Miriam Furst at Shape

Like many girls I know, I have been reading magazines for as long as I can remember. It all started with Scholastic Magazine for kids. From there, I moved on to the well-known Seventeen Magazine. I didn’t just skim through these magazines, though; I clutched each issue in my hands and read every single word, front to back. I never threw out a magazine, either. Somewhere in the bottom of the drawers in my room at home you will find a copy of Seventeen with Lindsay Lohan—back when she was only known for Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Mean Girls—on the cover.

Junior year of high school, when my American history teacher assigned a project to research anything we had learned about and to compile primary source documents, I did my research on how Cosmopolitan Magazine added momentum to the 1960s women’s movement. Avidly, I searched through Cosmopolitan archives for advertisements and articles, comparing them to contemporary issues of the magazine. I even read the biography of Helen Gurley Brown, who was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan for 32 years. In the early 1970s, she turned the then family magazine into a women’s magazine, reshaping its mission to empower the “fun, fearless, female, “a slogan that Cosmopolitan still uses today.

Naturally, I wanted to intern at a magazine badly, but I needed to wait until I was a college student to be eligible. So, as you would expect, during freshman year I searched for ways to apply to all my favorite magazines. First, let me say something I learned about the magazine industry: it’s extremely hard to break into it. I applied to every magazine you can find on a newsstand. Finding the correct name of which editor to apply to was hard enough, but trying to get an editor to return my emails was nearly impossible.

I ended up landing an internship at Shape Magazine. Though I had wanted to work in the features department, the managing editor called me to tell me there was only one spot left… in the beauty department. She told me that there was no writing involved in the internship, but that I could have the spot if I wanted it. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity. During my phone interview, I told the managing editor I would be happy doing anything. And I really meant it. All I wanted to do was to get an inside look into the magazine industry. I told my friends I didn’t care if I was getting Starbucks for editors all day. At least I’d be interacting with them, I thought.

My first day, I arrived at the American Media Inc. offices on Park Avenue. I made my way nervously through security and up to the tenth floor where Shape is located. The office literally looked like it came out of the set for The Devil Wears Prada: big glass doors, racks of clothing, and glamorous editors rushing to their desks in their heels.  

The managing editor who had conducted my interview introduced me to the three members of the beauty department: the executive beauty editor, the beauty editor, and the associate beauty editor. The first question the associate editor asked me was, “So, where’d you intern before this?” Shyly, I responded, “I just finished my first year of college,” meaning this was my first magazine internship. Her response to my answer was, “So, nowhere…”

Though during the months prior to my internship, I said I’d be happy to do anything, I ended up realizing that I really wasn’t that happy doing busy work. I spent hours sorting through boxes of beauty products, organizing everything in the three beauty closets. The editors had not had an intern for a month, and all the products they received had grown into a pile of boxes that cluttered the area by their desks. I had never sorted beauty products so specifically. I quickly learned the difference between hair pomades and hair gels; facial serums and facial primers; and tinted moisturizers versus tinted foundations. After organizing the closet for (literally) hours, I asked my editors if they needed anything else. My next task was stapling probably about 100 receipts to a piece of paper, in chronological order, so that they could get reimbursed for various expenses.

I went home that day feeling a bit defeated. I had said I’d do anything, but I didn’t know I was signing up for a custodial job. I had never had an experience in a professional environment before, and I didn’t really grasp the concept of ‘working your way up.’

At the end of the week, the associate beauty editor got a little overwhelmed. She was responsible for coordinating the Shape of Beauty Awards, an annual reader-based award list of the ‘best’ products. The list is always featured in the September issue. A survey for readers to vote on products had been posted on Shape’s website for months, and we needed to tabulate the results and start ordering product samples of the winners. Hesitantly, she assigned the task to me and taught me how to coordinate with public relations companies to obtain products. I remember noticing that the associate beauty editor knew all the PR companies’ phone numbers by heart. I didn’t understand how she could possibly know all the numbers. By the end of the summer though, I too knew which company represented what brand, what phone number to call, and which representative to ask for on the phone.

The associate editor first gave me the task with reluctance. She watched over my shoulder as I dealt with the PR companies. I was only supposed to intern three days a week, but I started going in five days a week until the Shape Awards project was completed. I called in all the products we needed, organized them as they came in, and packed boxes to send samples to dermatologists. When the article summarizing the products was written, I fact-checked the names and details of the products that won by using press releases. Working on the Shape of Beauty Awards project was both exciting and stressful; everything had to be coordinated with PR representatives, dermatologists, and the writer within a matter of days.           

After coordinating that project, I gained a lot of trust from my editors. A few weeks into my internship, the beauty editor pulled me aside to tell me the executive beauty editor was leaving and not being replaced. She said that I was going to have a lot more responsibility, since the beauty department was now down to only two editors.

I was sent to my first event on behalf of Shape: a hair treatment at one of the well-known Blow Salons in Manhattan. At the event, other editors surrounded me, and Blow PR representatives offered me beverages and refreshments. How had I gone from saying I would be happy fetching people Starbucks to being pampered myself? I thought.

Going to these events was clearly one of the most fun parts of the internship. One of my favorites was a pre-screening of the second Sex and The City movie. Not only did I get to see the movie before it hit theaters, but I also got to mingle with editors from all my favorite magazines: Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, Glamour.  At another event, I met Kelly Rutherford from Gossip Girl, Bethenny Frankel of The Real Housewives of New York, and Kathie Lee Grifford. Aside from being fun, the events taught me how to be professional. Although it was intimidating mingling with people who had twenty years more experience than I did, the events taught me that, as long as I acted professionally and confidently, I could gain the respect of even the most powerful people in the industry.

The most valuable part of my internship was really learning the meaning of ‘working your way up.’ The first day, I was really discouraged that all I did was sort beauty products and organize receipts. But learning how to sort the products allowed me to coordinate the Shape of Beauty Awards only a few days into my internship (and I was never asked to organize receipts again). My editors trusted me to go to events and take notes for future articles and gave me more important tasks like writing photo captions and doing research for stories. I put together a research packet with information about skin disorders that the beauty editor used to write a feature for the October issue. Though I had been told there would be no writing involved, I helped write blurbs for the “beauty news” page and helped my editors cut down stories when layout and space issues arose.

Doing even the smallest and most tedious tasks with pride, like unpacking lip-glosses from their boxes, is something you have to learn to do if you ever want to take on an actual assignment. I went from simply unpacking beauty products to actually picking which ones would be best for including in the stories.

Now, when I glance through copies of magazines, I no longer clutch them with the same fascination I did throughout high school. I know why certain products are featured on the pages, how expert advice from dermatologists or physicians are obtained, and how much thought goes into something like whether the nail polish bottle should be pictured with the polish splashing out of it—a detail you would probably never think about unless you have experienced the industry firsthand.   

And, as for those glamorous editors who seemed so intimidating—as if they could have come out of The Devil Wears Prada—they taught me some pretty cool makeup tricks, gave me the warmest hugs on my last day, and are always telling me to visit and restock my supply of cosmetics.