We Need Help: Now Hiring a Fashion & Beauty Editor and Staff Writers

feature image of rocket ready designs by molly adams via PHOTOESSAY: Queer Fashion Week

We are currently seeking a Fashion / Beauty Editor and Staff Writers on topics related to news, politics, social and feminist issues for Autostraddle dot com. If a candidate for the former also has skills related to the latter, well! That would just be fantastic.

Fashion/Beauty Editor

This is an independent contractor position — most of our Subject Editors have other full-time jobs and/or freelance work — and is a perfect fit for a creative and ambitious visionary who has limited time but is ready to jump into a leadership position without having to climb the ladder first.

The Fashion/Beauty Editor visualizes and oversees fashion/beauty-related content for Autostraddle.com. This includes writing and/or editing two posts a week, including a biweekly on-brand “regular” of your own, as well as corresponding with external stakeholders, vendors, Autostraddle staff writers and contributors on beauty and fashion-related coverage and content. You’ll also have the opportunity to contribute to group posts and write outside of your subject area as much as you’d like!

Covering fashion for Autostraddle is a unique and inspiring challenge, as our readers expect content with options for a variety of gender presentations and identities as well as body types and income levels. You should have some familiarity with masculine-of-center fashion for women’s bodies or be confident in your ability to find contributors who do. You should be familiar with both high-end and discount brands as well as contemporary fashion trends. You’ll also have the opportunity to coordinate larger fashion guides as well as themed weeks or months (e.g., bra week, underwear week).

You should be funny, hungry and ambitious, with a fresh perspective.

You should:

• Be informed and on top of fashion/beauty trends
• Be capable of being a competent photographer/model for your own fashion posts (having your own DSLR camera / photography experience is a plus — but if you don’t have a camera, we’ll buy you one)
• Have some familiarity with basic HTML and social media
• Have a command of grammar/spelling/fact-checking
• Be obsessively detail-oriented
• Be passionate about Autostraddle
• Be reliable and accountable — the nature of a “virtual office” means we need a lot more “check-ins” than you might be used to

To apply:

Send us an email with your cover letter in the body of the email to: riese [at] autostraddle [dot], laneia [at] autostraddle [dot] com, rachel [at] autostraddle dot com, yvonne [at] autostraddle dot com and heather [at] autostraddle dot com. I know that’s a lot of people! Please make your subject line read FASHION EDITOR 2017, otherwise we can’t guarantee that it won’t be lost in our inboxes. This is very important!

This email will include:

• You briefly introducing yourself, telling us why you wanna work here and how Autostraddle fits into your career goals, and what your schedule is like
• If possible, any specific vision you have for the section (this isn’t required if you don’t want to take the time to develop one before getting the job, but if you’ve already got one, let us know!)
• A resume attached as a PDF
• 2+ links to writing samples
• 3+ pitches for one-off fashion articles or ongoing regular columns
• Link us to your instagram / tumblr / twitter / autostraddle profile / website as applicable.

Please familiarize yourself with the website and its target audience before applying. Most of our writers were Autostraddle readers before becoming writers here, but if our last round of applications was any indication, we’ll be getting more outside interest this time.

Previous Fashion & Beauty Regulars for your reference:

• Hard Lacquer, by Aja Aguirre
• Style is Style, by Lydia Okello
• Queer Outfit of the Week, by Lizz Rubin
• Lez Get Dressed for Work, by Gabrielle Korn
• Style Thief, launched by Lizz Rubin, continued by many other writers including hopefully you
• He Said/We Said, by DapperQ
• How To Own It, by Gabrielle Korn
• I’ll Have What She’s Wearing, launched by Laura Wooley

What’s In It For You:

Your vision for queer fashion and beauty coverage will be executed on the largest website for LGBTQ women in the world. You’ll help shape not only what this community talks about, but also how we talk about it. The voices you want amplified? They get amplified. The trends you want covered, even created? Done. It’s like being Master of the Universe, but probably a lot more fun.

Staff Writers are paid per post, usually ranging from $35 – $100 per post (mostly in the $35-$50 range) with opportunities for more on special occasions and room for advancement into higher-paying positions as those opportunities arise.

Subject Editors are paid in a variety of complicated ways, through a contract negotiated with the Editors. This usually involves a three-figure stipend as well as per-post payments for posts unaccounted for by the stipend. We will negotiate this with you! We wish we could pay you a million times more, but as an independently-owned website with a huge team on a tiny budget, we can’t — just yet. Queer women’s media is not a big money-maker!

You’ll also get free and discounted merchandise, gold A+ memberships, reimbursements for expenses, passes to cool stuff, and the opportunity to apply to be on the A-Camp Team (and thus be a part of camp for free) and killer recommendations.

While unfortunately none of us are making the wages we deserve, we’re passionate about the work we do and we genuinely find writing to be FUN. You’ll become a better writer, build a brand and a portfolio, develop valuable skills, make connections with brands and industry professionals, have the freedom to write about things you care about and connect with an engaged, passionate audience on a GLAAD-award-winning and very popular platform.

If this all this describes you AND you are interested in writing about news/politics/feminist issues, let us know in your application. That would make you just a splendid candidate and we could create a bigger role for you!

Deadline to apply: Thursday, March 23rd

Staff Writers

We are also looking for staff writers (specifically, QPOC staff writers) who are knowledgeable about and ready to report on current events in politics and social issues, as well as contemporary feminism, feminist activism and sociological studies.

Responsibilities:

You’ll be writing at least one article a week and one longer-form piece per month, checking in with us on Slack as often as possible, and also contributing to the A+ Insider or roundtables as requested. We know you’re not making a living here and probably have at least one other job, so we’re very flexible about your work schedule.

You should:

• Be informed and on top of LGBT news and current events and have the ability to write about them quickly
• Be comfortable coming up with story ideas on your own and pitching them to editors, although stories may also sometimes be assigned to you.
• Be capable of delving deeply into a story, researching its background and thinking critically about it from multiple angles to write coverage of it that includes context and considers its implications fully.
• Be comfortable reaching out to sources and confirming facts on your own, as well as with journalistic standards of sourcing and fact-checking.
• Have some familiarity with basic HTML and social media
• Have a command of grammar/spelling
• Be obsessively detail-oriented and eager to hit the pavement/make phone calls when necessary.
• Above all you need to be reliable and accountable — the nature of a “virtual office” means we need a lot more “check-ins” than you might be used to.

You should be passionate about Autostraddle, too!

To apply:

Send us an email with your cover letter in the body of an email to: riese [at] autostraddle [dot], laneia [at] autostraddle [dot] com, rachel [at] autostraddle [dot] com, yvonne [at] autostraddle [dot] com and heather [at] autostraddle [dot] com. I know that’s a lot of people! Please make your subject line read STAFF WRITER 2017, otherwise we can’t guarantee that it won’t be lost in our inboxes. This is very important!

Let us know your background and experience, what your availability is, what your areas of expertise are, and how Autostraddle fits into your overall life/career goals. Link us to your instagram / tumblr / twitter / autostraddle profile / website as applicable.

We also want you to give us five story and/or column ideas and provide a few writing samples, in the forms of links to your work online or attachments in PDF form.

Also, please familiarize yourself with the website and its target audience before applying — we’re LGBT women and nonbinary folks writing for the same, and in the past we’ve gotten applications from people who aren’t in those demographics and have no experience in writing for them, and we feel bad that they wasted their time! So maybe read the “about us” page before shooting us an email!

What’s In It For You:

Staff Writers are paid per post, usually ranging from $35 – $100 per post (mostly in the $35-$50 range) with opportunities for more on special occasions and room for advancement into higher-paying positions as those opportunities arise.

You’ll get free and discounted merchandise, gold A+ memberships, reimbursements for expenses, passes to cool stuff, and the opportunity to apply to be on the A-Camp Team (and thus be a part of camp for free) and killer recommendations.

While unfortunately none of us are making the wages we deserve, we’re passionate about the work we do and we genuinely find writing to be FUN. You’ll become a better writer, build a brand and a portfolio, develop valuable skills, have the freedom to write about things you care about and connect with an engaged, passionate audience on a GLAAD-award-winning and very popular platform.

If this all this describes you AND you are interested in the fashion editor position, let us know in your application. We might be able to smash these two projects together into a larger role, perhaps even a full-time job!

Deadline to apply: Thursday, March 23rd

A Note On Both Roles:

This gig won’t work for you if you’re not here for the team and the community. We’re not a bunch of satellites orbiting the web, we’re people who collaborate, learn from each other, grow together, and feel like family. We’re here instead of any number of other publications that would pay us more because we actually care, deeply, about making an impact locally and on the queer and feminist culture-at-large. (Well, and, we also like the editorial freedom.) The Autostraddle Network of current and former team members is vast and brilliant, and has enabled incredible creative collaborations, lifelong friendships, a pretty decent website, and the best camp in the whole wide world. This is your very special space to discuss your horrifying second-hand sex experiences, how to have no f*cks to give, why you say No to everything, your Lisa Frank enthusiasm and shit white parents said to you.

Often when we put out these calls, we get some backlash on social media about what we’re able to pay our writers and editors. We cannot say this enough: we want to pay more than we do but we can’t. Our other option is to stop existing altogether, and our continued existence remains both a minor miracle and my greatest life achievement. Last year, our expenses (read: paying our employees and writers) went up 47% but revenue only went up 17% — we survived with profit left over from 2015. Although A+ income has gone up, advertising income continues to plummet, camp profits will decrease due to the increased cost of our new site, and last month Amazon slashed affiliate commissions in half with zero warning. But we’re always hustling and finding new ways to make money and grow. We do pay our writers on time, and what we pay is on par with publications like Bustle and more than The Huffington Post, and they have literal MILLIONS of dollars at their disposal. You can also trust that I don’t make assurances I can’t keep — although per-post payments and salaries have gone up gradually over time, they’ve never gone down. I budget carefully to ensure I never have to lower payments/salaries or lay people off due to variations in the company’s financial health. We are family; I take that very seriously.

We are also desperately interested in applications from queer people of color! We cannot possibly overstate how interested we are in applications from queer people of color!

Please submit your application by Thursday, March 23rd.