Glossy
The bombshell exposé that reveals—for the first time—exactly what happened at Glossier, one of America’s hottest and most consequential startups, and dives deep into the enigmatic, visionary woman responsible for it all.
Called “one of the most disruptive brands in beauty” by Forbes, Glossier revolutionized the beauty industry with its sophisticated branding and unique approach to influencer marketing, almost-instantly making the company a juggernaut with rabid fans lining up for a chance to buy its coveted products. It also taught a generation of business leaders how to talk to Millennial and Gen Z customers and build a cult following online.
At the center of the story lies Emily Weiss, the elusive former Teen Vogue “superintern” on the reality show The Hills turned Into the Gloss beauty blogger who had the vision, guts, and searing ambition needed to launch Glossier. She cannily turned every experience, every meeting into an opportunity to fuel her own personal success. Together with her expensive, signature style and singular vision for the future of consumerism, she could not be stopped. Just how did a girl from suburban Connecticut with no real job experience work her way into the bathrooms and boudoirs of the most influential names in the world and build that access into a 1.9-billion-dollar business? Is she solely responsible for its success? And why, eight years later, at the height of Glossier mania, did she step down?
In Glossy, journalist and author Marisa Meltzer combines in-depth interviews with former Glossier employees, investors, and Weiss herself to bring you inside the walls of this fascinating and secretive company. From fundraising to product launches and unconventional hiring practices, Meltzer exposes the inner workings of Glossier’s culture, culminating in the story of Weiss herself. The Devil Wears Prada for the Bad Blood generation, Glossy is a gripping portrait of not just one of the most important business leaders of her generation, but also a chronicle of an era.
This is Big
The story of a cross-generational, beyond-the-grave and beyond-the-scale friendship, one that led to the first breakthrough Marisa Meltzer ever had in her quest for self-improvement.
Marisa Meltzer began her first diet at the age of 6. Growing up an indoors-loving child in Northern California, she learned from an early age that weight was the one part of her life she could neither change nor even really understand.
Fast forward nearly four decades. Marisa, a contributor to The New Yorker and the New York Times, comes across an obituary for Jean Nidetch, the Queens, NY housewife who founded Weight Watchers in 1963.
Weaving Jean's incredible story as weight loss maven and pathbreaking entrepreneur with her own journey through Weight Watchers, Marisa chronicles the deep parallels, and enduring frustrations, in each woman's decades-long efforts to lose weight and keep it off. The result is funny, unexpected, and unforgettable: a testament to how transformation might begin with weight, but it certainly never ends there.
Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music
In the early nineties, riot grrrl exploded onto the underground music scene, inspiring girls to pick up an instrument, create fanzines, and become politically active. Rejecting both traditional gender roles and their parents' brand of feminism, riot grrrls celebrated and deconstructed femininity. The media went into a titillated frenzy covering followers who wrote "slut" on their bodies, wore frilly dresses with combat boots, and talked openly about sexual politics.
The movement's message of "revolution girl-style now" soon filtered into the mainstream as "girl power," popularized by the Spice Girls and transformed into merchandising gold as shrunken T-shirts, lip glosses, and posable dolls. Though many criticized girl power as at best frivolous and at worst soulless and hypersexualized, Marisa Meltzer argues that it paved the way for today's generation of confident girls who are playing instruments and joining bands in record numbers.
Girl Power examines the role of women in rock since the riot grrrl revolution, weaving Meltzer's personal anecdotes with interviews with key players such as Tobi Vail from Bikini Kill and Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls. Chronicling the legacy of artists such as Bratmobile, Sleater-Kinney, Alanis Morissette, Britney Spears, and, yes, the Spice Girls, Girl Power points the way for the future of women in rock.
How Sassy Changed My Life
For a generation of teenage girls, Sassy magazine was nothing short of revolutionary―so much so that its audience, which stretched from tweens to twentysomething women, remains obsessed with it to this day and back issues are sold for hefty sums on the Internet. For its brief but brilliant run from 1988 to 1994, Sassy was the arbiter of all that was hip and cool, inspiring a dogged devotion from its readers while almost single-handedly bringing the idea of girl culture to the mainstream. In the process, Sassy changed the face of teen magazines in the United States, paved the way for the unedited voice of blogs, and influenced the current crop of smart women's zines, such as Bust and Bitch, that currently hold sway.
How Sassy Changed My Life will present for the first time the inside story of the magazine's rise and fall while celebrating its unique vision and lasting impact. Through interviews with the staff, columnists, and favorite personalities we are brought behind the scenes from its launch to its final issue and witness its unique fusion of feminism and femininity, its frank commentary on taboo topics like teen sex and suicide, its battles with advertisers and the religious right, and the ascension of its writers from anonymous staffers to celebrities in their own right.