The glossy dream of working in magazines has recently been resurfaced with the release of a Devil Wears Prada sequel. The stars from the cult classic Noughties original are back with enough sass, wit and life lived through glamorous montages to make us beyond green with envy.
Many journalists, critics and fans alike have praised The Devil Wears Prada franchise for capturing the millennial obsession with becoming a magazine journalist due to its glitzy, unattainable nature. During the Noughties when the original movie was released, the magazine industry was still in its heyday – ie, making enough money to justify huge expenses.
The first film, released in 2006, perfectly encapsulated why so many of us who grew up in the late 1990s and early Noughties watched films like this – as well as How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, 13 Going On 30, When Harry Met Sally – and immediately aspired for a career that emulated the Andy Sachs, the Jenna Rinks and the Andy Andersons of the Hollywood world. These movies sold a certain kind of dream, that I see now as arguably half fantasy and half only available to a certain cohort of society.
Twenty years later, the industry is very different. Social media, AI and the general digitisation of magazine content have changed everything. And the Devil Wears Prada sequel deftly handles that, so well that at times the film actually comes across as something of a real-life horror documentary. But what the sequel – as well as the original movie, pop culture and public conversation in general – skims over is it doesn’t just take surviving a gruelling internship to make it in the magazine industry. All we get from the sequel is Simone Ashley's Amari telling anyone who would listen that she “deserved” her promotion from being an assistant. But it takes more than deserving your success to make it in magazines. It takes a mad cocktail of luck, perseverance, contacts and – importantly – wealth.
When I walked into my first journalism class in 2016, someone within ear shot told another new student that his dad had paid for his course in full “to get him out of the house”. From day dot, I knew journalism was full of educated and privileged people but as I studied and began working in the industry it became abundantly clear that those who got ahead quickest – oftentimes at all – were the privileged, well-connected, wealthy or all of the above. Starting out, I was none of those things – my dad works as a plumber and my mum has worked in car insurance, a boutique and a playschool.
So when this career is sold on screen, what isn’t explored enough is the utter disadvantage you have if your parents aren’t journalists or you didn't grow up in London (or New York, or whatever global city your country chose as its journalistic centre) or can live there rent free. Meritocracy alone is viewed as the way to get your foot through the door. And it’s just not that simple.
I’ve been a journalist for almost 10 years. A colleague asked me last year who “got me in”, who got me my first job. No one. I did countless unpaid internships and waitressed in my spare time and worked in a call centre for almost two years to pay for journalism school. I’m also from the south coast of England, so accessing London is easier than for others, and by no means am I the least privileged journalist I know. But the decidedly middle class nature of the starry-eyed glitzy career I’ve worked my way into is undeniable and needs to be talked about more, due to the impact this has on a) who gets the job of telling stories in magazines and newspapers and b) how this affects how stories are told, and crucially which stories get told.
Author and ex-Vogue editor Caroline Palmer explored this element of the magazine industry in her novel Workhorse, which I would certainly describe as a darker, murkier, more authentic Devil Wears Prada. Also set in the early Noughties, it follows protagonist and editorial assistant Clo as she navigates the incredibly opulent world that was (and is, to some extent, still) the New York magazine world. What is made clear from the beginning, though, is that Clo is a “workhorse” – striving so hard to leave her suburban social class history to hit the ditzy heights of the glitzy upper class wealth that she will never have or be comfortable being around.
She works alongside rich nepo babies at the magazine that she dubs “showhorses”, who are genetically and financially privileged and therefore seem to glide much easier through the magazine world. In her striving to keep up with these showhorses and attain the career and status she covets so badly, we see Clo dive headfirst into a rather messed up world and school of thought as she fights to keep up appearances and thrive in a world full of wealth.
Caroline tells Glamour that she wanted to interrogate social class in the magazine industry with Workhorse, whether you really can move between classes in this way and the “life or death” challenge of fitting in when you can't really afford to. She recalls the true cost of belonging in the magazine industry being something that is barely spoken of out loud. When one of her Vogue colleagues left the magazine, the reason she gave to Caroline shocked her.
“She said to me ‘I can’t afford it anymore. I can't afford to be this person anymore'… I was so shocked when she said it… She said the quiet part, out loud.” She describes wanting to “shed a light” on this truth and stigma that exists for those working in magazine journalism. Not to create a moral of the story or anything that explicit, but more to voice the nuances of different social classes and how they impact someone's survival in an industry full of financial and cultural expectations.
Another journalist shining a spotlight on the crucial relationship between social class and the wider arts industry is Jessica Phillips. Recently she launched Instagram page @theproletariart which interrogates the crucial relationship between social class and a career in the arts. “Magazine journalism is as elitist as banking or law, and is as competitive to break into," she tells Glamour. "The difference? When you 'make it, it' it doesn't come with the same pay packet or job security.”
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Growing up in an ex-coal mining town in Wales, Jessica broke into journalism the same way that I did – through unpaid internships. Now even less of these opportunities exist than when we started out a decade or so ago, meaning that working class creatives are having to fight even harder to make their voices heard in a middle-class magazine industry. “I've worked at magazines where editors have asked a room full of staff one by one which private school they went to,” Jessica tells me. “There's an air of Bullington Club behaviour in magazine journalism. 11 years into my career, I still feel like I'm on the outside.”
She started Proleteriart to "shed light on the elitism in the creative sector. It shouldn't be one subsection of society who get to have their stories told or who get to tell the stories of others.” Stories like Jessica's and mine are two of many. Earlier this year, writer Kate Pasola published a book of essays from 33 working class writers in Bread Alone: What happens when we run out of working class writers? Research presented in the book confirms an uncomfortable truth: 80% of journalists come from upper-class backgrounds; 78% of working-class writers say their background has hindered their careers.
So yes, a job in magazines and the creative world is, indeed, a job that a million girls would kill for. Even 20 years on. But we must acknowledge – and do something about – this second fact: it takes a certain status, access and support to even get in line for the kill.
