Running In Heels

Ok, I’ll admit I’m someone who enjoys reality shows. But by now there are lots of subgenres to reality shows, so I’ll specify: I like reality shows that let you see what someone else’s reality is like. My current indulgence is “Running in Heels” on the Style Network, which follows three interns at Marie Claire magazine.

I’ve done internships before, but of course those were at research labs, not magazine headquarters. Is there common ground to be found here?

Nope. And that’s what makes it fun.

As far as I can tell, based on this show alone, being an intern means you mostly run random errands for those higher up than yourself. By luck or hard work you end up eventually getting to help out with more interesting things, but there are no illusions about the fact that you are everyone’s beeotch.

Something about all of this feels refreshing and escapist. Perhaps that your work is straightforward: everyone else tells you what to do and you do it, and gain success by doing it well and reliably.

Oh and there’s lots of infighting and competition amongst the interns. And perhaps this squabbling is the *most* fun, because there are three interns featured and one of them, the D.C. intern, is extremely insecure and competitive. Every time one of her peers succeeds, it is unfair or the other person cheated. They couldn’t have actually deserved the praise. This intern focuses all her energy on knocking down or ganging up on the other interns, at the expense of actually focusing on doing anything right. Within three shows she’s switched alliances between looking down her nose (along with the Californian intern) at the Midwestern intern for her behaviour at a party to linking up with that same Midwestern intern to mock the Californian. D.C. intern swivels back in forth trying to gain support of one intern against the other. It will be fun to see with the other side of the triangle, a Midwest-California intern union, works together against her. It’s classic girl drama.

I guess in the end I love this show because it reminds me how much I’ve learned/grown in my life so far, even if I have lots of work ahead of me. When the head of Marie Claire told the interns they clearly hadn’t actually studied any magazines ever, they all reeled and acted like they had been torn a new one. I had to laugh, because statements like that are clear “putting the fear of God into you” statements. She’s putting the scary front forward to get them to respect her and listen to her, but I doubt she actually thinks they’ve never read a magazine. And overall their work just doesn’t seem that hard. Yeah, it requires you to have no other life, but you’re just paying your dues. Not that I’m an expert on the fashion industry, it’s just interesting to see how another industry lives.