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Kelly Cutrone’s “If You Have To Cry, Go Outside”

I’ve been a fan of Kelly Cutrone since seeing her for the first time on “The Hills” and “The City.” Later, I watched “Kell on Earth” and fell in love with her honest, direct, no-bullshit attitude. I’ve been inside boutique PR firms and more often than not, find myself face-to-face with the “typical PR girl” — stick-thin and wearing chic designer clothing, with a sugar-sweet disposition, but you know as soon as you turn your back that lipsticked smile will turn into a disgusted scowl as she rolls her eyes. Kelly Cutrone seems so up-front, direct and in-your face. I love it.

I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t really expecting a well-written book. After reading other exposés into PR firms like Robert Rave’s “Spin,” I was expecting a lot of gossip, a lot of shit-talking, and a lot of name drops from Cutrone’s book. But I was pleasantly surprised — I got the name drops (which are well-warranted, since she’s been in the business for more than twenty years), but I also got a glimpse into the life of a spiritual, successful, and independent woman who is whip-smart and true to her values. The book gave me a lot of insight into Indian spirituality, which I definitely wasn’t expecting from the memoir of one of the top Power Bitches in New York City.

Most importantly, it made me respect Kelly Cutrone as a strong feminist woman who kept her values intact in a world of shallow glamorous materialism. She refused to work for Donald Trump after he defended Mike Tyson after his domestic abuse scandal, and she defended Ashley Dupre after receiving a shitstorm of scandal when she placed her in the front row at a fashion show. “We’re all hookers in one way or another,” she said.

I remember when I told my friend Greg that I wanted to pursue a career in Public Relations, he told me to use it for good and not for evil. I never truly got what he said until I read this book. It’s like being a lawyer — a lot of lawyers have to defend awful, evil people. They justify corruption and greed and let guilty people run free. Successful PR people hold the same power. They spin the truth and turn it into something else, they detract people’s attention away from unlawful practices, they glamorize the immoral.

But PR can be used for good too. There are so many entrepreneurs and small companies and non-profit groups that are doing amazing things, and deserve attention, exposure and success. We have the power and the ability to use our skills for good instead of evil. In many ways, I think that’s what Kelly Cutrone was trying to project in “If You Have to Cry, Go Outside.”

This book also gave me a new perspective on interning and employer-employee relationships. Kelly Cutrone has an amazing passage on the employer-employee relationship towards the end of the book:

“No boss wants an employee she’s invested in to burn out. Your employer wants you to succeed. I don’t actually enjoy firing people — well, with the exception of one or two — and most other bosses would probably say the same thing. Think for a moment about what kind of an investment your employer makes in you. You may think the playing field is slanted in the employer’s favor since technically the employer can fire you at any time. It’s true that you can be fired if you fuck up or if you just don’t work hard or for many other valid or trivial reasons, but as an employee you are also a lot more powerful than you realize.”

And about interning:

“If you fail to treat your internships and early work experiences as the amazing learning experiences they are, you sabotage opportunities with the company you’re working for and you fail to cultivate the friends and mentors who might be resources or might give you recommendations in the future. When I like an intern and I can’t hire that person myself, I make phone calls; I go out of my way to help her get the job she wants. And I do this for her not because she has great style or she got my client featured on the Today Show; usually I go out of my way to help her because she fetched coffee and affixed labels cheerfully and efficiently and eagerly pitched in whenever she could. In other words, she understood and fulfilled her role in the pack to the best of her ability.”

Most of all, I liked Kelly Cutrone’s “If You Have to Cry, Go Outside” because despite her amazing success and mingling with the rich of famous, she still has an admirable sense of humility and is able to make fun of herself. I doubt I could say the same about Anna Wintour’s or even Lizzy Grubman’s memoir.

Final Verdict: A-