Latest / She’s Smart / Paula James-Martinez- Hope, Culture & the Teen Magazine Revival

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Paula James-Martinez- Hope, Culture & the Teen Magazine Revival · She’s Smart

0:02
Hey, everybody. Welcome to She's Smart. I'm your host, Maria Robotham.
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Each week, we sit down with incredible women to talk about life,
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work, and everything in between.
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Today's guest is someone who has lived at the epicenter of cultural shifts,
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and now she's building something that might just shift it again.
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Paula James Martinez spent 15 years inside the media machine before most of
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us even understood there was one.
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She launched Purple Diary on Tumblr before authenticity became a billion-dollar brand strategy.
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She was fashion director at Refinery29 when digital officially became the establishment.
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She built stories and brands across magazines, documentaries,
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apps, and live experiences.
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Anna Delvey was once her intern, and that wasn't even the most interesting thing that happened.
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But today, she's doing something that feels both radical and strangely simple.
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She's building a teen magazine.
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Cookie. A print magazine, a club, a radio show, pop-ups, real-life events.
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A cultural home for teenagers in a world where the algorithm has flattened everything.
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When Paula casually floated the idea online, over a thousand emails landed in her inbox in days.
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Librarians, parents, teens, creatives, everyone saying the same thing. We need this.
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In a time when nine-year-olds are looking for retinol cream instead of glitter
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eyeshadow, when middle schoolers are navigating Discord and Roblox before they've
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navigated their own awkwardness, Paula is asking a powerful question.
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What if we gave teens their MTV back?
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What if they had a place for embarrassing questions, bad poetry,
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great fashion, real conversations, and zero algorithm?
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Today's conversation is about culture, motherhood, nostalgia,
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and why building something tangible for teenagers might be one of the most hopeful acts of our time.
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So get cozy as we connect, learn, and laugh together on She's Smart with today's
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guest, Paula James-Martinez.
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Hi. Good morning. How are you? Good, Paula.
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Welcome to the podcast and thank you for coming on.
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So I wanted to start by briefly sharing how I found you on threads.
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And then I couldn't remember how long ago it was that we finally like it because
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it took a while for me to actually get back to you and get you on the podcast.
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But the thread was something to the effect of, I kind of want to start a teen magazine. Who's in?
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I think I did it in mid-November. I think it was heading up towards the holidays.
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And it just felt like, it was just one of those thoughts out loud type things.
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I used to be the fashion director of Refinery29.
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And I'm trying to keep my kid off social media.
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Should we start a teen magazine in prayer? And I went, I don't know who this
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woman is, But yes, yes, we need it. I want it.
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Like, how are you going to do it? And then I dove into who you are as a person and your background.
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And I'm like, oh, my gosh, this woman has done a lot. So she needs to come and
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chat with all of us and tell us her story and then tell us about Cookie,
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the magazine and everything else. So, let's start there.
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Let's start with how you got into this magazine world, this media world when you were younger.
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I feel like I was a terrible teenager. I was the teenager who went to festivals
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on my own and didn't tell my parents. And I was like a wild teen.
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I grew up in a small town in the English countryside, and it seemed like the
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most boring place in the world.
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I found that at London College of Fashion, you could do a course that started
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at 17 instead of 18, which most colleges do.
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So I was like, well, I'm going to get on this course because then I can leave
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this boring small town and go and live in the big city.
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I don't even know how I really got in because I'd only done like one year of art school.
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I had a portfolio. somehow I got in I started
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I loved it it was fun honestly though I was like not a straight man in my world
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at that moment because I only went to school with girls and gay guys and it
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was like a wonderful kind of life-affirming like hilarious light moment in my
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life and then when I turned 19,
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my dad.
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Got sick and he was always like the tough, you know, he was very stoic and he
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got sick really quickly and he died of cancer within about three months of being diagnosed.
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And at the time I was like, I don't think I should be at school anymore because I need money.
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Someone was like, they're recruiting for an assistant at Dazed and Confused
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magazine, which is like an English kind of style Bible Indie Magazine.
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So I applied and I got it. And I was like, okay, I guess this is it.
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I'm in. I'm just doing fashion now.
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And I'm actually getting paid barely anything, but I was being paid.
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And I dropped out of school.
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I guess like the rest is history in that sense.
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Like it was a really interesting time to start in magazines because it was like
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just after the recession.
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And so the glamour and the money was kind
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of still trying to hang on but it wasn't there in the same way and
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also online started to
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come into the conversation and there's a lot of reticence amongst
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the older editors that it was like the
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death of the expert and all of these bloggers and
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people who weren't real fashion people should not be
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talking about fashion and it was like a
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kind of very cut and dry but I was young and so
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I was like well I just want to talk I don't really care I
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haven't had 20 years of doing it this one
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way this is like the way we're doing it now and so at the time they were like
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well we need someone to do digital development and no one else wanted to do
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it because it wasn't very cool because they were like it's online and it's like
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the forgotten thing print is really where it's still at and I was like well
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I'll do it and so within two years.
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I had like it had grown exponentially we hired his suzanna lao at dazed who
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was actually one of the biggest bloggers at the time and there was like a huge shift in,
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in fashion. And it was hard for bloggers. Like, I think people were very rude
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to that in the early days. It was a lot of snobbery.
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But it was a really interesting time to, like, break into that industry.
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Oh, God, yeah. So you're at Refinery21. I know you're at Dazed.
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Were you at Dazed and Infused first and then Refinery21? I was at Dazed and Infused first.
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And then actually, my longest magazine period was at a French magazine called Purple.
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And for people who don't know, Purple was like the cool kid magazine. It was like the coolest.
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We used to throw parties at New York Fashion Week and people would like queue
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the blocks, like blocks to get in.
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And Olivier is my editor-in-chief who I still love, even though he's probably
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like on paper, a hugely problematic.
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He just really loved fashion and he loved art and he loved philosophy.
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And he wasn't a traditional like editor in the sense he cared about the money.
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He cared about the story he'd tell.
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And he cared about the creatives around him.
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And so when I was about 23, I think, we got stuck in Paris in a snowstorm while I was still at Dazed.
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Me and my associate publisher and I met Olivier and we were so bored and we
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had no office and we couldn't get back and he was friends with Olivier so we
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started going to the office and hanging out with Olivier,
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and eventually I went for dinner with Olivier because I had no one else to really talk to.
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And I explained what I was doing and he was like well we should have digital at Purple Magazine.
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I met Caroline, who was the director of the magazine, super tough,
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super smart, really the one holding it all together.
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And she was like, yes, let Paula bring us online.
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So we started with Tumblr, but it became a phenomenon because Olivier was a
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photographer in the way that no one else had been before.
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He was taking pictures at like the after-after party.
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Like there was the fashion dinner and then
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there was the fashion party but then there was the party in someone's
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hotel room with like three celebrities and olivia
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would take pictures of all of it and so we were like let's make
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this this is the tumblr so it became purple
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diary it became like this really crazy boyaristic phenomenon
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that like everyone in the fashion industry was checking into and
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this was pre-instagram so it was kind of the first time where the people in
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the fashion industry were like pulling back the curtain so I did that for six
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years it was wild like the stuff we did the stories I you know I'm like working
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on a memoir right now it like.
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It's stuff that i probably couldn't say half of it in public until
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it's like fully like thought out in my head because
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i throw like 27 people under a bus but
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i also feel like i was lucky because
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i got the last days of a particular disco before everything
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was taken over by social media it was hedonistic and
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it was crazy and it was inappropriate a lot
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and i was a young woman and I definitely dealt with the
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inappropriateness a lot but at the
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same time I got to have fun and I got
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to make my own mistakes and no one really judged me for them and they weren't
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like kept in perpetuity on the internet to say you're now a terrible person
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for the rest of your life because you kissed this guy at a party when you were
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22 years old you know so I think that taught me a lot.
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Then from there, I was headhunted by Refinery29 when I was like 26,
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I think, and moved and they moved me to New York and I became fashion director at the time.
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At its height we were talking to like 200 million women a month yeah and it was wild it was like that.
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You know kind of experience that people imagine
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in like 13 going on 30 or like the devil
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wears pride like you're suddenly broken into this world where i
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knew fashion i knew indie fashion i knew like the
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cool kids but this was like big and shiny and money
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and offices manhattan product placement
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advertisement advertisements who are the Nordstrom anniversary sale
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like exactly like I was like who are all
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these new people I've got to learn everyone all
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over and I learned and I learned fast and it was also startup
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culture they were the first big funded kind of
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media empire online for women and it
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was really really fun and I think I
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got burnt out really really fast because it
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was really high speed like the turnover and
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the pressure was very different to print print especially
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at purple was all about making something beautiful
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and make something cool and finding the.
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Best most intelligent way to tell this
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story whereas refinery was like a numbers
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game which we all know now because we all live in an internet
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world but it was like fashion is down for
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the day how are we going to rise our stories up and
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quick let's write something about a new Kardashian's like eyebrow
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shape and it just became it
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was so relentless that I think I
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got to the end of a two-year period and
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I was like I just don't want to do this anymore I was like I can't do this for
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the rest of my life and that's not to say that many people can and do and love
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it and you know I know many editors who worked in certain set shows until their
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80s and like more power to them.
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But I just personally was just like, this isn't me right now.
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So that's the refinery of it all. You feel like purple was...
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This less forced version of what we have today, right?
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So I feel like we're missing, I don't want to offend influencers.
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So I'm sorry if I offend you in what I'm talking about. Influencers follow the podcast. I love you all.
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I find that style and influence back in the day was something you saw.
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It was something you were gravitating towards. You walked into someone's home
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and you're like, gosh, I love how this has been put together.
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Or you flip through W Magazine and you saw a spread that was artistic.
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And different. And you're like, that feels really cool.
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And I feel like we're missing that element of that very calm,
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quiet, influential style that people have in their life, right?
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That you just kind of see and notice instead of it's constantly like,
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here's what I think is best and this is what you should do it because this is what I'm telling you.
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And I feel like we're missing that softness, right?
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Like magazines had that softness to it. Yeah, they have advertising.
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They have to put Ann Taylor here and then they have to put it inside of the spread here.
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But it was a softer way of talking about it than what we're seeing now,
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which is like 17 emails a day from different people and what they think we should be doing.
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Yeah. And I think, like you said,
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I don't think it's the fault of influences i think it's the fault of the algorithm
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in the sense of you're forced to show up in a certain way at certain speeds
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because otherwise you disappear.
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And that is really scary to me, especially when we start to think about young people,
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because, you know, at a certain time, I even know that I'm like becoming,
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I'm like, why have I been on my phone for this long, becoming addicted?
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Or I know how it feels when you post something and then no one likes it or less
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people than you expected to like it. And I'm like, I'm a grown up.
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I've done things with a sense of self and I still feel terrible.
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You know and so I was
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like how does that feel when you're 15 and you're
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no and you're trying to express yourself and
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then no one likes it yep it's
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there in your face and so then you're like well I'm gonna learn
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more and be more like the algorithm a switch actually who I
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really am or what I'm really trying to say to suit the
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style of this kind of machine and
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to me that's really sad because zines and
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magazine culture and all of that stuff yes
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there's so much about it was so problematic it was
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still at the end of the day controlled at the very top by
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some really you know crazy capitalist men
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but on the lower levels you could make
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zines you could make mistakes you could do terrible styling
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and terrible photo shoots and share it with your friends and
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it would be a moment of like self-expression just kind
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of like a garage band would be for music and then
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no one was going to tell you that you were a
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terrible person because you wrote a bad song some of the early stuff i wore
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i even look back i'm like oh my gosh what was i doing at fashion week in that
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outfit but like seriously i was learning something at the time and it was me
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trying to be me and i was like maybe that was a big fail and it was a fail probably but.
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Who cares like at least we got a place to do it and express themselves and I think that's really,
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where this I felt so sad about Teen Vogue and I know Teen Vogue hadn't been
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in print for a while but it felt like the very last place that was trying to
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hold space for young people to have a voice that was outside of this, like,
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performing for our machine. And...
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What do we do now? And I'm not naive in that. I'm like, you know,
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my daughter's a tween. She's nine.
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And the reason I wanted to do it now was like, I want to build something that
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she can grow into so it will exist by the time she's there.
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Because I'm like, yeah, they're going to be on social media.
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Like I said, I was a terrible teenager. My mom was like, don't drink.
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And we poured little bits of vodka into glass.
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I did all of the wrong things. And I know I have half pushing against the authority.
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I'm not going to like say, you can never look at these things or don't watch
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TV, but I want to give her a yes.
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And like, I want to give these kids like, oh, here's an opportunity for you
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all to connect in real life. Or here's something that you can sit and curl up
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with privately and read answers to embarrassing questions. And there's no other noise.
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It's not going to flick into the next thing telling you to feel bad about yourself.
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It's kind of like a contained space.
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Absolutely. So before we get to Cookie, I have questions about that for sure.
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Can you tell us a little bit about your journey of this scrapbooking?
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Was it the voyage?
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Voyage. Voyage means study trip in French. And obviously Purple is a French
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magazine. So I was like slightly French for a while.
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But that was like a real rebellion. As I said, I got really burnt out on Refinery
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just in terms of the speed of everything.
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And I missed just making stuff, the art of making stuff.
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So Boyeljuchud actually started online with a group of friends.
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I was like, there's no place for women's travel stories. So I had like a friend
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who was an activist in Afghanistan and she disguised herself as a man to go
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and make music when music was banned under the Taliban.
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I had like incredible people that I knew doing these incredible things.
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And I was traveling a lot at the time.
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It was pre-kids. So I was like in different cities having amazing lunches with
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amazing women, kind of like this podcast, you know, there's all these amazing people you knew.
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So I did it as like a scrapbook where I would just ask different women to share their stories online.
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And then from there, I was still like, I don't know if I really want to do online.
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It's feeling really like heavy and still filling in
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this machine so i was like i'm gonna do a print and i
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did a scrapbook of america because i just moved to the states
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and i realized i knew so little about it
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in the uk you know the coasts right
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you know the big moments you're like civil there was a civil
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war you know about all of this but there's
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a lot a lot of nuance to this country that i
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think as a european it's really easy
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to be snobby about america okay and i
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think especially now it's very easy to be snobby about america but the way i
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always described it to people is i was like europe is an old granddad of a continent
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and it has insidious things in it but they're very slow And they're very quiet
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and they don't feel so scary.
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And America is a teenager of an age. Yes. We are an adolescent. Loud and it is crazy.
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And one side is pushing really, really far in one direction and one side is
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yelling really, really loudly in the other direction.
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And it feels insane a lot of the time because it's still a teenager.
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I think...
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For me, that's what this scrapbook became was going, look at all this energy
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and look at all these different stories and look at all of these people that
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we didn't want to know or how do they want to tell their stories.
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So it became a scrapbook of America.
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As I said, it was like a weird anti-push because I was being a psycho about
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it, where I did every page on a typewriter.
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I asked every photographer to shoot on film.
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I had friends who were artists and they illustrated pages
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and we cut them out and we glued it all together
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and I literally had it on the living room wall of
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my then boyfriend now husband's apartment I
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just get bigger by the day it's like crazy like
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art piece and I was really lucky I knew some people at Marc
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Jacobs I'm my distributor like the person printing it got me in Barnes and Noble
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all across the United States and it became this really beautiful kind of cathartic
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thing and it reminded me that there's still art and there's still magic and
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there's still all of these cool crazy people out there who will go and like.
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Take pictures of your friends standing in fields of horses for you just because
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it's beautiful and fun to do.
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Yes. And it's a collective, creative experience, a collaboration,
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shared memories, shared thoughts, things we don't really get unless we make them happen now.
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Totally. I mean, I was thinking about the cover. The cover was like my friend
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Rebecca, who's a French actress,
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Langley Hemingway, who's an illustrator and actually the daughter of the godmother
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of my daughter now amanda who's this amazing photographer and we just were like
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what are we going to do for this cover and i was like well we're going to go
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on a road trip because that's america to me and so the three of us just went
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in her car and we drove up from la to big sur.
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The cover photo best drive and we pulled over on the side of a highway and there
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was all of the yellow mustard flowers everywhere and after langley had finished
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peeing amanda the photographer was like, it looks amazing.
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So she made everyone run up into the flowers and just take their pictures.
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And that became the cover of the magazine. And I think...
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We've lost a little of that spontaneity. Like you said, it was an adventure.
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We just, we had so much fun. We like ran through Esalen, the hippie commune,
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like topless and ate vegetables.
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I was like soup with the hippies on like overlooking the sea.
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We did so many weird things on that trip.
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And it was less about like, there's any commercial enterprise behind this.
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We're just going to have a really good time.
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We need more of those experiences that ground us. They bring us back to who we are, who we want to be.
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I feel like as we get older, too, we have more responsibilities.
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We're forgetting what lit us up and what brought us to our creativity in different ways.
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And I think it's so amazing that you got to experience that in that very freeing way.
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And going up the Pacific Coast Highway is, if any of you have not done it that
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are listening right now, as a Californian, is just one of the best drives ever
23:32
to experience at any time.
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So you're on this adventure, you create this beautiful thing,
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and then you have your daughter, right?
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And then at what point after having your daughter, watching her grow.
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Seeing how the world is the way it is, at what point before you even posted
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that thread, were you thinking we need something else for these kids?
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Something tangible, something they can look at and discuss and be together with?
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I started out in California, so parents in a certain subset of California tended
24:09
to be slightly more woo-woo,
24:12
slightly anti-screened, slightly like my daughter did the forest school and
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the Montessori school and all of the things, but I was never like full crunchy.
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You know, I was definitely, I was also European.
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I was pretty strict on some things too. I was also like...
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Watch a screen i grew up on tv like my husband worked
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in film i was like we should watch movies this is a part of
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our stories have culture have like silly culture
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like care beds like it's all part of who we are
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so i was never like no to
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that world completely i also was like
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very online i'm like taught myself to vibe code apps
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i'm not i'm like very interested in
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the future so i was definitely not anti that but
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in the early years of having a child it's really easy to
25:02
put them in a bubble and go
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ruma willis is a dear friend of my super crunchy
25:08
mom and her daughter lose too
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and she's in that world now where i
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was where i was like it's so fun and so nice because you
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just choose them a preschool and you expose them
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to what you want to expose them to and you let them be outdoors when you want
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them to be outdoors but as they start to get older they're like well everyone
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at school has this game and i'm like but what is this game and roblox for example
25:36
roblox on the surface seems really inoffensive.
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Roblox gets really if you actually looked it gets
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really dark yes there are some of
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those games that i won't let my kids play and i'm like
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but i don't want my child to then not be
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part of her kids culture i don't want her to
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feel like an alien i don't want her to feel like she's not part of
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things so it was more and more like
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okay firstly how can we instill like interest in
26:05
other things she like just took up whittling and
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crochet like the strange now mountain child
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that she is but you know I think
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she still was young enough that we could go we're gonna like do horse riding
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or we're gonna hey look over here or hey what's that but as she started to get
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older she started to question things like as you do you know like what is this
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and then I was starting to where I was like, have we made her too naive?
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Like we're a generation of helicopter parents. I was like, maybe I knew more
26:36
about the world than she did at her age, you know?
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And that was the point at which I was like, well, I'm not gonna let her have
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social media, especially now, you know, like she's so young.
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What age will I? And then what age will feel comfortable.
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To do that and then how do
27:01
we communicate she and her girlfriends just got
27:04
tin can like landline phones for christmas and it's all freaking hilarious i
27:08
love that because they don't know how to use it they all held the phones in
27:12
front of their faces and like it's not working we're like you have to hold it
27:16
onto your ear and they're like it makes a broken glitch sound and i was like
27:21
It's not a glitch. That is a dial tone.
27:23
This is how phones work. You know, it's an experience.
27:30
But also on the flip side, you know, my husband, for example, he's a Gen Xer.
27:34
He grew up in like Miami in the 80s and he was in so much trouble.
27:40
He did the wildest, most terrifying things.
27:42
But we were joking about that commercial that was on TV. Do you know where your
27:47
children are? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
27:51
And he definitely lived that life. But how do we give them freedom to actually
27:57
learn and fail and be kids again while protecting them from this insidious, creepy world?
28:05
And I was like, I don't know, is my honest answer.
28:09
When can she walk to school on her own? I used to walk to school on my own when I was seven. Yeah.
28:15
Eight. It wasn't far. It was like a mile. And I lived in a small town,
28:19
but I used to. I wouldn't let her do that now.
28:21
Right? My kids, they walk, well, they'll walk home, but we're only a mile from
28:25
the school. But not enough kids walk. Not enough kids ride their bikes.
28:29
Kids get yelled at for riding their bikes sometimes in town because people who
28:33
are driving are irritated by it.
28:35
And I'm like, when did we get to this point in our society where driving fast
28:40
and getting to where you need to go is more important than a child being able
28:44
to ride their bike to school with some freedom and some safety,
28:49
knowing that they will get there and back because other parents are there,
28:52
noticing where they are, noticing what's happening.
28:55
Oh, there's Jimmy. I see Jimmy. I'm going to make sure Jimmy's mom knows that
28:59
he was doing a great job riding his bike to school today.
29:02
There's something very lost in our culture, and not just with kids,
29:06
but with the parents, too, that we have become so reliant on these devices, watching our children.
29:17
I mean, I'm a culprit of it. I've definitely done it.
29:20
We're pulling back as much as we can because we're noticing how difficult it
29:24
is when they've done too much and you try to take it away and these boys lose
29:29
their shit because they were playing Roblox for two hours and all of a sudden
29:34
their brains are mush and they don't know how to function as proper humans anymore.
29:38
Because it's designed to do that. It is designed to do that.
29:42
In fact, you know what's crazy?
29:43
They were asking a bunch of game developers what they would not let their own
29:47
children play. And this is like Apple when he was like, my kids don't have iPads, right?
29:54
They said that they wouldn't let their kids play Roblox or use Discord.
29:59
Because Discord's like a whole other realm of conversation that's going on on that.
30:06
So I don't know the answer either, Paul. I have no answers for this.
30:09
A woman I know, Elena, she is a cultural anthropologist. And she studies parenting
30:15
through the lens of anthropology.
30:17
And she's like, we are not supposed to spend this much time with our children.
30:22
She was like, yes, as babies, but not as older children.
30:26
She was like, historically, we have never been the ones playing with our children
30:30
all day, every day, supervising their every move.
30:34
She was like, you know, even in like kind of caveman primordial times,
30:39
they went off as a little group of kids and they played with each other and
30:43
bounced off each other and learned that way.
30:46
And that's why if you're a parent who hates playing, you're not a terrible person.
30:52
You're just not supposed to be playing dolls for like 11 hours at a time.
30:59
I love my kids more than life itself.
31:03
I don't want, I did not want to play the games. I didn't. I feel I'd build Legos
31:08
with them because I like building Legos myself.
31:11
But I used to, honestly, I used to think I was terrible.
31:15
Like, I would just want to have a play date and chat with the moms.
31:19
Like, I don't want to be the one on the ground. They should be doing that themselves.
31:23
I have a very good friend whose son is Luna and my daughter and her son grew up together.
31:30
And we used to say once they got to about five, if they came back in the room
31:35
while we were chatting, having our coffee, they were like, oh,
31:37
you just reminded us you're still here.
31:39
Then we're going to have to go home. And they would run off and disappear and
31:43
play quietly for another hour.
31:45
And it was such a nice thing between us as an understanding of moms that we
31:50
weren't being neglectful.
31:51
It was a joke between us, but that they were safe and they were fine and they
31:56
had each other and they were in another room.
31:58
And it was okay for us to also be adults and have an adult conversation for an hour.
32:04
Yes. I want the moms of the young kids to bring that back for themselves.
32:07
I think that it's one step closer to them creating their own environments with
32:12
their own community of friends and people.
32:14
They build their own relationships. They learn cause and effect.
32:18
They learn how to get through something that's really fun and happy and also
32:21
something that doesn't feel so great.
32:23
Figuring it out together. Like...
32:25
I really, I miss that. So you're going through this whole process,
32:28
you have your nine-year-old, and then you're trying to figure out as a mom,
32:33
this balance between the two, right?
32:36
So when did Cookie come to you? When did the magazine come to you?
32:39
I started I got to the end of
32:42
last year and I was like what's next I have
32:45
like I've done many things in my life I've also
32:48
made documentaries and like done stuff in maternal health and crazy stuff but
32:52
I definitely get to this point in my life where I'm like okay I've done that
32:57
what's my next act and you know I think my 30s was so consumed by the early years of mothering.
33:07
And I had a conversation with a friend of mine too where we were joking about being in the in-between,
33:13
and we had like aging parents like
33:17
middle-aged children you know mid-aged children
33:20
where you're not in the trenches of babydom anymore and
33:23
they're starting to gain independence but they're not fully
33:26
independent and then you're maybe mid-career and
33:30
mid-life and it's just like a very strange like
33:33
middle time as a woman where no one really
33:36
is speaking to you there's not content for parents
33:39
and there's not actually a lot for kids in that
33:42
middle space anymore like I was like where's Mary Kate and
33:45
Ashley gone like where are those like yeah
33:48
teen stars and icons and pop stars and all of that kind of stuff like why are
33:55
nine-year-olds wanting to buy drunk elephant retinol creams instead of like
34:00
I don't know glitter eyeshadow you know yes what am I doing.
34:07
As someone who's like living the culture, going, looking at its cultural abyss and going, what's here?
34:14
I was like, even Claire's was like closing its doors.
34:17
And I was like, you know, Claire's is full of plastic stuff.
34:20
But I was like, as a 12 year old, I loved that plastic stuff.
34:24
I loved being able to afford, like terrible approximations of earrings that
34:29
I saw in my fashion magazine.
34:32
And so it just felt like all of it was dying. And then I was like,
34:35
so where are they and then I was like well they're just online and
34:39
they're just in an algorithm which we all know
34:42
is now all the data shows is destroying
34:45
their mental health yeah yes yeah and
34:48
then I was like well if I pull her off all of that stuff is she just going to
34:51
become like a strange shut-in child with no culture because it's nowhere else
34:58
you know yep there's nowhere else to find it so that's really where this came
35:03
from and you know i've actually been talking.
35:07
For a while about like doing a fast channel and like
35:10
doing a streaming tv channel for like millennial
35:13
parents we brought back daria and we put music videos on
35:16
and it could play in the background of the house without offending people and
35:20
so that's kind of rolling and i was like do we give them a radio show my husband
35:24
was a producer at mtv back in the day and he was having these conversations
35:29
so he was like where's that where's their mtv and i know that they have youtube
35:33
And I know they have social media,
35:35
but there's no curation to it.
35:37
So the magazine is going to be called Cookie. Yes.
35:41
And what do you see? What do you envision?
35:44
So the other day you posted on threads, what would people like to have in the
35:49
magazine, right? Like how there used to be advertisements.
35:53
And I think you had a picture of the actor from Party 5.
35:57
Yeah. He was in there. And I started thinking about it. I was like,
36:00
what would my teens or what did I as a teen?
36:04
Really enjoy. I was like, well, I liked the how-tos. I liked knowing how to
36:09
do a French braid. I still don't know how to do one, by the way.
36:12
But how-tos and things that you could do on your own, but you could learn really
36:18
good articles or interviews from people that these kids would admire.
36:23
But what do you see in it? What do you envision?
36:25
I think it's all of that. I think it's, we were saying it's like, some of it's silly.
36:30
Some of it's like those silly quizzes, which is like, what kind of dog are you?
36:35
And you fall down and you're like, I'm a poodle.
36:38
I'm mostly B's and some C's. Exactly.
36:41
Like, whatever. Like those things. We were like, some of it's like the silliness of that.
36:46
Some of it's actually like holding space for really hard questions.
36:49
The thing that's come up again and again from people is embarrassing questions
36:53
when they wrote in embarrassing questions and having a safe place where real
36:58
experts will anonymously answer your question. You won't get judged.
37:04
It won't be your face all over social media going, ew, you're disgusting. It's just that.
37:09
And other kids to be able to read that and go, oh, that happened to me too.
37:14
And I never told anyone or I couldn't expose myself in that way.
37:19
Trying to find people to...
37:21
Their own section like i want to have a sports gossip section
37:24
and we like bring sports for like young women and it's silly
37:27
and gossipy in there too and it's fun to read and
37:30
also let's talk about like the trauma
37:33
of like school shootings let's have
37:36
teenagers discuss that but also let's have
37:39
fashion and let's celebrate teenagers let's do
37:42
high low i was like i don't mind i come from a
37:44
luxury fashion background i was like i don't mind putting in
37:47
like a six thousand dollar dress but on the next page
37:50
i want to dress from the gap yes i want kids
37:54
to feel like this is fashion and
37:57
this is expression and this is for you and we're not dumbing
37:59
it down and we're actually going to make it beautiful and fun
38:03
and style and self-expression you
38:06
know like i talked to amazing staffers at team vogue and
38:09
they were like our top performing things were always still like what
38:12
to do with the biggest pimple you ever got and how
38:16
to get blood out of your sheets yes yes like things simple things you know that
38:24
you don't want to ask or the internet is so overwhelming in terms of the information
38:31
out there or trying to sell you something or.
38:35
Just like asking those like simple questions where
38:38
you come of age and every girl has those questions i
38:41
watched with my daughter recently hello god it's
38:44
me margaret yeah we both quenched cringed through
38:47
yes yes i wanted her to watch
38:50
it because as much as i've been the mom of like explaining menstruation and
38:53
this is how our bodies work i wanted her to see how
38:57
it's embarrassing and it's always
39:00
gonna be embarrassing and that's okay and look
39:03
all of these other little girls have gone through how awkward it
39:06
all feels and the same for boys with like you
39:09
know things that happen to their bodies and so to me having a
39:12
safe space to see other kids or other people have
39:15
survived yes like that's
39:18
the very core of what I want to do you know is just like really make it for
39:24
them we want to have like a teen editorial board I'm talking to people at the
39:29
new school who have college kids to maybe have college kids do the trends so
39:33
at least the trends are kind of closer in age.
39:35
I want to have teenagers write essays and we can help them craft and edit them
39:40
about things that are important to them.
39:42
But really feel like it's a place where you can make your first steps.
39:46
Like even as a photographer, where do young photographers get their break now?
39:50
How can we offer a platform for a young photographer to show their work?
39:54
That's brilliant. It's such a good idea. And I know you said when we talked earlier,
39:59
like so many people have responded to you wanting to be a part of it wanting
40:04
to jump on board so there's a need people see it which is incredible it's like
40:09
some of the stuff my husband's like,
40:12
i'm like sitting there like half crying they're like middle school librarians
40:16
you know who like you don't know how much these kids need it and i'm here to
40:20
help you in any way and i'm just like.
40:23
It feels so silly because it's just a magazine and
40:27
but i was like it's not just a magazine it's more than that
40:29
i want to open it up it's called we have cookie club
40:32
and i was like i want to do clothing swaps where we can do
40:35
meetups i want to do like book clubs i
40:38
want to do like movie screening nights that are like for
40:42
teens so that your kids won't be yelled at because
40:45
that that screening is reserved everyone can
40:48
drop their teens off there and know that
40:51
that's what this is for like how do we start
40:54
to bring back a culture of letting
40:58
them experience again so yes it's a magazine but to me it's kind of also bigger
41:03
than that and it's like it feels really hard to have hope right now yeah a lot
41:09
of people yeah and I think a lot of people are nostalgic for our youth because
41:13
it seemed so much simpler and kinder yeah yeah,
41:18
Absolutely. I can't wait to read the magazine. I would love to touch really
41:24
quickly before we have to jump off on Scrunchie,
41:28
the call-in advice line that you're doing with Ruma Willis.
41:35
Ruma and I, Ruma's incredible. Like, we kind of got to that point.
41:40
It's funny because I'm sure you've all seen the story that's going around about
41:44
the mean girl moms. And who knows what's true and not true.
41:47
I think there's such this odd culture in motherhood of judgment.
41:52
And I think it kind of goes back to that social media thing.
41:56
It goes back to our wider cultural issues.
41:58
And I was like, I don't think it felt like this before.
42:03
There's always been the woman at this PTA who looked down at everyone.
42:08
That's always existed. but I think
42:11
it didn't feel like it was the whole world full of
42:14
PTA moms looking down their nose at your choices you
42:17
know you still could just do like the silly things with
42:20
your four friends in the neighborhood your kids and
42:24
whatever you just had to make them happy and maybe a mother-in-law complained
42:27
somewhere you know yeah yeah and so I think for us like this idea of scrunchie
42:32
was like it's the middle there's silky moms there's crunchy moms but scrunchie
42:36
is the middle which is most of us we kind of pick and choose and find our own
42:40
ways to survive and how do we like.
42:43
I guess in the same vein as the magazine, like, allow people to ask genuine
42:48
questions because I had so many questions as a new mom because no one tells you anything.
42:53
Anything. That gets you what you, the answers you need, right? Yeah. Yeah.
42:58
Without judgment to go, oh, my kid has been wetting the bed and they're five
43:03
and, like, what am I doing and what am I doing wrong? Or my kid isn't making any friends.
43:10
How do I fix this? Or actually, I'm really struggling breastfeeding and it's
43:15
harming my mental health.
43:16
And then having a conversation, like playing them and going,
43:19
okay, let's talk about this.
43:22
Bruma and I have slightly different perspectives on parenting.
43:24
We're like, we can bring in friends and talk about slightly different perspectives on parenting.
43:28
But it was more like, can we create a place where we just talk to each other
43:34
like human beings? Yeah. Yeah.
43:37
Like I would to like a friend that I knew in real life or a mom at school who
43:43
is struggling and take her for a coffee and not go, it's not performative.
43:49
It's not me telling her, well, actually you should be doing this.
43:54
And, you know, I've given unsolicited advice, I'm sure, in my life.
43:59
I've definitely been given it.
44:00
But it's different when it comes from a place of love or wanting to genuinely help.
44:09
And a place where the person can disagree with you without it damaging the relationship.
44:15
I think we've lost so much of that, too.
44:19
Absolutely. It's all opinions. And everyone does things differently.
44:22
And sometimes you can learn when you're trying to discuss something with a friend
44:26
who's going through something.
44:28
I'll have discussions with my wives. That's what I call my best friends or my
44:32
wives. Because we could basically all just live together somewhere with our dogs.
44:36
We'll disagree on things. We agree on things. But we're learning at the same
44:40
time with no judgment. There's so much love there that you only want what's
44:44
best and you're only trying to figure it out.
44:46
And wouldn't that be really nice if we could do that with every other woman
44:50
that asks us questions or needs advice on something without being judgmental
44:54
or accusatory or just unkind for no reason, you know?
45:00
And, you know, I'm not saying it's
45:02
going to be perfect. I'm not saying our advice is going to be perfect.
45:04
It's kind of like in the UK, there's a thing called the National Childbirth
45:08
Trust. And when you have a baby, they put you in a neighborhood group with everyone
45:13
locally because we have a centralized healthcare system.
45:16
And you obviously, you're not forced to, but they host coffee mornings for moms
45:22
who have babies that are born within the same month as yours.
45:25
And so you can attend those and they're put on for the first year just so you
45:29
can build a community of humans that.
45:32
To be like oh we're doing this together and it's
45:36
supposed to stop isolation and just have
45:39
kind of someone to navigate it all with
45:42
and i think i'm not expecting us
45:45
to throw like national coffee mornings for everyone
45:48
but maybe it can inspire people to
45:51
be able to do that i was like you know what discord shouldn't
45:54
be for gamers it should be for groups of new mothers to
45:57
feel like there's a safe space where they won't be judged and they can talk
46:00
to each other seriously you know
46:03
an idea like how to bring the
46:07
group chat back but truly in like the spirit of wanting to look after each other
46:13
it's interesting because i came from like la after the fires and i've come to
46:19
a community which also was devastated by flooding and both communities the parents were.
46:25
Are incredibly open and have stepped
46:29
up in ways and i said to my
46:32
husband at the time he sounds really weird because i was like we're going through a natural disaster
46:35
with small child but i was like i'm so grateful we
46:38
had a child because community came
46:41
together in a completely different way like
46:44
in la we lost schools we lost so much but at the same time you know a friend
46:53
of mine her daughter this birthday was like a week after the fires and the local
46:58
bounce house place let us go for free and it was the first time all the parents
47:02
and everyone had seen each other.
47:04
My daughter was one of like only two kids but as we
47:08
came out all the parents were there and we're hugging
47:11
each other and we're standing in the little sad birthday room at the back with the
47:13
cake and all the kids were out on the bounce and one of the kids comes in
47:17
and they were like I know it feels really sad but
47:20
you know if you bounce you'll feel better and they're like you
47:23
have to come and bounce and so all the adults went
47:26
into this giant bounce house and started bouncing and
47:30
we were crying and falling and bouncing and
47:33
it was this most unbelievable cathartic like
47:36
beautiful thing and I was like thank
47:39
god for this community and thank god
47:42
for kids and thank god for us all to be
47:45
together and yes some of us children
47:48
are not allowed screens and some of our kids eat
47:52
candy every day but in this moment we're all
47:54
just like in a giant bounce house together and
47:58
we're just happy that the kids are okay and everything's okay and i know from
48:02
talking in ashville to neighbors who disagreed on things like kept each other
48:08
alive with the one family that had a generator on a mountaintop for like three
48:13
days until they could get power.
48:16
And I just, without being like, we're going to sell the nation.
48:21
Just a little more of that spirit, a little more of just like...
48:26
I feel really privileged to be a parent and I think the other part is to like
48:31
bring people into the circle as well.
48:34
Bring the aunties in and allow people to also be part of your life.
48:40
Like let friends feel like they have someone that they can ask the hard questions of.
48:45
And I think in the very essence, that's what Scrunchie is. Not that we will
48:48
be these people's anonymous friends but
48:52
there are people out there who genuinely do just
48:55
want to help or genuinely do just want to
48:58
say it'll be okay and you
49:01
know through all of my work in maternal health I learned
49:04
so much empathy I think it's really easy to
49:08
have a privileged perspective you think that you're super open-minded
49:11
yeah things really are and
49:15
you're like it's so hard for so many people
49:18
and so yeah i feel like i've gone on a
49:21
weird like strange optimism tirade we
49:25
need it we need more optimism we do we do
49:28
that all to say just like let's start
49:31
talking again let's start meeting again it's so rough
49:34
out there like there's some things that feel so big
49:37
and i don't think we're going to change overnight and that
49:40
we shouldn't stop working to try and improve
49:43
but also we need
49:46
to like sit in our homes and have a glass of
49:49
wine with our friends and laugh and like
49:51
remember that we have that too yes oh my gosh amen sister this was wonderful
49:57
paula i can't thank you enough i so appreciate you coming on and chatting with
50:01
me and i'm so excited to watch what's happening next get the magazine to see
50:07
it all it's really astounding so thank you thank you so much for having me.
50:12
Yeah. Thank you. I will update you when it's all alive.
50:15
Thank you so much for joining me today on She's Smart. New episodes drop every other Thursday.
50:22
Don't forget to subscribe, like and share. Stay cozy.