The Women’s Strike on International Women’s Day posed another challenge to the Cut. After much discussion and deliberation, the team decided to go red in honor of the day and stopped publishing. We also changed all of our social banners to a bold red “STRIKE” graphic and halted all social posts, save for one explaining our process and position.
The next day, staffers shared our reactions to the Women’s Strike: Thoughts on the International Women’s Strike and What It Meant.
While some staffers were on the ground reporting in D.C. and NYC on January 21, 2017, several of us were in the office making sure the site covered all the highlights and then some.
In addition to finding information on social media and sharing our stories across all the relevant New York magazine social accounts, I stepped in with writing, editing, photo research, and copy-editing.
Posts I blogged:
Published April 25, 2017 on New York magazine’s the Cut.
Breasts come in plenty of shapes and sizes, but there are certain challenges that come with being larger than a 34B. Don’t condemn yourself to ugly, schlumpy bras — the Cut is devoting this week to finding sexy, supportive styles for big boobs.
Coachella kicks off what anyone who gets too many promotional shopping emails knows as “festival fashion” season. For a certain subset, that means flower crowns, layered chokers, and cutoff jorts — all taken to the extreme, though not everyone buys into hyperboho clichés. Somewhere in the middle lies the bralette trend. They’re desert-heat friendly without being plain. Plus they allow you to layer while being as subtle or as revealing as you want to be. But for large-chested women, these lacy bits are something we look at longingly while muttering “must be nice.” A life free of underwire and an endless supply of chic, delicate, and ultimately flimsy bralettes is probably not in the cards — especially since most only accommodate a C cup at best.
Continued: Read the rest of the post on thecut.com.
Every month, the Cut asks staff to write about a book they are currently reading, and I used this opportunity to crack open selections a bit out of the ordinary. (After all, we couldn’t publish a list recommending The Handmaid’s Tale and Americanah every month.) Here’s what I read (that wasn’t already recommended in previous Cut Book Clubs):
Bonus TV Club: New Girl
One of the most fun parts of working on Team Cut was when group Slack conversations and recurring topics morphed into posts. Here are a few highlights of jokes, gags, and more gone publishable:
Due to the intensity of the 2016 election, the Cut asked staff to contribute to some posts on Election Day about our various emotions and coping mechanisms. Find my contributions in the links below:
When Twitter announced that it was shutting down Vine, the team at New York magazine’s Select All wrote about their favorite vines. Read the full post with mine and others’ contributions, published Oct. 27, 2016.
We all know that the sound of one rubber duck toy honking is annoying. But who knew that the sound of a whole bin is (1) more like pained moaning, and (2) completely horrifying? What really gets me is the wide-eyed frozen expressions painted on the ducks’ faces, as if they’re trying to get somebody, anybody, to help free them from this miserable, loud, rubbery existence. I wonder how long it took for this hideous flock’s moans to die out after the Viner slinked away. Pour one out for all the toy-store employees who had to deal with teens re-creating this nightmare.
Learn about the New York magazine social team’s Instagram strategy, published April 7, 2016.
From the story:
“My favorite thing about Fashion Feelings was, not only did our audience respond to it well, but the subjects themselves also commented on the Audiograms and re-shared Joana’s illustrations,” says Marissa Cetin, social-media editor for the Cut. “The project was a great mix of personality and creativity that suited Instagram and gave our growing audience something different in a month when runway and showroom shots dominate.”
Published February 26, 2016 on New York magazine’s Following (now called Select All)
One year ago today, two llamas, tired of being cogs in the petting-zoo machine, saw an opportunity to break free of their mundane lives as retirement-community emotional-support animals and ran toward hope of a new life. Toward freedom.
It was just before 1 p.m. in Sun City, Arizona, when the best livestreamed chase ever began to reach bored office workers’ screens across the country, perfectly timed for the West Coast lunch lull and prime mid-afternoon slump time on the East Coast.
“LLAMA WATCH:” the local news station’s tweet began in inviting all-caps. Say no more. For the next half-hour, we joined together IRL and URL to cheer on these freedom-loving rebels — Thellama & Llouise — getting a sweet taste of life outside their petting-zoo handlers’ shackles.
https://twitter.com/steventurous/status/571042528293580800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
And what a glorious 30 minutes it was! We high-fived when the llamas, seemingly cornered by police, ready to meet their caged end, bolted through an opening and once again evaded the oppressive animal-control state. We applauded their commitment to the team, rooting for them to stay together when one llama was lingering a little too far behind the other — “strength in numbers,” and all. We lamented when they were inevitably separated, as we all knew the end was nigh. They must’ve been so scared without each other, those poor llamas.
Usually, when a police chase grabs the nation’s attention, it’s for much more sinister reasons. With the Great Llama Chase of 2015, the stakes were low. The cops didn’t appear to use weapons other than lassos. Since this unfolded in a retirement community, the roads were relatively empty and low-speed. Llamas running don’t really require cops in cars to floor it, anyway.
The llamas, at times, even roamed at a leisurely pace, trotting around, taking in the lush Arizonan scenery of dry grass, sidewalks, and dirt. (Hey, it’s got to be better than a petting-zoo pen full of your own poop.)
This sense of endless, expanding leisure couldn’t last forever. Just a few hours later, in the early evening on the East Coast, BuzzFeed hit publish on the defining work of the viral-web era, “What Colors Are This Dress?” The internet, pop culture, the words the dress, and our lives were never the same.
We’d gone from cheering together to arguing with each other, disparaging the eyesight and intelligence of friends and family. Instead of laughing and smiling at the silly llama chase, we were getting headaches from color combos (I think I saw periwinkle and pink at some point), squinting to see the colors shift before our strained eyes.
Writers and editors and social-media managers scrambled to find their angle on the dress. Angry tweets were fired off. Bad memes were plastered all over social media. Relationships were tested. To this day, friends will not trust my judgment on colors — because I saw the dress in the right colors.
The simple truth is this: A good meme is hard to find. Those llamas had broken their chains and risked their lives to give us something to stare at. And instead of giving them their rightful place as that year’s great viral story, we gave in to the — honestly, super-ugly — striped dress.
Continued: Read the full story on NYMag.com.
Marissa Cetin 