Photo editor Rose Cashin-Trask had outdone herself. She’d combed old party pictures from celebrity photographers, wire services, and Photogram for the most flattering and sophisticated images of Bess and Cat she could find, portraying them as hardworking mini-Margots caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’d played along as instructed, giving a mea culpa interview—an hour-long sit-down on-air with broadcast personality Anders Smith—exactly one week after their arrest in July, affirming their devotion to RAGE and their devastation over Hillary’s death with convincing sincerity.
“It doesn’t matter what I’m being called,” Cat had said, trying to garner support from every woman who’d ever called herself a feminist. “Party girl—which we all know is tabloid-speak for ‘useless, drug-addled slut’—is just a pathetic attempt to reframe the focus from what RAGE, along with Maddie Plattstein, who I think you’ll agree is an incredibly well-respected investigative journalist, is trying to expose. Bedford Organics has opened a door into the beauty industry that we refuse to close. So if what comes out of this is that women across the globe learn about what constitutes healthy and safe in the products they use every day, that they feel pressured to use every day in order to be defined as ‘good enough’ by the society around them, then I’ll gladly be arrested a million times. We can tolerate being made fun of. We can’t tolerate promoting products that kill people, people like our friend Hillary.”
“But why not tell the whole story now? Why apologize without an explanation?” Anders had lobbed them a big fat grapefruit of a softball.
Bess had replied with her most serious face, punting to promote the magazine as Paula had instructed her to do: “The article will be out in the September issue, on newsstands August 20. It’s late for us, but it’s the soonest we can get it out. In this day and age, I know a lot of people think print doesn’t matter—but it does. It’s the best avenue for us to distribute this information as widely as possible. And frankly, it’s still being fact-checked at this very moment, something that’s very important to us, and certainly to the public.”
“So you’re confirming that there’s more to the story?”
“Absolutely. Read the September issue,” Cat had insisted. “RAGE is still a global feminist publication for everyone, and we’re still committed journalists, even if what we cover is fashion and beauty. Did we make a mistake? Yes. Absolutely. But that mistake has led to a story that we—and Margot Villiers—won’t drop.”
“What does Margot think about all of this?”
“Margot’s politics have shaped an entire generation of women,” Cat replied, ready for her final sound bite, one that had come directly from Margot herself. “As you know, RAGE began as a magazine that showcased only American-made goods, but when globalization demanded that we change, we did. We’ve focused proudly on featuring only goods made with living-wage labor since 1994. I’m thrilled to announce we’ve added a new standard, and that is represented by the word ‘sustainable’: starting with this issue, we’re transitioning into featuring only goods that are made with care for the planet and care for the people on it.”
Bess took the wheel. “Anders, did you know that the textile industry is the world’s third-largest overall polluter, and the second-largest polluter of our water supply after agriculture? Each year eighty billion garments are produced worldwide. The global production of cotton alone consumes one trillion gallons of water, thirty-three trillion gallons of oil, and twenty billion pounds of chemicals annually.”
“We’re starting with face cream that could kill you,” Cat continued, “but we won’t stop until you can be certain that the blouse you’re wearing didn’t poison someone’s well water. When we rely on goods—beauty products, clothing, shoes, anything—made under conditions that violate our own moral and ethical codes, we become vested in the oppression of others. The American woman can change that with her dollar.”
Subscriber issues were delivered worldwide at 4:00 a.m. GMT on the same day the September issue hit newsstands. Protesters had chained themselves to the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters in Washington, DC, by lunchtime; two members of Congress who had taken particularly lucrative positions on behalf of beauty-industry lobbyists resigned by 3:00 p.m. Four national pharmacy chains cleared their shelves of product from subsidiaries of Esme Bowder, Ruby Global, Calico Inc., and Raven & Co.—leaving just two brands of shampoo left in the bulk of their stores. The Dow fell 1,282 points before close.
Over the last eight weeks Cat and Bess had been promoted from their comfortable status as boldfaced names in trade publications like Women’s Wear Daily to a full-blown international obsession, dissected daily in every corner of the internet. Their glamorous mug shots, salacious backstories, perfect pedigrees, camera-ready wardrobes, and Photogram histories had sparked a flame of curiosity in the public eye; Paula had no trouble convincing Margot that flame could be fanned into a frenzy that would burn to RAGE’s advantage.
The first weeks of their ejection into the coliseum of public opinion had been merely an experiment. Cooper’s publicists sent them to events throughout August, with full makeup, hair, and wardrobe, as food for the internet’s gaping maw, and it had worked like a charm. After only a few days, Mania devoted an entire vertical and real-time interactive map to Cat and Bess, running it completely on user-generated content that pulled the GPS coordinates from any photo that was taken of them anywhere. Margot had been enraged. Why aren’t we the ones who are capitalizing digitally on our own fucking product? she’d screamed at Paula, but it didn’t matter. The map was just one of the pieces lighting the route of their new trajectory, and RAGE’s subscriptions went up by half a million.
The amount of time Cat and Bess now spent preparing to be photographed cut into their workdays significantly. They were no longer expected to attend meetings or even review copy. Other staffers, their workloads doubled, bristled with resentment; only Molly threw herself into their service, refusing to return to school for fall semester on the basis that they “obviously” needed her help. Bess was grateful for the loyalty and allocated Molly a stipend for the year, calling her a “contributing assistant editor.” Molly picked up the slack without question and happily settled into the cubicle next to Bess’s, where she arrived early in the morning and was the last to leave at night.