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Gabrielle Korn has always had a knack for asking the most incisive questions. This was true during her two stints at Refinery29, where she was most recently — until August 2020 — our (beloved) director of fashion and culture. It was also true when she was editor-in-chief at NYLON, where she was the youngest and first queer woman to hold the position. And now it’s true in her new book Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes.

In the memoir, Korn uses her own personal and professional experiences to highlight and comment on the many hypocrisies that exist in women’s media, which often positions itself as “woke” while continuing to uphold belief systems that work against the people they claim to want to uplift.

Korn’s essays are intensely personal, and she never hesitates to explore those uncomfortable moments that all too often remain unspoken. The following excerpt was adapted from a chapter in which she discusses her anorexia and grapples with the question: Can I be a “good feminist” and have an eating disorder? — Molly Longman

It was June 2017, a precious time of year in New York City when the heat has yet to vaporize the garbage juice, so the air still smells like pollen and possibility. 

I was on a third date with Wallace, a friend who had recently admitted to sharing the crush I’d had on her since we met a few years earlier. Because we’d been casual friends for so many years before, we’d quickly fallen into tell-each-other-everything territory, and I was going full speed ahead, divulging all the gory details of a breakup with a woman I’d been with for a year. 

Maybe it’s because I’d had two negronis, but I then found myself admitting a detail to Wallace that I had only recently begun to say out loud: “It got complicated because I had taken a little break from food.” I said it casually, like I was kind of joking, not wanting to sound dramatic.

Everyone else so far had regarded this admission with alarm, which was annoying, or skepticism, which was more annoying. Wallace, though, matched my tone. “Oh yeah?” she said. “That’s no good. You kind of need food.”

“Yeah,” I laughed, relieved. “As it turns out, you really do need to eat things.” 

No one really knew: I was about three months into recovery from what I was told was anorexia.

It’s estimated that upwards of thirty million people in the United States have an eating disorder. Meanwhile, it’s also estimated that more than 70 percent of them won’t seek treatment because of stigma. This statistic feels especially prescient: In this golden age of female empowerment, we aren’t supposed to have eating disorders anymore. It’s not cool to hate your body. Women, and especially women within the public eye, are obligated to promote a message of self-love, to put all our cellulite and wrinkles and rolls out there proudly. Culturally, we’re all about “wellness” and redefining it on our own terms. And yet, studies show that eating disorder rates continue to rise.

I’ve moved in and out of periods of disordered eating for as long as I can remember, though I can never tell it’s happening until I’m on the other side. When you admit to having an eating disorder, you’re also admitting that you’re body negative in an aggressively body-positive world. You’ve prioritized impossible beauty standards over your own health. And ultimately — despite your feminist politics — you’ve internalized the patriarchy. The misogyny that says women need to be skinny has infiltrated your brain until you believe it, until it feels like it’s a belief system you organically hold. It’s oppression at its most sinister: so pervasive that it becomes part of you. By starving yourself, or making yourself throw up, or otherwise doing whatever you can to keep your body small, you are in effect working to uphold the values of a system built on keeping you down.

That is, at least, what I told myself, what I punished myself with, and what many others do, too; I think it’s probably why many people don’t want to talk about their eating disorders in today’s world, which can feel built on surface-level feminism depending on what bubble you live in. For me, saying it out loud was nothing short of devastating, especially because a huge part of my mission had been to help young women expunge patriarchy both from their own minds and their communities. 

It felt like admitting weakness: I was trying so hard to be the picture-perfect empowered millennial woman, but I had gotten stuck on the “picture perfect” part. 

In our newly woke world of marketing based on “positivity,” the blame is once again placed on women — but this time, it’s not our bodies that are wrong; it’s our feelings about our bodies. And my feelings about my body were definitely wrong, creating a vortex of shame. 

I’d been in therapy for years without bringing up my on-again, off-again eating habits. I didn’t want to tell my therapist about it, because I didn’t want to stop — I liked having that kind of control over my body. I also didn’t really think it was that big of a deal. When I finally told her, she was alarmed, and convinced me to see a doctor so we could determine how severe it was based on test results. She sent me to a physician who specialized in eating disorders in adolescent girls. The day before I went, I wondered if I should eat more so that she wouldn’t think I had a problem, or if I should eat less so that she would take me seriously. I went alone, not wanting to burden anyone with what felt like a self-imposed disaster. 

The doctor diagnosed me with anorexia quickly. I was mortified but also relieved; I was exhausted from being hungry all the time, and now there was a professional telling me I needed to eat more, or else. There was also something so soothing about having someone tell me what I had to do — I had been making my whole life up as I went, including how I took care of myself, and she lifted the burden. There were, in fact, rules to follow in order to stay alive; I actually couldn’t just go without eating indefinitely.

Years of therapy have clarified for me the connection between my relationship to food and my coping mechanisms, or rather my lack thereof. Being skinny was a weapon, a strategy, a safety net. Trying to lose weight was a convenient way to distract myself from what was really going on.

It was, maybe most importantly, a secret so easy to deny because there was so much evidence to the contrary: my work, for one. Being gay came in a close second. Queer people are so inclusive, so all about supporting all kinds of bodies— right? Socially, I was part of a world where fatness had been reclaimed. Queer fat femmes and butches were lavished with as much positive attention as everyone else. They were celebrated. And I celebrated them, too. I just didn’t think my own body could be included.

After a round of blood tests on that first visit, the doctor called me and said that I needed to change my lifestyle in order to not do permanent damage to my body. All my results were low; my estradiol was so minimal that I was barely getting my period. She also explained that based on how low my T3, or triiodothyronine, levels were, it would take a full two years for my brain to fully recover. T3, she told me, comes from good fats and lines your brain; it makes your synapses connect. Low T3 is a symptom of starvation. It’s why it’s hard to think when you’re hungry. This was the first piece of scare-tactic information that truly got to me. I drew the line at a decline in mental capacity. 

The doctor told me the good news was I’d be able to recover fully as long as I started eating again. Eventually, I did, slowly at first, working with a nutritionist to get back up to three meals a day, then adding snacks, then making sure that every meal was well-rounded and satisfying.

The doctor didn’t take health insurance, and my plan didn’t cover my diagnosis in the acceptable out-of-network expenses, so my first visit was $800, my follow-up was $400, and my third visit was another $800; the nutritionist was $150/week, as was my therapist. I couldn’t afford both regular doctor visits and the weekly therapist and nutritionist, which was extra motivation to follow the plan they created for me: I hated the thought that my hard-earned salary was all going to treatment. It felt like failure. So I stopped seeing the eating disorder doctor after three visits and stuck with the therapist and nutritionist. I had to relearn how to put meals together, which was humiliating but also incredibly helpful. I surrendered completely to professional care, understanding that my own ideas about health and food were no longer trustworthy.

After outsourcing all my various issues to professionals around Manhattan, I managed to finally feel like I wasn’t living from crisis to crisis; I could approach food as something I needed to feel good, not the other way around. 

It’s not hard to imagine why women might hate their bodies when our place in the world is so often determined by them, and when so few people actually occupy that highly glorified yet rarely lived place of ultra-thin/straight/white/cisgender privilege. Despite being the majority, plus-size women are discriminated against and often publicly shamed for their appearance, which affects everything from access to effective healthcare to employment to travel to shopping. But thin women, in my experience, balk at admitting to being a privileged category, especially thin white women. I wonder if it’s because they’re punishing themselves so much to maintain that skinniness that the suffering feels louder than any societal benefit they encounter. But that’s a pretty naive way to experience the world, indicative of a privilege so ingrained you hardly realize it’s there. It also seems entirely possible that the panic to remain thin stems from a fear of losing that privilege — a maybe subconscious admittance.

A so-called good feminist in today’s world thinks that bodies in their natural state — cellulite, rolls, stretch marks, and all — are perfect. It’s almost like someone forgot to tell us to include ourselves. Or maybe we’re so used to hating the things that we’re suddenly supposed to celebrate that it’s simply easier to start with everyone else.

Copyright 2021 by Gabrielle Korn. From Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes by Gabrielle Korn, published by Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Adapted and printed by permission.

If you are struggling with an eating disorder and are in need of support, please call the National Eating Disorders Association Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. For a 24-hour crisis line, text “NEDA” to 741741. 

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In February — a lifetime ago — I was in Europe for fashion weeks, and a friend DMed me: “Why do you have paparazzi shots of yourself?”

I had to laugh. For people who don’t follow fashion, street style is an alien, and inherently confusing, phenomenon. Sometimes it takes someone else’s perspective to realize how ridiculous something is. For the uninitiated, it’s probably alarming and confusing to see swarms of photographers outside of fashion shows, blocking traffic to snap the perfect shot of a wildly dressed person as she crosses the street. Even for the indoctrinated, it’s a lot.

It is hard to remember a time when this part of the fashion world wasn’t so ubiquitous and pervasive, but before the mid-2000s, street style as we know it didn’t exist. The New York Times had spent several decades publishing Bill Cunningham’s work, famously featuring stylish New Yorkers going about their everyday lives, but street style that was specific to fashion week’s attendees had been relegated to a few pages in print magazines. With the rise of online media, though, street style took off in a new way, thanks to a few bloggers — The Sartorialist and Street Peeper, most memorably — who carved out a specific online niche photographing cool people on the sidewalk. By 2006, the most well-known street style bloggers were noticed by brands, who flew them around the world to fashion weeks to capture the glamorous and often chaotic process of arriving and departing from a fashion show. 

This is one of the best examples of the way old-school fashion media — and then the fashion industry at large — was flipped upside-down by digital. With access to once-exclusive events at their fingertips, outsiders became insiders, and then they became stars, eclipsing the old guard. 

And then, in 2009, Dolce and Gabbana put street style photographers in the front row: a declaration of the importance of not just those individuals, but of their work. Fashion media took notice. Soon, magazines were hiring their own street style photographers, rolling out slideshows and galleries filled with fashion’s most beloved figures crossing the street, hailing cabs, and battling the elements, often with puzzled onlookers in the background. In 2011, Phil Oh shot his first fashion week for Vogue, a gig he still has.

As part of the democratization of fashion — when influencers and bloggers were invited to shows and fashion month became as much, if not more, about the people attending as the work being showcased — street style marked a shift; personal style became more interesting than runway style, which so often felt editorial and abstract (not to mention showcased on such a singular body type) and totally out of reach. 

The proliferation of street style was, ultimately, positive; this type of content allowed women who didn’t look like runway models (i.e. tall, thin, and young) to have a presence in fashion month coverage, and along with that, allowed for readers to see people who look more like themselves. Refinery29 was part of that shift — one of the things this site was known for in its early days was its street style, as part of a rebellious spirit that declared fashion to be for everyone. 

But not everyone was thrilled with the change. “Today, the people outside fashion shows are more like peacocks than crows,” fashion critic Suzy Menkes infamously lamented in the NYT in 2013 in an article that roundly blasted the institution of street style for turning editors into spectacles. Mourning the 1990s, an era when fashion editors showed up clad in all-black for shows as though they were attending a funeral, Menkes condemned the fact that people were now getting dressed specifically to get noticed, saying that there was a difference between true style and simply showing off. She asked — in a hilariously out-of-touch line that clearly speaks to a generational difference — “If fashion is for everyone, is it fashion?” 

The answer to that question, for a lot of people, was a resounding “YES!” In 2014, Refinery29 published a NYT bestseller called Style Stalking. “Get set to build your best ever wardrobe featuring the hardest-working looks from around the globe with Refinery29—the world’s leading style destination—as their editors break down the essentials of the everyday chic, straight from the street,” the synopsis reads on Amazon. Fashion was becoming more for everyone than it had ever been before.

Suddenly, it became standard for editors to give photographers lists of people to shoot, so that dozens of cameras were all competing to grab what was, in essence, the same shot of the same well-known influencers wearing the same outlandish, if formulaic, outfits — a far cry from the emphasis on originality that inspired street style in the first place. Which also means that Menkes’s 2013 article was more prescient than street style fans would have liked it to be; it signaled the beginning of the end. In an oral history of street style, photographer Phil Oh recalled to Vogue, “When the Suzy piece came out, the mood changed overnight. All of a sudden people were like, ‘Oh, no, street style has become too much. It’s so manufactured. It’s so fake. Oh, my God, it’s so over.’”

I was a 24-year-old beauty assistant at Refinery29 in 2013, attending my first fashion week. As a young person who, admittedly, knew nothing about fashion before I dove headfirst into the industry, street style photography was terrifying. “Street style is bad,” I remember saying to a colleague while walking into a show. I had just passed by a well-known street style photographer, and watched as he assessed me — and then put his camera down, turning away. 

That turned out to be a not uncommon experience for me, even when I had titles like fashion director and editor-in-chief.  And it wasn’t just me — many industry friends I talked to about this story immediately said things like “street style is awful and I hate it” as soon as I brought it up. Of course, it will always feel bad — like a personal rejection — when someone looks you up and down and then turns away. But, really, it’s just business.

Most people who are street style stars are wearing borrowed clothes to fashion week, some because they’re getting paid to, and others because it increases their chances of being photographed. Some are dressed by the brands of the shows they are attending, which is an interesting marketing strategy because it not only increases the street style opportunities, thus spreading images of the product to more places, but it creates a public allegiance between the brand and the person. (Full disclosure: I, too, usually borrow clothes.) This is an added, weird layer to what street style has become. It used to be about personal style, and now it’s about… brand relationships. So, money. Lots of it.

And where there’s lots of money involved, there’s always going to be an underlying, complicated power structure. Because, while street style does indeed act as an ongoing reclamation of personal style, street style photographers and the editors who select which photos to run all act as gatekeepers, making street style feel like an insider’s club for popular people only. 

At its best, then, the vibe is extremely middle school. At its worst, street style upholds the kind of racism and fatphobia that has long run rampant in the industry. In 2018, Lindsay Peoples Wagner (now the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue) published a story on The Cut headlined, “Street Style Is Killing Itself With Its Narrow Focus On Thin White Women.” Of The Cut’s 300 street style pictures that season, she counted 29 men and women who were not white. “This season the lack of inclusivity in street-style photographs was so blatant it felt cruel,” she wrote. 

But perhaps street style’s true killer can be summed up best in one word: Instagram. As street style stars took to reposting their own images from magazine slideshows, a not-so-subtle kind of humble-brag to illustrate their influence, and street style galleries went from magazine features to popular social media marketing tools, trends popped up that seemed to specifically cater to Instagram — bold and graphic prints, statement coats, sneakers. The louder an item, the better it’ll look on the feed, and thus the more likely it is to get photographed.

Other fashion lovers who might not have been photographed at all began to recreate the aesthetic of street style on Instagram, posting their own fashion directly to their feeds, not waiting for a well-known photographer to bless their outfit with a snap. Influencer photography began to look a lot like the street style photography that was coming out of digital women’s media, complete with cobblestone streets, halted traffic, and golden-hour light — with or without a fashion show to go to.

So while digital magazine-driven street style photography upended the hierarchy of runway photography, Instagram culture stepped in to upend that. With the power to create and curate their own images at their fingertips — images that would compete in personal feeds right above and below images from magazines — people soon realized that they didn’t have to wait for a pro to document their look. 

One year ago, Vogue published a timeline of street style trends from the 2010s onward. “We’re only halfway through the year, but so far 2019 has been ‘peak’ everything: peak maximalism, peak influencer, peak celebrity, even peak minimalism as a reaction to all of that,” it reads, concluding:  “The streets of 2019 are more varied and diverse than they’ve ever been; let’s hope 2020 can keep the good vibes going.” Which, oof. 

Fashion month, as we knew it, is over. The world has changed. Many runway shows are turning to the digital space, curating live-streamed attempts at recreating the feel of a fashion show. But that leaves out street style, which, for many, is the most visible — and most vital — part of the whole thing. So what happens to street style in a digital season? What is the next iteration of this storied institution? 

Tyler McCall, the editor-in-chief of Fashionista, pointed out to me that the tradition of showgoers borrowing clothes from brands in order to be seen has continued in the quarantine era. It just looks a little different. “During the couture shows, a few influencers I follow still got dressed up in clothes from brands to post about livestreams — which I get, everyone still needs to get paid,” she said, adding, “It’s not quite the same when you’re sending clothes for influencers to wear watching your show from the couch instead of the front row.” 

It might not be the same, but maybe that’s a good thing. For one, self-documented style is inherently more empowering than allowing street style photographers to evaluate whether your outfit is worthy. I mean, literally: by taking a selfie and posting it, the power to show your style is in your hands. There is absolutely no need to rely on street style photographers to deem it worthy. And influencer culture, the epitome of the aforementioned spirit, was already eclipsing the days of editors dictating trends (though, the question of who influences us post-pandemic lingers). But, more than that, this season’s shift from street style to screen style — even though the pandemic didn’t give us much of a say in the matter — hopefully marks the end of the “circus” era of fashion week and the dawn of a new one that re-centers personal style above peacocking and marketing tactics. Even if that style is taking place on the couch. 

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LGBTQ+ people are not strangers to fighting for the right for equal treatment, both under the law and in the culture. So it feels particularly meaningful that this month, when we celebrate Pride,  is when America has erupted in protests. The issues being called out — police brutality against Black people and the systemic racism that has allowed it to go unchecked — are not new. But after enduring months of a pandemic that affects Black and brown people disproportionately, years of a president who aligns himself with white supremacy, and unceasing news about the murders of Black people, from George Floyd to Ahmaud Arbery to Breonna Taylor to Tony McDade, people across the country had had enough.  

The year is half over, and the world has been forever changed. 

The start of my year felt very different, on almost every level. I was barely two months into a new job at Refinery29. And on New Year’s Eve, I proposed to my girlfriend. I knew she didn’t want a diamond, so after months of searching, I found a band that’s half gold and half silver; a beautiful, minimal statement. I spent the last day of 2019 on the phone with her parents and mine, calls and FaceTimes filled with joyful tears. I hid the ring in the couch, and after we’d returned from a fancy dinner reservation, I surprised her with it. There were even more joyous, tear-filled phone calls. We are incredibly lucky to have families and friends that were thrilled for us, as two lesbians. 

As happy as we were to be engaged, we spent the next couple of months coming to terms with the fact that, because of the coronavirus pandemic, planning a wedding won’t be realistic, not for a long time. But, until a few years ago, I wasn’t so sure planning a wedding would ever be in the cards for me at all — not legally at least. I came out in the spring of 2008, a couple of weeks after I turned 19. Gay marriage was not recognized as a civil right across the U.S.; its validity was only recognized in a couple of states, and not in New York, my home. President George W. Bush, who had been in office for the entirety of my adolescence, had supported a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, rendering it illegal even in those places that had voted in favor of it. I didn’t know if it was something I’d see legalized in my lifetime. 

But, I did: The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the country in 2015, a decision celebrated by President Barack Obama, who had, in his original presidential campaign for the 2008 election, not been in support of it. It was an emotional day. I still have a saved voicemail from my grandma, who called me to say congratulations, as though it was something I had personally accomplished. Of course, the fight had started long before I had been born. 

By the time gay marriage was legalized in the U.S., it had been 46 years since the riots at New York City’s Stonewall Inn kicked off the gay liberation movement. As the story goes, the first bottle was thrown by Silvia Rivera, a Black Latina American trans woman. And it was queer and trans people of color who stayed at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots for five days. Similarly to the protests happening across the country right now in response to the police killing of George Floyd, the queer community at Stonewall was rioting against endemic police brutality.Though it’s become extremely corporate in nature, Pride was born out of a violent protest. As we’re seeing now, oftentimes, the only way to get power to pay attention to widespread inequality is to riot.

Back then, there were no legal protections for gay people; not only could you be fired for being gay, you weren’t really allowed to be gay in public — gay bars were regularly raided because gay people gathering in public were considered disorderly, and “soliciting” same sex relations was illegal. Gender, too, was legislated; you could be arrested for “cross-dressing.” Being gay was considered a mental illness in the DSM until the 1970s. Because of this, the LGBTQ+ community was not visible to the untrained eye; it couldn’t be. Representation for queer women was mainly relegated to pulp novels, where the characters usually died or went back to their husbands in the end.

Now, 51 years after Stonewall, the world looks very different. Home streaming services are chock-full of options for those seeking queer representation. Fancy an L Word, reimagined and rebooted for a queerer, more diverse audience? Check. How about a bisexual teen with superpowers? Check. What about a witchy Sabrina reboot with a trans supporting lead? Check, check, check. In fact, a total of 10.2% of all characters on TV were LGBTQ in the 2019-2020 broadcast season, according to GLAAD, which is a record high. And if you’re into fashion, well, that’s getting pretty queer too. Top models and designers are openly, proudly, and perfectly casually queer. Even all the magazines, the same ones that used to pretend we didn’t exist, now run stories throughout June about beautiful queer and trans women. Musicians are out, and actors — especially the young ones — are suddenly in queer relationships — they might even get more famous because of them. Only 48% of Gen Z identifies as exclusively heterosexual. Everyone, it seems, is at least a little bit gay right now. 

It’s a culture that I couldn’t have imagined when I was growing up, when I felt like the only lesbian in the entire world. 

And yet, even though we may be more visible than ever, we are perhaps more at risk than we’ve been in decades. An older activist friend once said to me about being queer in New York City in decades past: “The West Village was where gay people went to be gay, and where homophobes went to beat them up.” In 2015, it felt like the U.S. was finally a safer place to be gay; just over a year later, the arrival of the Trump White House meant we would be facing a steady attack on our rights and our lives. Not long after, the FBI reported a spike in hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ population.

It isn’t just people on the street who are behaving violently and homophobically —  the government is also rolling back our rights. Most recently, to name just a few: In 2019, the Trump administration announced it would be cutting $250 million from the The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; announced plans to ban transgender service members from openly serving in the armed forces; failed to uphold guidelines that protected LGBTQ+ people from housing discrimination (including homeless shelters); stopped collecting data about LGBTQ+ youth in the foster care system; and refused to guarantee transgender people health care under the Affordable Care Act. So far this year, the Department of Justice filed a court brief in the Western District of Kentucky calling anti-LGBTQ discrimination “not a sufficient government interest,” siding with private businesses who want to deny services to LGBTQ+ people. And, as reported by The National Center for Transgender Equality, nine different federal agencies proposed rule changes “that would encourage agencies to claim religious exemptions to deny help to certain people while receiving federal funds.” Certain people being, of course, LGBTQ+ ones. 

Perhaps even more pervasive than the legislation has been the government-sanctioned microaggressions. For three years in a row, Trump hasn’t mentioned the LGBTQ community while recognizing December 1 as World AIDS Day. The Department of Education removed “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as terms used to track bullying. Trump has attacked gay journalists on Twitter. He has praised anti-LGBTQ+ leaders. He’s attempted to prevent the Pride flag from flying at Stonewall, which is a monument and therefore federal land, and has completely barred U.S. Embassies from flying it.

And, not surprisingly, with this political backdrop, studies show that acceptance for LGBTQ+ people has declined year over year, especially among young adults. Last year, a national survey conducted on GLAAD’s behalf by The Harris Poll, called the Accelerating Acceptance Index, found that 36% of people ages 18 to 34 were “very” or “somewhat” uncomfortable learning that a family member was LGBTQ+, up from 29% from 2018 (43% of men, specifically, said they were uncomfortable). Gay men continue to be barred from donating blood unless they can prove they’ve been celibate for three months. 

There’s more: We continue to be disproportionately at risk for homelessness. According to the Williams Institute, of the homeless youth who turn to agencies for help, 40% identify as LGBT. Almost half of all clients at drop-in centers are LGBT, and a third of people helped by street outreach are. Meanwhile, we face higher rates of poverty, especially among the Black community; at least 32% of the children raised by Black LGBTQ+ couples live in poverty (compared to 13% off married straight Black parents and 7% of married straight white ones), and at least 34% of Black trans people do too (compared to the 9% of cisgender Black people who live in poverty).   

Violence against us is also increasing. The most recent data says that from 2017 to 2018, there was a 42% increase in hate crimes against transgender people. Nearly one in five hate crimes from 2018 was LGBTQ+-related. Last year, 26 trans people were murdered, the majority of whom were trans women of color. Violence against trans women is an epidemic, and it is only getting worse. Black trans women face the highest rate of fatal violence within the queer community, and they also are less likely to turn to the police for support, according to the HRC, because when they do, they are faced with even more harassment, physical assault, and sexual assault.  

All the while, GLAAD has reported an increase in LGBTQ+ visibility throughout media. So, sure, we can sit with our legally wedded spouses in front of the TV and see relationships that look like ours, but we can’t trust the government to protect us from those who hate us simply for being who we are. Thanks, I hate it. 

It is a terrible, terrifying feeling to know that the more visible you are, the more in danger you are. It is even more horrific to realize that most of the progress the movement has made is superficial. What good is representation if you can’t be safe in public? That question is not a new one, exactly; it has also been asked by civil rights leaders in the Black community, who have grappled with ongoing police violence and homicide, especially now. But even if it’s not new, it’s an important one to keep asking, not least because it reveals how intersectional the struggles between marginalized communities are, and how important it is to fight together. 

But the answer to it is complicated — everyone deserves both safety and representation. This fight will be ongoing for our entire lives, as long there are people who think that LGBTQ people are less deserving of rights than they are. It is naive to watch The L Word reboot or Pose and think it means the fight is over. It is foolish to think that proposing to your girlfriend on New Year’s Eve and FaceTiming with your parents about it means that you are equal. Because, honestly, those things are beautiful and amazing and important, but there’s no such thing as being kind of equal. 

That tenuous equality is at stake in the upcoming election. Joe Biden has a decades-long record of anti-LGBTQ decision-making, including his support of the Defense of Marriage Act and of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” as well as an infamous comment that Vice President Mike Pence, who supports conversion therapy, is a “decent guy.” While everyone should be allowed the space to evolve their opinions, as Biden did on the topic of gay marriage, it’s hard to trust politicians who ever thought you didn’t deserve equal rights. It makes their current promises feel like ploys for votes. I’m worried about what a Biden presidency means for all marginalized people. But I’m even more worried that a Biden candidacy will fail to unite progressive and moderate democrats, and we’ll end up right back where we started, with a Trump administration set on rolling back our rights while lying about it. 

And, of course, the LGBTQ community will be hard hit by the pandemic, as will most marginalized communities. The nonprofits that many rely on for life-saving services have closed their doors, leaving people without knowing where to turn for support. In April, The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention nonprofit, reported that the number of calls they’d received from young people had doubled in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Without our physical spaces, many people have been cut off from their communities, which can have dire implications for mental health and safety. College students are having to return to family homes where they aren’t welcome, and many don’t have homes to return to at all.

June is Pride month, and even though we’ve been quarantined for so long, many are taking to the streets in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Queer people, and especially queer BIPOC people, have a rich history of rioting for change, and many are now risking their lives by doing so in the middle of a pandemic. Pride will have a very different tone this year, as it should. Just a few weeks ago, digital parties and events were being organized, and now protests are taking their place. .Until there is justice — and large-scale institutional change to address the way racism pervades every layer of this country — there shouldn’t be peace.

And while we protest, it’s important for the LGBTQ+ community to remember that we are vibrant, strong, gorgeous, brilliant, creative, loving, and resilient. But that last one — there’s something so exquisitely agonizing about a community defined by resilience. We shouldn’t have to exist and thrive despite adversity. We should be allowed to live without fear, and without a fight — especially the Black and brown people in our community, who have waited far too long for the simple human right to be safe in public. Until that day comes, our screens will be inundated with representation, and those of us who know what’s at stake will continue to push for institutional change. 

And until the world catches up, we will always have each other. 

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New York City photographer Danielle St. Laurent, who recently moved with her husband and two children to Maplewood, New Jersey, says that in the beginning of the shelter-in-place order, she worried about the long term effects of social isolation on kids. “I looked out my window and saw my neighbor’s son looking at the window for a long time, at nothing in particular,” she said. “It looked sad and lonely.” Though she tried to stay optimistic, St. Laurent said that it was hard to keep worry from creeping in. Like many of us, she grew concerned about how long this will last. 
 
As the weeks progressed and the kids in the neighborhood stopped playing together, she started coming to terms with the severity of the pandemic. “Our boundaries got more defined and our world got smaller,” she said. “Day by day those lines were redrawn as new information came in.” 
 
To process the new normal of social distancing and isolation, St. Laurent began documenting the families in her neighborhood. She visited people’s homes, taking family portraits from outside. “I want these portraits to show the forced closeness families are experiencing, the beauty and the tension and the separation from society.” 
 
The challenges of the project are unique; aside from logistical inconveniences of shooting a family from the sidewalk, the pane of glass separating the photographer and her subjects prevents that sense of closeness that usually makes portraits feel so intimate, and even vulnerable. But the magic of this series is that those feelings are there anyway; the windows offer a glimpse into lives that have only recently become so private and insular.
 
“Sometimes I would be at someone’s house waiting to do their portrait, and I could hear the kids crying and fighting, and the parents desperately trying to get their people to the window,” St. Laurent said. “We are all putting on our brave faces, sometimes crumbling, sometimes thriving. We are seeing life through a new lens.” 
 

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Tan France and Alexa Chung are sitting in front of me in Refinery29’s photo studio, and they are overheating. “We’re in seven-gauge cashmere,” Chung jokes — or is it a joke? — while France pops up and cracks open the window. For the next 30 minutes, the duo, whose energy and natural banter make them a pleasure to talk to, proceed with a mix of wit, charm, and insider fashion references, often spoken at the same time or cutting each other off with excitement. I expected nothing less: Both style stars have made names for themselves in the reality space — their work is largely personality-driven — and so a conversation with them feels hyper-familiar, as though it’s the continuation of a conversation you’ve been having with them for years. 

This is perhaps why they’re such perfect hosts for Next In Fashion, Netflix’s debut in the fashion reality space, which dropped on January 29. With a winning combination of style, silliness, and earnestness that’s tempered with sarcasm, Chung and France are a refreshing answer to the fashion personalities we’ve grown accustomed to seeing on television. The structure of the show, while similar to its predecessor Project Runway, has its own unique angle: The contestants are already professional designers. They’re just not famous yet. And within that, the show prioritizes topics like inclusivity and sustainability, bringing in a diverse range of well-known designers who are on the cutting edge of an industry shift. It’s a familiar format driven into new territories by charming personalities and breathtaking talent; the perfect show to binge. As for the winner? Well, that’s spoiled in the conversation below, so if you haven’t finished watching, you’ve been warned.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Next in Fashion.

Refinery29: How did you originally meet each other?

Tan France: “We were invited to a party by Victoria Beckham’s team. I’m assuming she gets invited to a lot of Victoria Beckham stuff. This was my first time.”

Alexa Chung: “It was my first Victoria Beckham party.”

TF: “Get out. I don’t know if I believe that.”

AC: “It was. Since then I have been invited to a dinner.”

TF: “Oh, get out. I never got so much as an invite. I think I fucked up my chances at that party. And so I met Alexa because I walked around the room, and she screamed.”

AC: “I was drunk.”

TF: She was a little bit drunk. She ducked down and said to a friend, I think he heard me.”

AC: Yes, he fucking did.

TF: “I absolutely fucking did. Then I declared my undying love, and she was a fan of Queer Eye. We chatted for about half an hour, and then I left. Then we started working together and it’s been fucking bliss.”

It’s interesting that you were both familiar with each other’s work and public personas before you started actually working together. Did you find that there were assumptions that you had made about each other?

TF: “Not really. You are pretty much like you are on TV.”

AC: “Oh yeah. Personality-wise, yeah. I didn’t know as much about Tan’s background in fashion, so that was interesting to learn.”

TF: “Alexa’s been on my screens, not for the last few years, but before then…”

AC: “I’m very old.”

TF: “So since she was 16 — and she’s now 66 — she has been on TV. She’s basically herself. I don’t think you had a script. If you did, well done.” (Editor’s note: Alexa Chung, who is 36, not 66, has been on a wide range of TV shows since 2006, both as a popular red carpet reporter and as the host of her own series like MTV’s It’s On With Alexa Chung.) 

AC: “We wrote it.”

TF: “I never knew. So [her on-screen personality] was very much her. I didn’t feel like I was getting to know somebody new. I definitely knew who she was. She was very opinionated on that show, too. Just like I am on Queer Eye. It feels like I’m hanging with the person I used to watch on TV.”

And does it feel like that for you, too, Alexa?

AC: “Yeah, 100% yeah.”

TF: “Bitchier in real life.”

AC: “A horrible man. But a great, hard-working horrible man. The reason I screamed when he walked in was because I thought he was wonderful. And he is wonderful. It’s actually unlike me to be that positive about someone.”

One thing that I thought immediately when I started watching the show was that what you guys wear as the hosts is really important.

AC: “Thank you for noticing, because we…”

TF: “We give away the fucking episode every time. It’s so stupid of us. But I do love our outfits.”

Did you self-style or did you work with a stylist?

TF: “There is a stylist that we have — on Next in Fashion, not other projects — because you are constantly shooting. You can’t possibly pull for yourself. I have somebody pull for me who’s wonderful, and I love her very much. But I would say, I want this please, can you go get that from that brand or designer?”

AC: “I chose to work with Danielle Nachmani. Because, same thing, it was just for the show. I needed help pulling it, and they have to keep track of it. I feel like I’m justifying that. I think I’m justifying it because it matters a lot to me that I style myself, and so this is one of the only occasions where I’ve actually used a stylist. But she was great.”

TF: “The reason why it is important to us and I think the reason we have very much felt this topic is because…”

AC: “She is a fantastic stylist, and I’m a big fan of her work. She dresses lots of celebrities. I think she does such a great job. With me she did lots of it, but also I dictated a lot of it as well.” 

TF: “Let me explain this one last point then I promise I’m done. We do this for a job, [Alexa] way more so. But people look to us for inspiration, I hope, when it comes to clothing, and so if we can’t choose looks for ourselves, something’s wrong.”

AC: “I think it’s lame to have a stylist basically.”

TF: “I don’t.”

AC: “I do.”

TF: “That’s pure her. She does not speak for both of us.”

AC: “I do. I hate it when celebrities have stylists. It’s like, what’s your own style?”

Reality TV has obviously changed a lot in the past decade. How is this show different from reality TV in general, and specifically from other fashion competitions?

TF: “So reality TV has existed over the last couple of decades, but it really started in 2002 apparently.”

AC: “MTV’s The Real World was a reality show in the ’90s.”

TF: “That really wasn’t real.”

AC: “Jersey Shore.”

TF: “So around about 2000 is when it really started to hit big, where it became mainstream. And that was the likes the original Queer Eye.”

AC: “Big Brother.”

TF: “Yeah, but in the U.K., the Big Brother massively. Then in the U.S. in particular: Housewives.

AC: “Scared and Naked. Sorry.”

TF: “So those shows, they were built on negativity, anger, drama, and highly, highly, highly produced shows. Whereas our show — whether it be Next in Fashion or Queer Eye — I think that the tides are turning. Where people are wanting more positive shows that actually take them out of the crappiness of what’s going on in the world right now. Especially from our own government. So having an opportunity to watch TV and just be all positive — with that we can find connection even through competition.”

AC: Would it be safe to say that actually reality TV is the right word for escapism? Because our reality that we’re living in isn’t something people want to hang out with, and so they watch reality TV to watch unreality.”

TF: “I love that. So Alexa’s changing the definition of reality TV.”

AC: “It’s more of a make-a-wish.”

Can you talk about how fashion has changed, and what it takes for a designer to be successful now?

AC: “We’re giving [designers] this money to help set up their own brand and also the ability to be sold on Net-a-Porter. That kind of sets the tone and might answer your question in that since the revolution of social media and online shopping, it’s a different ballgame. It’s no longer going to a destination perusing the racks. In turn, clothes have changed. The way that we interact with style has changed. It’s about individualism, but at the same time things can become homogenized faster because the more likes it gets, [the more] it spreads out. I think we cycle through trends at a faster rate. What do you have to do to be a modern designer? You have to be able to understand the business is a 360-degree situation; it’s no longer just about the art of creativity. It’s also about having a good business head because there’s so many people vying for that position. And I think something that was amazing about social media is that it kind of democratized fashion in a way and it gave everyone a portal to their industry. However, it also flooded the market with so many different voices in the room. Now to cut through, you have to do something that’s really strong, or really has a point of view or is super authentic essentially.”

What did you like about the winning designer?

TF: “There’s literally not one thing I dislike about her.”

AC: She’s chronically talented; I was so impressed by everything. The challenge where they do print and pattern and she started creating their own fabric design was amazing to see. That’s when I first noticed her as being a really standout.”

TF: “Yes, it cemented her position in the competition, and she thinks differently from pretty much everybody in the competition. She pushes a brand forward that is unique, and it’s very much her even though we’d say push this further, push this further. You could always tell that it was a Minju Kim walking down that floor.”

AC: “Through every different lens we put it through. Any of the tailoring or underwear or things that aren’t necessarily part of her vernacular she still managed to create something that felt very her. I think that’s the marker of a great designer. She understood who she was and what she represented and what her look was. It never was diluted by any challenge.”

TF: “Even when we’d say maybe just like sexy it up a little bit, sex sells. She gave us her version of sexy, not our version of sexy. She was really resolute. She was incredibly passionate about who she was and what she wanted her brand to be regardless of our show. That’s why she was the winner. She’s also the most lovable person you could ever meet.”

AC: “Everyone loved her. She went on an amazing kind of emotional journey as well. She found confidence away from her family and was able to say at the end of all of this, ‘I’m really proud of myself.’ I thought that was so touching.”

TF: “We love a Queer Eye moment.”

What is next for the two of you? Are you going to keep working together?

AC: “Get married.”

Congrats.

AC: “I hope we get to work together again. We don’t know. But if we do, I would love it, and if we don’t then we should make our own sad version at home. Like I did in my bedroom when I was a teenager.”

You should do it on TikTok.

AC: “Yeah. We’ll just be massive on TikTok.”

TF: “A TikTok version of the show. We don’t know yet.”

AC: “Can I ask a really grandma question? What the fuck is TikTok?”

TF: “I don’t quite understand it. I think it’s like a mini Vine?”

AC: “Do they dance?”

TF: “I think it’s just dancing.”

AC: “Because I loved Vine.”

TF: “Is it like Dubsmash?”

AC: “Yeah is it like Dubsmash?”

It’s more like Vine. I think dances just do really well on it.

TF: “Why do people use it? Fuck. We are sounding really old.”

AC: “I am old. That’s okay. Let’s not be ageist.”

TF: “Why do people use it?”

I’m glad that you’re asking me, someone who has never used TikTok.

AC: “Yeah but you’re hip; you’re cool.”

TF: “You’re in your twenties.”

I’m not in my twenties.

TF: ”But you work for Refinery.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. 

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