Zara Barrie is not new to putting words on a page. For over a decade she has been blogging and writing for such popular publications as Elite Daily and GO Magazine. But what is new this year is her very first book, Girl, Stop Passing Out In Your Makeup: The Bad Girl’s Guide To Getting Your Sh*t Together. As you may gather from the title, Barrie revels in the fact that this isn’t your traditional self-help book … it’s “more about the messy journey than it is about the picture-perfect destination.” Hark! Millennial women everywhere! Don’t you feel seen?!
Barrie recently took time with The Nerd Daily for a Q&A just as humorous and insightful as her book. Read on for her thoughts on what those “traditional” self-help books are missing, the importance of sexual empowerment, the incredible comedic writer she recently started fangirling over, and much more!
Hi Zara and thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions for The Nerd Daily! To start, tell our readers a little bit about yourself.
Hello! Thank you SO much for having me, Nerd Daily!
I’m Zara and I’m an author, speaker, and performer. I’ve been pouring my heart out (via the written-word) on the great expanse of the internet since I was fifteen. I had one of those old-school LiveJournal blogs, that were all the rage amongst the emo set in the early aughts. Since then I’ve published thousands of articles for a wide variety of publications, founded the “837 Lit Salon” in partnership with Samsung, and published my first book: Girl, Stop Passing Out In Your Makeup: The Bad Girl’s Guide To Getting Your Sh*t Together.
It’s been a wild, messy ride and I’ve loved every moment of it, even the heartbreaking ones.
In May you released Girl, Stop Passing Out in Your Makeup: The Bad Girl’s Guide to Getting Your Sh*t Together, which is not the traditional self-help book. (In all the best ways!) How do you describe your book to others and why was it important to you that the book be different from more mainstream self-help books?
Girl, Stop Passing Out In Your Makeup is absolutely ~not~ a traditional self-help book, and honestly, that’s entirely by design. While I love and respect the self-help genre, I found myself longing for a different kind of self-help book. The self-help books I was reading at the time seemed to be catered toward women who were already pretty settled down in their lives. What about single, millennial party girls reared in the age of social media and prescription speed and leaked sex tapes? Why should these brilliant, creative young women keep slipping through the cracks? Additionally, I found that so many self-help books glossed over key issues that young women are grappling with: Sexual trauma. Addiction. Self-medicating. Toxic relationships. Eating disorders. Sexual identity.
It’s my utmost belief that unabashed honesty is at the very root of wellness. You can meditate for fifteen hours a day — but if you’re still ashamed of your dark past or are teeming with secrets or are deathly afraid to confront what happened to you when you were seventeen — you’re never going to truly heal. And I kept seeing a pattern so many women in my generation who genuinely want to better themselves, fall into. We dutifully partake in every activity the wellness gurus preach: clean eating, yoga, rubbing our feet in the grass, cold-plunges, gratitude lists. Yet we still feel wracked with anxiety and depression. And because we don’t feel as good as these wellness activities promise to make us feel — we keep falling back into the same old destructive habits that hold us back from living our best lives: self-medicating with booze and drugs, searching for validation in all the wrong places, stuffing down our desires and punishing ourselves with obsessive negative self-talk. And then we shame spiral! What’s wrong with me that I can’t ever get it together like Suzie the viral nutritionist on Instagram! I’m trying to do EVERYTHING RIGHT.
I came to realize, that reason we weren’t getting it “together” is because we’re terrified of being honest with ourselves about what’s *really* keeping us up at night. So I decided to write a book that will help people get over the fear of gazing into the truths they’re terrified to confront. A book that’s more about the messy journey than it is about the picture-perfect destination. And in my career as a writer, I’ve learned that the only way to truly get a person to look in the mirror (sans a filter), is by looking into your own mirror (sans a filter). Revealing the truths you’re afraid to confront inspires others to do the same.
That’s where the title Girl, Stop Passing Out In Your Makeup comes from! The book has nothing to do with beauty or skincare. Truthfully, I don’t care if you sleep in your makeup, I sleep in a full face at least once a month. When I say Girl, Stop Passing Out In Your Makeup, what I mean is this: let’s dare to look at our raw skin without anything covering up our scars. Let’s examine how the scars came to be. And hopefully, by the end of the book, we’ll stop seeing our scars as shameful or ugly. We’ll see them as beautiful.
You cover a really broad range of topics in the book … from relationships and sex, to substance abuse and eating disorders, to manifesting the life and career you want, and much more. Was this your intention going into the book, rather than focusing on a particular set of issues? Did your vision or structure of the book change over time as it came to life?
It’s so interesting because while my book seems to cover a very broad range of issues, I’ve found that they all tend to bleed into one another. If you’ve experienced sexual assault it’s very likely that you’ve felt out of control and therefore, tried to micromanage your food intake. If you’ve harbored shame over your sexual identity since you were a kid, you’ve likely gotten in the habit of self-medicating with drugs and alcohol to numb the torturous shame that plagues your soul incessantly. If you’re getting lost in the glitter of the party every night, you’re likely an incredibly creative-creature who hasn’t learned how to channel their party girl prowess into wild productivity yet. If you’re super creative and don’t have an outlet for that boundless creativity, you’re going to feel depressed. Which will lead to self-medicating. And so on.
I’m not sure if it was my intention to cover all of these issues, they just sort of naturally came up as I was working on the proposal. I would think about one issue and my brain would circle to another issue that was connected to that issue. It was pretty organic, which is such a joyful way to create. I say, let the mind wander to where the mind wants to wander and it will travel to all kinds of magical places all on its own!
I love that you connect a song with each chapter of the book. Music is so powerful in our lives, whether it is through creating a specific mood at the moment or connecting us to a particular memory or experience. Could you talk a bit about the role music has played in your life and why this needed to be woven into Girl, Stop Passing Out in Your Makeup?
Music is everything to me. I process all of my feelings through music, like a true melodramatic, Lana Del Rey loving Sad Girl. Nothing makes sense to me emotionally, until I experience it through a song. Whenever I embark on a big writing project I always create an elaborate playlist that helps me break free from the shackles of intellectual analysis and dive right into the visceral. My intention is to stab the reader in the heart, not the head.
I paired each chapter with a song because I wanted to elevate the intensity of the whole book. Nothing heightens a scene like a gut-punching song, you know?
So much of what you have tackled in your previous writing, as well as in this book, is related to relationships and sex. For those who haven’t read the book yet, could you summarize some of the common preconceptions you think millennials struggle with in these areas? What advice do you have for moving forward with healthier relationships?
Oh wow, what a great question! Millennial women are in an interesting spot because we’re a generation caught in the crossfires of a cultural evolution. As teenagers and adolescents, there was no sex-positive movement, there was no #metoo movement, there was no body-positivity movement. If a girl dressed provocatively or was god-forbid the first girl in her class with boobs, she was deemed a “slut.” This slut-shaming world we endured during our most formative years on earth, made us feel deeply ashamed about our sexuality. And I believe that our sexuality lives at the very core of who we are. If the core of who you are is bathed in shame, every aspect of your life will be negatively impacted.
Then as we fell haphazardly into our twenties the media shifted its narrative about sex. Suddenly it was no longer acceptable to slut-shame young women. The internet was bursting with powerful think pieces about body positivity and sexual fluidity and freedom! And we all agreed with this new world order. Except even though we as adults, have embraced all of these wonderful, modern ideas about sexuality, our younger selves still need to heal from the trauma of growing up female in a world that tried to rob us of our sexual empowerment.
I think the way to heal from all this is to work on healing our younger selves. Our teen selves. We need to speak gently to our teen selves and let her know she did nothing wrong. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. She wasn’t wrong, the culture was wrong. And once we’ve done the work, we’ll have a healthy, more empowered grasp on our sexuality. And then we’ll feel empowered in so many different parts of our lives, including our love lives. Like I said, sexuality lives in your core. Once you’ve made peace with your sexuality you’re going to stop seeking out toxic relationships. You’re going to stop dating people who you desperately want to provide you with a cheap hit of validation. You’ll be the only one who validates yourself, which will make you feel strong. You’ll get healthy. And once you get healthy you’ll start attracting healthy people! Remember: sick attracts sick. Healthy attracts healthy. Relationship work is self-work. A toxic relationship with a person is a really just a toxic relationship with yourself. So nurture all aspects of yourself before you nurture anyone else.
Your passion for talking about mental health is fantastic! From sharing your mental health challenges to talking about the pros and cons of therapy and medications, you don’t hold back on anything in your book. Yet there remains stigma out in the world about mental health, an issue which affects so many. What do you think still needs to be done to tackle this stigma and what role do you want to play in continuing to be an advocate going forward in your own life?
Thank you! The conversations around mental health have come such a long way, which is so fabulous. What I think holds our culture back from true healing, is that we expect these cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all techniques to work for everyone. We’re told we’re either on Team Holistic or Team Medication. We look for either full-blast practical solutions or full-blast spiritual solutions. When, what I think we need to do, is learn about all the tools that exist in the mental health hardware store and pick and choose the ones that work for us. I meditate and take medication! I pray to Lana Del Rey (my higher power) in the shower every single morning but I also love studying the science of the brain! I see a classic talk therapist but also believe in exposing myself to sunlight as often as possible!
Most people who struggle with their mental health are nuanced, complex, multifaceted individuals. They aren’t one-note people, so why would we expect them to be served by a one-note solution? I will always be encouraging people to not box themselves in, to not subscribe to just one method of healing, and do whatever the hell works for them — even if it doesn’t make sense to other people. The other thing that I touched on earlier, is I find our conversations about mental health still to be a bit surface. A bit performative. Let’s stop pretending that we feel so amazing after that one yoga session and get real! Let’s talk about the past and the lingering anxiety and the embarrassing gastric side effects of our psychotropic medications! The only way to heal is to be effing real.
Girl, Stop Passing Out in Your Makeup reads like a hybrid of a memoir and a self-help book because you are so incredibly open in sharing your experiences and how you have learned from them. If you could go back to a certain age to give your younger self some advice, what age would that be and what would you say?
I would love nothing more than to take my seventeen-year-old, wildly-insecure, eating-disorder-laden self out to a fabulous dinner — like maybe Balthazar in Soho or Milk and Roses in Brooklyn. I would tell her to order whatever the hell she wants and to stop confusing feeling empty for feeling beautiful. I would grab her by the shoulders, look into her eyes and tell her that all girls are born with girl-alarms, incredible internal-alarm systems that always know when danger is lurking about.. I would tell her when that alarm sounds off in her heart, don’t you dare ignore it. Don’t try and silence the siren with cocktails and weed and whatever else some sketchy dude offers you. Listen to the girl alarms. Honor the girl alarms. Go home.
You mention in the book that you love to read more than you love “a cold glass of champagne on a summer evening” and that you use “pure instinct” to choose your next read. What was the last book you randomly picked off the shelf in a bookstore? (Or bought online, since we’ve been in a pandemic for the last 5 months!) What drew you to select that book and did you end up enjoying it?
Yes! I love instinct buying books! It’s funny, I’ve been staying with my family in Florida for the past month, and as I was trolling my mom’s incredible bookshelf, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris jumped out at me! LET ME TELL YOU! HOW THE HELL AM I THIS LATE TO THE DAVID SEDARIS GAME?! I’m teeming with shame that it took me *this long* to get down and dirty with a David Sedaris book. As soon as I was one page deep in the first chapter, I was howling with laughter. Howling. It’s one of those books that I feel like will forever change the way I write! I love how Sedaris doesn’t tie his chapter endings up in neat pink bows, but abruptly ends them — yet they are still somehow so…poignant? I could wax poetic about David Sedaris all day long, though I doubt he appreciates a lame poetic wax from an overly-obsessed new fangirl!
What did your writing process look like for this book as compared to your everyday writing for GO Magazine or your blog? What did you learn or find unexpected about the process of writing the book?
Honestly, my decade-long stint in media, mainly working as a staff-writer which required me to publish between one and five articles a day, hugely influenced the way I wrote my book. When writing is your full-time job, you stop being precious about the writing process. You don’t have the luxury of experiencing writer’s block. If you’re not feeling creative that day, no one cares. Write the damn piece, put it out there even if it’s not “perfect” and do it all over again the next day. Because of my daily, high-stakes writing practice, I’ve built up some serious writing muscles over the years. I feel like I’ve been in writing Bootcamp! I believe that’s why writing a book wasn’t such a harrowing, painful process for me. Don’t get me wrong, it was extremely challenging, but I didn’t struggle with procrastination, perfectionism, or writer’s block like I hear a lot of authors lament about. I’ve been trained to write through creative blocks, bad days, distracting environments, hangovers. Writing is a discipline that’s built-in to me now. I wrote my first draft in five weeks because I write my best work under the ruthless deadlines I’ve grown accustomed to. I would say the main difference in writing a book was that it felt more fulfilling and luxurious! I could go as deep as I wanted without an editor telling me it was too intense for digital media or too long (I’m a notorious overwriter, big surprise). I found book writing to be more natural to me than internet writing. That was the unexpected part. I loved it. I can’t wait to do it again.
Let’s Get Nerdy: Behind the Writer with 9 Quick Questions
- First book that made you fall in love with reading: The Babysitter’s Club series!
- 3 books you would take on a desert island: How To Grow Up By Michelle Tea, How To Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell, Lord Of The Butterflies by Andrea Gibson
- Movie that you know by heart: The HBO made-for-TV biopic Gia starring Angelina Jolie!
- Song that makes you want to get up and dance: “Summertime Sadness” by Lana Del Rey because I’m a natural-born sad girl who likes to sway and stew in my feels whilst clutching a glass of wine. I’m not a girl who dances at clubs.
- Place that everyone should see in their lifetime: KENYA
- Introvert or extrovert: Introvert, one million percent.
- Coffee, tea, or neither: Coffee in New York, Tea in London. Green juice in LA.
- First job: Working on the shop floor at Fred Segal in Santa Monica for $8.00 an hour.
- Person you admire most and why: Today? The writer Cat Marnell. I was feeling dead inside this morning and I re-read one of her Vice columns from back in 2012 and it brought me back to life. If you need to feel inspired read her essay, “Blonde on Very Famous Blonde.” The last line is fire.
