by Mia Freedman
There were some workplace situations so bizarre, they could only have happened on a magazine. Like the time I came to work to be greeted by my fashion director shrieking, ‘You’re wearing my dress!’ I assumed she meant I was wearing a dress similar to one she owned. But no, I was wearing her dress. One that she had paid for and that had come from her closet.
This was easier to accomplish than you might think. As with most magazines, Cosmo had a fashion ‘cupboard’ that was actually an entire room, packed with rails full of new-season clothes sent to us for upcoming fashion shoots. I would often spot things I wanted for my own wardrobe and would either buy the sample or a new version when it was ready. One afternoon I popped into the fashion cupboard for fluffy diversion after a particularly unpleasant budget meeting and saw a lovely green dress. I tried it on while a wide-eyed work-experience girl sat quietly in the corner taping the soles of dozens of pairs of shoes for a fashion shoot the next day. I didn’t really care who saw me getting changed. Hell, I’d had a baby; flashing my boobs in a fashion closet was no big deal.
The dress fitted perfectly. The fashion department was all out on location so I took the dress home, figuring it had either been shot already or wasn’t going to be.
The next morning, I threw on the dress with a belt and some boots and headed into the office, happy in the way you are when you’re wearing something new. I hadn’t technically bought it yet but I’d already decided I was going to.
My poor fashion director. She’d come into the office before her appointments, hung up her dress—the one she was going to wear on a date that night—then returned late that afternoon to find it gone. To add insult to injury, she discovered her boss wearing it the next day.
That could only happen at a magazine. Or perhaps only happen to me.
Baking was a motivational tool I used to great effect with my staff. I love to bake cakes and biscuits, fudge and brownies. I have since I was a kid. I’ve never been that interested in savouries, but I’ve found everyone loves sugar. There are more compliments in sweet than savoury. With only so much we could eat at home, I began to bake for my staff. This made them happy, particularly around deadline time and during PMS week, which—frighteningly—would coincide every few months. Yes, it’s true about women working closely together. All our cycles did tend to match up. Hence the need for sugar, and lots of it.
Despite the sugar, there were still casualties. The three parts of management I hated most were interviewing new staff, having staff resign (because it meant I’d have to interview to replace them) and firing people.
I did my fair share of all three, starting mere months after I began at Cosmo when I had to fire my PA. She was also the magazine’s editorial coordinator and really not great at her job. But her general disorganisation wasn’t what got her fired in the end. It was the fact she had been holding ‘castings’ for firemen in the office before and after work. On weekends, she’d visit fire stations and hand out leaflets with details of open casting calls for a Cosmo firemen calendar we were producing. Except we weren’t. It was just a way for her to meet firemen.
Working with women wasn’t bitchy in my experience—I wouldn’t allow it—but it was intense. And the fact most were young women meant the drama was high because, well, they’re the high-drama years, aren’t they? There were break-ups, breakdowns, drug problems and eating disorders. Never a dull moment.
One girl forged my signature on petty-cash forms to pay off her credit card. When I found out, I could have fired her—should have, probably—but she’d been through a hard time. Her mother had died not long before and she was under extreme stress. So I gave her another chance. She paid back the money and turned out to be one of the best and most hard-working staff I’ve ever had.
A valuable lesson I learned as a manager is that you will never have one hundred per cent of your team performing at one hundred per cent capacity one hundred per cent of the time. Everyone has off days and off months. Even so, several times over the years I had to pull girls into my office and talk to them about partying too much or tell them to lift their game. Even when someone went completely off the rails, it was sometimes salvageable.
Many tears were shed in my office because women tend to cry when they’re angry or stressed, hurt or disappointed. I always had a box of tissues handy and I’d simply pass it across the desk and wait for the tears to stop.
There were many more happy staff than sad ones though. I was always a big believer in internal promotion, possibly because this meant I didn’t have to interview new people. I never forgot how I’d been groomed and mentored by some incredible women and I tried to do the same. Seven of my staff would go on to become editors of other magazines. One of those started at Cosmo on work experience and two had been my PA.
By the time I became Editor-in-Chief of Cosmo, Cleo and Dolly, Generation Y had infiltrated all three magazines and I found myself having some bizarre conversations.
Y: ‘I feel like I’ve hit a glass ceiling. I have, haven’t I?’
Me: ‘Um, didn’t I just promote you? I’m sure it was you.’
Y: ‘Yes, but that was three months ago. I’d really like more responsibility, more money, a car spot and a four-day week.’
Inevitably, even if I acquiesced to all of Gen Y’s unreasonable demands, a few weeks later she’d be back in my office announcing she was resigning to travel around Europe indefinitely.
Sometimes, an impatient and ambitious staffer would be placated with a title change. This is a tactic used by all editors when there is no other job and no more money available. There are all sorts of fancy-sounding jobs I don’t recognise in the staff list of magazines these days for this exact reason.
When your twenty-three-year-old features writer marches into your office to demand a promotion ‘or I’m going to Marie Claire’, you are forced to invent something fanciful to call her that implies increased status. Like Associate Features Director. It’s a meaningless bunch of words and the job stays the same but she gets a new business card and her ambitions are satisfied for, oh, five or six minutes.
Dealing with Gen Y en masse every day, I decided I had to turn my frown upside down and focus on these young women’s strengths.
This took some time.
But I realised I could learn from such supreme self-confidence and manifest impatience. I also learned that Gen Ys weren’t interested in having it all. They’d watched Gen X trying to do it and wisely decided it looked like punishment. They were right. It was a myth, a form of cruel torture. By trying to do it all, all at once, we’d merely created a different type of limitation for ourselves and a whole other layer of pressure and expectation.
It was a revelation to me to see these women who had very different ideas about what their futures might hold. I came to value the energy and new ways of thinking I learned from my Gen Y staff. And my Lord they were smart. Impatient, demanding and smart.
DIARY OF AN ANXIOUS PREGNANCY
Week 5
Terror and elation. Jason and I have decided to tell no one. I know our friends and family will be worried for me and I want to keep as much positive energy around this pregnancy as possible to help it stick.
Week 6
Our first ultrasound to check my dates. I was weirdly convinced it was twins and I’m oddly disappointed when it isn’t. And I’m only six weeks. Bummer. I thought I might be at least eight. Why on earth am I focusing on my disappointment when there is a heartbeat? This baby is such a blessing.
Week 7
Where is my morning sickness? With Luca and my second pregnancy I was nauseous until twelve weeks. This time, I’m starving. I should be delighted that I’m not sick but it’s making me nervous. I frantically check books and internet sites which assure me there’s no connection between morning sickness and the viability of a pregnancy.
Week 8
Still ravenous. From the minute I wake up to the minute I go to sleep. What happened to the part where your pregnant body is meant to instincti
vely protect you from risky food by turning you off it? All I want is sushi washed down with cocktails. And coffee. I haven’t drunk coffee for eight years.
Week 10
My first weigh-in. I don’t have scales at home so I don’t know what I weighed pre-pregnancy. But with the amount I’ve been eating, I’m psyching myself up for a very big number. Worse, my appointment is at 2 pm, after I’ve eaten breakfast, lunch and snacks. Every woman knows the only time to weigh yourself is naked, after going to the toilet, first thing in the morning. I try to compensate by undressing as much as I can in the waiting room. I even take off my rings. I give myself a stern talking-to about priorities. Weight be damned, I just want this pregnancy to be okay.
Week 11
The new issue of Cosmo Pregnancy hits my desk fresh from the printer. Despite having been intimately involved in the magazine’s production as Editor-in-Chief, I take it home to actually read from a pregnant perspective. Am immediately drawn to all the stories about weight, food and body image. Somehow it’s easier to focus on that than the possibility of miscarriage.
Week 12
We still haven’t told anyone. When my friends commented that my boobs are big, I mumbled something about a new bra. I sneak out of the office for my nuchal translucency. My stress levels go ballistic as I walk into the ultrasound room. There’s a heartbeat. Thank you God. I’m buzzing with happiness and can’t stop smiling. The baby is moving. Afterwards, we have a meeting with a high-risk specialist and he is very positive. We arrange another ultrasound for week fifteen to help me over my anxiety. On the way out I bump into an editor from a rival magazine company—also pregnant. She swears to keep my news secret and confides she fell pregnant on her fifth round of IVF. She’s forty-one.
Week 13
I’m feeling confident enough to tell our families and my closest girlfriends. They’re thrilled for us but they’re surprised and a smidge hurt that I didn’t tell them sooner.
It’s time to tell Luca. It goes down a treat.
Jason: ‘Guess what, little guy? You’re going to be a big brother because Mummy is pregnant!’
Luca: ‘But I wanted to be an only child.’
Week 14
I’m starting to seriously show. Fortunately, most of my clothes still fit. Between empire-line dresses and loose, bias-cut tops my wardrobe seems to have been preparing for this pregnancy for years without realising it. It’s just how I dress.
Week 15
A tough week. This is when our baby died in our second pregnancy. By the time I get to the ultrasound, I’m white and in tears. The technician is lovely and points to reassuring signs like the fact the baby is moving its arms and all the measurements are right for my dates. I’m starting to feel movement—a few weeks earlier than I did with Luca.
I field a call from a gossip columnist who saw me doing ‘The Glass House’ on TV and noticed a bump. I avoid calling her back and hope she’ll hold the story. Still not ready to go public.
Week 16
Time to put away all my clothes that no longer fit. I read this tip in Cosmo Pregnancy—apparently it makes it easier to get dressed each morning. For me there’s the extra challenge that no one at work knows yet. It’s no fun dressing for pregnancy when you’re trying to look un-pregnant. I visit a friend who’s about the same way along as me but with her first. She’s upset that she’s not yet showing. My stomach has popped but is far from taut. If I grab it with both hands, I can make a spare tyre. Room to grow, I suppose.
Week 17
I’m craving some interesting things. A few weeks ago I placed a little pile of sea salt next to my keyboard at work and nibbled it during the day. Lately it’s been grape-flavoured bubblegum. I’m so paranoid about getting listeria that most foods make me anxious. The lady at the sandwich shop helpfully points out I shouldn’t be eating ham. Super. Will add this to the growing list, which now includes seafood, sushi, smoked salmon, processed meat and soft cheese. How soft does it have to be to be dangerous? Feta is apparently bad, but it’s not that soft. Ricotta? Cream cheese? Is yoghurt like cheese? I ban them all just in case.
Week 18
A colleague at another magazine who is also eighteen weeks with her second has become my pregnancy email buddy and we swap questions and problems. I ask her what the strange pain in my upper back might be. She has the same pain and we decide it’s the weight of our breasts, which have doubled in size.
I also have this hideous zitty rash on my chest. Reading Cosmo Pregnancy, I notice a celebrity referring to the same thing. At least I’m not vomiting into garbage bins behind my desk like another friend who is in the early stages and trying to hide her pregnancy from workmates.
Week 19
Jason picks me up for the ultrasound and I pick a fight in the car the same way I have for the last three ultrasounds. I’m tense. He knows it and doesn’t take the bait. All clear on the ultrasound, a huge relief. This was the ultrasound where last pregnancy we discovered there was no heartbeat. A huge mental hurdle. The kicks and movement are really regular now. The periods of wake and sleep are quite noticeable too. Nothing for a few hours then some kicks and wriggling and then back to sleep.
Week 20
Popped. My tummy is now officially sticking out further than my boobs, which is saying something. This is the most aesthetically pleasing phase of pregnancy, I think. You look obviously pregnant—not just fat—you’re still totally mobile and the bump looks reasonable in clothes. I seem to remember this phase is short-lived. Given that I’m only halfway there, will I be twice the size by the end? I send three pairs of jeans to my alterationist, who turns them into maternity jeans for $36 each.
Week 22
Watching TV one night, I suddenly notice I’m having a Braxton Hicks. Panic. Remembering that I only had them with Luca in the last month of pregnancy, I send Jason rushing for What To Expect When You’re Expecting, while I quickly hit the internet. The book only mentions it in the seventh month. I grab it to make sure, accidentally open up to the ‘Best-Odds Diet’, which suggests I don’t eat dessert during my pregnancy ‘except fresh fruit like watermelon’. Hurl book across room while reaching for more Kit Kat to console myself. Find reassurance on the net on medical Q&A pages that say Braxton Hicks actually happen all through your pregnancy. Unless they become painful or regular it’s perfectly fine. Double-check with my doctor on Monday morning and he says the same thing.
Week 23
I’m invited to the DJs fashion parade and swanky dinner so I borrow a new-season Zimmermann dress to wear from their showroom. Bump into Nicky Zimmermann at the parade wearing the same dress and due two weeks before me. With a toddler to run around after, she’s tired and I’m reminded how great it is that my first child is old enough to fetch me chocolate biscuits.
A newspaper magazine editor wanders over to chat with us, also pregnant, also wearing the same dress. We are knocked-up fashion triplets.
Week 24
I officially adore being pregnant. I do. I love it. I’m constantly asked how I’m feeling and people seem surprised when I say ‘fabulous’. I feel almost guilty. Maybe it’s the hormones making me happy. Or deluded. Or maybe I’m just grateful.
I see Dr Bob, and while he’s listening for the heartbeat, the baby kicks him in the stethoscope.
Week 25
It’s a relief to be in the same life-stage as our friends. Finally. When we had Luca, they were all years away from having babies. But we seem to have caught the second wave. Several friends with toddlers are now expecting their next baby, and other friends are having their first. Jo and my close friend Karen are both pregnant. It certainly makes a change from the isolation I experienced the first time around.
Week 26
Anxious again. Actually, freaking out. My Braxton Hicks seem to be getting stronger and there’s pressure around my cervix. Maybe it’s just the baby growing and getting heavier? Call Dr Bob who kindly says ‘pop up’ and I bolt out of a meeting with fifteen people in it and race to his
office. He examines me and says my cervix is closed but seems a little shorter than he would expect at this stage, which can be a sign that the Braxton Hicks might trigger early labour. He bans me from exercise and sends me off for an ultrasound. Turns out cervix is fine. Baby is fine. Ultrasound lady tells me Braxton Hicks are much more noticeable with second pregnancies, and by third pregnancies, some women feel them as early as twelve weeks.
Week 28
I have officially lost contact with my bikini line and my bra options have become drastically limited. I make a reluctant pilgrimage to DJs to get properly fitted for maternity bras. Oh my lord does it change my world. Maternity bras have certainly improved in the past eight years. I pick up some lovely ones and note with bemusement that I am a DD cup. Holy hell, my norks are huge.
Week 29
We’re fighting about names. I’m pissed with Jason for his complete lack of interest in tossing names around with me and his refusal to make any suggestions. A typical exchange goes like this:
Me: ‘What about Zeke?’