My mother abused me growing up. She could threaten and punish me in most realms, but she could never touch my art. Because I tried to remain distantly connected to her into adulthood, I learned to accept manipulative behavior from women in professional circles.
Three years into my career, a woman with very similar behavior and objectives began harassing me. She stole my work, ideas for an event and conference, and manipulated everyone around me to cover her abuses. She threatened me privately and lied publicly.
But this is not why I made this project.
This project highlights women who aided in the years of harassment and abuse I endured. I went to a couple of these women for help. Instead of providing insight or compassion, they exploited my vulnerability for profit. They used their massive platforms to obscure the truth and/or cyber bullied me which resulted in PTSD. This project holds them accountable.
Lauren constantly collaborated with my thief despite being on my artist roster. Eventually I approached Lauren privately to explain and asked her to stop highlighting us together as co-creators of our genre. She began grifting off my style, depersonalizing me into a “trend”, which my thief later offered as validation for her behavior. Our agents spoke to her several times on both accounts; her behavior was hurting all of us. Instead she stopped mentioning me entirely and continued boosting my thief. When I went public with my ordeal, she took a wishy-washy position in favor of my thief (the post is now deleted) because she was under contract for her event. Eventually she exploited my theft experience in a podcast and redacted our names so she could echo my stance. Shortly after Lauren created sympathy campaigns against agencies and individuals stealing her work. She plans to attend culinary school to improve “food design” skills. There’s still money in the banana stand.
Jessica sympathized enough to turn my first email asking for help into an anonymous blog post. I hadn’t used names. When she announced she’d be speaking at my thief’s event, I revealed this was my harasser and asked her not to endorse the event. Jessica offered to mediate and encouraged me to share my experience and evidence. When I opened up fully about my experience, she gaslit me, saying I had no case. This was opposed to her prior positioning. She warned that going public often resulted in criticism of the target rather than the harasser. She did not disclose that my going public at that time would have interrupted her first book tour. Jessica did not mention she was under contract with my thief, which made her partial and wildly unethical. When I went public she criticized me and pulled her mentor into a dog pile, creating the very scenario she warned me against. And she gloated in her words like “a teenage girl.”
Both of these women champion a “strong women support women” stance, but these are merely pretty letters and empty words. Both have stolen from others and profited handsomely. Both have been stolen from. Rather than use those experiences for a greater good, they tried to bury me to avoid their exposure. Sadly, I’ve seen these tactics before. They are unoriginal.
Marian is retired. She’s a giant of the lettering community. Yet she’s here because she enabled theft. Jessica stole from Marian early in her career, and Marian was passive. Gracious, too gracious because this problem became mine a decade later. Rather than echo this graciousness, Jessica was manipulative. Those unchecked behaviors have impacted an entire industry, exacerbating toxic norms for theft from the top down. History repeated itself, but I wasn’t as financially secure or renowned as Marian. Marian was too retired to make a positive impact against unscrupulous practice but was readily available when Jessica called on her to dogpile me. That is terrible mentorship, also terribly unoriginal.
I see fear in all of these women. Fear of losing prominence; fear of the past coming back to bite them; fear of doing what is right. Even fear of being usurped. But so many of us feel this way. Our fear is not original. And it should not keep us from acting with integrity. It is brave to stand up for what is right. It is courageous to manage up. There is freedom in making your own path and refusing to obstruct someone else’s.
And for a long time I was fearful. What help is there for a freelancer, beyond the court of public appeals and a massive gap to legal action? These experiences opened my deepest wounds multiple times. But I believe in abundance and the immense wealth of knowledge this experience gave me. I owe it to myself to share. And my fear is not original; every artist whose name you know has stories like these.
Is this what we’re promising people when we tell them to follow their dreams? Or “make friends, not contacts” while colleagues wait to twist a knife in your back? Rising above and taking the high road only enabled compounding abuse. I can’t lie to students about their heroes anymore.
All of these women owe me apologies and attempts to make it right after publicly maligning me. Time passing will not make it right, has not made it right. Neither will silence.
In many ways, these women and I are unalike. And yet our work, our mistakes, our paths are replicable. It is easy to slip up. Too easy to act dishonorably. We know where that leads. It is rare to admit we are wrong. It is unusual to take responsibility. And the most original move, according to Twitter, “is healing yourself without becoming like those who traumatized you.”
I am choosing an unmarked path. I pledge I will not and have never misused my power to thwart or steal. I am using these experiences to find solutions for community good. And not just the lettering world, anyone who aligns with this feat is someone within my community. And I will continue questioning why we let fear guide us to predictably poor behavior. To bad art. To theft and subterfuge. To prewritten endings. We can and will be better if we choose to be fearlessly original and brave.
Your Fear is Not Original.
Danielle Evans is an artist searching for originality at marmaladebleue.com.
EDIT: One of these women gave me permission to publish our interactions that led to this experience. I have compiled them in a google document.