-Welcome to the show. -You got a live audience here.
This is fun. We have a good time out here.
-Congratulations -Thank you so much.
on not only your first book,
but on being a New York Times best seller.
Listen, I'm just trying to keep up with this guy.
-Thank you. Thank you. -(cheers and applause)
It feels like this was an inevitable step for you
because so many people were blown away
not just by your leadership,
-but by your writing at Teen Vogue. -Mm. Thank you.
Like, you seem to have always had a way with words.
-Where do you get that from? -You know what?
I think my dad would like to say I get it from him.
He would like to take credit for that.
But, yeah, I think ever since I was a little kid,
I was always interested in storytelling.
I remember being, like, in the bathtub at six years old,
and I would pretend to be Oprah or Barbara Walters,
and I would just interview, like, these imaginary people,
and it would be so dramatic.
Yeah, because there's someone in the bathtub with you.
It's just, like... As a six-year-old you're like,
-"Why are you in my bathtub, first question." -Right. Right.
Like, most people have, like, their moms doing story time.
-Yes. Yes. -I'm like, "Mom, I'm good. I'm good here."
You have a personality that has really just--
I mean, it has blown you up in multiple different fields.
More Than Enough tells us the story behind
-what we see in front of the camera, -Mm.
and that is who you are and how you became who you are today.
Why that title, More Than Enough ?
(sighs) I'm so glad you asked that question
because, um, I struggled with what to call this book.
Um, what's the through-line?
-I knew all the stories that I needed to tell. -Right.
And it's really about, you know,
going beyond the headlines and the highlight reels
that we scroll every single day on the Internet.
But the title, really, More Than Enough,
it's a mantra that I think we all need,
particularly young women, women, people of color,
people from marginalized communities,
because, for generations,
-we have been made to feel that we're not enough. -Right.
You know, and I think it resonates with anyone, really.
We all know that feeling of not feeling smart enough,
successful enough, skinny enough, tall enough.
And, you know, we both have experienced,
you know, not black enough, not white enough,
-coming from interracial families. -Right.
Um, and so, I think as you go through the book,
you kind of see yourself in this journey, this arc,
where you're born into the world
with this limitless sense of possibility,
and unbridled confidence, and then, over time,
the world starts to chip away at that,
particularly young girls who,
a stat I found when I was writing the book,
is that young girls' confidence peaks at age nine.
-It peaks at nine? -Peaks at age nine,
which was so heartbreaking to me.
And then I thought about my life
and I was like, no, it makes sense.
Think about all the messages that we're getting,
and then now you layer on social media.
And so you can kind of see this journey
that I think we all go through, where, if we're lucky,
we get to a point where we start to reclaim, you know,
some of that confidence in who we were really born to be.
So this is what the book is actually about.
It's a larger arc that I think we all can relate to.
You talk in the book about finding your mentor.
You know, you wanted to get into the world of magazines,
and you just, you just hunted somebody down,
and you're like, "I'm going to work with you."
I was a stalker, basically. (laughs)
-Yeah. I was relentless. -A very classy stalker.
Yes.
-Somehow it worked. Yes. -Right.
But how did you even think of that?
Like, how did you choose your mentor, and then, how did you--
Like, how do you go, Harriette Cole is gonna be the person
I want to shadow?
And how do you then even begin the journey of taking
all those "no"s and then turning them into a "yes"?
Well, here's what I think. I think it's important
to find out what you don't want to do.
And so, I kind of did soul searching early on,
and-and, and then I kind of had an "aha" moment.
I realized I wanted to be a magazine editor.
I had no idea how to make that happen as a small-town girl
who knew no one in New York City,
and no one in this magazine world or fashion.
And so I found this woman. I felt really drawn
to this woman named Harriette Cole, a black woman
who had this really multi-faceted career in media.
And I was so drawn to her.
I was like, "This is my career role model.
This is the woman I want to be."
And so I proceeded to stalk her.
And this was pre--
-this was pre-social media. -Oh, that's OG stalking.
-Now you can just... OG stalking. -Yeah.
-Like, now I could just slide into your DMs, Trevor. -Right.
-You know what I mean? -Yes. Yes.
-And, like, maybe you'll respond one day. -Right.
But even if you don't, I can see the way you're living your life,
and I can be inspired by you from afar, digitally, right?
-Yes. -But back in the day, I mean,
I had to, like, snail mail her.
I had to find her assistant's phone number
and call every day, and, luckily,
-she eventually took my call, -That is, that's...
'cause I threatened to show up with coffee.
Wow. That's inspiring and creepy.
-It really is. -I know.
No, i-it's amazing, and, I mean, that really is...
I don't recommend it but it did work.
You know what it is, I think it's because
-of the way you did it... -I'm gonna get stalkers
-after this, I feel like. -...and what you were trying--
Yeah, they're gonna stalk you and be like, "How does it feel?"
-Um... -(laughs)
Here's the thing, though,
you came into it with a base of knowledge.
You did the work, you know, and I think that's what you feel
in the story is that it's not just a story
of lucking your way through or forcing your way through,
you were doing the work.
I mean, it's no mistake that at 29
you became the youngest editor in chief
in Teen Vogue's history.
That's an insane achievement.
-Thank you. -(cheers and applause)
What is even more impressive, in my opinion,
is that you take over at Teen Vogue,
and everybody remembers this,
Teen Vogue shifted its focus in what people saw it as,
and it went from being a-- just a magazine
where it was just about beauty tips alone,
to now engaging young people, predominantly young women,
in politics, social justice, what's going on in their world.
Some people were like,
"Who is Teen Vogue to talk about politics?"
That was really done under your curatorship.
Why was that important, and how would you even begin to do that
in what people consider just a "beauty space"?
It was a critical responsibility.
I mean, you have to think about what was happening at the time.
The 2016 election had just taken place,
and, you know, this is a generation that cares deeply
about the issues that affect our world,
and that directly affect them, whether they can vote or not.
And they see themselves as activists.
They see themselves as change agents,
and we needed to respect and reflect that.
And so it felt like a real responsibility,
and, you know, we threw out the formulas.
We didn't know if it was going to work,
but we knew it was the right thing to do,
and we really ended up finding
a much larger audience, actually, of really engaged,
-politically engaged young people. -Right.
And I just feel really proud of the work
that we were able to do collectively as a young team.
It was a very young team of people that really took risks
to change that-- to really transform that brand,
and hopefully, more adults think
of their young teenagers in new ways now.
I hope that they're inviting them to the conversations
to talk about politics because they have an opinion,
-and their voices matter. -Their voices definitely matter.
- Thank you so much for being on the show. -Oh.
-Congratulations on an amazing book. -Thank you so much.
-Thank you. -More Than Enough is available now.
Elaine Welteroth, everybody.