It’s safe to say that Ariana Grande is currently at the top of her game: Her latest hit single “thank u, next” just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 as the top streaming and selling song of the moment. It’s the first debut at the top of the list for a female artist since Adele released “Hello” in 2015.
As she’s been healing, Grande has opened up to fans about her pain and how she’s getting through it all. (She’s a big fan of therapy.) Recently she’s tweeted with fans about where she is emotionally and how grateful she is for them, as well as her friends and her successes. “for once i don’t really have words ?1️⃣? i love u so much and thank u,” she wrote on Monday about the Billboard debut.
“What an interesting, challenging, painful and yet beautiful and exciting chapter of life ….. when it rains it pours,” she said. “but i’m embracing all of it. i’m excited for whatever else the universe has in store for me. she’s growing n she’s grateful. ?”
It’s no small thing for a celebrity with such a large platform to speak publicly about emotionally tough times and mental health—and it’s sure to have impacted at least a few fans for the better.
For the past 28 years, Glamour’s Women of the Year Awards has honored game changers, rule breakers, and trailblazers. This year’s class of extraordinary females is no exception. The stories of our honorees often start with the same idea: a woman who refuses to wait for someone else to make things better. Alone, or with an army behind her, she decides to act.
To kick off the celebration, Glamour is hosting our second annual Women of the Year Live Summit at Spring Studios in New York City—led by comedian Phoebe Robinson—followed by our annual awards ceremony on Monday, November 12. The summit will feature sessions with body-positive activist Ashley Graham, Today co-anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, singer-songwriter Halsey, along with many more inspiring women.
Follow our coverage, below, as we share every unforgettable moment and our panelists’ invaluable wisdom from the Women of the Year Live Summit.
Breakfast With Aerie
PHOTO: Craig Barritt
Our Women of the Year Summit kicked off as any great morning should: with breakfast, a lot of coffee, and a pep talk from Aerie global brand president Jennifer Foyle and #AerieREAL model Iskra Lawrence. The model, who’s been at the forefront of the body positive movement, spoke about the importance of sisterhood and being kind to yourself—and how the brand is making changes to raise women up.
“A few years ago, I started the Mirror Challenge, where instead of looking in the mirror and seeing all the insecurities screaming and shouting at me, I decided I was going to find the things I appreciated about myself,” Lawrence told the crowd. “I either told myself verbally in my head or I wrote it on Post-It notes. So one of the amazing things we implemented in all Aerie stores is having Post-It notes. Changing rooms can be a pretty negative place if you’re not feeling one-hundred or if something doesn’t fit the way you want it to, or if you’re going through changes in your body, we wanted to create a positive environment.”
“So I’m hoping you’ll all start writing your own Post-Its,” she continued, inviting women to come up to the stage and leave their own notes for themselves or another “sister” who could use a word of encouragement. Let’s just say what everyone wrote is surely an example of what’s to come today.
Opening Remarks With Phoebe Robinson
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
“Hello, my name is Phoebe Robinson, and I am your Nordstrom Rack version of Oprah today.” We’d disagree—our host of the day is nobody’s discount emcee, but we wouldn’t expect the author and comedian to kick things off any other way. If you follow her on 2 Dope Queens or have read her book “Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay,” you know Robinson has a way of finding the humor in even the darkest of topics.
To introduce today’s theme “Women Rise,” she touched on the major wins women have had this year—”The midterm elections were the most exciting thing for me. Two native American women won, a bunch of black women won, hopefully Stacey Abrams will win”—along with the importance of having strong women role models in her own life. “Women have done so much for my career. My mom is a very smart, wonderful, funny woman. She’s where my sense of humor comes from. Writing for magazines like Glamour has been empowering for me. I feel like I’ve learned my biggest lessons from other women. They’ve taught me things like stop telling yourself no before other people do. Stop saying sorry. I’m not saying sorry anymore. I’m going to be like a white guy.”
She ended the speech with a call to share stories about the women who have raised you up using the hashtag #GlamourWOTY. “Send me a picture or photo with your mom, girlfriends, you with your gyno if you’re close to each other, cousins, anyone, a moment that shows women rising up together, celebrating each other.”
For more of Robinson’s best quotes from the Summit, click here.
From Anguish to Action How to Lead During Crisis
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
During the first panel of the day, Glamour Editor-in-Chief Samantha Barry and The Washington Post‘s Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah discussed what happens—and how do you react—when things go horribly wrong. Barry noted that crisis can come in many forms—it can be personal, it can touch your community, or in the gut-wrenching case of Attiah, it can play out on a global stage. Attiah was the editor of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was captured and killed because of his work as a reporter.
“We recruited him about a year ago to write for us,” said Attiah. “He put himself into self-exile. He was critical of the Saudi Crown Prince in particular. He was someone who really believed in his country, really loved Saudi Arabia, but he just wanted to be free to speak his mind about the country.” Attiah said she’s still trying to cope with the horrific loss. “I still can’t believe he was taken from us and from his family in such a brutal way. It’s not just an attack on journalism, it’s an attack on The Washington Post.” The one thing that keeps her—and the team—going, she said, is not a fight against the attacks on journalists, but a fight to tell the truth.
She also discussed President Trump’s dangerous rhetoric surrounding the media, and women of color in the media in particular. (Many were surprised to learn that Khashoggi’s editor was a young woman of color.) “If he’s attacked three black women journalists, we don’t have black women or women of color who are White House correspondents,” said Attiah. “We can’t control Trump, but what the media can control is how seriously we take sending reporters who represent the world around us and represent the demographics trends that the U.S. is going in. Many times my white colleagues don’t have the same grounding or sensibilities. That is a reckoning we should have.”
As for advice for the other women in the room? “Sometimes you feel like Tweeting into the void doesn’t always help,” she said. “I think I heard the advice once that to a certain extent journalism or opinion writing can be about anger—about righteous anger. You’re seeing what’s going on, and you’re asking questions. That’s a way of pushing back. At a very basic level, I used to journal. Try to write [your anger] out, to get it out there, and use your creativity to channel what you’re feeling. Sometimes just expressing what you’re going through is a form of creating bonds, solidarity, and activism.”
My Woman Rise Moment: I Listened to That Inner Voice
You might know Yvonne Orji as Issa Rae’s wisecracking best friend, Molly, on HBO’s Insecure. But what you might not know is that her journey to get there was entirely faith led. Orji emigrated from Nigeria to America when she was six years old, and says she never imagined a career in comedy was a even possibility…until God showed her the way one fateful evening in college.
“One night, when I was trying to figure out what was next and needed some clarity, I heard Him say, “Do comedy,” she told the room. “I wasn’t funny. I was like, nobody laughs at me. Nobody was like, ‘That Yvonne is SUPER funny.’ At that point, I was on my way to becoming a doctor. I was stalling because I got my masters in public health. This is what you do when you’re the child of immigrants—you go to school to avoid going to school. And then after I got my masters, I was still not ready to be a doctor. I wanted to go to Liberia, which was just finishing a war, because it was easier for me to go to a war-torn country than tell my parents that I wasn’t going to be a doctor.”
On a leap of faith, she made the jump though and moved to New York City to pursue comedy, which went about as well as you’d expect. “Pretty soon after I moved to New York, I found myself with zero dollars and zero leads,” she said. “Let me tell you right now: That’s not sexy. OK? Because Sallie Mae wants her money, like all of it.” She continued: “Here I was, 25 years old, with two degrees, and not even the $7 to get a slice of pizza. I was like, was this really the life I risked it all for? I have a family that loves me and cares about me, and I am broke.”
The thing she says turned it all around was the power of saying yes to whatever opportunity came her way. “I said yes to the temp job I hated but allowed me to perform comedy at night,” she said. “I said yes to taking over a stand-up show in New York City. I said yes to a residency in a college production in Richmond, Virginia, that gave me two days to get there. I said yes to being a writer in the writers room for a TV show in L.A.”
Her parting words for the audience? “Inside all of us exists some kind of compass—whether it’s divine or otherwise—but it’s something desperately trying to navigate you and all of us to the life we know we were destined to live. So I think the choice is pretty simple: Keep letting fear sidetrack you or take what you’ve been given, maybe even told from God above, and say yes. But whatever it is, keep going. Keep doing it.”
Just a few years ago, it was unheard of to see anything other than thin, flawless, mostly white models in fashion ads. And models with any kind of visible health condition? Forget about it. Times are changing, though, and in part thanks to brands like Aerie, women of all different backgrounds, abilities, and sizes are now being celebrated for who they are. And that’s exactly what our Stop Hiding, Start Shining panel was about.
AerieREAL Role Models Danielle Candray (an alopecia advocate), Gaylyn Henderson (the founder of Gutless and Glamorous), and Evelyn Riddell (a type-1 diabetes advocate) joined Jess Weiner, the CEO of Talk To Jess (an organization about women’s empowerment), to discuss the social stigmas around health conditions and how they’re finally beginning to fade.
“I was only 14 when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, an inflammatory bowel autoimmune disease that can affect your entire body,” said Henderson. “Because of the severity of my condition my doctors told me I needed an ostomy—which meant removing my entire colon. At first, I said no way. I thought I was too young—I thought an ostomy was for old people. That it would smell. That it was nasty! And all I could think was I didn’t want to spend my whole life with a bag hanging off of me. But there came a time that I had no choice. I was in constant excruciating pain and getting worse. The disease was killing me.”
She went on to discuss how much better she felt after getting the procedure, and how much it meant to be cast in a global underwear campaign as a model with a colostomy bag. (Something that was met with much fanfare when her ads launched earlier this year.) “I’m an underwear model—it’s incredible!” she said. “I always tell people, ‘You have to do what’s best for you, no matter how it may look to somebody else.’ It’s a process, accepting yourself for all that you are. But being authentic with yourself and sharing your truth is essential. It’s a superpower, and everyone in this room has it.”
Turn a Big Idea Into Bigger Business
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
Here’s a not-so-fun fact for you: For the second year in a row, only 2.2 percent of venture capital funding is going to female-led companies. The women on our business panel—which was moderated by Sutian Dong, partner at Female Founders Fund—fall in that tiny percent and shared with the audience how they were able to defy the odds and launch successful companies with VC support. Audrey Gelman is the founder of The Wing, a women’s co-working space and social club; Tyler Haney is founder and CEO of athleisure line Outdoor Voices; and Jen Rubio is the co-founder of Away luggage, those adorable suitcases you’re seeing all over Instagram.
If you’re looking to start your own brand, here are biggest takeaways you need to know:
Nobody knows your business better than you. “We realized there was no such thing as traditional start-up experience,” said Rubio. “We said we’re going to build the Warby Parker of luggage, but we realized there is no play book … You’re going to get a lot of advice from people, but unless your inputs are the same, that advice doesn’t go. So we took a lot of advice and learned to filter through that.”
Don’t get discouraged by the no’s. “Being a woman when you’re building a company for a woman is an advantage,” said Haney. “There’s an opportunity for a female to shake up the space and create a brand that is resonating for everyone. What I found is that I got a lot of nos at first because guys didn’t get it. But what worked ahead of time was when I sent things to wives of the investors. That is when I started to get yeses.”
Be really, really sure that you want to do it. “Know there is a lot of crap coming your way,” said Gelman. “It’s part of the job.”
“What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering,” Betty Reid Soskin likes to say. The 97-year-old park ranger is one of our Women of the Year honorees, and she’s made it her life’s mission to make sure the stories of underrepresented people are being documented and celebrated. One of her biggest achievements? The Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park, where she leads talks about the Rosies and the typically white narrative about the women who served the war effort, but also interweaves her experience as a young black woman in segregated America.
Soskin and moderator Kimberly Drew, an art curator and social media manager for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discussed how women (and particularly women of color) have to fight claim a seat at the table—and because of us doing so, we’re seeing our history being written in a more inclusive way. “Because I was in the room, albeit as a field rep, I was able to supply so much of the history that—by no means was being ignored by intent—but was rolled over by history,” Soskin told Drew. “I was able to participate in the history of a national park just by being in the room.”
She says that now, at 97, she’s able to look back and know that these periods of chaos are the moments when democracy is being redefined. “It’s in those periods where we can get at the reset buttons,” she said, adding, “Every single day, in every way, by what we do or fail to do, we are creating tomorrow. And just as I helped to create the future that I’m now live in, everyone in this room is creating the future their children are going to live in.”
Even despite the dark history currently being written during the Trump era (like Charlottesville), Soskin says she’s optimistic that Americans will ultimately fight to do what’s right. “The power is in us collectively. We’ve proven that ever since 1776,” she said. “I think that’s where my optimism comes from: Having lived long enough to know that it’ll work out.”
Closing the Dream Gap: Showing Girls (and Ourselves) What’s Next
PHOTO: Ilya S. Savenok
If anyone’s qualified to talk about making your dreams come true, it’s three women who have refused to take no for an answer: Mindy Kaling, Hoda Kotb, and Savannah Guthrie. But even the Today co-hosts and * The Mindy Project* star acknowledged it’s easier said than done. Their biggest advice for women looking to build their confidence and make their dreams come true is to put in the hard work. From that, they say, comes the confidence and the courage to think you can achieve anything.
“I always just did the leg work, and it meant I never came to anything unprepared,” Kaling told the crowd. “The only reason I was able to be confident was because I literally couldn’t not be confident with the amount of research and preparation I did.”
Kotb, Guthrie, and Kaling also discussed a conundrum many women face: the balance between being assertive and coming across as “likable.” Kaling told a self-deprecating anecdote about how never being perceived as conventionally attractive by men actually made asking for things easier. “When you are ignored in that way, things like confidence and asking for things in your professional career become a little easier,” she said.
Did you know that, in 2017, female founders got only about 2.2 percent of venture capital funding? A sobering statistic, but an unsurprising one to any woman who’s working to turn their idea into a viable business. Still, many have been able to cut through all the noise to create some of your favorite products, from Away carry-ons to Outdoor Voices leggings. And they have some real-talk for anyone hoping to follow in their footsteps.
At the Glamour Women of the Year Summit, Audrey Gelman of The Wing, Jen Rubio of Away, and Ty Haney of Outdoor Voices came together in conversation with Suitan Dong from the Female Founders Fund to discuss what it takes to get from pitch deck to big business. You can follow all the inspiring speakers and panels from the on our Summit recap—below, we round up some of their most pressing tips for female entrepreneurs.
Don’t get discouraged by the no’s.
Away’s Rubio has been on both sides of the fundraising conversation, so she knows that “no’s” are just a part of the process. But, from her experience, she sees women get discouraged by the sheer amount of rejection you face in those early stages of the business. “It’s part of the process,” she says. So it’s important to prepare yourself for it.
When she was first pitching Outdoor Voices, Haney would introduce her idea as “the next big activewear for women”—more often than not, to a group of men, who would counter with the names of the big-name activewear brands you know (and are, well, mostly run and designed by men). A lot of times, they wouldn’t get her vision for Outdoor Voices. So Haney came up with a new strategy: Send product ahead of a meeting to the women in the office, to the VC’s wives… Then, she started to hear yes from the rooms full of men. “Being a woman is a competitive advantage when you’re building a company for women,” Haney says.
The process doesn’t end once you get that coveted “yes,” though: The Wing’s Gelman stresses that what you do once you receive it is just as important. In her case, it’s fostering a community that then allows for more female entrepreneurship: having members network, encourage each other’s ideas, hire each other, and so forth. Pay it forward to get more voices in the room.
Know when to take advice—and when to not.
Rubio and her co-founder, Stephanie Korey, both came from Warby Parker, which is often held up as the paradigm for start-ups—but “one of the first things we realized is that there’s no traditional startup experience,” she says. There’s no playbook for starting a small business; in fact, a lot of what they learned during their time at Warby Parker didn’t really translate to their new concept, of starting a direct-to-consumer luggage brand. When you start a company, you get advice from a lot of people. The key, according to Rubio, is to learn how to filter through all of it and apply what makes sense for your business.
Cultivate a sense of community within your customer base.
The Wing’s 6,000 members are “their marketers,” according to Gelman: They spread the word on the co-working space and create interest in what they’re doing, attracting new customers. From its inception, The Wing would host events for specific sub-sets of their community—based on where they lived, or what industry they worked in—where they would pass physical business cards to each other, connect in real life… And that proved to be a valuable asset. Now, The Wing is working to launch a mobile app that allows its members to get in touch outside of the physical space, whether that’s for advice or networking.
Remember that fundraising is a two-way street.
Walking into a room to pitch your idea for a business can be extremely intimidating. But Haney encourages people to remember: You’re just talking to a person. If you’re real and vulnerable, it’ll come across.
Gelman points out that, when you’re fundraising, the power dynamic can feel imbalanced: They have money, you don’t. So when you’re preparing to pitch your company to potential investors, try flipping that and asking, “Do I want to partner with this person?” It takes the power back, if only energetically—and it offers you, as a founder, an important lens through which to think about potential partnerships.
Rely on your community of fellow female founders.
The community of female business owners is, unfortunately, still pretty small—but it’s there, and there’s often overlap when it comes to potential executive hires and VCs. Backstage, Rubio and Haney were discussing some candidates they were looking at for open positions at their respective companies. Because you often end up talking to a lot of the same people, you can recommend folks to each other and get real insight that you can’t find elsewhere.
This network is also not city-specific: Haney launched Outdoor Voices when she lived in New York, but she then relocated to Austin. And though the decision to move her still-growing company to Texas might have felt odd at first, she slowly began building her own community out there, thanks to some introductions from other female founders. (Girlboss’ Sophia Amoruso introduced Haney to Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd, for example.) “Don’t be scared to leave your comfort zone,” she says.
Be really, really sure that you want to do it.
Newsflash: Starting a business is hard. You’re going to be told “no” a lot. It can feel lonely. What’s going to get you through is passion, says Rubio. “You have to really want to do it… It’s easier than ever to start a company—it also means you can go too far in a direction you don’t want to be in.”
For Haney, it’s all about execution, and making sure she can deliver on an idea she sets her mind to. She has a rule of having no more than three goals at a time, for instance—that helps her stay focused and ensure she doesn’t muddy her vision.
Also, don’t get caught up in what other people are doing. Gelman likes to think of the quote, “Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outside.” You might see something in a magazine and think they have it all together, but it could be a whole different story behind the scenes. Keep your eyes on your own path.
Get more from Glamour‘s Women of the Year Summit here.
Comedian and author Phoebe Robinson isn’t just one half of 2 Dope Queens—she’s also the emcee of Glamour‘s 2018 Women of the Year Summit. (Oh, and a former Glamour.com contributor, to boot.) On top of hosting the day’s festivities, Robinson spoke on the “No Blueprint, No Problem—the Power of Being an Outlier” panel, moderated by Ashley Graham, alongside Younger‘s Nico Tortorella, Pose‘s Indya Moore, and Arrested Development‘s Alia Shawkat. And throughout the day, she had a lot of wisdom to share. Her best quotes, below.
“` I am your Nordstrom Rack version of Oprah today.”
“Women have been kicking ass nonstop this year, from all the black women on magazine covers in the fall. That was very exciting. Nobody wanted to cheer for that? That’s OK. You don’t care? OK! Cute, cute, cute! Emma Stone was on a cover. Do you guys care about that?”
“You’re all working women. You’re career women. You’re stunning women.”
“I can talk to myself. I’m more than happy to talk to myself. ‘Hey Pheebs, How’s it going? Not too bad. I’m wearing Spanx. Can’t breathe. I’m wearing this dress I can do a split in.’ Women rise, my dough is rising honey.”
“I feel like I’ve learned my biggest lessons from other women: supporting each other, stop telling yourself no, don’t count yourself out. Stop saying sorry. That’s been a big one for me. I’m not apologizing anymore. I’m ‘gonna be like a white guy. No apologies from me ever! I’m always right!”
“I need you to cheer like Mumford & Sons is about to come out. I need you to cheer like Drew Barrymore’s ‘gonna give you guys all Crocs. I need you to cheer like Michael B. Jordan’s ‘gonna come out and propose to me.”
Catch up on all the 2018 Women of the Year happenings here.
Idris Elba was (rightfully) named People‘s Sexiest Man Alive this year, the magazine announced on Tuesday (November 6). “I was like, ‘Come on, no way. Really?’” Elba told People when he first heard he won the title. “Looked in the mirror, I checked myself out. I was like, ‘Yeah, you are kind of sexy today.’ But to be honest, it was just a nice feeling. It was a nice surprise — an ego boost for sure.”
No one on Twitter was surprised, though. People have been campaigning for Elba to win Sexiest Man Alive for years now. Every time someone who wasn’t Idris Elba snagged the honor, it felt like the Internet let out a collective, “Why not Idris Elba?”
This was most apparent last year when People awarded country singer and Voice judge Blake Shelton with Sexiest Man Alive. People were…perplexed by that choice, to say the least. No shade to Shelton, who seems like a great guy, but Twitter just thought other dudes were more deserving of the tribute—dudes like, ya know, Idris Elba.
Now that he has the title, many feel like justice has been served, and they’re taking to Twitter to celebrate. Check out the reactions for yourself, below. Fair warning: There’s some playful jabbing at Shelton, but it’s all in good fun.
“My name was Idrissa Akuna Elba, okay?” Elba also told People. “I got picked on a little bit. But as soon as I could grow a mustache, I was the coolest kid on the block. Grew a mustache, had some muscles, bonkers.”
Bonkers indeed. Congratulations, Idris. 2018 just got a little better.
This Halloween marks the official end of my 17-year tenure as a trick or treat chaperone. It was a good run. Like a well-behaved mother of the bride, I kept my distance, took lots of pictures and helped myself to refreshments—Mike and Ikes and the occasional paper cup of cider (preferably spiked). I have no regrets about any of it, and I always looked forward to those chilly fall nights as the season opener of my down vest. So when my 11-year-old announced my retirement, it took me a minute to understand what was happening. She said, “Mommy, I was thinking I’d go trick or treating alone this year.”
I said, “Won’t that be a tiny bit sad?”
A look of pity passed over her face and, suddenly, I knew what was coming—knew it right down to my fingertips, the same ones that carried her pumpkin when it was overflowing. This was a service I provided: candy sherpa.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m going with my friends. Just, like, without you.”
Of course I gave her my blessing. Who am I to stand in the way of an independent giraffe?
**
I hated Halloween as a kid. Dreaded it. Even in the years when I would have given anything to be someone else, I loathed dressing up. Sweet or frisky? Black cat or Madonna? And then there was the whole issue of who to trick or treat with and which neighborhood to go to and what kind of bag to carry and whether or not I’d need a coat. Windbreaker or cardigan? I was relieved when I outgrew the whole ordeal.
From there, trick or treating evolved into Halloween parties, including one where I had my first-ever long chat with my now-husband; and the occasional wacky colleague wearing an antenna headband on October 31. Realizing, Right, it’s Halloween. How liberating it was to buy my own fun-size Kit-Kats instead of asking a stranger to fork them over! I developed an appreciation for gourds, candy corn and pumpkin ravioli.
And then I had kids. For the first few years, I planned their costumes with my mother-in-law; she’s crafty, I’m lazy. My older daughter was an apple, then an eggplant—we were going for a produce theme—and then a dinosaur (Diner Horse, as she called it). At two-and-a-half, she came to visit me in the maternity ward in all her green felt splendor, spun around for the nurses and warily offered peanut M&Ms to her hours-old “sister-brother.” She was on the fence about the brother part.
The next Halloween, he was a black cat and she was a ladybug. We read books featuring witches, goblins and Clifford the Big Red Dog dressed as a ghost. We carved pumpkins, toasted the seeds, baked pumpkin muffins (from a mix, but still), marched in parades, trick or treated in our apartment building and went to a costume party where, in the space of an hour, every guest ran the gamut from elation to hysteria. I bought a pair of jack-o-lantern knee socks at the drugstore. I was fully-invested in Halloween.
Pretty soon my kids started planning their own costumes. The oldest and youngest were twin zebras; Dorothy and the Tin Man; a ladybug and a bumblebee. My son was Superman, LeBron James, and then LeBron James again. When he entered his Harry Potter phase, I perfected the lightning bolt scar on his forehead. It couldn’t be black or red; it had to be a realistic rust-color. I watched a YouTube video multiple times just to get it right.
Every year, my kids asked why I didn’t dress up. Some parents did—the fun ones who would put a red nose on the grill of their minivan in December. I told them I was a witch the other 364 days of the year; on Halloween I preferred to be a nice mom who said yes to everything. Now I wonder, why didn’t I put on a costume? How hard would it have been to go as the Cowardly Lion or Hermione?
What are you? It’s a surprisingly meaningful question. For me, October 31 is as good a time as any to mull it over. Anything is possible. Isn’t that the whole point of Halloween?
Two years in a row, hurricanes swept through our town—first Irene, then Sandy. Both times, we were without lights, heat or hot water, so trick or treating was the least of my concerns. But after Sandy, a friend who had power invited the neighbors over to her house, where kids trick or treated from room to room. Superior parents chose high-traffic zones like the mudroom and the living room; I grabbed a bag of Snickers and high-tailed it to the third-floor bathroom where I gorged in peace, huddled under a fleece blanket. When I finally emerged, I found a pack of monsters with masks on top of their heads, little hands wrapped around bowls of homemade chili. Someone handed me a goblet of wine. I took a deep breath—warm and spicy—and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the best Halloween we’d ever have. I was right.
But power or no power, rain or shine, my favorite moment of the holiday has been the same year to year. It’s the one when my kids and their friends finally get to answer the question they’ve been waiting for since the day they picked their costumes months ago, usually round the Fourth of July or when the first Halloween catalogs start arriving in the mail.
The question is simple, and constant through the ages: What are you?
Ask this of a group of kids on a crisp October night when the leaves have just started to fall and the sky isn’t quite dark and the neighborhood echoes with “Trick or treat” and “I’ll trade you Almond Joy for Nerds!” Shoulders straighten; chins lift; feet plant firmly on the ground, each one claiming the space it deserves.
One little girl says, “I’m Wonder Woman.” Another says, “I’m Cleopatra.” A third: “I’m Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” (The lucky ones will grow up to be a combination of all three.) Even the boy dressed as a carton of milk announces himself proudly, as if he’s ready to get poured into the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had.
What are you? It’s a surprisingly meaningful question if you tend to overthink things, as I do. When was the last time you asked this of yourself? Some people wait for January 1. For me, October 31 is as good a time as any to mull it over. Anything is possible. Isn’t that the whole point of Halloween?
This year, I’m ready to step into my new role at the front door. Let some other mom smile at her toddlers from the end of my walkway. Vampires and fairies, Oreos and bananas, Pete and Arianna, Meghan and Harry—you’re all welcome at my house. Even you, Melania (but leave your husband on Air Force One). I won’t ask too many questions of our visitors because my teenagers will be waiting in the wings, mortified. But I do want to know what you are, and I want to give you one piece of advice, the same one I’m giving my giraffe: Tomorrow, be yourself.
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