To be beautiful, to be memorable

Before they were called “Town Hall” meetings, they were called “All Hands.” At some point HR made us change the name because “not everyone has hands.” Believe all 60 of us had both hands but anyway, the point was to get the whole marketing team in a room once a quarter to exchange personality test results and pretend to know what EBITDA means, pretend we control such profitability metrics through Pinterest ads.

In advance of each Town Hall, leadership would pick a few people for these “get to know the team” panels. The questions were personal, and yet everyone’s answers always circled back to work. The host would ask, “Who’s on your Spotify Wrapped this year?” and some middle manager would gush, “Like alllll classical because it helps me focus!” SHUT THE FUCK UP. JUST SAY TAYLOR SWIFT AND WALK THOSE DUSTY ROTHYS BACK TO YOUR CUBICLE.

I remember the last Town Hall I attended before changing teams. We broke for lunch which was, invariably, a taco bar for gringos on SSRIs. Then it was panel time.

Donna Livingston perched upon a stool in her signature glam. Her long, shiny red hair in loose curls; Disney princess eyes with 100 coats of mascara; berry lip. She embodied the bygone elegance of mid-tier city office life, the kind of woman who called a shirt a “blouse” and pants “slacks.” That day she wore black slacks and a deep-pink-hued blouse. I thought to myself, Donna loves a jewel tone. Gotta respect a woman who knows what looks good on her. I’d only ever seen Donna in sapphire and emerald and this shade of pink; it was the color of love refracting off the edges of a ruby.

Donna worked remotely from DC. We were all used to admiring her through a screen, her dedication to Getting Ready every day to work from home. Always warm, always smiling. To see her up there on the panel reminded me that those intangibles like “grace” and “poise” can’t be fully apprehended via Microsoft Teams. Real-life Donna was just so… lovely. That’s the word. Lovely.

At one point, the panelists were asked about their dream jobs. Everyone got fidgety because what on earth would you do if not write website copy for B2B telecom?

They passed Donna the mic and she turned the color of her shirt.

“I would be a figure skater,“ she confessed, her voice shaky and girlish. “My girls skate and it’s the biggest part of our lives.”

Everybody loved Donna, and that was the first time most of us got a glimpse into her personal life. I must have been in a million meetings with her and she never once mentioned this thing that colored a sterile conference room with charm and wonder and truth. And then it clicked for me: that Donna’s glam might be an extension of her passion for skating. It can be a lovely thing, to look the part; it crystallizes your image in the hearts and minds of everyone who meets you.

On January 29, 2025, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a US Army helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington D.C. It was a small flight, 64 people between the crew and passengers, 28 of them returning from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships training camp in Wichita, Kansas. Donna Livingston died alongside her husband Peter and their daughters, Olympic hopefuls Everly, 14 and Alydia, 11 who were known online as The Ice Skating Sisters.

I was working from home when my friend called and broke the news. “The whole office is a mess. Everyone’s crying and leaving for the day,” she said. Meanwhile, our friend Sarah had just taken a job under Donna. Sarah was in California for a conference where Donna was to meet her when she returned from Wichita. She was texting with Donna just before she boarded Flight 5342, wished her safe travels and everything.

What are the odds of knowing someone who dies in a 64-person plane crash? I was too catatonic for statistics but just responsive and incredulous enough to watch the video footage over and over and over. The helicopter looks like it’s being pulled directly into the plane by some invisible force, something bigger and more sinister than human error. The aircrafts collide into a magnificent ball of fire suspended in the night sky. I just kept thinking, they were almost home.

Donna’s been heavy on my mind since the Olympics. I felt lucky to catch Alysa Liu’s gold medal performance and imagined Donna and her daughters glued to the TV, skipping school to witness the important stuff. Staying in pajamas all day. Eating toaster waffles with too much syrup. Popping out to the backyard ice rink their dad made every year, antsy to practice their jumps.

Alysa Liu captured the world with her halo hair and bedazzled smile. And that quick pause to reapply Rare Beauty lip stain before taking the podium? Instant icon. She said I’m going to be me and you’re going to remember it.

There’s a real generosity in that, in caring for the memory you leave behind. I wonder if Donna ever considered the legacy of her beauty. I doubt she ever suspected it’d be cut so short.

This idea of beauty as memory—it’s something I contemplate a lot as a person who writes about beauty on the internet, who generally believes the motivations behind acts of beauty are more charitable and shared than assumed. Of course, I will always remember Donna as the vivacious redhead who approached every project with a smile. But I will really remember the way her smile was framed in purply pink, the intention required to do that every day.

To pursue a beauty that is unforgettable, which is to say an outward expression of self that reflects internal coherence and love, is to live in delightful opposition to the culture of impermanence. To transcend products and procedures and trends. To imagine a future where we remain in conversation long after we’re gone.

And so I say with certain pride that I want to be beautiful because I want to be memorable. I want you to remember me. I want to remember you.