Gabrielle Korn on queering media, from Nylon to Netflix

Gabrielle Korn, Editorial & Publishing Manager at Netflix’s The Most 
| In conversation with Maggie Lee

How did you set your career on the path of queering media?

I studied queer and feminist theory in college, and started working in media right away. My first editorial job was at On the Issues Magazine, which was published in the basement of an abortion clinic in Queens, and then I went through Autostraddle. When I got to Refinery29 in 2013 as a beauty assistant, I was the only queer woman on the editorial staff to my knowledge. I felt a sense of obligation to start doing content that spoke to my community, because their beauty content was pretty traditional in terms of product recommendations and hairstyle inspo. There was a piece I did about being a femme with body hair that was a pretty major turning point for both me and the brand. It did really well, and all of a sudden people were wanting me to lean into writing about my own identity as a way to open up beauty into the larger topic that it is. So I carved out a niche for myself in that space and it affected the strategy of the whole company. They realized that they had to start considering “women” a multitudinous category. You know, the more stories and viewpoints you talk about, the more your audience grows.

And did you then face the same landscape and challenge at Nylon — was that what you went there next to do?

Nylon had already kind of branded itself as queer without actually coming out and saying it — it was the alternative Glossy, and I think there's some degree of implied queerness within that. But what I found was that in practice, that wasn't necessarily true. When I started, I was the only lesbian on staff again. So in creating the digital strategy, rather than having it be LGBT-friendly, I started talking about having it be queer-encompassing, so that a queer person could feel welcome regardless of what they were reading. When I became editor-in-chief in 2017, I’d already built up a very, very queer team across editorial, social media, video, and art, which were my departments. The content really reflected that. Readers responded to it, too, and I would have conversations with college students who would say things to me like, Nylon has always been a beacon for diversity. I would say, Really, when did you start reading it? And, they would say it was as long as they could remember, but I’d push further and find out it was maybe just four years.

Before that, to me, the brand was just kind of vaguely that Nylon was cool. In 1999, when the magazine was founded, they relied on skinny, white, privileged, cis women as their embodiment of coolness, and for my community and the audiences I wanted to reach, that really wasn't relevant. I would meet so many people who would say to me, I love Nylon, but it's not for me. And I'd be like, Well, why? You're so cool! It was obvious that they just weren't represented by it. So it was kind of like evolve or die, and in the mid-20-teens, the best way to be cool was to have a political awareness and involvement. Do everything you can to use your platforms to make the world a better place. That, to me, was what was cool. And it wasn't that much of a leap from doing edgy, indie fashion and music stuff to figuring out who the marginalized people within those industries were and how we could help elevate them and give them attention that they might not otherwise get because of how racist and homophobic media tends to be.

Now you head up The Most, which is Netflix’s home for LGBTQ+ storytelling on social media. When it comes to being not only queer-friendly, but queer-encompassing, I think about how the platform is able to cater to both how my mom consumes queer content on Netflix and how I watch. She’s seen Queer Eye, and she texted me about A Secret Love—stuff that’s maybe more of a friendly entry. Whereas I go to Sex Education, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Sarah Paulson in anything, the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror. What are you watching right now?

I’m so excited for people to see I Care A Lot. And I absolutely inhaled Bly Manor and Ratched! I am currently in the land of watching things that aren’t out yet, but I also loved the new seasons of Sabrina and Big Mouth, and also Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. I’m excited that Carol is on the service too. 

Me too. Did your team make that happen?

I wish! No, it was coming back regardless.

I guess what I’m saying is that Netflix really hits the whole range of what queer content means to different people. Who is The Most’s target audience — is it trying to mainstream queer content?

The Most is for queer people. Period. It's really important that as a marginalized community, we have a space to call our own, and that’s what we’re creating. It is for queer people by queer people.

Do you overlap a lot with Strong Black Lead, Con Todo, and other teams at Netflix in your work?

Intersectionality is really important to all of us. We create separately most of the time but when we can come together and work on a project it feels really special and powerful.

Tell me about the approach you’re taking with social.

We are working to amplify Netflix’s incredible queer titles, characters, storylines, and creators. Beyond that, we are engaging with our audience constantly, so that we are chiming in even when it’s not directly about a title. For example, we created a week of programming around Trans Awareness Week. We have a lot of titles we were able to pull from for it. We said something new with the things we already had, bringing in new voices and artists to help.

Netflix is a storytelling platform and a maker of representation, and in your job, you’re essentially strengthening the meaning around that representation. What are the advantages and challenges in that?

As someone who has always had to fight in other companies for work like this to be done, it is really amazing that the channels in this department existed before I got here. The fact that a company like Netflix has the intent and the wherewithal to create a space just for queer people is incredible, especially because queer media in general has a really hard time figuring out how to be sustainable. It's so valuable to be able to do work in this space and to have it be an arm of something that is such a core part of people's lives, especially right now. I think the challenges are that the internet is an ongoing conversation — being part of the conversation is the challenge of social media teams everywhere. It never stops.

And the queer community has so many sects within it, so many different conversations.

There are so many different ways to be queer and representation for everyone has such a long way to go. So I think it's really valuable that we are on the front lines of listening to people and how they want their stories told.

Speaking of stories, you’ve written a book! Tell me about Everybody (Else) Is Perfect. As you’ve been doing the virtual book tour around its launch, working back through what you wrote about, does it feel very different from where you’re at now in life?

One hundred percent. It feels like a very specific moment in time — that moment being my twenties in New York lifestyle media. The thesis of the book is that we’re at this point in time where women's media has gotten very surface-level woke and the content is really body positive and feminist. But the issues that women really face are the issues that we've always faced. So the question is, what is broken? And I found that to really answer that question, I needed to use my own experiences as evidence, so it became a memoir. And what happened to me was that I experienced professional success really, really young. But in order to do that, my personal life just totally fell apart. I thought that I had to achieve certain things and be a certain person. And the more I sacrificed, the more I was rewarded. It became this impossible cycle to get out of, and it's not uncommon — everyone in women's media is overworked, underpaid, and just totally taken advantage of. So that's what it's about. It was supposed to come out in June 2020 but that got bumped to this month. [Book and tour info here]

Do you consider the book queer?

Extremely! It’s as queer as I am. Which is to say, thoroughly. I talk about being a lesbian on the first page of the intro. And it’s also not chronological, which to me is queer because I think memory for queer people is nonlinear. We have our life as it happened and then we have a gradually unfolding understanding of ourselves, which informs what we see when we reflect, depending on when we are reflecting. I tried to capture that. I also wrote A LOT about dating. 

How do you define “queer content” in film and TV?

Good question! Well, I think it has to be about queer people, for queer people. Bonus points if it stars IRL queers, too.