Cosmopolitan UK — June 2017

COSMOPOLITAN · 13

R

E

FARRAH STORR

Editor

When I took over as editor of Cosmopolitan at the

tail end of 2015, I had a problem. (Well, actually,

I had 99 problems but that’s a whole other story.

You can watch my TEDx talk to find out the rest, if you’re

really interested.) No, the problem was this: we needed to

find a new features intern. And we were struggling.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: there’s no shortage

of young women who want to work on a glossy women’s

magazine. And you’d be right. These sort of entry-level jobs

can see us ploughing through as many as 800 applications.

But here’s the thing: almost all the women who applied

were the same woman. Not literally, obviously, although we

do always get that one candidate who thinks the number

of times you apply for the same job is in direct proportion

to your chance of getting said job. For the record... it isn’t.

Instead, what we found was that we were recruiting the

same type of woman: namely middle-class women from

the south-east of England.

Now, nothing wrong with that, of course. But you and

I know that is not a true representation of the UK. And

that was a problem for a magazine like Cosmopolitan.

In fact, it’s a problem for the media full stop.

There are countless reasons why but the most obvious

is... money. In the last decade London has become a town

of privilege. Once upon a time you could come down to

the capital with a fistful of dreams and a pocketful of loose

change and just about make things work. I was one of those

people. So too were my siblings, my friends and many of

my colleagues at Cosmopolitan. It was a democratic starting

block for those whose chosen career meant a necessary

4Keep in touch by following me

on Twitter @Farrah_Storr and

Instagram @farrahstorr

move down south. This, of course, is no longer the case. The

average monthly rent in London is now around £1,450*. If

you’ve a job on the London living wage (a starter salary that

the Mayor of London encourages businesses to provide),

that means three quarters of your monthly salary is gone

before you’ve even had time to buy cereal and Tampax.

The result has been a rapid, Geneva-fication of our

capital: a creeping, cold sterility that happens when you

price out the young.

So we here at Cosmopolitan had a dream. It was a dream

to open houses across the capital where young women were

able to live at a cost they could truly afford. We teamed

up with a wonderful social enterprise, Dot Dot Dot, which,

over the last year, has helped us find empty properties

across the capital. With help from our friends at Ebay we

have been able to refurbish these homes and, to date, have

provided homes for 12 women, all of whom are just

starting out in their careers. You can read about their stories

and see their new homes on page 116, as written by our

features director, Amy Grier, who has risked a small

aneurysm trying to make this all happen.

This is an ongoing project, so if you or anyone you know

wants to help with paint, carpets, white goods – you know,

all the things most of us had when we first started out –

then please email us at [email protected].

You should also get in touch if you can provide us with

some better painting outfits

than the ones we’re wearing

on the left...

FROM THE

EDITOR

Cosmopolitan Interiors Inc

*DATA FROM MAYOR OF LONDON AT GOV.UK

Here’s the

Cosmopolitan

team ready to

get to work

painting the

houses. We are

available for

all interior

decorating

work (as well as

ghostbusting)

for a very

reasonable fee