When I finally graduated in the Summer of 2023 with a BA in Multimedia, I left with all the key skills and tools of the trade to be a successful journalist— besides, well, a job. I’ll admit, the thought of being able to tell people in passing conversation what I do for work seemed pretty cool. I pictured myself sitting in a dimly-lit bar, sipping an extra-dirty martini and pouring over a bunch of half hazard papers in pursuit of my next juicy journalistic conquest.

“So what do you do for work?”, someone would ask.

“Well, I’m a journalist.”

It gave off an aura of effortless mystery, yet I could still be committed to the civic-duty of shining a light on the important topics in our community.

But as the afterglow of graduation wore off, and I began to wade through the murky waters of countless Indeed applications (and seemingly even more rejections) as a freshly graduated 22 year old in a highly saturated market, it became clear to me that journalism wasn’t something I was interested in pursuing as a full-time career. No more hiding under blankets to record crisp audio, chasing down potential sources across the street for a news story, or struggling to set up 6-foot-tall bumbling television cameras on Drake’s campus.

As the months went by, and I found myself tackling a variety of IT, coding and service industry gigs, I finally started to settle into the revelation that my days of journalism were over— and perhaps for the best. And yet beneath the surface, there was an itch from these college days that still needed to be scratched.

Enter Drop Dead Gorgeous.

What It’s All About

Drop Dead Gorgeous was birthed, in hindsight, as a way to carry on the legacy of the two things that had consumed my days in college: my time participating in beauty pageants, and well, murder. I’ll explain.

If you’re a morbidly-fascinated psycho like me, you’re probably at least semi-aware of the rise of crime documentaries and movies in the last decade or two. While there have always even media involving coy villains lurking in the shadows (think 1930s Noir films), or disgruntled criminals brandishing weapons in a western saloon, humans just naturally seem to gravitate towards the bad and the ugly. And as technological media has become less of a luxury and more of a necessity in our day-to-day lives, so has the abundance of true-crime related media.

When I was in college, crime podcasts (particularly the show Morbid, go look it up!) snuck their scaly claws into my bedtime rituals after a long day of classes. In fact, to this day, it’s hard for me to unwind at night without some sort of Keith Morrison-esque voice in the background giving me the grueling details of a murder-suicide. It wasn’t all fun and games, though. Murder is a serious topic (duh), and victim’s stories should be treated with the dignity and awareness they deserve, as serious as it would be if it was your own loved one. And as I found myself scrolling through Youtube and TikTok for my next nightly fix, I became disheartened at the ways in which people would present these stories: in the form of clickbait titles (“He Cut Off WHAT PART of Her Body??”), shoddily researched short-form videos ablaze with misinformation about the case, and makeup gurus smooshing makeup on their face while giggling about aspects of the case. It didn’t feel right to me. And it shouldn’t feel right to anyone else either. That’s when I had an idea.

From what I have found, there’s not really any podcast that focuses on crimes in the beauty industry. Sure, there are lots of episodes featuring slain beauty pageant contestants and famous scandalous fashion moguls, but it’s rare to see them treated with the same care and respect that other stories have. I mean, they’re just dumb airheads in a crown and sash, right?

As a former beauty queen, I wanted to use my knack for informed, responsible storytelling to give these humans the proper voice. And I’m not just talking about stereotypical western beauty queens either— I’m talking transgender contestants in small countries no one’s ever heard about, or black and brown champions for equality like Marsha P. Johnson. I wanted to explore crimes from all over the world, with a vast array of communities, cultures, ethnicity groups, and identities.

I think the reason I’m so proud of this little passion project of mine is because I do everything for it. And I mean EVERYTHING. I do the research, writing, sound design, audio engineering, fact-checking, copywriting, social media, marketing, graphic design, you name it. When I’m sitting in a job interview, and someone asks me what being a “Creative Content Developer” entails, and why I do it, I’ll show them this. It’s a conglomerate of all that I’ve learned, and all that I am. Well, I can’t tell a potential employer that I’m dead certain I can out-eat a sumo wrestler in a Mac-and-cheese eating competition, but this will do.

And I’m pretty damn proud of it.