“People come for my content all the time, they just don't find it” -Karen Huger, but not
Issue 002, check it out in its entirety here
Emily
ɛmɪʃ(ə)/
1. To be annoyingly endearing, a bit of a witch and maybe, just maybe, a little bit right.
Now that Emily in Paris is behind us and we’ve mentally processed the atrocity that were those outfits, I feel it's time to discuss all the Emily’s of the TV world and their impact.
Swept up in a haze of Emilyations, it seems that all television representations of the Emily character share one similar characteristic. They’re quite charming, and more often than not, British. But while they may have this one trait in common, they each taught me a different lesson.
Enamoured with the fashion world, the first Emily that came to mind is the Emily in The Devil Wears Prada. Her cold, “learn it on your own, bitch,” demeanour was everything I believed the fashion world to be, spoiler alert: it is. Despite having worked hard and you know, actually knowing the ins and outs of the industry, she was overlooked and this is something that resonates well with me. I often jest that had a black woman, or any woman of colour shown up to an interview as ill-prepared as Andy, we likely wouldn’t have gotten the gig, but I digress.
In my warped imagination, where Rihanna and I sip expensive red wine on our weekly catch-ups, Emily of TDWP was simply championing this. Reminding Andy that she had to work hard if she wanted the praise that came with it. Unlike her undeserving counterpart, Emily of Emily In Paris, though charming, was wildly unrealistic. Reminding me that while her aesthetic was incredibly questionable, her social media story was kind of spot on. On the first watch, sure it was improbable that a subpar social media expert rose to internet fame in a matter of days, but in the Covid era, isn’t that sort of… very accurate? We’ve seen that all it takes is one viral post to achieve every influencer's dream of collaborating with fictional beauty brands like Maison Lavaux. And I now believe that 'ahh... that's history' - word to Whitney.
I felt something of a cosmic, spiritual connection with Emily Waltham from Friends, though the 90s world despised her. In my own coming of age story, I realised just how much I related to her and her relationship woes. A bit of backstory for those who weren’t engrossed in Channel 4’s daily replays of the hit comedy show; Emily Waltham was Ross Gellar’s wife, and harboured ill feelings towards his ex-girlfriend Rachel, whose name he just so happened to say the altar instead of hers.
Now that we are all up to speed with Emily Waltham, I want to publicly express my solidarity. That is to say that I completely understood her erratic behaviour following *that* incident. I mean, who wouldn’t feel terribly insecure about their husband's ex (and the love of his life) still being very much in the picture. Her insecurities, which led to her asking her spouse to dial back communication with this, particularly hot, individual made some sense; though it came off as wildly jealous and possessive. What the quintessentially British Emily of Friends showed me, was that insecurities can manifest regardless of another person’s attempt to quell them.
Sure, telling Ross that he should cease all communication with Rachel was slightly out of line, but was she also… maybe a little bit right? Having been in situations where I felt incredibly insecure, similarly to this character, I felt myself at one with Emily in her fears of losing to *her*. As TV shows, films and real-life have shown us, he always goes back, eventually. Ms Waltham displayed on screen that it’s totally justified to be the ‘crazy gf’ in someone else’s story.
Though I’m not a successful assistant to an Editor in Chief, Parisian wanderer and “master” of Social Media, nor am I heir to the Waltham empire, these three TV characters each helped to open my eyes to Emilyisms and their many wonders.
This month's #ThingsIDontMeme references my mini social media break. Given the pandemic, I think we owe it to ourselves to take time out and really grieve the loss of our IRL social lives.
My break was long overdue and once Instagram and I were finally reunited, I was met with a plethora of, 'is everything ok, is there rice at home?' messages. Which I of course greatly appreciated. But it got me to thinking about our spiritual bondage with social media and that an absence from it means that something must be seriously wrong.
Having socially distanced myself from an overload of perfectly edited images, I came to appreciate the finer things in life like how many times I can scroll through LinkedIn to cure my wandering thumb, or browsing TikTok and inadvertently finding golden material. More than that, I was able to remember to put my mind first, and truly come to terms with the fact that my life is one long-running reality TV show, where I talk to myself as though cameramen actually follow me and my dramas.
As the wise monarch once prophesied, 'I'm back in my bag, my eyes bloodshot but my jet don't lag.' It was Jay-Z and he was referring to my chronic anxiety. Until next time all.
Love, L x