10 Reasons Being a Men's Style Writer Sucks

A man making a pre-tax $2,250 a month can only write about Givenchy bomber jackets and Dries Van Noten cashmere so many times before he starts spiking his morning coffee with a half bottle of Kirkland brand bourbon. There aren’t many of us in the blogging strugglesphere who can justify a Raf Simmons piece. So, we end up curating the walk-in closets of inherently swaggerless bozos in the finance industry. Mad taxing on the psyche, bruh.

If you work for a publication like, say, Complex Media, you’ll be surrounded by fashion bros who rock a month’s rent on their feet. Keeping up with the Joneses is especially difficult when the Joneses have a taste for rare outerwear, retro Jordans, and A.P.C. collaborations. Granted, this is a very fly way to destroy your credit score.

Oh you thought you could mentally check out at the end of the day from this life? When a single tweet has the power to rock your entire world, please believe that you're going to start mainlining a potent mixture of HGH and exotic Korean energy drinks. If you want to cut down on delivery times, you might as well just shack up with your coke dealer so that you can be the first on that 2:38 a.m. announcement about the next Kanye x adidas development.

Writing about fashions requires a next level pain tolerance for inbox fuckery. Between ignoring press releases and follow-ups to press releases ignored, your Gmail will be about as fun to look at as a Geocities page by Dolce & Gabbana. And, the number of women’s brands that invade your world for no discernible reason is mind blowing. Mix in a few notes from your editor with “Your pitches are late…AGAIN” in the subject line, and it’s enough to trigger vertigo.

You don’t typically think of yourself as a bloodthirsty maniac, until you’re at a Jets game with seven beers in your system and screaming at Geno Smith to tear his ACL. As a style writer, you’ll live a similar existence. Meaning: You won’t realize what a little jerk you are until people of the same ilk surround you. To scroll your blogger frenemies on Tumblr is to walk a #menswear funhouse, where every #selfie is a digitally filtered, only slightly more wack version of what you see in the mirror.

Between child poverty and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, you have to be a sociopath to spend two grand on a motorcycle jacket. And, writing about python skin snapbacks and $400 sweatpants in a serious manner requires a similarly disturbed set of priorities. Very few revolutionaries and political activists are remembered for their ability to flex on Instagram, and for good reason. When you enter this club, you have to check all practical sense at the door.

Being a style writer sounds glamorous, until you figure out that most outlets pay you in “personal brand exposure” and leftover bottles of Remy Martin that have been sitting around the office. You’ll continue, foolishly thinking there’s some sort of endgame, but no sartorial prince is going to see your work and bless you with a corner office and stock options. When you get old enough to realize the importance of dental insurance, you’ll apply for a job selling insurance and qualify your job experience with a reasonably impressive Tumblr following. SMH.

Oh, almost forgot, you actually have to work too. Yawn. People think this business is all free swag and smoking blunts with runway models, but it’s really about chugging Red Bull and staring at your laptop for 16 hours a day. Like, what is that?

You didn’t choose the #influencer life, the #influencer life chose you. As a male style writer, you have the power to upgrade basic dudes, which is not a responsibility to take lightly. Whether you’re going to work or grabbing milk from a bodega, you need to hit the streets in a perfectly aged denim jacket and beautifully sculpted side-part. Layering like a stylish bean dip every time you go outside can be exhausting, though.