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Sara Blakely Worked at Disney World, Sold Fax Machines, and Did Stand Up Comedy All Before She Founded Spanx


But it was very, very hard to keep my spirits, and mindset, in the right place. I would listen to motivational tapes all the time in my car—from people like Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, and Wayne Dyer—that would help me get the courage to step back into the next office building. I was getting escorted out of buildings by security, I was having people rip up my business card in my face a couple times a week. It was really intense. But it was laying the groundwork for Spanx. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was really laying the blueprint for me to be able to invent something the way that I did. Because while trying to get something made with no expertise, no background in it, and not knowing a single contact in the industry—I heard the word “no” a lot. But I was so trained to not let that stop me, that I think that’s really part of why Spanx exists.

Own your desire for success.

Two years before I cut the feet out of my pantyhose to solve an undergarment issue [the initial inspiration for Spanx] I had literally written down in my journal, after one really bad day of selling fax machines, “I’m going to invent a product that I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good.” I asked the universe to deliver the idea to me. And for two years after that I still sold fax machines. Then one day I cut the feet out of my pantyhose, and thought, “Maybe this is my big idea.” So that’s how that happened. I just thought, “Okay, this might be my idea that I asked for. I’m going to explore this idea.”

Then I told myself, “This is crazy, Sara.” I mean, there are billion-dollar companies where people sit around all day thinking up new products. There must be a reason they didn’t think of this one. If it’s such a good idea, why doesn’t it already exist? I played a lot of mental tag with myself; going back and forth between, “You should give this a go.” Then, “No, you’re crazy, don’t bother.” But I continued to fight through the negative self-talk and the self-doubt. And I think so much of that was listening to people talk about how to control your own mindset. But that doesn’t mean I never have moments of doubt. I’m 20 years into my Spanx journey. I still have those thoughts.

Believe in yourself, even if nobody else does.

When I started my company, I’d reach out to hosiery mills—which were all run by men—asking them to manufacture Spanx. I called them all on the phone at first, and they all pretty much gave me the run around. So I took a week off of work and drove around to all these manufacturing plants that were all mostly concentrated in North Carolina. I had my lucky red backpack from college with me, and I would walk in, and they would always ask me the same three questions. They would always say, “And you are?” And I would say, “Sara Blakely.” And they’d say, “And you’re with?” And I’d say, “Sara Blakely.” And then they’d say, “You’re financially backed by?” And I’d say, “Sara Blakely.”

Some of them would just escort me out and say, “We’re not interested.” But the way that I handled it was that I used very definitive, confident language. If you’re only given 30 seconds or a minute to try to make your pitch, you need to also figure out how you can make it about who you’re presenting your idea to, and what’s in it for them. So I did that all along the way of my journey. I would say, “I’ve invented a product that’s going to definitively change the way women wear clothes. It’s going to end up becoming an enormous program for you. You have to give me the chance for this to happen. I have total confidence that you’ll end up getting a great amount of business from making this decision.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Samantha Leach is the associate culture editor at Glamour. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @_sleach.



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I Tested Dozens of the Best Hair Mousses—Here's What Worked


It’s 2019, and mousse is back. I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t that the reason my mom’s hair had hurricane-level wind resistance in 1984? Didn’t we send that ish to the beauty graveyard, along with frosted lipstick and Paris Hilton’s perfume? Yes, it is, and we did.

But here’s the thing: My hair is now the longest it’s been since 2014, when I chopped it into a bob as a preemptive strike before losing it entirely to chemo. Once it grew back, I kept it short—partially because I loved it, but mostly because I also hated how long hair made me look. When it’s past my collarbones, I channel Keanu Reeves in role of Severus Snape, since my waves weigh down the rest of my hair, leaving it flat and frizzy. But a combination of sheer laziness and morbid curiosity led me to grow my hair out again. Would it still be bad? The answer is yes—but not 24/7, thanks to this magical little thing called mousse.

With mousse, my hair looks fuller at the crown, its wave pattern is more uniform, and said waves keep their shape all day long. That’s because mousse, shoved to the side in favor of cooler-sounding things like dry shampoo and hair serum, is the original multitasker: It delivers volume, light to medium hold, and even texture. And it’s quick. All I do is brush out my hair while it’s damp, work a baseball-size amount of mousse through it, scrunch, and let it do its thing as it air-dries.

Plus, 2019’s mousses aren’t the kind you’re thinking of—you know, the ones that gave it a bad rap in the first place, leaving a crunchy, sticky texture and inspiring ’80s-era hair bands (called hair bands for a reason). Instead, new formulas keep frizz at bay and even condition hair. To find the best hair mousse out there, I put 11 of them to the test to see what holds up—and what doesn’t.



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Self-Care Only Worked for Me When I Got Sober


When it comes to self-care, I’ve tried it all. Hot baths, hot yoga, trips to hot climates. Retail therapy, sun therapy, cat therapy, talk therapy. Massages, mindfulness, acupuncture, reiki. I felt pretty chill for an hour or so after a massage, sufficiently revitalized after working up a sweat with sun salutations and downward dogs—but the positive effects never lasted. For all my forays into the world of wellness none ever seem to make a real dent in the anxiety and bouts of depression I’ve been living with since my teens.

After years of this cycle, I finally realized the problem: All my self-care efforts were accompanied by a side helping of alcohol. A cold beer in the airport, to stem the stress of travel; a glass of wine, to wind down after a long day; a few flutes of champagne, to calm my nerves at a party; and, if things got really bad, a shot of vodka to dull my anxiety. Despite the dozens of wellness trends I was pouring myself into, I realized I was putting more effort into self-medicating than self-care.

Alcohol had become a soothing salve. I needed it.

For the longest time, I genuinely believed that alcohol was a legit component of my self-care regimen. After a tough day at work, I’d seek solace in a bottle of wine. Or two. It was my go-to when I needed to relax, deserved a reward after a stressful day of parenting, or was feeling sorry for myself. My “me time” invariably involved drinking—any other acts of self-care I engaged in took second place. And I didn’t see anything wrong with this. After all, treating yourself at happy hour or cuddling up with a bottle of chardonnay are often billed as totally acceptable forms of self-care. For years, I believed they were.

As a short-term measure, alcohol does seem to help. “It has a sedative effect on the brain,” says Channing Marinari, a licensed mental health counselor at Banyan Treatment Center. “This means that a few beers or glasses of wine can seem to relieve stress and make you feel more relaxed and calm.” But the reality is, alcohol can actually make your anxiety and depression worse, since booze is a depressant. “This can cause your problems to seem worse than they actually are,” Marinari says, leaving you more anxious and depressed than before you had a drink.

Using alcohol as a self-care strategy, in other words, is like downing a sugary soda to boost your energy—it may seem to work in the moment, but the sugar crash will only leave you more tired. “It becomes a vicious cycle,” says Jean Campbell, a licensed clinical social worker in California. “When the effects of the alcohol wear off, you not only have your original anxiety, but the added anxiety that sets up in the nervous system and brain when you stop using alcohol,” she says. Turning to the bar when I was feeling anxious or depressed meant I wasn’t developing healthy coping mechanisms. The result? Needing a drink became the one self-care strategy I couldn’t cope without.

Alcohol wasn’t really helping me take the edge off—it was slowly but surely making me even more stressed. After two decades of heavy drinking, I finally hit a turning point in June 2017. For a year, my drinking had gotten more and more out of control. Blackouts were no longer a rarity: Whether I’d been drinking solo at home to “relax” or hanging out with friends, I’d often wake up in the morning with absolutely no recollection of what had happened the night before. I had become totally emotionally dependent on alcohol and it was eating away at my ability to actually take care of myself. I wanted control of my life back.

I read as many sobriety memoirs as I could get my hands on, and found support from the sober community on Instagram. In the beginning, it really was one day at a time. My goal was just to make it to bedtime without succumbing to my inner wine witch—even that was difficult. As I marked off more sober days and weeks, I started to realize how much drinking had affected every aspect of my life. I was starting from scratch in so many ways: redefining relationships, working out how to socialize, and—one of the hardest things of all—learning how to approach self-care sober.

Without alcohol as my crutch, I needed real—healthy—self-care. Growing up, I thought that meant eating your veggies and getting enough sleep. Anything beyond that—the yoga, the reiki, the meditation—felt like luxuries. By the time I was old enough to appreciate the importance of caring for my inner self, I was already committed to drowning out her voice with copious amounts of wine. The revelation that self-care isn’t a luxury, but a necessity (for everybody, not only those who misuse alcohol and other drugs) was life-changing. After some trial and error, I’ve learned a 30-minute swim does more for my mental health than an hour on the massage table. Alone time and hot baths help make my anxiety manageable. None of these things are magic cures for anxiety or depression, but now that I’m sober, they make a lasting, meaningful difference.

At no time is this shift more apparent than during the holidays when booze is everywhere. This is the time of year I need to take care of my mental health the most—FOMO, financial strains, family stress, and an endless holiday to-do list make quick fixes like mulled wine and spiked hot cocoa seem more tempting than ever. But I remind myself that self-care can help keep me on the sober road. Last year, spending Christmas with drinkers was exhausting. I couldn’t face doing it all over again for New Year’s so, I politely declined a spate of party invites, stayed at home with my boyfriend and watched movies all day. I listened to myself, and did exactly what I needed to do to feel positive, strengthened and safe. Watching the ball drop sober, I realized I’d finally gotten self-care right.

Claire Gillespie is a writer living in Scotland with her blended family of eight. She dreams of moving to France to (finally) finish her novel.



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I Tried the Top Upvoted Curly Hair Product Routines From Reddit—Here’s What Worked (and What Didn’t)


To the casual Internet user, Reddit can seem like an endless den of threads, fandoms, and people posting pictures of cute animals. And it is—the R/Aww subreddit is often the thing that keeps me going. But on the beauty side, the site also holds the key to crowdsourced product reccs, the craziest new, under-the-radar products, and answers to most of your beauty woes. As the owner of a head of 3b curls, I have a long history of issues. We’re in a good place now, but to give you some idea of my hair growing up, picture Emma Watson as Hermione Granger in the first Harry Potter movie. Now, double her hair width by two. I’ve burned some pictures.

After many years of trial and error, I finally found what I believed to be the ideal hair routine a few months ago. Most curly-haired people—or anyone with hard-to-please hair—can probably relate: once you find your styling routine, you generally stick with it for good. Trial and error sucks, as does always wondering if the day will bring great curls or a poofy nightmare. That said, the hair selfies people post on r/Curlyhair are magnificent—and never one to stick with the “good” in case there turns out to be an “even better” (it’s a character flaw), I logged on to Reddit and went down the rabbit hole.

PHOTO: Jennifer Mulrow

With each person’s current routine listed along with the photos, it’s a feast of curly hair porn that you could theoretically replicate at home—so I did, testing out each of the sub’s top upvoted routines. I’ll be honest, I was expecting to run into a few bad hair days, but I was wrong to doubt. Across the regimens, Reddit uniformly delivered the defined, ideal curls above. My hair looked seriously identical every day—which wasn’t the rollercoaster of results that I was expecting. Sorry, but also not sorry, I love good hair days and Reddit knows its stuff. It wasn’t a wash (eh) by any means, though: here, your guide to the best and worst parts of each routine, with defined curls guaranteed.

Routine One: Laptop Next to the Shower

PHOTO: Jennifer Mulrow

I started the adventure off with a riddle of a routine: only three products were involved, so by all accounts it should have been easy. But the accompanying instructions were seven steps and eight paragraphs of vernacular, and for my 7 A.M.-showering soul, not easy to remember. So with my computer literally balanced on my toilet seat, I hopped in shower and got started. A did a quick shampoo with DevaCurl Low-Poo Shampoo, and then we were onto the technique that changed everything. It’s called “squish to condition” A.K.A. “squish to condish” A.K.A. “s2c.” It means you keep on scrunching in DevaCurl One Condition Decadence until your hair makes a very pleasing, squelching sound when you squeeze it, and in the words of redditor Curlysueee, it feels like “squishy noodles.”

After you reach the squelch point, you let it sit and brush out your hair with your fingers or a wide tooth comb (I used a comb). Step under the shower head and “drizzle rinse,” which Curlysueee describes as stepping under the water for 10 seconds to rinse conditioner from the top of your head. You don’t want conditioner at your roots, which will weigh your curls down, but you still want a lot of it left for the hydration benefits. While still in the shower, you then “build your cast,” which is a fancy way of saying “put gel in.” Slather your hair in DevaCurl Ultra Defining Gel, reach the squelch point again, wrap your hair in a microfiber towel, and air-dry from there.

Best for: Beginners trying to get the lay of the curl land. It’s beyond thorough, and it taught my curl veteran self some good tricks.

Worst for: Not going through conditioner at a mile a minute. After one shower, I’d made a noticeable dent in the bottle. If you have early morning meetings, also beware: the conditioner mixes with the gel and leaves a goopy white coating while it’s drying. It’s not crazy noticeable, but don’t be surprised.

Total cost: $66

Routine Two: The Hit Maker

PHOTO: Jennifer Mulrow

It’s named as such because with over 20,000 upvotes on Reddit, this routine went incredibly viral a few months ago. At the time, people were in awe of both her curls, and the thorough regimen she’d developed to get them. I’ve gotta say, though, this routine actually turned out to be one of the simplest of the bunch. Shampoo and condition how you please, then squeeze out water with your hands, and then with your head flipped over, run a dollop of Cantu’s Shea Butter Leave in Conditioning Repair Cream through your hair. Scrunch in a generous squirt of Miss Jessie’s Multi-Cultural Curls Cream, tie up your hair with a cotton T-shirt (I used a microfiber towel again), and let it sit for 10 minutes. Reddit user Capslockramen recommends using a diffuser for 20 minutes while scrunching your hair with the towel to help it dry faster, but I’m an air-dryer through and through, and didn’t miss it.

Best for: People with easy access to Miss Jessie’s (i.e., a Target). This routine gives great results (as they all do), but it took me three drugstore visits to find one that carried the Miss Jessie’s cream.

Worst for: People who don’t have half an hour to dry their hair in the morning; people with thin hair. The Cantu was great for me, but as they say online, it’s thicc.

Cost: $21.99 (not including shampoo and conditioner)

Routine Three: The Cruelty-Free

PHOTO: Jennifer Mulrow

As someone who’s never met a too-strong gel, I was wary heading into the Aveda routine. Per Reddit user anxietygirl13 (an anxietygirl after my own heart), you use the brand’s co-wash and conditioner, then comb and rinse. Squish to condish with the same conditioner, flip over your head, and run a few pumps each of Aveda’s Be Curly Curl Controller and Style Prep through your hair. Up until this point, I’d been intimately familiar with all the product categories on my head. Cowash, conditioner, leave-in, gel—the mileage varies, but you generally know what you’re getting. The Curl Controller, on the other hand, was way thinner than I was expecting, while the Style Prep was also a squirty little guy. Bottom line, I was nervous—but the combo gave good curl, and if you’ve ever walked past an Aveda, you know what my head smelled like all day. Would recommend.

Best for: Cruelty-free curlies, and anyone into the Aveda smell.

Worst for: People who need a seriously heavy product. The routine worked well for my 3b hair, but any kinkier and you’d probably need some more heft.

Cost: $96

Routine Four: The Deva Advanced

PHOTO: Jennifer Mulrow

Reddit loves it some DevaCurl, and when you see the beautiful Jon Snow hair it gives people like Reddit user bludog89, it’s easy to understand why. That hair comes via a twist on the first Deva routine: wash with the brand’s No-Poo Shampoo (which is non-lathering, as opposed to the low-lathering Low-Poo above), then condition with Paul Mitchell’s Tea Tree Special Conditioner, which gave my scalp a crazy tingle. It’s supposed to—that’s the scalp exfoliation. Follow with DevaCurl’s Styling Cream applied in sections, topped with DevaCurl’s Light Defining Gel Soft Hold No-Crunch Styler.

Best for: Dry-haired, dandruff-prone curlies who want a routine that’s more sexy-effective than clinical-efficient.

Worst for: People who want to wash and go.

Cost: $104

Routine Five: The Drugstore Dark Horse

PHOTO: Jennifer Mulrow

God, I was anxious before this one. I can handle a long routine, but this short one gave me a cold sweat and visions of poofy hair. The directions only said to shampoo and condition with Garnier’s Curl Nourish line, and post-shower, run some of the line’s leave-in through your hair. Top with Suave’s Captivating Curl Mousse, and you’re done. According to Redditor Waderboddle, the routine was born of effort lost. She wrote, “I used to complicate it with so many different products and techniques, but the results just were not worth it.” And damnit, she was right! The shorty delivered the same defined ringlets I’d cautiously come to expect. Although, a confession: after many years of horrific hair thanks to mousse, I only trust Dove’s Nourishing Curls Whipped Cream Mousse, and solely because it was recommended to me by the Olsen twins’ hairstylist, Mark Townsend. I subbed it in. The routine worked great. (And I’m sure I would’ve been fine without the swap.)

Best for: A short, sweet, and cheap routine.

Worst for: People with mousse PTSD. Trust doesn’t come easy.

Cost: $15.34

My overall takeaway

Reddit knows its curly hair routines backwards, forwards, and up a double helix. I was mentally prepared for a week of bad hair, but from the elaborate, thousand-word routines to the quick, easy, and dirt cheap, the experiment proved that across price ranges and effort levels, curly hair products have stepped it up. Across regimens, the consistent trick to 3b hair turned out to be giving it moisture and hold; with that in mind, I’ve been flipping through the routines ever since, with only a few trips back to my tried and true. Curly hair products were a toss up back in the day, but—hand held by Reddit—if you’re not totally satisfied with what you’ve got, excellent options exist.

Related Stories:
–28 Fresh Takes on Pinterest’s Most Popular Curly Haircut
–The Cleansers and Enhancers That’ll Make You Love Your Curls Times Infinity
–Scalp Exfoliation Sounds Gross, But It’s Given Me the Shiniest, Bounciest Curls Ever



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