Q: I've had a series of terrible BFs, but I just met this awesome guy and I hella-heart him. The issue? I'm six-foot-one and he's 5'10". When I'm in stilettos he looks like Kevin Hart and I feel like Lurch. Are kitten heels the worst?—@LongTallSally1981
A: Yes, sugar, kitten heels are the worst. Only appropriate if you're Michelle Obama or Carla Bruni, you're a smidge taller than your president husband, and you absolutely cannot dwarf him in front of the world. The Obama-Bruni Clause. Excuse me while I have this notarized..
Here's the thing. You seem charmed by the new man. Focus on the thrill of new love. It hardly ever comes in the package we envisioned. Instead of hiding an imagined flaw, enhance it. He knows you're tall and loves it. You should love it, too. Rock the most obscene heel you have and watch him gaze up at you like he's just aching to climb your mountain. I'd suggest Guiseppe Zanotti's Grommet Ankle-Buckle Heel. It's so S&M fierce. Like something out of the Red Room. Raowr.
Jenna Jones clicked the Publish button, sat back in her new chair at her new desk at StyleZine.com—and grinned. She whipped her compact out of her makeup bag and freshened her lip gloss. It was the Friday of her first week on the job, and she was due in her boss’s office in five minutes. As she fluffed up her Flashdance-style curls, she felt relieved. Her stomach might’ve been in knots, but at least she looked perky.
She crossed the bare-bones, industrial loft space filled with cubicles. One wall was tiger-striped, the floor was made of steel, and the only decorations were a few banana-yellow chaise lounges and an oversized print of Marc Jacobs in drag. Jenna’s look that day was “Cerebral Charlie’s Angel” (since elementary school, she had a near-OCD-level need to name every outfit in her orbit): a vintage seventies denim wrap skirt, an oxford rolled up at the sleeves, and sky-high cork stilettos. Getting dressed that morning, she almost felt confident—like the woman she used to be, before her life fell apart. Before she fled to her childhood home in rural Virginia.
She was trying her hardest to fit in at StyleZine, an online fashion mag devoted to street style, but Jenna missed the print world, where she felt safe. She ached for her glitzy life at Darling magazine, where she worked as the fashion director for ages until her quasi-nervous breakdown. She mourned the loss of her healthy clothing allowance, massive photo shoot budgets, and the pony-skin rug in her office (God, that rug was so good). Sexy Cosmo girls, icy Vogue bitches, fiercely toned Self chicks—it was all she knew.
But that world, with its Columbia School of Journalism degree-wielding socialites and high-glam aesthetic, was old-school and barely breathing. To be a fashion expert these days, all you had to do was decide you were one. Any wily twenty-year-old with a covetable look, a WordPress account, and enough followers could be a powerful style insider. They’d displaced major editors from the front row at Gucci!
She arrived at her boss’s office and Terry, an associate editor, hurried over to intercept her.
“Jenna, I was supposed to tell you that Darcy’s gonna be late. It’s a thousand percent my bad,” Terry said.