Welcome to DEFY (It's been waiting for you)
Here's the story of how I finally figured out how to become a human "being" and why that empowered me to start this magazine.
BY JULIE LAWRENCE
“You know Julie, you’re very smart. I think you could be a senior person in this agency one day.”
That’s what my superior said to me the week before he kissed me.
He was twenty years my senior, with the accolades and awards to prove his professional prowess. I was an up and comer trying to learn the business. It was widely known in the industry that if he thought you were good, that meant something.
There’s no way I could have predicted the course of events that were set into motion; that this one kiss would lead me down a dark path, leaving me emotionally and spiritually bankrupt and my career in professional purgatory.
I realize now that the whole fiasco might have been avoided if I didn’t seek so much validation from the men at work. But my whole life was about being “one of the boys”.
I learned early that girls were vicious, judgey and boring. Boys, on the other hand, equaled fun, sports and jokes. While girls tormented me at school and wouldn’t let me sit with them at lunch, boys tossed me a football and sometimes kissed me behind the groundskeeper’s shed. I picked a side and stuck with it.
Boys were my home team, and I was a committed and doting fan. I was the last one standing at the party, the first one to clean up a spilled beer, and the loudest to laugh at the desperate girl that was the team captain’s newest conquest.
It’s no great shock that when I joined the working world, I had a string of “work husbands” who were gifted with my attention and energy. I was there to make their lives easier (and more fun) because that’s what cool girls do. Need an expense report done? No problem. Struggling with that brief? Let me take it off your hands. I thought this would cement me as an indispensable part of the team and that it would be reflected in my ascension up the proverbial corporate ladder. For a while, it worked.
Until it didn’t.
I put in more hours, took on more projects, and responded to more proposals than anyone else. But all that work didn’t get me any closer to the inner circle. Every time a new man was hired, he was immediately nested into the brain trust without question. The men would talk about “strategy” and then let me know what they needed me to do.
I was doing everything right (I thought) and still was not being recognized as an intellectual equal. So, what was the damn point?
"I was doing everything right (I thought) and still was not being recognized as an intellectual equal. So, what was the damn point?"
That one kiss from my senior colleague that night led to three years of being used: physically, emotionally and financially. I kept his secret, brainwashed to believe that he had more to lose than I did. But I did lose. I lost everything. And when I stumbled out of the wreckage with a drinking problem and a dodgy reputation, he continued to sit pretty in the glass-walled office. After all that work, I crashed and burned while he held the matches.
The next few years are a haze of booze, drugs and bad decisions. I floated through the world with no direction or purpose, self-medicating to protect myself from feeling the shame of it all. I talked myself into and then behaved my way out of a string of really good jobs, but my lifestyle eventually rendered me virtually unemployable. Stints in therapy, hospitals and rehabs followed before I was able to pick myself up and dust myself off. I had to learn to accept that the things that happened were not my fault, but the way that I reacted to them was.
I learned that the thing with narcissists is that they pick strong, independent women to feed off of and victimize. And it works for a while. I began to shrink; to become a shell of my former self. But then, from somewhere deep within, I caught a glimmer of hope. I clung to that hope with everything that I had, until that faint whisper of my own strength and independence could be heard. I started to remember who I was and what I’m capable of.
That hope came in the form of a Journalism degree, where I learned how to help people tell their truth. Armed with this new diploma, addiction recovery and self-awareness, I took on a job with a health and wellness magazine for women run by (you guessed it!) middle aged men. I quickly became the lowest paid magazine Editor in history.
Before long, I was doing it again. “It” being all of the work with none of the respect. There I was with ten years of work experience and two degrees. Still, my thoughts and opinions on the development of a women’s magazine meant nothing (and I was the only one with a vagina). Have an idea? Better back it up with scores of research. Want to change something? Nope, our buddy says it’s a bad idea. Like that cover? Too bad, let’s put that pro athlete in an evening gown instead.
Then it dawned on me: if this crap is happening at a small Canadian women’s magazine, it must be going on everywhere! It was like a microcosm for every company targeting women. All roads probably lead to middle aged white men that decide what women should do, think and feel.
I received a heartfelt plea for me to stick with the magazine, complete with a promise that I would be “an owner one day” (sound familiar?). A month later, the company ran out of money and I was fired. The man that made those grandiose plans never spoke to me again.
It was frustrating, shocking, maddening and the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It lit a fire under me to create a magazine for women that would help them rather than hurt them. That would bring them together rather than tear them apart. That would empower and educate rather than placate and perpetuate stereotypes.
A magazine that would defy convention.
"It lit a fire under me to create a magazine for women that would help them rather than hurt them."
As I was preparing to launch DEFY, I inhaled Kate Manne’s book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (which I highly encourage every woman on earth to read). In it, she explained to me that in a patriarchal society, women are often seen as “human givers” rather than human beings. In other words, as far as misogyny is concerned, women only exist to support the needs and wants of others (especially men).
Well, shit.
I was so busy giving, and seeing my work as directly relational to the men around me, that I didn’t even notice I was being completely taken advantage of. My desperation to please; to be helpful and fun and cool, played right into their hands. My whole job revolved around making life simpler for them, at the cost of my professional growth (oh, and self-respect).
So here I am, stepping into my “being” as a human for the first time in my career. It’s scary and uncomfortable putting myself out there like this, but I’m doing it for you, dear reader.
I want you to learn and grow with me; we are in this together and win or lose, we are doing it on our own terms and without apology.
Not today, patriarchy. Not today.
With much love, respect and gratitude,
