I was clearing out my inbox one morning when I spied the latest email from Otegha Uwagba. No, I don’t know her personally but I am a bit of a fan, the proud owner of Little Black Book and on her Add to Wishlist email list. On this fateful morning, she was letting everyone know that she had just landed her dream job as a columnist for Grazia Magazine. And, do you know what my first thought was when I read this?
Good for her.
It’s almost a cliche now. Ever since the 1990’s and Carrie Bradshaw sauntered across our TV screens with her Sex and the City column for a New York City paper, hoards of young women proclaimed “I wanna be Carrie Bradshaw“. Present company included. However, in the years since SATC, the chances of becoming a sexy columnist for a major publication has dropped drastically. One of the biggest factors affecting this career path was the rise of the internet and blogging. Who needed to beg big publishers for the opportunity to write for them when you had an internet connection and your own blog? This rise of free content which was available with a few clicks meant that a lot of magazines, that were once thriving, lost their reader base and shut their doors as they published farewell issues.
If it’s your first time here, I am pro-blog. That might sound cruel considering the rise of blogging caused the downfall of the glossy magazine. However, one of my biggest achievements is running this little corner of the internet for over ten years. I have no deadlines except the self-imposed ones; I pick and choose the content that I want to see published here; nobody can tell me what to do. It definitely has some perks. On the other hand, I am a one-woman enterprise. Every failure is my own. And these failures range from spelling errors to the amount of money that the site makes me. If I don’t proof read a post properly before I hit publish, there could be some horrible spelling errors, some of which I don’t spot until years later. As for generating the cash flow, blogging isn’t known for being the most reliable form of income.
I suppose Sex and the City isn’t the only thing to blame for the desire to write. The media, both movies and TV shows, are responsible for creating the illusion that being a writer is a good go-to career for women. Thinking off the top of my head, I can name several movies that helped shape my own desire to become a writer for a glamorous glossy. Last weekend, while I was working on my “ugly jumper”, I was watching Crocodile Dundee. The gorgeous Sue, played by Linda Kozlowski, was a magazine writer who got to travel the world. In How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, Andie was an underappreciated columnist who was creative but dreamed of writing serious stuff about the world. And let’s not forget about the famous Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote. Yep. Strong, glamorous women are writers according to fiction.
For me, it all started when I picked up a copy of Company magazine back in the late 90’s. I think it came with a free bikini (that I think I still have somewhere) and in a bid to feel like a grown-up, even though I was 15 or 16 years old, I read the whole thing. Cover to cover. There were interviews, fashion tips, where to shop; you know, the usual. But one page had a column. The small picture of the columnist with the sharp bob cut, the story filled with jokes, and a woman being completely relatable about normal things. I didn’t know what an overdraft was, why Saturday night TV was so important, or why the rain meant that I didn’t have to shave my legs anymore. But it was normal. Up until this point, I believed in order to be a writer, you needed to be some sort of glam-bot. I didn’t know “normal” people could be writers. For a full year, I picked up a copy every month just to read that column. The writers name has faded from my memory but if I could tell her how much of an impression she made on me as a teenager, I would.
So, what does Otegha getting her dream job mean for the rest of us? I suppose this means that there is still hope. Despite the odds being against us, there is still a chance that we could join the ranks of columnists, living our dream lives, and use our ovens for shoe storage because it will be dining out and take-away from here on out. It also means deadlines, writers block, and making sure your editor is happy with what you are writing. It has its downfalls but the perks and glamour. . . well, let’s just say I’m a little bit jealous. But I’m still happy for her.
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