-[theme music playing] -[Reese Witherspoon reading]
So fun. Whoo!
-Cheers! -Cheers!
Hi!
[Reese] I'm doing a show highlighting powerful,
ambitious women in different fields.
Let's go back to the top of the frame.
Okay, how did I do?
[Reese] And I would love to share with you
what makes these women so inspirational to me.
[gasps]
Love, Reese.
[upbeat music playing]
[Reese] I'm here in New York City to meet two groundbreaking women,
Cleo Wade and Elaine Welteroth.
Artist, poet and author,
Cleo Wade has captured everyone's attention
with her uplifting hand-written messages.
And her first book,
Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life,
was an immediate best-seller.
At age 30, Elaine was named editor-in-chief
of the print edition of Teen Vogue,
making her one of the youngest people to helm a Condé Nast publication.
Along with Phillip Picardi and Marie Suter,
Elaine helped reinvent Teen Vogue.
She's also co-written an episode of Grown-ish,
and just landed a major book deal.
I'm meeting these two best friends at their new co-working space,
where they're coming together to inspire the next generation of women.
[Reese] Hey!
Oh my God, it's so cold.
You look so chic.
-Hi! -So very New York.
I am not a New Yorker.
You look so good.
-Welcome to New York. -Thank you so much for having me.
-Come up. Come up. Come up. -I can't wait to see your new space.
-Let's get you out of this cold. -Okay.
[upbeat music playing]
Okay, so you've only been here for a few days.
[Elaine] Literally, this is day one
-of forever. -Wow.
[Elaine] Cleo, we have guest.
-[Reese] Oh my God! -Oh my God!
How lucky am I,
-that I get to be the first one. -You are the first one.
[Reese] You look like you're busy at work.
[Cleo] I'm just putting some mantras in place.
-Kind of set the tone of the space. -Set the tone.
We were gonna sage this space for you as well.
-Okay. -[Elaine] If you wanna be a part of like,
-christening the space. -Do you sage your house?
[Reese] Yes, I do.
After any kind of disturbance...
-[Cleo chuckles] Yeah! -...or breakup, or...
Even if I have a hostile house guest, I'm like, right when they leave...
-Bye-bye! Bye-bye! -Okay, see you next week, girl.
[Reese] Get out there.
[Cleo] Totally, totally.
-[Elaine] Do you want to do the honors? -[Reese] Sure.
Okay, I love that this is happening.
-[laughing] -[Elaine] We're so ridiculous.
Get her! Get her!
Don't say "get me" like that.
[laughing]
[Elaine] I met Cleo through
a story that I wanted her to do for Teen Vogue.
And I reached out to her
and she writes me back, "Goddess,
why don't you come over for a cup of tea?
Love, Cleo."
I'm like, who is this fairy? What planet does she live on?
So Elaine comes over to my house,
and what I love about her so much
is that a moment begins when she enters the room,
because she's kind of like comes in and it's like,
"Oh! Blah, blah, blah, da-da-da! Da-da-da!" Like... you know,
and you are just mesmerized by her.
We sat, we talked.
We had a bottle of wine.
I swear, I feel like I left with a sister.
You're both on this new journey.
And you're doing it together, in a shared space,
which is amazing.
We already had been, like, collaborating and talking about all the--
[Cleo] But we were doing it like slumber parties.
[Elaine] Right. Like, in bed...
So we'd be in bed, we'd be having takeout,
-We'd be watching... plotting-- -Plotting our takeover of the world.
So we really were plotting... It started as just slumber parties,
and then I was like, maybe we should just have, you know,
a space where other people could come,
who don't have to know me so well that they're in my bed.
[Reese] And so you created this space.
Yeah. So we created this space.
And you designed this space.
I did. I'm like low-key.
Do I give up the poetry thing and become a decorator?
Right. Right.
-[Reese] I'm excited about this. -[Cleo] Oh my gosh! I'm so excited.
She wrote a book!
I've been waiting for this.
When I was selling it, I was like, I'm not making a book of just poetry.
I really wanna make a tool kit.
I wanna make a guide, and I also wanna make something--
-I love that. A tool kit for people. Yeah. -[Cleo] Yeah.
Before I wrote the book, I sat down and I was like,
"I'm making a promise to this reader,
and I promise you that you will feel less alone,
because I made this for you."
[Reese] I definitely feel that way when I read your work.
I just feel like seen, heard,
um, and acknowledged in a way that
I've never felt acknowledged before.
When I was writing the book, it was really interesting,
because I focus a lot
on the joy of being able to be imperfect...
That's a tough one.
-Oh, it's so tough. -Enjoying imperfection.
-Yeah, it's horrible. -I do think
we as women are so hard on ourselves.
I wasn't even brave enough
to dream this for myself as a little girl.
I've never even seen a poem in The New York Times.
I never thought that I'd write one in The New York Times.
I grew up poor and in Louisiana,
I wasn't a great classroom learner.
I didn't have enough money to go to college,
I moved to New York at 17.
It's such an adventure to also be a poet and artist at this time,
because back in the day, like a gallery had to break an artist.
Now you break yourself as an artist,
because the online spaces allow you to do that.
I think that Instagram really democratizes the art world
and for me it really has been
such an incredible community-building tool.
So, Elaine, I've heard you speak about
that race walks in the door, before your accomplishments.
Or who you are as Elaine.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Because I think it is something where definitions can be a headline,
but it isn't necessarily how you feel in your heart.
I was just a girl that worked really hard
and got a great job. Right?
But then, I learned that I had made history.
And I saw in the headlines,
I was the first black editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue.
And you had no idea till you read it in the newspaper.
[Elaine] I had no idea. Nah, I had no idea.
All roads sort of lead to that. I started my career at Ebony magazine,
which is a black magazine,
and I've always known.
So taking it back to like that existential crisis,
at 19 or 20, when I was about to graduate from college, and I was like,
"Holy shit!"
I don't think the universe or the world that we live in
prepares young women to take leaps,
or to dream big,
or to even see a path towards
a larger vision of your life.
I knew I wanted to be great,
but I just didn't know what the title was, or what the...
You know, what it would look like.
And so I remember locking myself in my mom and dad's study.
I was home for Thanksgiving break
and I prayed, and I googled, and I was just like,
-"What should I do with my life, Google?" -[laughing]
-But what did Google say? -[Elaine] I know, this is...
Google didn't have anything for me, okay?
This is why we needed your book then, but...
No, but I googled so many different internships and stuff, and I...
And I remember, my mom had an Ebony magazine
with Alicia Keys on the cover in this fabulous red dress,
and I normally would never pick up Ebony
'cause it's like your auntie's magazine.
But I was like, "Oh, I love Alicia," so I opened straight to her cover story,
and it was as if I audibly heard to google this woman's name.
The woman who wrote this story, her name is Harriete Cole.
So I googled Harriette Cole, I read her bio.
She was a magazine editor for 11 years in fashion and beauty,
and then she became a best-selling author.
She basically translated
her value system
across mediums.
She became the brand,
and it was like
a light bulb had gone off in the darkest room.
"This is what I'm supposed to do. I need to meet her."
And I found her assistant's phone number and I called every day.
They absolutely thought I was crazy.
For sure, they were like, "This girl..." And I was like,
"It's okay, I will... If she's not available, um...
I will just fly to New York." And they were like,
"Don't fly to New York."
-"Don't call us anymore!" -[Elaine] "You're insane."
So eventually, they were like, "To make this girl stop calling,
let's just set up the phone call, get it out of the way."
Four months later, Harriette calls me back.
And she was like, "Elaine, this is Harriette.
I'm looking for an assistant."
-What? -[Elaine] And I was just like...
What? [imitates explosion]
Looking back, it's like,
"Of course that girl was supposed to be a magazine editor."
You know, I would make these elaborate collages...
Now I have the language for it. These were layouts, you know?
This was my way of storytelling
and sharing my life, and now you have Instagram,
which is sort of the online version,
or the social networking version of that,
but really, I'm just a girl who likes to scrapbook.
I grew up with a black mother,
a white father, but my mom really exposed me to black culture.
She made sure that on Sundays, I was at a black church
even though I grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood.
She made sure that I got my hair done in a black salon.
And so I've always had this real appreciation for black beauty,
and black culture and the community.
I felt like I was meant to be a bridge,
like I was meant to bring
positive messages of what black people are,
what we look like, what black excellence is,
and bring that to mainstream.
Being from a mixed-race household,
I kind of always felt like I was in-between two worlds.
Things as small as just not having a band-aid
that actually matches your skin tone
reinforces this idea that you are other.
And you are not the norm
and your beauty is not the standard and you are not,
you know, desirable. It goes deep.
As a person who saw Teen Vogue, 'cause I have a teenager at home,
saw the evolution where it became
a much more engaging conversation
with these young girls.
And as a young white woman, I was always reading Seventeen
and Teen and Vogue and all these things and always seeing myself represented.
It was like suddenly the lights were turned on
and we were starting to see
different ideas of beauty.
And different ideas of political activism.
I'm learning more about what is white feminism,
what is intersectionality.
-Right. Right. -[Reese] And those are things like,
you don't know what they are, because I am
-a victim of my own privilege. -[Cleo] Right.
[Elaine] It's heartening to me
to hear you even use the word "privilege," by the way.
To even have the language
and the understanding that you are...
That you have privilege,
and that you're willing to check it is so, like...
Teen Vogue's doing its job, you know. And...
You are, because my daughter reads your magazine,
and her friends read your magazine and they educate me.
You know, I wish somebody, when I was a young girl,
had been writing about that in my magazines, but they weren't.
At Teen Vogue, I had a social responsibility
to create a space that was inclusive
where you can be on the frontlines of the Black Lives Matter march
no matter what color skin you have.
And also be obsessed with Bieber and Selena
and like, "Are they getting back together?"
I never want to be categorized as an influencer
or as like...
I don't think of either one of y'all as influencers.
Well, it's like one of my least favorite words.
But if you're gonna use it,
what are you gonna use your influence for at a time like this?
Change-makers?
You gotta come up with something new.
Yeah, we need something else to brand an active woman
who's changing hearts and minds.
Ooh! Ooh!
I'm borrowing that. That's gonna be on my card.
-Active woman. -[Cleo] Active woman.
Actively changing hearts and minds.
-Active women. -Yeah, you might have heard of me.
-Oh. -Nice to meet you.
-[laughing] -[Elaine] I love it.
And I think that a lot of what most women struggle with is
reconciling your girlhood dreams with your womanhood dreams.
You've dreamt your whole life of the career you want.
And then when we get to these spaces,
it's all of a sudden you're hearing this faint knock at the door
getting louder and louder.
And it's your womanhood who's coming in, saying,
"Okay, now what?"
What are you doing with the power you just got?
You don't really get to have just like intention be good enough anymore.
Yeah. I had that wakeup call like,
I've been so blessed in the trajectory I've had in publishing,
but there's something else for me.
I wanna take the skill set of being a storyteller
and I want to translate that across other mediums.
Three months ago, I walked into Anna Wintour's office,
and I resigned.
I loved every moment of my career at Teen Vogue,
but it was time to write my next chapter
across TV,
and film and books.
Starting with my first book that I'm working on now.
And the sky is the limit.
I've been so blessed to have friends like Cleo,
who has been like my spirit guide on this,
leaping out on my own, because she's done it already.
She had a career in fashion that she doesn't really talk about very much,
people probably don't know that about her.
But she had to take the leap as well.
But watching her
boldness and her intentionality
and how she builds her business for the betterment of all women,
and all of that has been so inspiring to me.
I love one of the things that you wrote about unsubscribing.
I thought that was so powerful. When I read that,
I thought, "I've heard anybody say it like that."
And it just gave me chills to think about unsubscribing to other people's ideas
-of what a woman's supposed to be. -This fight against the silencing of women
which I think started with the Women's March
and then carried through with movements like Me Too and Time's Up,
I think when it hit,
it really gave me permission to say, "Nope."
And I think that we have to remember that
our "hell nos" are as important
-as our "hell yesses." You know? -[Reese laughing] Yes. I love that. Yeah.
When we can say, "No."
[Reese] Mmm-hmm.
I don't feel that way anymore.
I don't think that's okay anymore.
I won't accept that behavior anymore.
Is it sometimes hard to take your own advice?
[Cleo] Everything I write is something I practice.
So I don't really look at it as advice.
You know, when I write, I want to be gentle
-with where people are. -Yeah.
You know, because a lot of it can be pushy, especially...
You know, when you write in the kind of spiritual, or political space.
I don't think it's that inclusive all the time.
Yeah, for sure.
A few years ago, I did this
public art installation where I...
It was inspired by Lucy from the Peanuts,
and it was a booth that I put in.
-[Reese] Oh, I read about this. -Yeah.
I put it in this park in the Lower East Side
-and it was an "Are you okay?" booth. -Yeah.
[Cleo] And it said "Free, peaceful and loving conversation."
And I had young person after young person after young person, I mean, I...
Just telling me these heart-breaking stories.
One person said to me, you know,
"As a gay Latina plus-size woman,
I've been told my whole life that there's no space for me in the world,
so I walk around trying to take up as little space as possible."
And she said, "So how could I deserve love? Because love is so big."
And I remember making a promise to myself that day
that I'd always get up every morning for these girls.
Elaine and I talk about a lot
how and why we pick certain projects or certain things, you know,
sometimes, it's just five-year-old me, six-year-old me,
never saw someone who looked like me doing this.
-You have to do it. -[Reese] Yeah.
One of the things that bonds us
and that makes us feel like we have common ground is like,
we really care about young girls.
Personally and professionally, we've made great strides,
but there's more to do.
And I think that there's so much wisdom
locked up in the stories women don't tell.
Right.
You know, I think it's really important when we start to think of
how to activate ourselves as citizens.
Like, what do you do locally?
What do you do nationally? What do you do globally?
And so one of the things that we do locally,
is work with the Lower East Side Girls Club
which is the most amazing facility for young girls
who are living in under-served communities
and we are gonna take you over there today.
-Oh my God, I would love to meet them. -So...
-[Cleo] I'm so excited. -[Reese] Let's go meet the girls.
I admire what Elaine and Cleo are trying to accomplish in this world.
They are determined to make a difference
through activism, through journalism,
through creativity,
through poetry and art.
There's no modern playbook
to be female and a boss.
Because all the role models we've had have been men.
But I found that
when you trust people, when you're there for them as a mentor,
when you ask for the person in the room
that you've noticed hasn't had an opportunity to speak,
it shifts the outcome in the entire room.
And you're actually, by example, training
-a new generation of leaders. -Yeah.
I think every woman thinks, "What can I do for a younger woman
to make this a different world for her?"
How can we do more?
[Reese] I'm so excited.
[Cleo] The Lower East Side Girls Club is three blocks from my house.
So it really is in my community.
I have done panels with them,
I've sat in on their art classes,
sometimes I just go and hang out with the girls,
and to see the way that these girls are
knowing their right to their voice so early
is so incredible.
So tell me when the Girls Club started.
So we were founded in 1996.
There were three boys clubs in this neighborhood
and no program specifically for girls.
So a group of women from the community got together and decided,
"No one's gonna do it for us,
so we're starting a girls club."
[Erikka] And we provide meals every day that are open to...
So, full vegetarian meals. We grow some food on our roof.
It took everyone in this community really coming together to fight for this.
Yeah, and bringing their own special skills to the table.
-Absolutely. -That's amazing.
You haven't seen anything yet.
This is just the beginning.
[Reese] So how many girls come here?
[Erikka] About 300 a week
and we teach our young women to be entrepreneurs
and start their own businesses.
So this is our sewing room
and here we have, like, the younger girls,
some of the high-school girls make pot-holders.
We make aprons, we make shirts.
We have a stall in Essex Market.
The high-school girls, they work there and they sell our products
to help make money for the Lower East Side Girls Club.
This is one of the short aprons.
-Oh, that's so cute. -And basically we have the girls
sign their names on here to see who made them.
-This is so cool. That's awesome. -Thank you.
We love the Girls Club. I've been here for like... Since fifth grade.
-[all cheering] -What's your favorite thing
that you've learned here that you wouldn't have learned anywhere else?
I don't wanna cry, but like, I've been here for so long,
and like, I go through, like, a lot of struggles,
like, outside of Girls Club.
And so when I come here, it makes me feel really happy.
And like, they just welcome you,
and not only do they teach Girls Club... like how to sew,
but they teach you like life experiences.
Like, if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have a job.
I just... I'm just really thankful for that.
-They teach me a lot of stuff. -That's so awesome. Thank you.
At Girls Club, we learn at a young age,
even though we might not know who we are, we know what can we do
and especially in a community where it seems like
you're hopeless, I know that I can
turn my passion into something that's gonna help other people.
Do you think they should make more of these girls clubs?
Yes, it's sad that there's a whole bunch of boys clubs, and not enough girls clubs.
Well, thank you for sharing your stories. It makes me so happy.
That's amazing, y'all.
This is so cool.
[girl] You wanna try?
Yeah. Oh, no, you're gonna make me thread it!
Yeah, you're gonna thread it.
Reese, you're going the wrong way.
-I'm going the wrong way. -You gotta go this way through the line.
-Oh, okay, okay, okay. I knew that. -I knew that.
Ow!
I stabbed myself. Ow!
-Where's the place for that? Okay. -[girl] You put this in here.
-I... with a lot of help. -You did it!
Oh, my God, my mom's gonna be so upset at me.
So we're heading to our wonderful sound studio.
Our philosophy is, give a girl a mic, you give a girl a voice, right?
You're training them to sort of empower themselves
through conversation and through research and question-asking.
So, we have a little podcast set-up.
This is our airstream trailer.
-Wow. -Aisha's waiting for us.
-WGRL. -WGRL.
WGRL on the radio.
Take it away, Aisha.
Hi, I'm Aisha Shariff from the Lower East Side Girls Club
and you're listening to WGRL, Where Girl Radio Lives.
And we're here with Reese Witherspoon,
Cleo Wade and Elaine Welteroth.
Thank you guys for coming and welcome.
Thanks for having us.
Our first question's actually for you, Reese.
Oh.
I was wondering, as a young filmmaker myself,
what the Time's Up movement is gonna mean for my generation
and not just for young women who are going into the film industry,
but also just in industries as a whole.
Well, that's a great question. I think
when we're trying to eliminate discrimination,
create more inclusion,
making sure every voice is heard
and there are more seats at the table for different kinds of story-tellers.
I know I feel like I'm sort of a recipient of
women like you who have
kind of been an example of not being
stuck in a box,
and you're now creating opportunities for more women.
And I wanna do that too.
So it's an exciting time to be alive
and it's an exciting time to be a woman,
and, you know, what I ask myself every day
is the same thing that I'd ask of you,
it's like, "What are you gonna do with the platform that you've been given?"
Because this is an opportunity.
The movements that are the most effective
are when people are actually changing how they think culturally.
-Mmm-hmm. -So if there's a new cultural movement
where women are saying time is up,
I think that makes much more of a difference,
because then when it's my generation, we're gonna expect
to be treated this way,
because that's how we're being like raised up.
-[Cleo] New standards. -[Aisha] Exactly.
It's time that we stand up for the younger generation as well.
I'll just end with
what advice you guys have for me,
but me as in other young women.
If there's anything I really want your generation to know, is that
it's new territory, so we really need each other
and we need to be in it together.
This is Aisha, and you've been listening to WGRL.
-Thank you so much. This was so fun. -Thank you.
We had way too much fun with this microphone.
-[Cleo] Thanks, Aisha. -[Elaine] Thank you.
[Reese] What's the podcast called?
[Aisha] It's WGRL, Where Girl Radio Lives,
on iTunes.
[Cleo] So here we are, in Alphabet City Art School right here.
-Hi, fabulous ladies. -[all greeting]
[Erikka] Cleo actually sent over a poem
that we're gonna work on in a little bit here.
The Lower East Side Girls Club represents
everything girl power.
We're training the next generation of young women
to be leaders, to be entrepreneurs,
to travel, to change the world.
So this beautiful poem by Cleo is very fitting for the work that we do.
And because this is about girl power and your power,
it should be about how you see it and how you would do it,
and defining your style within the words.
So, do you, baby boo.
We are living in such an intense time and space.
What I love the most about the Lower East Side Girls Club is that
they give kids a space to be kids.
Bam.
I hope that adults are talking to their daughters,
and their daughters' friends.
I hope they're inviting them to have critical constructive conversations,
because they have an opinion and it matters.
[theme music playing]