Credit: The Bathroom
Much of my success as a writer and editor of home-improvement magazines stemmed from the fact that during the 1980s it seemed that there were only 10 or so carpenters in the U.S. who could write. It was a period of rapid expansion in the magazine business. Every time a job opened up, they’d round up the usual suspects. When I learned to edit photos and copy, I became a hot commodity among the how-to and shelter books. I had started as an assistant home and shop editor at Popular Mechanics, but every year or two, someone would find my name on a masthead and call to offer me more money and a better title.
My third magazine job was senior technical editor with a stylish shelter title aimed at upper-middle-class women. After getting the offer, I read the magazine and thought, “This is pretty light stuff. They hired me because they really need someone who knows how to build houses, install flooring, fix the plumbing, etc. They must want me to improve the quality, quantity and detail of the technical information in this magazine. “
I must admit, too, that I thought I had internalized a feminist ideal of equality between the sexes. No matter how your chromosomes were configured, you needed to know what I could tell you about how to build things if you wanted actually to build them. I didn’t fully appreciate that it was really my job to get our readers in the mood to get out their checkbooks. The design/build firms and the advertisers could take care of the rest.
Before long the magazine’s editor-in-chief assumed the role of Miranda Priestly (The Devil Wears Prada) in my own coming-of-age/publishing-industry drama. She was scary smart, driven by God knows what, and intolerant of those who didn’t keep up. The art director was a brilliant visual stylist—a metrosexual long before the designation existed. One imagined that tough boys in the schoolyard might’ve bullied him, but in this milieu he could have his gentle revenge. And most of my colleagues were pretty decorating editors with a keen eye for style and competitive instincts to match. So when this Brooklyn carpenter brought his tool belt and technical diagrams to story meetings, there was much head shaking and hand-wringing—that is, when it wasn’t utter frustration and evisceration.
When I got a story package through, my draftsman-like scrap art was rendered by illustrators with soft hands. My first-do-this, then-do-that copy was passed through the editing chain and re-styled with cute puns and gushing clichés. That had never happened before, and I believed it was wrong.
At my first-year anniversary on the job, I was summoned to Miranda’s office for my annual performance review–an appointment that I anticipated with darkest dread. But the conversation was pleasant, and she informed me that I’d be getting a substantial raise.
“I’m very surprised, Miranda. I didn’t think that you liked my work that much. I mean, all the rejected story proposals. You always rewrite my copy.”
“In truth,” she said, “I like your work very much. You’re very professional. It’s just that for the first six months, you were working for the wrong magazine.”
It was then that I realized some important things about the differences between women and men, and targeting a publication to an audience. For one thing, I formed a much clearer idea about what constitutes information for each gender and the differences in how they process it. For me it was like, “The object comes in red, green and brown.” For them the important fact was, “I love the way it looks in aubergine.”
And I came to understand differences in the effect and fungibility of mood. When Miranda really felt in control, she was gracious and generous. Here she was giving me a raise despite my cloddishness, and I still wanted to argue about things she said before I’d gotten on the right page. That I’d gotten on the right page was news to me. (Well, I did go on to produce “Summer Slip Covers for Breuer Chairs” and a gardening piece entitled “Companion Planting.”)
Wasn’t it George Carlin who said, “Women are crazy, men are stupid?” When I look back on the episode today, I don’t think Miranda was crazy (except maybe when driven to it by the tone-deafness of a narcissistic geek). But I’m sure that Carlin got me right.
Tags: learning