Transcript | Ep. 90: How to Reckon with Refinery29

Ashley: with all the past events that have happened in the past few weeks from starting with Amy Cooper and George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, and just– there's just so many things, and I think especially the Amy Cooper thing kind of resonated with me. And everything else, obviously, is horrible and has resonated, but, you know, Refinery, the office is an office full of Amy Coopers. And to a lot of people who don't know the inside workings of Refinery, it seems like a feminist, inclusive utopia. And as someone who worked there for a year and a half, I just know that's not the case. And I think just with all the grief and trauma everyone is collectively feeling right now if there was ever a moment for you to speak out, it's now.

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Caroline: Hey everybody, I’m Caroline.

Cristen: I’m C. And y’all, we’re living through an anti-racist, civil rights movement unlike anything our generation has ever witnessed firsthand. The Black Lives Matter protests that have broken out across the country are calling into account not only the police violence that led to the murder of George Floyd, but also the ways that white women like Amy Cooper perpetuate white supremacy and systemic racism every day.

Caroline: Amy Cooper, aka "Central Park Karen," the white woman who called the cops on a Black birdwatcher named Christian Cooper (no relation) and falsely claimed he was "threatening" her.

Cristen: In the midst of it, we at Unladylike have also noticed something of a white-feminist reckoning happening, partly catalyzed by that video of Amy Cooper weaponizing her white privilege. Over the past month, a number of white female CEOs and startup founders who’ve publicly presented themselves as championing feminist inclusion have resigned over accusations of racist, inequitable and punishing workplace cultures created on their watch.

Caroline: The list includes the head girlbosses of well-financed companies like The Wing, Man Repeller, Bando, Reformation — and digital-media powerhouse Refinery29 .. whose editor-in-chief also just stepped down. Today on the show, we’re focusing in on Refinery as an Unladylike case study of working while Black — and why seemingly woke, women-led utopias aren’t immune from workplace toxicity and outright racism.

Cristen: Full disclosure, I freelanced for Refinery29 for about a year. The company touts itself as an forward-thinking, global leader in media for young women meant to inspire, entertain, and empower them. But legions of current and former BIPOC employees beg to differ. In recent weeks, dozens have shared their experiences with what they describe as a toxic workplace culture … including Ashley Alese Edwards, whose voice you heard at the top of the show.

Caroline: Ashley worked at Refinery29 from November 2017 to April 2019, first as a senior news and politics editor, then as the section’s deputy director. And on June 2 she fired off a tweet that inspired the hashtag BlackAtR29. The combination catalyzed a full-blown racial reckoning inside Refinery29.

Ashley: I wasn't tweeting this for a reaction from something from anybody. I was just tweeting it out of anger. And I really did not expect the tweet to blow up in any sort of way. And it did, which was surprising. But in the end, I'm really happy I did it.

Cristen: Calling out Refinery has had tangible consequences already. In addition to prompting the editor-in-chief’s resignation, their parent company, Vice Media, is conducting an internal investigation, and the Refinery29 employees’ union has rallied in support.

Caroline: Another significant reason R29 is our case study today? Media reporter Kerry Flynn had been investigating the dynamics inside the company for the previous 9 months before the black-at-R29 hashtag hit. She’s today’s second guest, and she comes with receipts. Reporting for CNN Business, Kerry interviewed more than 60 current and former Refinery29 employees who painted a picture of a deep-pocketed, but not-so-idyllic workplace.

Kerry: My editor actually made a comparison weeks ago that like this is like the MeToo movement in the fact that like this, just like you're like this person goes, this person goes. It's because it's just like people just like airing out the things that we've known for a while. It's just like nonstop reckoning.

Cristen: And Caroline, I’d go a step further and describe what we’re witnessing as a combination of MeToo and Black Lives Matter, both of which were ALSO started by Black women.

Caroline: Yeah, when money and power are at stake, white girlboss leadership can be just as adept at making work life a tokenistic hellscape as any bad male bosses out there. Sesali Bowen, a former senior writer at Refinery29, will share more about that later in the episode.

Sesali: I mean you know, the phrase that I've been saying over and over again since this whole thing happened is that, you know, a fish rots from the head

Caroline: Well Cristen, are you ready to filet that fish?

Cristen: You bet I am. Let’s do it.

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Caroline: Our story starts with a Blackout. On June 2, record-label executives Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang urged their industry to take a break and reflect in the wake of nationwide protests over the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. They wanted to disrupt business as usual, but the sea of black squares that overtook social media that day … wasn’t exactly what they’d envisioned.

Cristen: I mean, it definitely disrupted! Countless brands, celebs and influencers dutifully posted black squares to their accounts. Caroline, you and I decided to not publish a new Unladylike episode that week as part of the initiative.

Caroline: Participation was SO widespread on Instagram, that there are now about 3 million MORE posts hashtagged #blackouttuesday than #blacklivesmatter. And to a lot of Black people like our guest Ashley Edwards, all those squares looked like fake solidarity — not the deeper conversations and collective action that the creators originally were calling for.

Cristen: So that Tuesday, Ashley Edwards and some current and former Refinery29 employees she keeps in touch with were venting their frustrations over the black squares of it all in a group chat.

Ashley: One of them was like, "Did you guys see Refinery blacked out the home page?" And the current employee was like, "Yeah, we did that earlier today. And we're only posting content about, you know, Black Lives Matter." And I know you're not supposed to tweet in anger, and I've been generally really good about doing that, but I just, I was really triggered, to be honest, and just really annoyed. I'm like, what is this performative bullshit? Like, posting your– the background of the website black is kind of a slap in the face to your current and former employees that you've mistreated.

Cristen: Ashley tweeted, “Hey @Refinery29, cool blacked out homepage! But you know what real allyship looks like? Paying your Black employees fairly, having Black women in top leadership positions & addressing the microaggressions your Black employees deal with from management on a daily basis.”

Caroline: Her thread continued: “How much $ has @refinery29 made off their Black & POC employees? Has that been reinvested in them?”

Cristen: Former Refinery29 entertainment writer Sesali Bowen, who we’ll hear from later in the episode, quickly replied in support. She tweeted: “As a former employee I can definitely say that Refinery29 is the official publication of White Feminism. Well meaning, but violently clueless about race.”

Caroline: A few days later, another former Refinery writer, Khalea Underwood, came forward and amplified the conversation with the hashtag black at r29. Khalea tweeted: “I was hired as a Beauty Writer in 2017 … a ‘natural hair writer’, specifically, is what I was told during my interviews. I was too young and too eager to realize that I was signing up to be tokenized.”

Cristen: The hashtag BlackatR29 and Ashley’s original Twitter thread emboldened more than THIRTY other current and former staffers to publicly share their experiences of working while black at r29. This was on top of stories shared by anonymous current employees. Allegations range from physical violence and verbal abuse to constant tone policing and white colleagues getting credit for Black women’s ideas.

Ashley: Reading those stories, I was like, wow, I can't believe all this was going on and a lot of it– I had no idea and that a lot of people have been suffering through this. And it was also validating because a lot of the times when I was there, I was always questioning myself. Am, like, am I going crazy? Am I being overly sensitive? Is what they just said racist, or was that, like, a racist comment? And I was always second guessing myself. But then to see so many people agreeing, I was like, OK. So this whole time Refinery was kind of just gaslighting me. And all this stuff is legitimately racist.

Cristen: Since Ashley was in a management position at Refinery for a year and a half, she had a front row seat to the way the company’s structural inequality trickled down

Ashley: When I was there, I came in as a senior editor, even though I was doing the job all the directors were doing. I had tried to negotiate my title to be deputy director or director, and they were like, "No, we'll let you go up to that." Even though as a senior editor, I was doing the exact job, if not a bigger job than some of the directors. I had more editorial and journalism and reporting experience. And then when it came time for me to be promoted, I was promoted to deputy director, even though there was no one above me, and I wasn't given a real reason for that. And I feel like that is what happens to a lot of the Black women and other women of color there. That you kind of get stuck in this limbo of, "Oh, yeah, you're doing a great job. You're really valuable. We want to give you more responsibility, but just wait for that title and just wait for that pay bump." And while they tell you they can't pay you more, they can't give you a title they want, that you want, they go ahead and hire some other white woman with some high title and high pay. And you're left wondering, "Hmm, that's interesting." If it were just one or two people, then maybe you can chalk it up to an accident. But as you can see from the movement, it it's, it's systemic at this point. And management really can't hide from that.

Cristen: Well, it's systemic and it's also grossly ironic because I know I have read many a Refinery29 piece about negotiating salaries and asking for what you're worth.

Ashley: Um, yeah. And that's what, for me, what attracted me to work at Refinery. And the hypocrisy at Refinery is something that I've never experienced before, considering we have a whole section and a whole series based on, you know, women asking for what they want, how to negotiate a salary, how to manage your finances. And we were actively discouraged from sharing our salaries when we were there. That was, that was a true statement. We were told not to share our salaries.

Caroline: FYI, unladies: Employees have the legal right to share salaries with each other. Full stop.

Ashley: I, you know, really didn't give a fuck. And I, I personally told my writers, like, my reports, how much I made. When any other editor or director asked me how much I made, I told them because when you have transparency like that, it's harder for management to get away with these sorts of discrepancies and that's what's happening now. Everyone is actively sharing their salaries and fighting for fairness. It's extremely hypocritical. And they kind of just use the feminist movement to– it's a business move for them– to make money. It's not something that's really practiced internally.

Cristen: Ashley’s right. The site was founded in 2005 by two white men — Justin Stefano and Philippe von Borries — as a blog about New York design and fashion.

Caroline: When Justin and Philippe realized that their fashion posts attracted the most eyeballs, they leaned in and began reimagining Refinery as a slick, fashion-forward destination for progressive millennial women. The guys then hired Piera Gelardi — who is now married to Philippe — to focus on site design and visual branding, and Piera’s old boss, Christene Barberich, was brought in to oversee editorial.

Cristen: Less than a decade after launching, Refinery had become one of the fastest growing media companies in the US, valued at $500M. Other digital media brands began popping up to get a slice of the millennial lady-pie.

Caroline: Yeah, in the early 2010s, feminist digital media was more of a cottage industry of blogs like Jezebel, Bitch and Feministing. Then suddenly, women’s content was queen, and along came the digital gold rush of feminist-y websites (of varying quality). Refinery29, xoJane, The Hairpin, TheSkimm, PopSugar, Hello Giggles, Rookie, Broadly and Bustle … just to name a few.

Cristen: Increased competition for eyeballs and advertisers meant these new sites needed to crank up output, ad deals …and especially in Refinery’s case, click-bait-y celebrity content.

Caroline: That celebrity factor is what led to one of Ashley Edwards’ first major what-the-fuck moments while working at R29. It was the summer of 2018, and Ashley was the deputy director of news and politics. Christene Barberich, then the editor-in-chief, wanted Ashley to publish an essay about the border crisis … written by white actress from Texas Amber Heard.

Ashley: This was kind of at the height of the border crisis with the Trump administration separating children from their parents. In this essay, Amber Heard was writing about how she grew up in a border town. First of all, Dallas– I am not from Texas– I don't think Dallas is a border town, if I'm correct.

Cristen: Wow.

Ashley: It's not. So, it's not.

Cristen: Ashley was uncomfortable with Christene’s request from the jump. On top of that, the weekend before the article was set to publish, Amber Heard tweeted: "Just heard there's an ICE checkpoint in Hollywood, a few blocks from where I live. Everyone better give their housekeepers, nannies and landscapers a ride home tonight." FFS, Amber

Caroline: Ashley didn’t want Refinery29, and specifically the section she was in charge of, to be associated with those racist tweets and get dragged across the internet.

Ashley: Christene wanted us to publish it because at Refinery, upper management has kind of, like, an obsession with celebrities. They kind of want to be "in" with these people. So, I sent her a very nice e-mail and just saying, "Hey Christene, I just have some concerns about this, given what Amber had tweeted over the weekend and the tone of this piece. I mean, there's a lot of different Latina writers we can get to write about this authentically," because it's just the truth. The next day she called me into her office and was like, “I felt like you were telling me and not asking me.” And I was just so confused and taken aback by her tone, and as editor of the section, I felt like I had right to raise those concerns. And the piece ran after that, because she was pretty much threatening that, you know, this is running. And it was flooded with negative comments. And that was one of my first inclinations that like, oh, I guess that I'm here to show that there's diversity. But when it comes to kind of speaking out about my concerns, I'm really not supposed to do that. I'm, I'm kind of supposed to stay in my place. And I'm not the type of person who can kind of tolerate that for too long. And that's why I was at Refinery for only a year and a half.

Cristen: The breaking point for Ashley came at the end of 2018. One of her reporters, Andrea González Ramírez, had been doing a ton of great work. She’d been one of the first people to even cover Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, plus she was doing tons of press appearances and getting exclusives for the site. She was killin it!

Caroline: Around that time, Ashley’s team all shared their salaries with each other. Turned out, Andrea was being paid $15,000 less than two white writers doing the same job. So, Ashley brought her concerns to the higher ups.

Ashley: And the two people I went to kind of, like, laughed it off and acted like, she's getting paid what she deserves. She's getting paid enough. And I remember the executive editor at the time who was my manager was like, "Yeah, you know," –and Andrea has tons of followers on Twitter. She's- has a really great voice. She does really amazing work. And the executive editor decided, "Well, you know what? I kind of want her Twitter voice to come across more in her writing." And I'm like, what does that even mean? And at that point, I realized it didn't matter what Andrea did. It didn't matter how many followers she had, how much traffic she got, no matter how many podcasts or TV shows she was asked to be on. They just didn't see that she deserved any more. It was like she, she's paid what she deserves. And for me, that was it. I, I couldn't deal with that kind of blatant discrimination, quite honestly. So for me, that was the breaking point for sure.

Cristen: Ashley left Refinery29 in April 2019. Six days after her BlackoutTuesday tweet went viral, Christene Barberich announced she was stepping down immediately, though the NYT reports that she's staying on as an advisor through the fall.

Caroline: In an Instagram post, Barberich explained the move was her way of "making room" to "help diversify our leadership in editorial and ensure this brand and the people it touches can spark a new defining chapter.” But the women who’d spoken up via the blackatr29 hashtag call bullshit.

Ashley: From what I've heard from people who were there, Christene was planning on stepping aside even before this all happened. Just, you know, when the Vice acquisition happened. So, she was planning on stepping down. I think this just accelerated the situation. And she's an easy sacrificial lamb to kind of throw, especially since, like, oh, she was resigning anyway. Oh, but she's resigning because of this. First of all, her resignation little message on Instagram was insulting. She framed herself as some, like, noble person who is gracefully stepping aside to give a woman of color, or a black woman a seat at the table. No, you're kind of stepping aside in disgrace. So let's just leave– like, let's just put that on the forefront. And you're - she's no martyr. She's no hero. She didn't apologize. She never apologized for anything, from what I saw.

Cristen: Time will tell whether Christene Barberich was just a sacrificial lamb. But the movement that showed her the door is a whole other case study on the power of true solidarity.

Caroline: Yeah, it's been a collective effort both externally with BlackatR29 and internally with the Refinery29 Union. The Union is less than a year old, and they'd already been organizing around issues of company diversity, pay disparity, and problematic leadership. And as Ashley told us, all these former and current staffers rallied together because they genuinely care about each other and the meaningful content they've created despite the toxic workplace environment.

Cristen: The reckoning is far from over, too. Christene Barberich wasn’t the only Refinery29 exec who’d been called out specifically for racism and mismanagement. If you scroll through all the blackat29 stories, another name that comes up a lot is global president and chief content officer Amy Emmerich.

Ashley: Amy has been running the company. And all of this ladders up to her. She can feign not knowing what was going on. I know she's released a couple of statements. But it's– if you are the CCO of a company and all this is happening on your watch and you say you didn't know about it, I think that's grounds enough that shows you- you're not doing your job. And I know there's an investigation being launched, but I know strongly from speaking with people there that she– they want her to resign. Will she? I'm not sure. But that's what everyone wants. It's not enough for just Christene to kind of take the fall for all this bad behavior. If Christene is the only one to go and she's replaced by a black woman, that black woman is being set up to fail because she's going to enter the same system with the same people that we've all experienced, and we all know what happens there. And it can't just be a symbolic token for someone– it needs to be somebody who's going to be there to make real change and have the opportunity to do so.

Caroline: We’re going to take a quick break.

Cristen: Up next, we’ll talk to Kerry Flynn, a media reporter at CNN Business who spent 9 months reporting on the workplace culture at Refinery29. And spoiler: Her findings back up all the major themes raised in the #blackatR29 tweets.

Caroline: Plus, Kerry follows the money and wades knee deep into venture capital.

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Kerry: I had talked to, you know, like over a dozen people and really like had started to paint the picture of this, now, as we well know, this, quote unquote, toxic work environment, these claims of toxicity. And I asked people why they worked at the brand, like, you know, it's so inclusive and so representative and it's just fun, you know, like it's a good place to work. And yet it really didn't take me long to discover that if I want to write about what it was like to work at Refinery29, the short answer was not good. Like, not inclusive.

Caroline: We’re back with Kerry Flynn, media reporter at CNN Business. Kerry had been chasing her own version of the Refinery29 story since August of 2019.

Cristen: That’s the month she joined CNN Business. She’d come prepared with a list of stories she was interested in telling, and pulling back the curtain on Refinery’s operations was at the top. Here was this booming, quintessential millennial feminist brand that no other media reporters had really dug into.

Kerry: So the original picture that I was painting, you know, before everything came out online, I kind of had to make a stronger case for why I was writing the story and frame it as kind of a problem that's pervasive across digital media. This idea that media companies perhaps just aren't the best places to work. A lot of the initial themes of the story were less about racism and tokenization. It was still part of it. But a big thrust of the story was the massive pay disparity and the quote unquote, what people told me, the untenable pace

Caroline: Overwork and underpay are hallmarks of digital media. As far as Refinery goes, Kerry says their churn-and-burn pace had been an open secret in the industry and among her sources — as was the idea, like we heard at the top of the show, that Refinery29 wasn’t exactly the empowering, feminist utopia it appeared to be from the outside.

Kerry: I think the story that stuck out to be the most was the not the like, kind of inappropriate workplace behavior that Christene, the editor-in-chief, had, but the editorial decisions she made. So that was where a former editor had tipped me that Christene would repeatedly choose to promote, quote unquote, white faces on the site rather than black women. And I heard that, and I was like, that just seems like that's the opposite of Refinery. like really?

Caroline: But until Ashley Edwards got fed the fuck up with Refinery’s hypocrisy on BlackOutTuesday, a lot of Black women Kerry interviewed were reluctant to go on the record about the racism.

Kerry: And honestly the story was like near publication, we were like ready to like list allegations and tell Vice that, like, here it is. You know, like, respond. And pretty much the week, you know, when we were ready to do that is when the hashtag blackatr29 happened and people started speaking publicly.

Cristen: The floodgates opened, and the course of Kerry’s reporting shifted.

Kerry: What was so powerful about what happened is I was able to get so many people to speak on the record. People were like, “Yup, you can put my name on it.” So it was this fascinating thing where I really think that despite having that story so long before, what the finished product ended up being was so much more powerful because of what happened online.

Caroline: That time the editor-in-chief ran her fingers through a Black employee’s hair? Corroborated.

Cristen: The times (plural) that same editor in chief confused a Black employee for another Black woman who worked there, even though they looked nothing alike? Corroborated.

Caroline: Executives pigeonholing Black writers as race-centric reporters? Corroborated.

Cristen: In the course of her reporting, Kerry also obtained a copy of Refinery29’s 2018 demographics report. What she saw further explained the toxic culture behind the inclusive content. The company’s overall diversity at the time was on par for the industry, which isn’t saying much .. other than how white it is. But what struck Kerry was how Black, indigenous and other staffers of color were concentrated toward the bottom of the Refinery hierarchy. The farther up the chain you went, the whiter it got.

Caroline: And not just in the executive suite. The senior positions and even into mid-level management were noticeably white, compared to folks actually making and promoting the content.

Cristen: One very unhelpful question that I noticed coming up in response to a lot of the conversation that was that was happening around the BlackatR29 hashtag, were people interjecting and saying, “Well, if it was so bad, why why didn't y’all get together and, like, take a stand against this kind of behavior?” Like, why did you essentially saying, like, “Well, why did you even put up with it?”

Kerry: You know, the people that I spoke to, some people did go to H.R. Nothing was done. And other people said they were scared to go to H.R. because unfortunately, that's just the way that a lot of people think, is that that H.R. is not your friend. And and I think one thing that's important at the company as well is it it was and is a lot of younger women, you know, and not to say that younger younger women can't be empowered to make change. But it was younger women who were fearful of their job, you know, fearful being like, I don't want to lose this job. I can't lose this job. Like, I can't pay rent if I lose this job. And I'm scared that if I speak out, then Christene or someone else at the company is going to make sure I never get a job again in this industry that I want to keep working in.

Cristen: On June 11, CNN Business published Kerry’s story exposing the problems that blackatR29 and the Refinery29 union had called out. A week later, Vice Media, which owns Refinery29 (and has its own history of toxic workplace problems), announced they were launching an internal investigation into what the fuck has been happening inside Refinery.

Caroline: What's your take on why companies like Refinery, Bando, the Wing, why they push such a good social-justice image, why they why they talk such a good game when they refuse to grapple with the reality behind the scenes?

Kerry: I think they they speak to the generation, I think they and they honestly, like some of those founders, also like embrace that and want to be that right. Like, as in like there's you know Refinery 29 started being like we want to like, not be Vogue. Right. Like we want to go to fashion shows and be another like brand and and the Wing being like I want to, you know, Audrey being like I want to create a place that's inclusive to women because I just feel like there aren't those spaces. Like I think they did have good intentions, like, you know, not all but but definitely some I would trust that they had good intentions. But I think there's really something to this industry when you're put in a position of power and you're now like running a legitimate business, that people lose sight in that. Like I said with the Refinery story before, like, you know, people were willing to speak on the record, I had to, like, make a case about, like, why Refinery29 was this way. And for me, I followed the money, you know, and I started to learn that, like, things really started to change when Refinery29 raised a lot of venture capital, like it was like round after round. And like, you know, in 2016, they received $45 million. Like, it was an insane amount of money. And these you know people, they had this mission. But then you look at like, OK, we need to hit these goals. Like if we don't hit these goals, we're going to like, die like, you know, this company's going to collapse. And I think that makes people like push aside diversity and inclusion and push aside those original goals because they they just need to make money. It's it's unfortunate. And we're starting to see it and have seen it for a while people, you know, hiring people to focus on diversity and inclusion and Chief People Officers and be transparent about their numbers. But when it comes down to it, a lot of people in power are just blinded by the fact that they they need to make money and for a Refinery for a while, it was “we need to sell this company.” And it just it just loses that.

Caroline: Dumping piles of venture capital in digital media companies like Refinery29 doesn't just build up the churn-and-burn problem for the folks making the content. It also keeps the money and power in overwhelmingly white hands.

Cristen: The vast majority of VC funding still goes to white men. And if we narrow in on the share that goes to Black women founders? According to a study called Project Diane, it’s just .0006 percent.

Caroline: Meanwhile, white feminism has attracted a bit more than crumbs.

Cristen: But girlboss beware. Intersectional feminism and white venture capitalism don't mix all that well for "all women." Just take a look at The Wing. The women-only coworking space with 8 locations around the world, has received more than $100 million in VC funding.

Caroline: But just like at Refinery, current and former employees of The Wing say the company doesn’t walk its intersectional talk. In March, the New York Times reported that The Wing’s feminist facade covered a toxic culture that treated staff — particularly black and brown women — more like the help.

Cristen: After months of tensions and more employees speaking out, CEO and founder Audrey Gelman resigned June 11. Later that day, employees staged a “digital walkout” demanding the company take further action to correct its practices of disrespecting and underpaying workers.

Caroline: When we come back, we’re talking with former Refinery29 senior entertainment writer Sesali Bowen. Sesali is going to tell us the story behind the Black women’s sub-brand that Refinery29 execs couldn't be bothered to fully support

Cristen: Stick around

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Sesali: I'll never forget when I went in to interview at Refinery, I was just like, "Oh, my God. People are wearing whatever they want." And "These girls have on crop tops and their titties are out." Like, Refinery29 in 2016 was just, like, I think the place that any, you know, kind of millennial girl trying to get into media would want to work.

Caroline: We’re back with Sesali Bowen. Sesali worked as an entertainment writer at Refinery 29 from November 2016 to December 2018, and she’s one of the original minds behind Unbothered — the Refinery sub-brand started by and for Black women.

Cristen: At first, Sesali was thrilled to get hired by Refinery29. For a while, she even felt like one of the leadership’s favorites. Execs would pull her into meetings to get her thoughts on various projects. Video producers would ask her to hop on camera for various shoots. She got assigned to profile Janelle fuckin Monae, ok?

Caroline: So, when social media editor Ally Hickson asked her to join a group of black women at the company to start Unbothered, she was like hell yeah I’m in! The women built Unbothered themselves from the ground up without any formal resources - brainstorming ideas for their channel and sending them past legal, plus building out pitch decks and identifying potential brands to partner with .. as well as brands to avoid.

Sesali: And doing that work just on top of our normal duties, because we wanted to see ourselves represented in the content at Refinery29, aYou know if we really want to look a Refinery is like a microcosm of the feminist movement in general, that is always the issue: that black women's role in the movement becomes this very niche thing, and when we want to participate we have to find ourselves and make room for ourselves in that. Or, I like to say, reinsert ourselves into the narrative, because, I mean black women have a very rich history in terms of the origins of feminism. You know, I felt so much, like, the black pop culture that I was covering, it was me talking to white people about black people in pop culture, and I wanted to talk to black people about black pop culture, if that makes sense.

Caroline: So, how did management respond?

Sesali: So basically in terms of how management handled it, Amy Emmerich...

Cristen: Remember, Emmerich is the President and Chief Content Officer of Refinery29 … among other things …

Sesali: Amy Emmerich is um. Amy Emmerich is a fucking hustler, OK? And Amy Emmerich has the gift of gab. Like, that in a lot of ways, that makes her phenomenal at her job and attributes a lot to her success. So she was very much so if you want to talk to her about maybe an idea you had for like a series, or something like that, she was like, "Well, be scrappy. Make it. And then let us see it. And then we can go from there." And that's very much so how Unbothered was treated as well. It– we pretty much had it built perfectly and served on a platter for the company to essentially just launch. And we'd done all of that without any formal resources from the company. Ally was the only person who was formally assigned to it, and even she had other responsibilities in her actual job title. Like, it wasn't like her job title was, like, Director of Unbothered. Her job title was social media editor.

Caroline: When it came time to show Amy what they had been working on, she didn’t seem to even understand why the company needed Unbothered to begin with.

Sesali: We had been trying to get time on Amy's calendar to come to an Unbothered meeting, so we could, you know, finally show her, like, what we'd done and kind of tell her, like, "We think we're ready to go with this.” What she told us was that we needed to be prepared to explain to "the rest of the company," I'm using air quotes because basically what that means is all the white ladies, we needed to be able to explain why Refinery needed this. In other words, you know, why does Refinery need to speak specifically to black women?

Caroline: So after y'all presented Unbothered to the rest of the company, what was the response like?

Sesali: Oh, it was super congratulatory. "This is awesome. This looks great." You know, "This is amazing." You know, per, I mean, as to be expected. I think, you know, very performatively great

Cristen: At big industry events where media companies get up and basically sell themselves to ad reps in the audience, Refinery29 lauded Unbothered as its fastest-growing Instagram channel ever. They even brought Sesali to one of those events and asked her to present about Unbothered on stage.

Caroline: Internally, Sesali and the Unbothered team wanted to be clear that Unbothered is intentionally a capital-B Black sub-brand. But what they heard from the marketing team sounded a lot like whitesplaining.

Sesali: We kept having to explain to them why it was really important in all of our marketing materials when we were considering partnering with other companies and other brands, when we were talking about Unbothered that we did not use the word multicultural. We were like, we want to use the word black. We are black women, this is for black women. We need to say that word. Multiculturalism, especially in advertisement, usually leads to a lot of white washing. It means you put a palatable black woman who is really light skinned, or maybe bi-racial, with, like, curly hair, but not too kinky, and you say, "Great," you know. “We're diverse and we're multicultural,” and there's still an erasure of black culture that is happening in a decision like that.

Caroline: Why the disconnect? What is going on? What is sparking the disconnect between, "Look at us. We are such an inclusive, feminist front lines company," but we also treat our people like shit.

Sesali: Oh, it's because there are only white women at the head of it. I mean, it's really quite simple. There is no diversity amongst the leadership. I'm very aware, you know, in hindsight, of how my work at Refinery29 was filtered through the lens of white folks. I mean, I saw that happening in terms of how my pieces were edited because I was rarely edited by black folks. So, you know, I could produce all the ideas that I wanted to, but if if Christene, or if Amy, or any other number of white women– the, you know,all of my work has to be filtered through them and through who they think the Refinery29 reader is, who is also white.

Cristen: Sesali, Ally Hickson and previous Unbothered contributors all expressed pride and joy in the vision they collectively fought to bring to life. But all the microaggressions along the way added up. And when they each decided to leave Refinery, that meant leaving Unbothered behind while the company got to continue cashing in on their unpaid side hustling.

Sesali: It has now become this really shiny piece of marketing real estate, essentially, for advertisers who are able to tap into this very specific and really engaged sector of Refinery's general audience. So, yeah, it's the moneymaker. And I mean, honestly, when I was there, I was definitely greener than I am now. And I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm so valued at this company. Oh, my God, I'm being– I'm in meetings with Amy. Oh, my God, I'm in meetings with the head of video. They want to know what I think about this. But, you know, when your title is just entertainment writer, it doesn't translate. And when you're not paid for that kind of work. Now that I know what– now that I know what marketing professionals make, in comparison to what I make, it's- it's it’s infuriating.

Caroline: So you told Kerry Flynn CNN, "In hindsight, I believe I was being tokenized as a fat, black woman and underpaid for my work." So, how has that become clearer to you in hindsight versus when you were still on staff there? And how do you think that compares to the experiences like of some of your fellow black co-workers?

Sesali: I think that there are, you know, to be transparent, there are different kinds of, like, presentations that, you know, black women have– obviously black women are not a monolith. And, you know, for my homegirls who came in and were very, kind of, unapologetically black, they were just experiencing what I now understand, just based on some of those stories that were shared, so much more outright hostility. Whereas, you know, I was a fat, black woman coming into the company at a time where they were making a commitment to fat women and a commitment to black women, as half-assed as they, those commitments may have been. And so I think, really hearing from, you know, just some of my girls who work there and how different the experience was for them in a way that I didn't see when I was still there and when I was just so excited about the work that we were doing and excited about the opportunities that I was getting. It's a huge regret of mine, actually.

Cristen: So in a more perfect, actually inclusive media world, what kinds of stories would you want to be writing and covering?

Sesali: So this is, this is the sad part of this, is that I think a lot of the stories that I want to see out in the world do exist. and I also know so many dope black women who are telling amazing stories in media. I think in my ideal world, they would be paid more for them. They would be treated better by the companies that pay them to write those stories. They wouldn't have to be so emotionally and mentally drained in trying to tell those stories. So for me, it's not about– the ideal media landscape is not about the story because black folks are excellent storytellers, and we're always going to tell our stories. It's about the conditions that we have to work in to tell them.

Caroline: Well, this has been an incredible conversation. Is there, is there anything that we haven't asked you or touched on that you think is important for listeners to know?

Sesali: I guess, I want to say that I'm glad that you did not ask me, like, what white women need to do to, like, be better allies. Because um... I don't know the answer to that. And I guess what I– the last thing that I want to say is that what I've noticed is that in these moments, it's always, like, the labor of black women to, like, not only experience this shit, but then to have to help others remedy their own actions and thoughts and behaviors to, like, treat us better. And that is so exhausting and tiring. I mean, we've had a lot of allies who came out, like, in support of us in this moment, but I really fucking wish that some of those people would have spoken up when they were sitting next to us, when they were our managers, when they were our bosses at the company.

Cristen: We reached out to Refinery29 for comment on the issues we raised in this episode, and the parent company, Vice Media Group sent us the following statement: "We take the concerns raised by employees regarding Refinery29 very seriously. The Company, through its counsel, has retained Morgan Lewis to conduct an impartial and independent investigation into these allegations. The Company is committed to taking the appropriate action based upon the independent findings that Morgan Lewis provides.”

Caroline: OK unladies … what are your thoughts on this episode? Let us know! You can email us at hello@unladylike.co, find us on social @unladylikemedia or join our private facebook group and jump into the thread for this episode.

Cristen: I also highly recommend reading the blackatr29s stories that have been collected at the Twitter account @r29stories and follow the incredible women who sounded the alarm. You can also visit unladylike.co to find this episode’s sources, transcripts, and our weekly Unladylike newsletter.

Caroline: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Additional transcription help this week from Janmaris Perez [Juh-MA-ris Puh-REZ]. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford. Executive producers are Chris Bannon, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Cristen: This podcast was created by your hosts, Cristen Conger

Caroline: And Caroline Ervin of Unladylike Media.

Cristen: Next week…

Aminatou: I think that like it for me, it was in my friendships that I really learned how to be someone who loved people like I don’t learn not from like. Being in romance, I was like my friends are who really taught me like unconditional love and, you know, like you mess up and someone doesn't throw you away or like, here is how you apologize to someone or here is how you can be challenged by someone that's different than you and and stay with them. So I would say that like all of my healthy, like romance, like every healthy habit I have in a romantic relationship is truly because I learned that in my friendships.

Caroline: We’re talking to Aminatou Sow from Call Your Girlfriend who is helping us imagine what life could look if we let go of the marriage mandate and supported singletons. And for her, friendships is a big part of it.

Cristen: You won’t want to miss this episode! Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get unladylike.