Glamorous media job. Expensive clothing. Expensive shoes. Adorable best guy friend who turns out to be the love of your life. Are these classic elements of a bad romantic comedy, or are they the stuff your dreams are made of? Well, get a job with Her Campus—which is now hiring—and maybe, just maybe, your future can become a chick flick come true. (Okay, minus the part about the best guy friend. No guarantees on that one.)
Her Campus, a student-run online magazine for college women that hopes to be a kind of savior for the dying print media industry, has been sending out emails advertising opportunities to “gain work experience” with “a growing entrepreneurial team” and “work with top brands like Juicy Couture and Victoria’s Secret.” The following unpaid positions are available: Publicity Associate, Finance Associate, Social Media Associate, and most curiously, Beauty Associate.
Hmm. Most of those seem pretty standard, but “Beauty Associate”? What does that even mean? See our musings after the jump.
So what exactly would a Beauty Associate’s job entail? Would she (or he) be a wannabe Anna Wintour, dictating makeup tips and style advice? Would she be in charge of helping Her Campus perpetuate the single standard of beauty touted by just about all fashion and women’s magazines? What if an applicant has a really grotesque sense of beauty, one that doesn’t conform to the mostly thin, mainstream, well-manicured version that Her Campus (so far) seems to support? (Yes, we mean, what if you think the applicant is ugly?)
We contacted Her Campus to inquire more about this and the other jobs, but we have so far not received a response.
Now, even though FlyBy has definitely been guilty of snarking on Her Campus in the past, we’ll say now that we do think it’s great whenever young entrepreneurs—especially women—start their own businesses. So, for that reason, the fact that Her Campus exists is actually pretty cool. But the magazine claims that it represents “the future of online media” and “responds directly to the needs of college women.” We’d argue that a lot of Her Campus’ content is neither particularly revolutionary nor universally insightful. (The daily poll today was, “What color nail polish are you wearing right now?”)
Granted, this FlyBy correspondent is an unfashionable cheapskate who only recently learned to appreciate the wonders of an eyelash curler—probably not the kind of candidate Her Campus would want to hire anyway (especially as a Beauty Associate). Which, of course, is totally fair.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)