of material Book Main title Nasty women : feminism, resistance, and revolution in Trump's America / edited by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Picador, [2017] Description 248 pages ; 21 cm ISBN 9781250155504 (trade pbk.) CALL NUMBER HQ1421 .N37 2017 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• Samhita Mukhopadhyay website - https://www.samhitamukhopadhyay.com/

  Samhita Mukhopadhyay is the former executive editor of Teen Vogue and Feministing and the current editorial director at the Meteor. Her writing has appeared in New York, The Cut, Vanity Fair, Vogue, The Atlantic, and The Nation. Born in New York City, Mukhopadhyay lives between Putnam County and Brooklyn.

• Time - https://time.com/author/samhita-mukhopadhyay/

  SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY
  Mukhopadhyay is the former executive editor of Teen Vogue and former executive editor at Feministing. As a writer, her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The Cut, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and The Atlantic Monthly. She is the author of The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning

• London Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/profile/mukhopadhyay-samhita

  Samhita Mukhopadhyay

  Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer and digital strategist living in New York City. She was the executive editor of Feministing.com and is the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life. Follow her on Twitter at @TheSamhita.

• MacDowell - https://www.macdowell.org/artists/samhita-mukhopadhyay

  LITERATURE – NONFICTION
  Samhita Mukhopadhyay
  Region: Brewster, NY
  MacDowell Fellowships: 2022
  More: www.samhitamukhopadhyay.com
  Samhita Mukhopadhyay is former executive editor of Teen Vogue. An award-winning writer, editor, and lecturer, Samhita formerly served as senior editorial director at Mic and executive editor of Feministing.com. She is the co-editor of Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America and the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, NBC, Allure, Jezebel, New York, Vogue, Vogue India, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and The Nation.

  While at MacDowell, Samhita worked on her third book, The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning, a reported memoir on the state of “girl boss” feminism and equality in the workplace.

• Lingua Franca - https://linguafranca.nyc/products/samhita-mukhopadhyay

  Samhita Mukhopadhyay
  Name: Samhita Mukhopadhyay
  Occupation: Writer, speaker, digital strategist and executive editor of Teen Vogue
  IG: @thesamhita

  Samhita first showed up on our radar when she took the helms as executive editor of Teen Vogue, but she's been a well known name in feminist power-girl circles for years. As the executive editor of the award-winning blog Feministing, Samhita has had a voice in everything from online dating to affirmative action and Mad Men, all with her sharp-witted feminist voice that we truly admire. You can read some of Samhita's work here.

• Teen Vogue - https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-myth-of-making-it-samhita-mukhopadhyay-ambition-work

  In The Myth of Making It, Samhita Mukhopadhyay Talks Ambition, Work, and Career Myths
  In her new book, Teen Vogue's former executive editor unpacks the lies we tell ourselves about work.

  BY ALLEGRA KIRKLAND

  JUNE 18, 2024
  Image may contain Clothing Apparel Human Person Coat and Art
  We’ve all pretty much concluded that work sucks. During the pandemic and in the shaky years since, some problems have come into sharper focus: We’re overworked, underpaid, burned out, uninterested in being girl bosses but also not entirely thrilled by the prospect of frittering our one wild, precious life away working in lazy girl jobs. So now what?

  In The Myth of Making It, author Samhita Mukhopadhyay takes a hard look at the narratives we tell ourselves about work and success, and considers how we can begin to undo the worst of them. Mukhopadhyay lays out how women in particular have been sold a brand of corporate feminism that prioritizes individual ambition and advancement while requiring us to constantly make sacrifices for work, pretending our lives outside the office don’t exist.

  Mukhopadhyay drew from her own experiences as executive editor at Teen Vogue (where, full disclosure, she was my boss) while writing The Myth of Making It, which is equal parts personal reflection and an analysis of the structural issues that can make our work lives feel so impossible. The author gives an unflinching account of the challenges she experienced while running a magazine, losing her father, caring for her sick mother, and watching the world dissolve into the chaos of 2020. (There are also a lot of fun, gossipy anecdotes about life in upper management at Condé Nast.)

  Rather than focus on title or salary, the book suggests, we can try to work toward a healthier, more collective vision of success. We can prioritize supporting our colleagues, building worker power, and, crucially, forging identities and interests that are separate from our jobs. “These little acts of recognition, of connection, of collective resistance,” Mukhopadhyay writes, “can go a long way toward creating the culture of work we have long been craving.”

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  I recently caught up with the author via phone to talk about all of it.

  This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

  Teen Vogue: So much of the book is about challenging the often conflicting narratives imposed around work: You need to find meaning in your job, you can do anything, your worth is tied to your paycheck, and so on. How can we reset those expectations, especially for young people going into the workforce?

  Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I’m trying to bridge the gap between momentum and excitement [about labor organizing] with what I think is this general, growing frustration with work. It's really easy to share a bunch of lazy girl memes and be like, "I hate doing my job," but that's not ultimately going to make you happy. There might be periods in your life when you can “quiet quit” or check out or just work for a paycheck, but to live a life of meaning and impact — one that's in alignment with the politics I think a lot of Teen Vogue readers espouse — what does that actually look like?

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  The thing I talk about in the book is this idea of the “margin of maneuverability,” right? What is the space between these theoretical understandings and criticisms of the workplace and the reality of the places where we're working? I was really careful to not have it be like another girl boss manifesto, where you're like, "But now that you know, go and do this.” It’s like, I just need to take a deep breath and say, "Here's what's possible, here's what's not. Here's how it'll affect my life, and how it could affect broader labor conditions."

  TV: You talk a lot about the anxiety you had working at Teen Vogue and Condé. In your mind you'd made it, but you still felt like you were faking it. There's no title, no age, no Gucci bag that makes you feel like, Okay, I've made it. I'm done, it's good. What do you want readers to know about that feeling?

  SM: I write a lot about my appearance in the book and my experience being in an environment that very much upholds a specific definition around beauty, and how I sit in that. I’m really facing how much I had internalized that success was not just what happened on paper, it was not just the job, but also how you looked, and that you had to look the part to play the part.

  That hasn't changed, right? It's legal to discriminate against fat people. I think New York just passed legislation that actually does identify it as a form of workplace discrimination, to [give people] some legal recourse. But what you look like, how you dress, what your class background is, what your race is, these are all ways that we're coded in the workplace.

  It's a very seductive narrative. A lot of the girl boss, gaslight, gate-keep [stereotype] — the kind of truest form of the girl boss, she's super hot. She's going to SoulCycle. She fits the part, but most of us don't. It [creates] this inordinate pressure that, I think, continues to perpetuate this idea of what does it mean to be a successful woman. Literally, what does it look like to be a successful woman?

  That's changing in a lot of ways. I think people are rejecting it, but I still think there is this pressure. I felt it acutely because I worked in a really specific place that creates the images we're held to.

  TV: We know the generation wars are kind of a scam; they undermine intergenerational connections and the struggles we have in common. But I agree with you that here are some different approaches to work and professionalism between generations, largely because of things like student debt, the expectation of being able to retire, what was going on when particular generations came of age. Can you talk about some of the differences you’ve seen?

  SM: I am socialized as a Gen X'er-slash-geriatric millennial, as they call us. I grew up in the era of [legendary Cosmopolitan editor] Helen Gurley Brown, and then Sex in the City — this type of girl power where it's like you can do whatever you want to, you just have to hustle for it. You work hard to get ahead. Your work is as valuable as the man next to you, but because you're already going to be devalued, you have to work twice as hard to get half as far.

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  That was just understood, right? Because it was 30 years ago… I had to work as hard as possible because there were 100 people in line for that same job. That's doubly true in an industry like we're in, a creative field, where there are so many people that want jobs and so few jobs for them.

  I didn't have any boundaries with work. I was very comfortable working above and beyond, basically allowing my own labor to be exploited, my ideas to be exploited in the service of a bigger dream — that this would somehow get me to a place where I would find happiness and own a home and pay off my student debt — and all of those things that we now know are lies.

  I very much bought into it, so subconsciously and so deeply that it's hard for me to deprogram myself.… People who are teenagers right now are coming out of college, they are looking at us and being like, "You did all this. What did it get you?" Right? “You destroyed the economy, you destroyed the environment, student debt is astronomical, there are no jobs. Why should I fall for this? It's a scam.”

  I do think that difference is generational. I think there is a lot to learn from that criticism because they are basically identifying this idea, this mythology we've been force-fed, that if you work really hard, all of these things you've been told since you were five years old would happen for you. That's not the case. As the American dream has kind of unraveled, so has our commitment to that hustle.

  The way that plays out in the workplace is that while it's important to have this kind of theoretical understanding of why work is bullsh*t, it actually hasn't changed work and how much you have to work.

  We're in an interesting tension point right now, when a lot of these things are not happening at the systems level. It's not like organizations are changing and they're like, "You know what? These people are making a good point. We should really change the way that work is structured." Instead, it's become even more of a rat race, where there's the people who are willing to do whatever and then the people who are kind of seen as not willing to do it. But we don't have a language for how to hold anyone accountable about this stuff.

  TV: You talk about the “Gen Z is lazy and entitled and doesn't wanna work” trope, but also how you’ve seen high schoolers bring resumes to Teen Vogue events and younger colleagues — especially young women of color — work so hard. There's a scarcity mindset, too, and this need to hustle because there are so few jobs. Can you talk about that a bit more?

  SM: Both things are happening, but [it gets lost] because of the generalized hatred of young people and the media's bias toward always trying to identify where young people are wrong.... You see it in all the coverage of the [campus] protests. You see it definitely in how we talk about work, this kind of assumption that it's coming from a place of entitlement, which sometimes it really is, but a lot of times it's a legitimate criticism of a system that was set up for them to fail.

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  One of the things I try to highlight in the book is that there are young people who are taking that momentum — like [Starbucks Workers United founding member] Jaz Brisack organizing a Starbucks — who are taking their college education, their privilege, and saying, “I'm actually going to work to create better systems.”

  TV: This is my last generational question, but I'm interested in your discussion of the boundaries around our personal and professional lives. Obviously, we are all people outside of work. Everyone has stuff come up in their personal life that looms larger than work at various points, but there's also criticism of Gen Z for oversharing at work.

  What feels like a reasonable balance there? To what extent is keeping boundaries helpful for preservation of some sense of self outside of work?

  SM: Part of that is the breakdown between the idea of the professional and personal, because our professional lives have seeped into our personal lives. We're checking email at 10:00 at night, taking phone calls when we're at dinner. The professional has kind of crept into the personal, and the reverse has happened too. Our personal lives have kind of come into the workplace.

  I believe that if we had a more comfortable relationship with the reality that people, especially women, have care-work responsibilities, familial responsibilities — to normalize that, and to normalize that for fathers as well — and [could] say that, "Work is not your life. Your whole life is your life. Work is a part of your life. You have friends, relationships, families, you have children, and all of these things," that it wouldn't feel like there was so much pressure on being perfect at work and for work to be your life.

  In some ways you do want to have an environment where people feel comfortable being open and honest about what they're going through, but then it's also a slippery slope.… Some of this is a response to the expectation that work is supposed to be everything for us.

  TV: Let's return to the personal vs. collective question, which comes up repeatedly. You say some of what we need is structural — paid family leave, equal pay, strong and functional unions — and some is individual, like figuring out what makes you happy at work.

  There's that great question you share from adrienne maree brown: “How much do I actually need” at work or financially? One answer you come to is that there are seasons when different things will matter more. Is there anything else you want to say on that?

  SM: That's kind of always been true, but women and people of color have been penalized more for those types of things. Women are looked over for promotion when they take maternity leave, or it's not considered appropriate workplace behavior to have to leave early to take care of a parent.

  I do think there are different times in your life when you can be committed to work and different times you can't be, but I also think people really push themselves to try not to have those interruptions because they're so focused on advancing in their career.

  That's what the “lean in” neoliberal feminist advice has long been — just push through, push through, push through. Part of what I'm arguing in the book is to just recognize and be at peace with [those different phases], but also, work to create [professional] environments that understand and recognize the ebbs and flows of how life unfolds for people.

• The Nation - https://www.thenation.com/authors/samhita-mukhopadhyay-0/

  Samhita Mukhopadhyay
  Samhita Mukhopadhyay is the former Executive Editor of Teen Vogue. She is the co-editor of Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America and the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life and the forthcoming book, The Myth of Making It.

• Wikipedia -

  Samhita Mukhopadhyay

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  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Samhita Mukhopadhyay

  Born May 3, 1978 (age 46)
  Education San Francisco State University (MA)
  Occupation(s) Writer, editor
  Years active 2005–present
  Employer Teen Vogue
  Notable work Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life (2011)
  Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America (ed., 2017)
  Website samhitamukhopadhyay.com
  Samhita Mukhopadhyay (born May 3, 1978)[1] is an American writer and former executive editor of Teen Vogue. She writes about feminism, culture, race, politics, and dating. She is the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life and the co-editor of the anthology, Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America.

  Career
  The child of immigrants from India, Mukhopadhyay was raised in New York City.[2]

  She started blogging in 2005.[3]

  In 2008, Mukhopadhyay contributed an essay on the sexualization of black women to Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti's anthologyYes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Empowerment.[4]

  Mukhopadhyay earned a master's degree in Women and Gender Studies in 2009 from San Francisco State University, where her thesis was entitled "The Politics of the Feminist Blogosphere."[5]

  Mukhopadhyay is the former Executive Editor of the blog Feministing.com[6] and former Senior Editorial Director of Culture and Identities at millennial media platform Mic.[7]

  In February 2018, Mukhopadhyay was named executive editor at Teen Vogue, following Elaine Welteroth's departure from Condé Nast.[7]

  In 2022, after stepping down from Teen Vogue, Mukhopadhyay was named a MacDowell Fellow.[8]

  Books
  In 2011, Mukhopadhyay published her first book, Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life,[9] a feminist intervention to mainstream dating books.[3][6][9][10][11][12]

  In 2017, Mukhopadhyay co-edited an anthology with Kate Harding entitled Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America. Mukhopadhyay wrote the introduction to the collection of essays, in which prominent feminists discussed the impact of Donald Trump's election on hard-fought wins for gender, race, sexuality, class and ethnicity.[13][14][15][16][17][18]

  Bibliography
  Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life (Seal, 2011)
  Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America, ed. with Kate Harding (Picador, 2017)

• Global Comment - https://globalcomment.com/negotiating-love-an-interview-with-samhita-mukhopadhyay/

  Negotiating Love: An Interview with Samhita Mukhopadhyay
  November 19, 2011 0 Comments BY Emily McAvan
  Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer, activist and executive editor of feminist website Feministing.com. Her first book Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life discusses contemporary dating mores and gender roles, and the challenge of finding fulfilling relationships in a patriarchal world.
  Emily Manuel: Let’s start out by giving the general gist of the book, what were you trying to achieve?
  Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I felt a tremendous frustration with what I felt were the dominant narratives about romance in the mainstream media. I really saw the book as an intervention. Not really rewriting the fairytale, or this is how you live happily ever after, not necessarily a follow these guides into the relationship of your dreams, but to really critically analyse the dominant mess that we have internalised about romance and to really serve as an intervention into what I felt was making young people unhappy.EM: You use the phrase “romance-industrial complex” to describe some of this, could you explain what you were trying to get at with that term?

  SM: The romantic-industrial complex is a borrowed term. Chyrs Ingraham originally wrote about it in her groundbreaking book maybe ten years ago called White Wedding, and it was about the role that all of these structures play in the decisions that we make. I extend this to talk not just about weddings (she talks about the wedding industrial complex), but to the entire romantic industry – everything from what we are expected to look like or how we’re expected to act. From lingerie, to expensive getaways, to candy to cars, flowers, all of these things work together to create a specific romantic experience that has almost replaced the actual authentic experience. Like when someone gets engaged, the first thing you ask them is to see their ring. Everyone says that, “can I see the ring.” It’s become this materialistic marker of progression in your relationship as opposed to this more special moment.

  A lot of the way you describe the dominant heterosexual romance narratives are written as a grand consumerist gesture – the proposal, the flowers, the skywriter. I was wondering what you thought the link between that big gesture, which is always from a man to a woman, to the everyday functioning of patriarchy?

  The whole aspect, man asking the woman, comes from historically it was assumed [that] he didn’t even have to ask a woman, he asked her father because she was to become his property. And obviously that’s not the language that we use to talk about marriage today – women are not male property – but that history is still there. It’s not just asking you to marry him. Men are supposed to make the first move or be aggressive and it relies on this idea that men are aggressors and they have to conquer and possess and then the reward is the woman they’re supposed to be getting. And that’s what a real man does. And so it hinges on this incredibly patriarchal idea of male dominance over women. A man asking a woman–that isn’t even possible without the support of patriarchal structures.

  At the same time, you talk about how there’s the idea of a masculinity crisis.

  The masculinity crisis is not so much a crisis in the loss of power of men [. . .] but the crisis is in our inability culturally to let go of these more traditional or archaic ideas about what it means to be a man. And that’s where the crisis comes in. Because the change has come in, so we can either accept it and recalibrate and figure out new ways of dating across gender, or we can cling to old and traditional ideas and feel nothing but frustration every step of the way.

  The masculinity crisis also comes with the idea that there’s a scarcity of men, “good men are hard to find” and all that. Where does that idea come from and what does it do?

  Since I’ve mentioned this shift, culturally, there is an entire culture that’s going to [need to] be revisited. You have article after article that is blaming the progress of women on the shortage of men. Mathematically it doesn’t really make sense but also a lot of these stories are scare tactics to put women back in their place. They say that if you get too independent, if you are too successful, if you earn too much money, you’re not going to find a man that’s comfortable with you. And not only are you not going to find a man that’s comfortable with you, but the men that you find are going to be turned off that you’re so powerful. All of the major well-known relationship advice people, they all tout the same stuff–that’s exactly what they’re saying. So I think those stories while they might seem a bit harmless, they are actually attempts at scaring women, to get us to retreat.

  Why do women read those kinds of mainstream dating advice, then?

  Because there isn’t an alternative story. And I think most people want to meet somebody and they want to get married and that’s scary. It’s really scary to be faced with an entire media message that’s saying because of who you are you could die alone. That’s a horrible message. And I think the strongest person has a hard time not internalising that on some level, unless you’re completely so confident and so comfortable with where you are and so sure you’re going to meet somebody. That’s one reason. I think it’s human nature to be afraid when everyone’s telling you one thing.

  The other is, I do think that women in many ways are still judged by their relationships. I think that they’re not considered complete societally unless they’re in a successful heteronormative, heterosexual relationship with somebody. And so that puts a pressure on women to try to figure it out and then in your attempt to figure it out, what’s out there? Really bad advice.

  So how does feminism help you date, and have better relationships?

  Feminism personally has given me the confidence to decipher the difference between what is socially expected of me and what I genuinely want for myself. And I’m not saying those two things are always clean cut, there are things that my parents may want for me that are social expectations but that I also feel because they genuinely love me, they want me to be happy and all of that stuff. And so it helps you decipher what is expected of you versus what you do for yourself, or what you want to do for yourself. And also I think that it gives you the confidence to recognise that your value is not based on what attention you get from men or the success of your relationships with men but it’s based on who you are as a person and the things that you want. It’s a question of self determination. Honestly, I always say it’s like this taste of freedom and once you have it you can’t go back. Like now that I know, I’d never settle for someone who isn’t completely comfortable with who I am.

  Towards the end of the book it seems like you’re advocating a feminist version of what you call small l love, which is not goal directed and is experimental. Are there any models you’ve seen that are attempting that kind of experiment?

  It’s so interesting, I get asked this question all the time and you’d think that I’d come up with an answer for it. I do think that there are. I think it’s really interesting, all of the really strong powerful women in the mainstream media, their romantic lives are questioned and villainised. Like Oprah, who never married her long-term partner or Hilary Clinton, who’s less emotional, ballsy. It’s how these women are constructed – either you’re super hyped sex object or super mom like Sarah Palin, or you’re this butch who basically castrated her husband. I think it’s hard to say, in the mainstream, what are the really positive models of really anything. You don’t have super positive models of masculinity either. You don’t have a lot of positive models of relationships, especially with the rise of reality television.

  But in my own life, I do know several couples that have worked very hard to really de-centre and rethink the role that gender plays in their relationship. And it’s just a natural recognition of where the two people are at. And I can think of many couples. Even at that it’s still not easy, relationships are not easy, it’s a constant negotiation. But a recognition of the different places the two people are at and how that works together, and sometimes that does fall along the lines of traditional gender roles and sometimes it doesn’t, but both parties are consenting and aware of that negotiation.

  The word negotiation is quite telling because it means we have to be aware of both power and desire at the same time.

  It can be a lot of work, practice. But it’s almost easier to recognise what you need and work out the situation where you’re comfortable and your needs are getting met than to support a system that doesn’t meet your needs and you’re constantly forced to compensate and in many cases overcompensate.

  It seems like a recipe for depression…

  Sexless marriages, high divorce rates, all kinds of things.

  So really what you’re what you’re saying is that feminism can and should save love?

  I believe that love is at the heart of feminism. The way that feminism is portrayed is as though it is hate, we’re all about hate. Because we’ve been dehumanised. But I do believe that at the heart of any social justice movement is love. And one of the things I didn’t realise until the book was done and it was out in circulation was that I was frustrated with my own journey to finding what I thought was love; and this frustration I felt with these different roles that we were playing that I thought were really holding us back from authentic and loving connections with people. And that frustration was really motivated me to write the book. So that’s really at the heart of feminism, social change and the book.

• Ms. - https://msmagazine.com/2011/10/21/dating-while-feminist-an-interview-with-samhita-mukhopadhyay/

  VOICES
  Dating While Feminist: An Interview with Samhita Mukhopadhyay
  10/21/2011 by ALLISON MCCARTHY
  Samhita Mukhopadhyay is the executive editor of Feministing.com, one of the largest feminist or social justice blogs. Her new book, Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life (Seal Press) questions the traditional relationship advice so often aimed at young people. Unlike other dating manuals, her book doesn’t assume you’re straight, white, cisgendered, middle-class or looking to get married. Ms. talked with Mukhopadhay about relating while dating–and why feminism is so critical to a progressive dating practice.

  Ms. Blog: What led you to write a book about dating?

  Samhita Mukhopadhyay: At Feministing, I’ve focused a lot on race, class, gender and sexuality from the perspective of activism, but not as much from the perspective of pop culture. I became interested in mainstream media depictions of women and how those depictions impact our lives and our feelings about ourselves. I saw this huge hole in the dating advice industry: I was shocked that no one had written an intervention to the antiquated sexist ideas peddled by mainstream dating books.

  Speaking of antiquated ideas, did you read Kate Bolick’s “All The Single Ladies” piece in the November 2011 issue of The Atlantic? I was disheartened to see such a prominent feature article promoting the same tired ideas: that women are all straight, desperate to get hitched, and only interested in men who have more social clout and make more money. Why hasn’t feminism been able to undo these damaging ideas?

  First of all, I think people have so bought into the romantic fairy-tale story that deviating from it is almost impossible to imagine. What I talk about in my book is that we don’t have an alternative romantic story. The only language we have to describe our romantic relationships is either “couples” or “sad single people.” And I think the analysis in these pieces is lazy. These writers aren’t thinking enough about how the world is changing and how gender roles have shifted. You can either harp on the idea that men aren’t men anymore and that women are too independent, or you can acknowledge that the world has changed and that we need to focus on what will make us happy in our lives.

  Her argument seems to boil down to Lori Gottlieb’s: Women who don’t marry early on are doomed to be single if they wait. How can feminists counteract that message?

  First of all, that is statistically not true. Most people who get married in their 20s are divorced by their 40s [laughs]. For the small percentage of people who marry in their 20s and stay married into their 80s, marrying young is great. But for most people, that’s just not the reality anymore. We move in and out of relationships throughout our lives. Most people need to learn to deal with both being in a relationship and being single.

  In your book, you coin the term “romantic industrial complex.” Can you talk a little about what that means?

  It’s borrowed from Chrys Ingraham’s idea of the “wedding industrial complex.” It’s looking at romance not as a feeling or a natural thing that happens interpersonally, but an experience influenced by a whole system of industries that collude to form a specific romantic experience. Everything from the perfect first date, to having to look a certain way, to romantic getaways, to flowers, to chocolates, to greeting cards. Even to things that you wouldn’t think were related, like bikini waxes. And then [part of the romantic industrial complex is] the wedding industrial complex: bachelorette parties, destination weddings. The romantic industrial complex is all of these things working in tandem.

  How does the idea of community transform the culturally dictated need for a romantic partner?

  I think when we examine how we think of relationships vs community, it opens up an alternative space where we can create supportive communities that don’t rely on couples.

  Do you think any of the traditional advice from self-help books is helpful for folks?

  Yes, I think a lot of the mainstream books I surveyed had kernels of truth to them, but what I found problematic was the framing and the reliance on essential gender differences. He’s Just Not That Into You is right in telling women that if a dude is giving you the run around, you should probably let him go. But the focus is on whether he is “into you” or not, when it should be on whether or not he meets your needs. I.e., do you even want to date someone who can’t call you back or doesn’t respect your time enough to give you a straight answer? Most likely, no.

  The most radical approach to love is not having an approach, but instead a solid recognition of exactly what you want for yourself. Feminism can help you decipher the difference between something you want and something that is expected of you, which is an invaluable exercise not just in dating, but in life. It’s not always easy, but ultimately will make you happier if you do end up in a relationship because you are more likely to enter it on your own terms.

  What future projects do you have on your plate?

  Promoting this book for at least the next year! And some speaking, Feministing and some other writing. And I am really interested in the idea of being sustainable in the work that we do as feminists, activists and writers. I am going to be focusing on health and healing; how to make our work helpful and impactful while also making sure we get enough sleep.

• The Rumpus - https://therumpus.net/2011/11/10/the-rumpus-interview-with-samhita-mukhopadhyay/

  The Rumpus Interview with Samhita Mukhopadhyay
  NEELANJANA BANERJEENOVEMBER 10, 2011
  Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s new book Outdated: How Dating is Ruining Your Love Life takes a deep look at how the hell do you balance your feminist ideals with the archaic power dynamics that dating forces us to engage in and how skewed gender politics and damaging messaging are getting in the way of men and women finding real love. Political writer Melissa Harris-Perry said it is “the pick-yourself-up, get-back-out-there, break-up book for third wave feminists.”

  Along with critiquing mainstream dating books, which are giving men and women often-contradictory advice, Outdated tackles some of the big media-inflated gender stories of the 21st century, including the masculinity “crisis” and the “tragedy” of single womanhood. But, perhaps most significantly, she starts a public conversation about the pitfalls of Dating While Feminist (DWF).

  Samhita talked to me during one of our regular bi-weekly Skype sessions from Brooklyn to Kolkata, India—where I’m living right now—about finding her voice through blogging, writing like an orphan, and love as social change.

  ***

  The Rumpus: You started blogging for Feministing over five years ago and now are the Executive Editor. It really seemed like you discovered your voice and style as a writer in this totally public medium. How do you think that affected the way you write?

  Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I talk about that a lot when I talk to college students who want to become writers: the value of public versus private writing, and the different purposes that they serve for you. One of the difficulties of having been so public from the get-go was that when I fell, it wasn’t a private mistake. It was a very public mistake. And I was chastised for it. There is this expectation that when you are public, you’re perfect—especially as a young woman, being in the male-dominated world of political writing. There were certain expectations that you [should bring] a specific type of analysis and if you didn’t bring that, then you’re just not that good of a blogger. You don’t really get opportunities to have space to experiment.

  But the good thing about it is that it forces you to be a little bit more competitive about your writing, and to push yourself and really think about how to convey these messages in a way that a broader audience can understand. That part has been invaluable. I don’t think I would have been prepared to write a book, just five years after starting writing for a public forum, if I hadn’t had that external pressure to satisfy a broader audience. So, it came with baggage and trauma, but I can almost point to the blog posts where I had this transition in my writing, from being uncertain and confused and not necessarily knowing how to make the points that I want to make to knowing how to do that in this clearer way.

  Rumpus: I think the biggest challenge for most writers is the self-discipline to sit down and write. In a way, Feministing has also forced you to have this crazy self-discipline when it comes to writing. I’ve seen you go to some pretty crazy lengths to cover the site and make those deadlines—even though it has never been your main “job”.

  Mukhopadhyay: Yeah, I don’t feel disciplined. It’s not always pretty. I mean, you’re a writer, you know that you can’t wait until you’re inspired to sit down and write. You just have to start writing and you hope that one percent of the 100 percent you put in is something you can salvage for the following day. In that way, it’s almost like mental masturbation. You have to get it out there, and you hope that once you do that there’s something in it that you can come back and edit.

  Blogging forces you to self-edit—it’s like competitive speedwriting. You are specifically creating an intervention to the media. It is a type of activism, really. It’s not so much that ‘This is my writing process,’ as it is ‘This needs to get said before the New York Times comes in and says it like this.’ One of the side effects of that urgency, yeah, is building discipline. It is the ability to articulate arguments in a very complicated way very quickly. That then translates to any kind of writing you do.

  I wrote this book so it would be an intervention to other dating books. Not because I necessarily felt I needed to write a book about dating for young women, but because I felt this urgency [to respond] to the messaging that was out there.

  Rumpus: You have a background in high school debate that you often equate to why you’ve been successful as a blogger, but I think it also comes from your experience and training as an activist. Why do you think that writing is the form of activism that works best for you?

  Mukhopadhyay: I’ve always been interested in the way that believing in a specific worldview, and wanting to work towards that, impacts your intellectual and cultural and artistic thought production. That relationship was always … almost seamless to me. That was the type of art that I was most drawn to, revolutionary stuff or anti-establishment.

  I do think, you know, finding my voice through blogging, was my way of being the most effective activist I could be for myself. I also got lucky, that was paired with really good timing. I started writing for Feministing [in 2005] when blogs were first really taking off, and we were one of the first feminist blogs, so we got a lot of attention. That was both a privilege and a responsibility. Prior to that, when I was an activist or working in non-profits or even in schools, I didn’t feel as effective. I didn’t feel like I was instrumental enough in producing these worlds that I wanted to live in. I felt like I was working within the means of a system that was so broken.

  Rumpus: One of the things I loved about Outdated was that it straddles all these different spheres and styles. It’s part feminist theory, pop culture criticism, self-help and self-love. What genre do you classify it as?

  Mukhopadhyay: Well, lucky for me, it has been classified as a “Dating and Relationships” book, which I’m really happy about. Though, I think it does fall into the lineage of feminist work or Women’s Studies work that is more personal narrative as opposed to a kind of deeper structural analysis. It really comes from “the personal is political” type of writing—the stuff that really influenced us, like bell hooks. [I was] taking things I learned in an academic context but applying them to my real world experiences. It is Women’s Studies as a genre, but thinking about the limitations of that field, there is a new generation of writers—like Julia Serano, Michael Kimmel and Jaclyn Friedman to name a few—and I would like to think that I am part of them, that are really rethinking differences in gender and sexuality and really looking at masculinity and the role that masculinity plays in constructing our romantic ideals. I think it is part of this post-Women’s Studies space that is slowly emerging.

  Banerjee: Who is your ideal reader for Outdated? Who do you hope is picking up this book?

  Mukhopadhyay: My ideal reader, I would say is anyone who is currently engaging with these pressures in contemporary society. A young woman who is dealing with the fact that all of her friends are getting married and she doesn’t want to, or she does want to and she feels bad about it. A lot of these books that have come out in the last few years are geared towards women in their 30s and 40s, like He’s Just Not That Into You, or the other week, the Atlantic Monthly had a cover story, “All the Single Ladies,” about how, basically, single women are the outcasts of regular normative society.

  I think the book is for these women who are being told they have “missed the boat” and now have to deal with it the rest of their life. My hope is for women like that, who feel like they’ve really lost hope, and that they are never going to find “the one”, that they’ll read the book and feel like it’s okay, and that they’ll come to some kind of common sense understanding of the shifts that are happening in our generation and how a lot of them, though they may not embrace this language, but they are the warriors of this generation in terms of really shifting the way we really think about gender.

  Rumpus: You’ve faced some really heinous backlash in your years as a blogger—I’m especially thinking of the blogging you were doing around the alleged Duke Lacrosse Team rape case back in 2006, and how you were getting responses that said that you should be publicly raped for what you were writing. And now, with Outdated, you’re taking on bestselling male authors like Steve Harvey, not to mention you have written with incredible honesty about your own romantic and sexual history, and your insecurities. It’s really, really brave. How do you keep the fear at bay when you’re writing; and how do you deal with the backlash?

  Mukhopadhyay: Well, first of all, the public backlash was so secondary to the fear of my mother reading this book. At least those are people I don’t know; it’s not your mother, okay? When I was writing this book, one of our friends gave me this great quote from Margaret Atwood about how orphans tell the best stories because they don’t worry about what their parents think. So, I kept remembering that when I was writing the book, because that was my biggest fear, more than anything.

  One of the things that I think writing publicly did train me for was that level of crossfire on a political and intellectual level. As a prominent feminist writer there are certain experiences that women have because they are speaking truths that go against the grain of what makes people comfortable, and that is just a reality, that is the condition that we’re writing in. That’s not a personal failing on my part, or something that I could do differently, that’s just a function of writing in a patriarchical society about the things I am choosing to write about. So, I reconciled a lot of that before I wrote the book. I definitely knew going into the process of writing the book, and preparing for it to come out, that I would get a lot of backlash, because I have been dealing with that for a long time. The number one way that I have supported myself in the process is keeping people close to me in my life—having a good personal support network. I think that is often where the difficulty comes in when women write stuff like this. If they are writing it in isolation, it is very easy to become victim to these larger forces and believe these things about yourself, like “I am not smart enough to write this. Maybe I am imagining sexism.” And you start to believe that, and I think it is so important that we create the communities to reflect the world that we want. You know, and to really build close relationships and mentorships. Without those people, there is no way I would have been able to do this.

  Rumpus: The book balances humor and snark with this really deep analysis, which speaks to your style. Your personality really comes across. Why do think humor is important in talking about these issues?

  Mukhopadhyay: One of the things that is difficult about a lot of feminist work, is that it is so serious. It turns young people off because it is too heavy to engage in. And the reality is, that a lot of these issues that we’re struggling with are funny. You have to laugh about them, because they are so ridiculous. Some of these dating situations that I’ve been in, you have no choice but to laugh at them. I’m like: This person can’t actually take themselves seriously, can they? So, I am happy to hear that people are responding to the humor in the book. I was really afraid that the book would turn out to be serious because I was not in a good emotional space—I mean, I was in the difficult space of writing a book, which is not a good emotional space, and I was also navigating several rather unfortunate romantic situations that had me in a very negative headspace. I was afraid that the book would be a reflection of that, that it would be this really sad take about this 30-somethng girl living with her roommate in Flatbush. But it nice to hear that the humor is sticking out to people, because that is what helped me get through these situations in real life—laughing about them with you.

  Rumpus: The conclusion of the book was really powerful to me, especially as someone who isn’t single right now. It raised the book above something targeted just to single women, to something larger. I mean, in general, I think the book has a lot of important points for anyone interested in changing heteronormativity, but when you talk about the power of love as a force of social change—it was epic, it really brought it all together for me and made me feel like I could be an important part of this movement. Did you always know that was what the book was really about?

  Mukhopadhyay: My initial motivation to write the book was this frustration I was feeling in our generation of our inability to truly embrace love between ourselves and to overcome all of these constructed obstacles we have between ourselves. Which was either playing games, or playing into these very specific gendered ideas about how men should act and how women should act. I realized that my frustration, personally, with that was that I was looking for love and that I wanted it in my life, but I just didn’t feel like it was obtainable given the tools that we had. So it did emerge for me when I was writing the book that that was the larger struggle.

  I didn’t write the book so much to justify my own experience or say that I wanted to stay single, or any of that. I wanted to reconcile a certain level of spiritual damage that has happened in our generation, because of so many other forces, with our relationship to loving authentically. Also, for the last chapter, I talked to all these feminists and heard all the things they have navigated to find love for themselves. I realized that the book wasn’t just about how He’s Just Not That Into You is a sexist book, but that the messaging in the book is actually stopping us from having authentic loving connections with people.

Byline: Alyssa Rosenberg

Like a lot of women, I cry when I'm angry. I say this so that you understand that when I tell you that I stuffed a scarf in my mouth while watching Hillary Clinton's concession speech last November so that my co-workers couldn't hear my sobs, you understand that I was weeping as much out of rage as out of sadness.

And like a lot of Americans, I've been grappling with the competing impulses to build bridges and to blow them up for almost a year now, so I was excited to dive into "Nasty Women," a new essay collection curated by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding and named for President Trump's self-revealing slam at Clinton during the campaign. The book, subtitled "Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America," is a convenient field guide to many of the debates that have sprung up since the presidential election, and many of the intra-left grievances that preceded it. But the book is a disappointing reminder that even when women try to reclaim slurs and difficult emotions, the gravitational force of the need to please can be nearly impossible to escape.

The thing that stood out most to me about "Nasty Women" was, in fact, how generally polite and nice it is. The book strikes a careful balance between pieces by white women and women of color, straight women and LGBT ones. Its contributors say that "anger is not enough," that "I have no choice but to try and be a bridge" between Trump's supporters and opponents. There are defenses of politically radical tactics, including civil disobedience, strikes and destruction of property, though it's only Meredith Talusan, writing from a transgender perspective, who suggests that women who engage in these tactics are often treated as if they've violated the norms of their own gender. But there's a difference between the confrontations involved in militancy and actual meanness.

"Nasty Women" contains a few moments when the writers urge readers to shuck off their customary politeness. Katha Pollitt urges women to quit churches and synagogues that don't back their reproductive rights, "never mind ... how nice the priest or rabbi is." Randa Jarrar harshly (and justly) rebukes a white woman who, assuming that Jarrar is also white, says racist things about Syrian refugees. Samantha Irby ducks her neighbors in her new rural community and even swipes at any of her readers "who had your hearts broken when the lady who called the police on your dreadlocked cousin that one time didn't start leaving her front door unlocked and inviting you over." It's no mistake that Irby and Jarrar's essays, which are the closest the collection comes to actual nastiness, are two of the most readable pieces in the book.

I understand why the editors of "Nasty Women" wouldn't want to encourage more women to be nasty in the style of our commander in chief. Public life in America is plenty coarse and corrosive with only half the population given permission to act this way. And the gender double standard is such that a woman who takes even a tiny fraction of the liberties Trump does is quickly ostracized. But I wish the collection had included more impolite emotions and some serious exploration of whether politeness and diligence actually served Clinton -- and whether they serve many other women -- all that well.

Co-editor Mukhopadhyay writes that Clinton's defeat "played out like a morality tale gone wrong, in which the smart girl who had done her homework loses to the class clown who barely seems to show up for school." But the truth is that in most of our popular storytelling*, the "smart girl who had done her homework" is the prude, the scold, the try-hard enemy who exists to be either turned or defeated by the looser, more charismatic man in the story. What if it's a trick of the so-called meritocracy that teaches girls and women to please others, only to reveal to them that there's always someone who will insist that to earn his approval a woman must restrain, restrict or even reinvent her behavior?

I ask this question as someone who has a personal stake in the answer. Niceness is a major constituent part of my private personality and public persona. I write thank-you notes to my own parents when they send me birthday gifts, and I respond to all but the most abusive reader emails. As much as is possible, I try to see everyone's side as I pick my way through difficult arguments. I have friends and defenders across the political spectrum. During last year's presidential campaign, I tweeted some minor praise for Clinton's ability to be lightly mean and funny all at once, and a much more prominent male journalist decried me as a hopelessly compromised fool, sending his followers to trash me as a shill. I simply sat tight and let other people come to my defense. (Elsewhere on Twitter, I mute; I don't block.) A boss of mine once described my niceness as one of the qualities he valued most in my work.

He meant it as a compliment, and most of the time, I think it is. Trying to be kind and respectful, which are more powerful subsets of niceness, is often a useful way to defuse an argument without giving up your own position. And for me, being nice generally feels better than being mean. But both "Nasty Women" and my own experience often left me feeling that even if I'm succeeding within someone else's rules, I'm still playing a rigged game.

*"Parks and Recreation" being a notable counterexample.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post
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Rosenberg, Alyssa. "Even after the 2016 election, 'Nasty Women' are still acting far too nice." Washingtonpost.com, 4 Oct. 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A508077724/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c399078e. Accessed 25 June 2024.

Mukhopadhyay, Samhita NASTY WOMEN Picador (Adult Nonfiction) $16.00 10, 3 ISBN: 978-1-250-15550-4

Women essayists reflect on Trump, Clinton, and the prospects for feminism. Mukhopadhyay (Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life, 2011), senior editorial director of Culture and Identities at Mic, and Harding (Women's Resource Center/Cornell Univ.; Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--and What We Can Do About It, 2015, etc.) gather a diverse collection of essayists to respond to the challenges faced by women in Trump's America. The writers include Cheryl Strayed, who felt "numb shock" after Trump's election; Nation columnist Katha Pollitt, who offers suggestions for activism for reproductive rights; and award-winning essayist Rebecca Solnit, who points to the "highly gendered term 'hysteria'" used to attack Clinton. Many writers agree with Carina Chocano, who sees Clinton's defeat as a result of gender bias: "there's no more despised figure on earth than a woman who thinks she should be in charge." The anthology is broadly representative. Sarah Michael Hollenbeck considers women with disabilities; Jill Filipovic points out the plight of women in Africa after Trump's "gag rule" prohibited U.S. funding to any foreign organization that provides abortions or advocates for abortion rights; Melissa Arjona writes about Mexican women living in South Texas; Collier Meyerson and Zerlina Maxwell consider black feminism. Also represented are gay and trans women, such as Meredith Talusan, who asserts that "Clinton's loss, despite the fact that she was exceedingly better qualified than Trump, mirrors the way trans women and femmes are marginalized in post-Trump feminism, despite our significantly greater experience of fighting oppression" compared to mainstream white women, who, several writers note, dominated the women's march after Trump's inauguration. Kera Bolonik, a gay mother raising an adopted black son, and the granddaughter of Jews persecuted by Nazis, sees parallels to fascism in the atmosphere of hate and fear unleashed by Trump and his supporters. Strong, thoughtful, and angry voices ring out for resistance, empathy, and solidarity.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Mukhopadhyay, Samhita: NASTY WOMEN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A500364984/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7dd66bdb. Accessed 25 June 2024.

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America. Ed. by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding. Oct. 2017. 304p. Picador, paper, $16 (97812501555041. 305.42.

Twenty-three influential and eloquent feminist writers of the twenty-first century have come together to create this searing and urgent collection. Contributors including Rebecca Solnit (The Mother of All Questions, 2017), Samantha Irby (We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, 2017), Cheryl Strayed (Wild, 2012), and Jessica Valenti (Sex Object, 2016) present vulnerable, furious, and frank accounts of their lives since Donald Trump's election to the White House. Editors Mukhopadhyay and Harding have assembled an impressive breadth of perspectives, giving voice to the transgender and queer communities, women living with visible and invisible disabilities, the Black Lives Matter movement, the overlooked resilience of black women, the Asian American experience, the skyrocketing patterns of violence against Native women and children, the labor movement, and coundess others that are all too often left out of U.S. political consciousness. The writers are emotionally generous as they meditate on this pivotal moment in American history. The 2016 election marked a deeply personal shift in the tides of hope for so many. This book invites readers to converse, comfort, and hold one another accountable in the hope of igniting radical, intersectional change. --Courtney Eathorne

YA: This book is essential for today's young feminists, many of whom are probably already familiar with the contributors. CE.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Eathorne, Courtney. "Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America." Booklist, vol. 114, no. 1, 1 Sept. 2017, p. 16. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A509161440/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=467e0781. Accessed 25 June 2024.

NASTY WOMEN: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America

EDITED BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY AND KATE HARDING

Macmillan Publishers

"Such a nasty woman."

It was a sexist insult hurled by Donald Trump at Hilary Clinton during one of the U. S. presidential debates and it became a rallying cry for feminist outrage. Then, like many of the writers in Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America, I found myself in tears on the night of Democratic presidential candidate Clinton's epic defeat. Trump's ascendance seemed surreal at first, and then, much like the "nasty woman" slur, seemed less surprising in retrospect.

The horribleness of the election outcome--whether realized immediately or only after a good deal of denial--is captured in these 23 essays by American writers and activists who display varying degrees of despair, defiance and determination. Nasty Women showcases a diverse range of voices and experiences from an impressive roster of feminist writers and activists.

Mary Kathryn Nagle shows how, for Native American women, Trump can be seen as similar to the white presidents who came before him, while Sarah Jaffe talks about the working class, and its often contradictory relationship with conservative economics. Randa Jarrar, Zerlina Maxwell, Nicole Chung, Kera Bolonik and others discuss racism, anti-Semitism, and the rising tide of xenophobia across the United States. Samantha Irby tackles the LGBTQ experience in rural America, which is known for its pro-Trump sentiments. A powerful piece by Rebecca Solnit shows how misogyny shaped the politics of the 2016 election at nearly every level.

This intersectional approach captures the individual perspectives of each writer, but it never forgets how each piece fits into the bigger picture of global politics and feminism. Especially poignant is the essay by Jill Filipovic, author of The H-Spot The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness," about the impact of U.S. policy decisions abroad and the increasing danger of anti-choice rhetoric.

Whether looking at identity politics, disability, reproductive rights or online misogyny, or simply detailing the overwhelming sadness of comforting shell-shocked children post-election, each essay in Nasty Women is a case study in why the personal is always political.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Herizons Magazine, Inc.
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Troska, Amber. "NASTY WOMEN: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America." Herizons, vol. 32, no. 1, spring 2018, p. 38. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A543610763/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a0b0b281. Accessed 25 June 2024.

An Interview With: Samhita Mukhopadhyay

Interview By: David Palumbo-Liu

Summary: Yes, it's still owned by Condé Nast. But Teen Vogue has been publishing writers who've managed to spread progressive and radical views to a new audience.

Could Condé Nast be publishing the best mainstream forum for progressive views?

Since 2016, bolstered by the contributions of radicals like Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue has made a curious transformation into a venue that mixes standard fare culture writing with political primers like "Everything You Need to Know About General Strikes" and "Who Is Karl Marx: Meet the Anti-Capitalist Scholar."

It hasn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the media, with Quartz going as far as to say that the publication was "terrifying men like Donald Trump."

We're not so certain about that. However, it's certainly an important sign of the times and the growing influence of anticapitalism that its politics editor and author of some of the publication's best pieces, Lucy Diavolo, spoke at this July's Socialism Conference in Chicago. And it's not just the left echo chamber that's reading these articles - Teen Vogue receives around ten million monthly page views and has over twelve million social media followers, many of them young women.

Reaching a segmented market with radical views isn't exactly revolutionary in and of itself, but at the very least the coverage is pissing off the right people. The far-right Federalist noted that a Teen Vogue tweet linked to a "poorly-written diatribe that reads like a B student's Marxism 101 paper and gets key historical facts wrong ." The article instructed Teen Vogue to "shut up about politics" because, after all, the magazine "owes its existence to the tremendous wealth capitalism has created."

What the Federalist is concerned about, and what socialists and others should celebrate, is that Teen Vogue recognizes the artificiality of separating the public, the private, and the political, and its political writing fuses all three. As the publication warns: "the relentless politicization of all spaces in public and private life is exhausting and dangerous."

But how dangerous is Teen Vogue ?

The New Statesman has just declared Teen Vogue to be a "champion of democratic socialism," and editor in chief Elaine Welteroth refers to the magazine as "a movement." However, a realistic appraisal shows that Teen Vogue presents a range of liberal to left materials, and despite the earnest political convictions of so many of its authors, as an institution its pivot may just be a rebranding exercise.

After all, Teen Vogue is owned by Condé Nast - a 108-year-old global media company with more than one billion consumers in thirty-two markets - and the magazine must toe its corporate publisher's line. But what it can do, and what it has been doing so successfully, is to educate its readership on issues that they might not have ever been exposed to. Think of what the average American high school, or even college, puts before the eyes of its students - it is mind-numbingly bland and hardly the material that provokes political thought.

And timing is everything - the interest in the new Teen Vogue is attributable to a sense of urgency in the air and also the growing awareness of the bankruptcy of neoliberalism. People want to know new things, and socialism is more and more one of the things people want to know more about, for it seems the only humane response to economic violence.

For precisely this reason it is crucial to chart the emergence of young, smart, politically astute writers into mainstream media, where they can have the kind of effect Teen Vogue has had. To understand things a bit better, I sat down with Samhita Mukhopadhyay, the magazine's executive editor.

David Palumbo-Liu: Could you say a little bit about yourself and how you got to Teen Vogue, and what are some of the things you want to do there?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: My background is fairly varied. I'm a little bit older than the rest of the team here. Before I was at Teen Vogue, I had written a book called Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America . I used to work at an organization called Mic, which was another kind of millennial media outlet - I was building out their social justice, culture, and identities work, building reporting teams around Black Lives Matter and the pipeline, climate change, indigenous issues, the Muslim ban, those types of things. Before that, I was the executive editor of a website called Feministing, which was very popular in the mid-2000s.

I started there in 2005. And I was there until 2012 or '13. And for the last four years of it, when I was the executive editor we were very much on the front lines, holding mainstream media accountable for the way they were depicting women and wanting to diversify narratives around the way that women in other disenfranchised communities were being represented in the media. And it's an interesting time because I think many of the people you'll see who are working in positions like myself - a lot of us did start in blogging.

We created this intervention, and now we are at this moment where mainstream publications have realized they need people who understand social justice. They need people who understand feminism and many of the issues that young people are invested in.

David Palumbo-Liu: That's exactly where I was going to go. So, now you are in effect mainstream media. So, what's the transition been like - certainly, you are under another set of constraints and another set of demands.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I would say the biggest difference between working for a blog that has no funding and working for a media empire with a budget is the level at which we can do things at Teen Vogue, having the kind of resources we have to tell the stories that we are really invested in. And also, to remind my team when they take it for granted that - not to be like that auntie that says, "I walked uphill both ways to school."

A lot of us were trying to just be heard in the media, to be included in any of these conversations. And things have changed. They're not perfect, but things really have changed. And you are seeing more women and people of color and women of color in leadership positions in these newsrooms. And I think that's a really good change.

David Palumbo-Liu: You mentioned before that several media venues have the aspiration to do something like what Teen Vogue is doing. Say more about that - what kind of mediascape are we looking at now?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I think many publications are recognizing the importance of hiring people with expertise in feminism and covering women and women of color. Historically, people like me were always on the outside criticizing women's magazines - they did not reflect the diversity of women's experiences. And they were not necessarily explicitly feminist. There are very few magazine editors now who don't openly identify as feminists, but they aren't always looking for a story that elevates an unheard voice.

I do think that those efforts are being made. I think that Teen Vogue has been the most explicitly political in terms of us being very open about the fact that we are representing a generation that's much more comfortable with being political.

David Palumbo-Liu: Of the political writing that's been done recently the last couple of years, could you name a couple of articles that show the variety and trajectory of the kinds of things Teen Vogue wants to do.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I think one of the things I'm really proud of that we did last month was we did an entire package on fat bodies. I actually wrote a personal essay for that, about being a public person who's fat, and my evolution of growing up in public - being this public person where people will comment on your body all the time. For a fashion magazine with Vogue in the title to explicitly do something that really criticizes the industry and elevates this unique point of view - we shot a size twenty-four model for one of the main features.

I was very excited about everything we did for Covering Climate Now. We were part of that initiative. We put Greta on the cover, which I thought was fantastic. And we did that cover in literally fifteen minutes. She's a very, very busy young woman. We got a very small amount of time with her. Lucy Diavolo, who you've already talked to, did a great job writing the feature for that.

We also started two columns that I really love this year. One is about masculinity and kind of how young men are engaging with ideas of masculinity. And that's by writer Thomas Page McBee, who's a phenomenal kind of trans writer, just really, really talented writer. And then we also have a sex column called, "Down to Find Out," which is a play on DTF. I think one of the things that we get criticized for a lot is that we're very open about recognizing that young people are going to try and have sex.

David Palumbo-Liu: I'd be interested in some of the readers' reactions that you've had that have impressed you, either really good ones or really disappointing ones. What's the feedback been like?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: The feedback in my experience is overwhelmingly positive. People are so impressed and excited that we're doing global journalism. It's not just in our politics section, right? All of our verticals reflect in some way the values of this new generation, for example, inclusion and diversity. It's an awareness of class difference. And it's an awareness of sustainability and climate change. You'll see that in our fashion vertical. You'll see that in our culture vertical. And you'll see that in identity and in politics.

People have said, "We come to Teen Vogue because we know we're going to get a more balanced opinion than the New York Times ." These are exaggerations, right? Obviously, we are not the New York Times, but I think the sentiment is really that in a moment when people are trying to figure out both sides and how do you kind of cover these issues.

We're not afraid to just have a point of view and say, "Hey, Trump is bullshit." We're not afraid to say it.

David Palumbo-Liu: Well, to begin with, I'll say thank god you're not the New York Times . And second, that you are super trustworthy. I think that the excitement about what Teen Vogue is doing is that you're doing high-quality journalism and that you're presenting it to an entirely new demographic that's not going to read the New York Times . And then as we all know from doing political work, it's better to get people on board earlier than hope that they read something later on in life, right?

But what do you do with the charge - " Teen Vogue is not a political magazine. Why are you doing this? What qualifies you to do political pieces? And you're polluting people's minds." What do you say to that?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: That the criticism has come from the Right. Tucker Carlson is obsessed with us. He is upset that we have a labor columnist. He's upset that we do the sex content. And he really doubles down on this idea of what is appropriate for teen girls, even though I'd say to him, "Stop thinking about teen girls so much." Nobody wants that. Nobody wants your opinion on this.

The right wing thinks we are brainwashing a new generation. I put one such quote from a right-winger on my Twitter bio, "The most insidious form of teen communist propaganda," or something like that.

David Palumbo-Liu: That's nice. I like that.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Communist propaganda. I was like, "Thanks, guys. Thanks for writing the bio for me." And there is an elitism around who has the right to kind of cover and talk about politics. And I think that is laughable to me because personally I'm a totally serious journalist. I have won fifty Hillman awards. I have won ASME awards. I'm a serious journalist. I was brought in to help build up a new perspective and help build up a team - and it's been really refreshing to work with people who aren't primarily imbued in the values of traditional media.

They are young. They are diverse. They are just hungry to learn and to really be writing about the world in a new and unique way. That's what our audience wants. Our audience wants - they want the balance of both Justin and Hailey's surprise wedding over the weekend. They also want to know about Greta's UN speech. And they also want to know about whatever Trump is doing badly this week.

They want that information and want it all in one place. That falls into the tradition of a lot of kinds of general interest publications. We don't have a huge team. So, we have to be really strategic and think about what we do and don't cover. It became very clear that it would almost be tone-deaf for us to not be covering the fact that four million young people took to the streets two Fridays ago for climate change.

One of the things that we are really looking at for the rest of the year is youth activism. Youth activism is one of the defining things of this generation and especially Gen Z. So, it behooves us as a publication that caters to that demographic to be covering those issues.

David Palumbo-Liu: What has been Condé Nast's reaction? What kind of feedback have you gotten from them about what you are doing?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: This is the most creative and political freedom that I've ever had. And part of it is there's a newness to it where people are like, "Yeah, sure. Give it a try. Whatever." Anna Wintour [editor in chief of Vogue ] has a very strong point of view. I think she's very comfortable with all of her teams having really strong points of view.

She elevates people - she elevates people like myself and our editor in chief Lindsey Peoples Wagner, because she wants people that kind of make - are provocative and tell good stories. And so, we had nothing but support from Condé on the political front. I mean I think there's been - there have been little moments where, of course, like with anything there are legal battles or fact-checking battles. I have to make a lot of really tough decisions in terms of what are the things that are worth going after.

How many investigative pieces do we want to do? We are a little bit more at risk because we are a big media company. And I think things that I didn't have to worry about when I worked in kind of smaller, independent media. And so, there are bigger battles. But I've never had somebody tell me I can't do something.

There might be arguments around how I do it or some disagreement around that. But it's always - and that's one of the things that I really value about working with Condé Nast is they really value their editors' point of view. We are empowered to fully have a kind of oversight.

Please note: Some graphics were omitted from this article.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Jacobin Foundation, Ltd.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/
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"Teen Vogue Is Good." Jacobin Magazine, 28 Oct. 2019, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A661671615/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0c2c947b. Accessed 25 June 2024.

Mukhopadhyay, Samhita THE MYTH OF MAKING IT Random House (NonFiction None) $28.00 6, 18 ISBN: 9780593448090

The former executive editor of Teen Vogue and Feministing considers the nature of ambition and how corporate feminism sets women up to fail.

By the mid-2010s, it seemed that America had entered the "girlboss era," when ambitious women could finally have it all: wealth, power, relationship fulfillment, and "feminine chic." Mukhopadhyay, however, argues that "the quest for structural equality and justice asked women to fetishize gender inequality as something you could overcome with quirky personality traits, disarming oppressive men with a twinkle of the eye and a touch on the arm." As she shows, that brand of feminism did nothing to change the basic structural inequality and injustice in the workplace or the misogyny that undergirds society. When, for example, startup founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of criminal wrongdoing, "some felt--despite her company's egregious lies--that Holmes's treatment by the industry and the press highlighted an unfair double standard for women founders." Drawing on both research and her own experiences, Mukhopadhyay shows how the workaholic "hustling" that also goes along with "girlbossing" has helped fuel workplace toxicity, which has led to high rates of burnout and, more recently, "quiet quitting," an ethic that rejects the professional win-at-all-costs mentality for a "politics of laziness." What the author argues for instead is that women "channel our 'hustle' energy" into organizing the workplace in terms that take into account not only gender, but other factors like race and sexuality. She also asks women to reconsider the "false bill of goods" that capitalism has sold them about what makes for a prosperous life and consider embracing the ethos of "having enough." Provocative and intelligent, Mukhopadhyay's book will appeal to both feminist scholars and working women seeking more humane ways to navigate the sexist, racist, hypercapitalist minefield of the modern workplace.

An incisive study of the current business landscape.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Mukhopadhyay, Samhita: THE MYTH OF MAKING IT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A795674054/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9ef9dd94. Accessed 25 June 2024.

Rosenberg, Alyssa. "Even after the 2016 election, 'Nasty Women' are still acting far too nice." Washingtonpost.com, 4 Oct. 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A508077724/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c399078e. Accessed 25 June 2024. "Mukhopadhyay, Samhita: NASTY WOMEN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A500364984/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7dd66bdb. Accessed 25 June 2024. Eathorne, Courtney. "Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America." Booklist, vol. 114, no. 1, 1 Sept. 2017, p. 16. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A509161440/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=467e0781. Accessed 25 June 2024. Troska, Amber. "NASTY WOMEN: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America." Herizons, vol. 32, no. 1, spring 2018, p. 38. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A543610763/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a0b0b281. Accessed 25 June 2024. "Teen Vogue Is Good." Jacobin Magazine, 28 Oct. 2019, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A661671615/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0c2c947b. Accessed 25 June 2024. "Mukhopadhyay, Samhita: THE MYTH OF MAKING IT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A795674054/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9ef9dd94. Accessed 25 June 2024.

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