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After five seasons of climbing their way up the ladder at Empirical, the women of Younger are finally getting their due. Liza (Sutton Foster) is no longer balancing coffee runs for Diana (Miriam Shor) with editing books on the side. Instead, she’s a full-on editor and co-leader of the Millennial imprint. And Kelsey (Hilary Duff) isn’t just a star publisher on the rise: She’s the head of Empirical, and the new Charles (Peter Hermann). Over the past five seasons, we’ve watched Liza and Kelsey fight for respect in the company, push to have more women’s-focused literature published, and for their imprint to be given higher status. And now they have it. All of it. They’re calling the shots and running the C-suite. “It felt weird at first. It’s just the three of us sitting in the conference rooms. It feels earned,” Sutton Foster tells Glamour. But just because it feels earned doesn’t mean the women of Younger are ready to celebrate.
The first episode of the season opens with Lauren (Molly Bernard) shooting social videos of Kelsey as she enters the office and telling her, “You are a role model for every young girl with an English degree who wants to believe she didn’t throw away four years of her life. You are the youngest publisher in New York right now, and you are defining a cultural moment.” But Kelsey, who’s normally the type to shout about her successes, seems nervous. Like, really nervous. Gone is the girl who fought to launch her own imprint and treated winning manuscripts out from other editors like a sport. At first, it seems like she just needs to get her sea legs and adjust to her new title—but about halfway through the episode, we find out why Kelsey isn’t displaying her usual confidence.
Miriam Shor, Sutton Foster, and Hilary Duff on Younger
When an author comes in to talk to Liza and Kelsey about a business book called The Glass Cliff, the issues stacked against Kelsey begin to crystalize. The author begins her pitch with, “Research shows when companies invite women into their C-suites, they experience a 27 percent decline in revenue. Why? Why are women underperforming? Or maybe we shouldn’t be blaming the women at all. Maybe they’re being set up to fail. Women inherit distressed companies far more often than their male counterparts. When an institution is in crisis, the next man up usually gets the axe, so why not make him a woman?”
This isn’t just a fictional premise. The term “glass cliff” was first coined in 2005, and according to research, is just as prevalent of a problem today. With Kelsey’s promotion coming on the heels of a new, risky stakeholder taking financial control of the company, her appointment feels like an opportunity to make her a scapegoat in case Empirical goes under. And it’s not lost on her.
Hulu‘s new true-crime series The Act, now streaming, delivers its first big shock in episode two, when all of Gypsy Rose Blanchard (Joey King)’s teeth are pulled out at the request of her own mother. Dee Dee (Patricia Arquette) puts her daughter through such a heinous procedure to help her, presumably, but the entire thing feels sinister. Does Gypsy really need this done? The fact you have to ask is disturbing in itself.
The aftermath is just as hard to watch. Gypsy’s miserable. She cries in the bathtub while her mother assures her fake veneers are on the way. One day, two days, three days go by—but still, Gypsy has no teeth. She’s so upset about it that she tells Dee Dee she no longer wants to attend an upcoming charity event, where she’s supposed to collect a monstrous check.
It’s only in the midnight hour—right as Gypsy’s about to go on stage—that Dee Dee gives her the veneers. “Thank you, mommy, but why didn’t you give these to me before?” Gypsy asks. To which Dee Dee says, “They just came this morning, fresh from the dentist. It’s like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight. Does the glass slipper fit?”
The timing is strange, to say the least. At best, it’s a coincidence. At worst, Dee Dee purposefully kept the veneers from Gypsy and sprung them on her to look like a hero. This type of psychological manipulation is rampant in The Act, which is based on the Munchausen by proxy horror story that rocked the world in 2016. You remember it: Dee Dee Blanchard intentionally made her teenage daughter, Gypsy, sick for most of her life. In June 2015, Gypsy retaliated by conspiring with her online boyfriend, Nick Godejohn, to murder her mother. HBO highlighted the case in the documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest. It’s a grisly, unfathomable story. And now, the brains behind The Act want to humanize it.
“Over the years people have asked me, ‘Is this or that person in the story a psychopath?’ or, ‘What’s wrong with these people?’ Ultimately, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them,” Michelle Dean, who wrote the BuzzFeed article that inspired The Act, tells Glamour. (She’s also credited as a co-showrunner and screenwriter on the series.) “I think we all have our pathologies. Dee Dee’s was deeper than most, and Gypsy’s was deeper than most because of what her mother did to her. It was a lot more human than the crazy tabloid profile of the story.”
Work stress is the phenomenon that’s launched a 1,000 articles (10,000? 20,000?) and spurred countless of tips, books, guides, and product recommendations. To ward it off, we’ve put ashwagandha powder in our lattes, we’ve listened to gurus who promised us that back-to-back yoga classes would cure all that ails us, if only we could squeeze them into our packed schedules. But here we are, still faced with one essential truth: All that green juice later, we feel overworked and overextended.
So instead of attempting to solve the perception of stress with a cup of tea or a new mindfulness app, it’s time we view it as an important tool that’s meant to tell us it’s time to step back from our desks and do less.
We’ve spent countless hours reading up on how stress and the emotions that come with it intersect with our lives at work. (The result is our new book, No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work.) Two of the most frequent questions people asked us in the process were how to reduce job-related stress and how to press pause on their to-do lists without an avalanche of guilt. We wrote the book for them (and for you). We’ll get to our best tips in a second, but in the meantime:
Take this quick self-assessment. How many of these statements apply to you?
You get anxious if you haven’t checked your work email for 10 minutes.
When your friends ask you how you’ve been, you start detailing a minor work inconvenience.
Later, you dream about said inconvenience.
You obsess about work during dinner, at the gym, and when you’re trying to fall asleep.
Your mood depends almost completely on how work is going.
If you answered “a lot,” it might be time to take Drake’s advice: “You need to get done done done with work.“
Letting your job consume you is unhelpful and unhealthy. It makes small problems seem exceptional and places too much emphasis on casual conversations and interactions. Plus, it’s not just leaders or women or Virgos who care too much. Tons and tons of people are too attached to their work, and it’s—not to be dramatic—kinda ruining their lives. (Also, there’s little evidence it makes them better employees!) Enter our first new rule of emotion at work: Be less passionate about your job.
Why should you care less? Because it’s solves a lot of anguish. If you put just a little less emphasis on your responsibilities, you’re less likely to hyperventilate (and overthink) before a big presentation. You won’t be as frustrated by incompetent colleagues. You might even put your phone away at dinner with friends and you won’t have dreams about Slack as you backpack through Machu Picchu.
“Be less passionate about work” doesn’t mean “Don’t care about work.” It means: Care more about yourself. Carve out time for the people you love, for exercise, for guilt-free vacation. Remind yourself that few people look back at their lives and wish they had stayed at the office until 10pm.
But while “care less about work” is good advice, it tends to be easier said than done. So to start, we have some advice:
Touch email once: When you open an email, do you have to respond to it immediately? Liz used to read all her emails first thing in the morning and, in an effort to get right to work, would then mark them all as unread with a plan to respond later in the day. That meant she spent the morning obsessively thinking about all the emails waiting in her inbox instead of focusing on her work. Now she sets aside time to go through all of her emails, and then moves on to other projects with a clear head.
Block off a day: One day every week, Liz does not schedule meetings, calls, or even social events. This off day lets her catch up on her work, so the rest of the week doesn’t feel quite as hassled. If you can’t block off an entire day, try blocking off a few hours for focused work on your calendar, so that the time feels just as “real” as appointments or meetings.
Set up an after-work ritual: Your brain will benefit from a signal that tells it, “Work is over!” Walk or bike home, meditate on your commute, listen to music, read a magazine, or lift weights, which some studies show boosts your mood more than cardio. At the end of each day, Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, transcribes loose notes into a master task list, shuts down his computer, and then says the phrase, “‘Schedule shutdown, complete.'”
“After I’ve uttered the magic phrase, if a work-related worry pops to mind, I always answer it with the following thought process: I said the termination phrase,” he writes.
If you’re in a leadership role, set an example: After she had children, TV writer and producer Shonda Rhimes changed her work email signature to read, “Please Note: I will not engage in work emails after 7 pm or on weekends. IF I AM YOUR BOSS, MAY I SUGGEST: PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE.” Dan Calista, CEO of consulting firm Vynamic (whose motto is “Life is Short. Work Healthy.”), created an email policy called zzzMail. Employees cannot send each other emails on weeknights after 10pm, on weekends, or during holidays.
Finally, remember that time off—real, no-thinking-about-work time off—boosts your health and your productivity. Research shows that your productivity actually drops dramatically after you’ve worked 50 hours in a week. Working more than 10 hours a day dramatically increases your risk of heart issues. So if you’ve been burning the candle at both ends, consider this your permission slip to head home, put on sweatpants, and enjoy a night off. Your work will be there tomorrow.
In a world where social media informs a lot of our day-to-day, one might ask: If you didn’t post something, did it even happen? Same goes for holiday gifts—sure, they’re supposed to hold a special meaning between the giver and the recipient, but they also make for great Instagram fodder. It’s hard to resist showing off that perfect something a loved one got you that is just so you (or having that satisfaction of seeing someone post what you gifted them, knowing you nailed it.) Plus, everyone’s a little bit nosy… Point is: Instagrammable gifts are a whole subsection of the category, and they’re insanely fun. There’s no shortage of options—just see 31 of our favorites, ahead, which will wow your loved ones (and maybe even get you a shout-out on social).
This Thanksgiving, I’m extremely grateful for Ariana Grande. First she teased the upcoming music video for her instantly iconic breakup song, “Thank U, Next” which will include homages to a quartet of equally iconic movies: Legally Blonde, 13 Going On 30, Mean Girls, and Bring It On. Now she’s taking down British television host and frequent troll Piers Morgan in such a brilliant way that I stood up and gave her a slow clap from my living room.
Here’s the gist of how it all started: Earlier this week, Morgan tweeted about Ellen Degeneres admiring photos of men and tried to call it out as “hypocrisy” in feminism. “Ellen drooling today over famous men’s bodies on #InternationalMensDay2018,” he wrote. “Yet I’ve been abused all day for complimenting @hollywills on her legs. The hypocrisy of modern feminism laid bare.”
Guess who didn’t like what he had to say? Joan Grande, Ariana’s mom. “Honestly what is wrong with you @piersmorgan ? Didn’t your mother ever teach you, if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it,” she tweeted. “You came for @TheEllenShow yesterday which was disgraceful, she is an angel. @LittleMix today, did you ever hear of paying homage? And…well never mind.”
Enter one of social media’s most revered queens: Ariana Grande, who was ready to defend Ellen, Little Mix, and a woman’s right to do as she chooses with her own body. “Ellen is an incredible & kind human being.. I use my talent AND my sexuality all the time because i choose to,” she wrote. “women can be sexual AND talented. naked and dignified. it’s OUR choice. & we will keep fighting til people understand. i say this w all due respect but thank u, next.”
