It’s Rachel’s 24th birthday!
Rachel’s birthday happens once every year, thank goodness, but this year it’s even more special. Besides the fact that it’s on a Friday, it’s also smack in the middle of Autostraddle’s fundraising campaign!
Super quick refresher: In less than a day, Autostraddle readers raised over $40,000, enabling us to rebuild our site and give you everything you deserve in a community. Now we’re hoping to give you — and our staff — even more. Because of your dedication and generosity, we were able to hire Alex Vega as our full-time Design Director, and she will start in September! We’ve also designed new You Do You boybriefs, Autostraddle This boxer briefs, and there are lots and lots of cookies coming your way. We’re SO PROUD and SO EXCITED for the future! The Ultimate Dream Goal is $100,000, which would enable us to pay all of our writers and editors, as well as guarantee a tattoo of Tinkerbell on Alex’s behind.
Which brings us to this hallowed day, wherein you have the chance to help pay Rachel’s fair salary for a solid year. Everyone at Autostraddle works so very hard, but for a select few of us, it’s our one and only job. Rachel works here every day — literally all seven days of every week. Rachel has been writing for Autostraddle since October of 2009 and took on the Senior Editor position in 2010 and worked for free for a long time, then worked for a couple hundred dollars a month for an even longer time. She’s a very hard worker and, apparently, a very good budgeter.
How does Rachel find time to do so much AS work and live her life, which involves graduate school and teaching young humans how to write? We don’t know. Probably like this:
‘how does rachel do it?’ images via intern geneva
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[Click Here If You Love Rachel]
In addition to paying Rachel a more fair amount of money, when we reach $80,000 we’ll raffle off TWO A-Camp Camperships, provide an additional perk to those who purchased the Fundraiser Zine, hire an accountant, add to the medium-sized fund to pay all of our writers and contributors, and AND Brianna has promised to start taking requests on straddlegifs.tumblr.com! That is so many great things in one sentence!
[Click Here to Pay Rachel’s Fair Salary!]
To compel you to help us reach our weekend goal of just over $4,050, we’ve taken some of our favorite Rachel quotes and paired them with adorable pictures of Rachel as a babychild. I know — I didn’t think the world could be a better place either, and then this happened.
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“Most of the time, I fantasize about not having to worry about money. Not leading some kind of hedonistic lifestyle where you buy brand-name Saran Wrap, but the kind where you never have to check your account balance immediately after buying gas to make sure that you didn’t overdraft anything.” -Rachel
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I would so contribute to this if I were earning a salary of my own, but as I’m mooching off my parents and brother til the school year starts I’ll just cheer you guys on from the sidelines :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIbBqX1z23Y
Happy Birthday, Rachel!
*runs off to find money*
Happy Birthday Rachel!
Also, the paper crane quote. I died. I died. So funny. Laughed out loud in public, now everyone in “my New York office” (this Starbucks on the Upper East Side) thinks I’m a crazy person.
It’s not even fair that one person can contain that much adorable.
I found 10 dollars doing laundry, in what I’m pretty sure where a pair of my sisters pants.
HERE YOU GO RACHEL I MAY HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME TO PAY YOU THE MONEY YOU DESERVE.
Were* I hate grammar.
Happy birthday!!
Every time a new fundraising article is posted, I feel guilty for not being able to donate every single time.
Happy birthday, Rachel!
Happy birthday! :)
Oh my god, can childhood pics of queers labeled with amazing quotes be the new thing?
Also, guys, if anybody reads this, she’s a grad student which means you make VERY LITTLE MONEY FOR LOTS AND LOTS OF WORK, on top of the LOTS AND LOTS OF WORK she does for AS. I’m assuming she doesn’t sleep. Or can afford to eat much.
Even if we can’t do it today, we really have to get to the mark where Rachel gets paid closer to an amount that a normal human should make. I feel like that’s non-negotiable.
Also a poor grad student (oh god so poor) but if I can pry the money out of my old roommate for utilities, I’m going to try to throw a little bit more this way BECAUSE IT’S FOR RACHEL OKAY THIS IS IMPORTANT.
in conclusion HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
in secondary conclusion, operation FEED RACHEL requires approximately 3,750 more dollars at the time of this writing. That is only 150 people donating $25 for the super cool sticker package. Or say, 20 more shirt people, 10 more priority A-campers, and 50 more sticker package people. (disclaimer: this math may or may not actually be correct). but the real point is, this can happen.
Hope you had a good one, Rachel! No worries, the campaign will make it to $80k. We got this.
rachel deserves a million dollars, though, can we raise a million dollars
guys rachel made the YOLO stencil for camp
don’t tell me that didn’t change your life
forever
if the point of this post was to make me fall in love with rachel and intern geneva at the same time, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. i love you rachel and for your birthday i promise to make sure the campaign reaches AT LEAST 80k (it will reach more) and i also promise to finally send the infamous unfinished email i have had in my draft folder for now almost a year. it will probably be disappointing now that i’ve discussed it so much, but by gosh i’m gonna send it!
happy birthday <3 <3 <3
So. This is my own Baby Rachel graphic featuring my all-time favorite Rachel quote: http://bit.ly/S6xEBS
happy birthday!
I actually don’t think I could have laughed any harder at that.
Happy birthday, Rachel! 24! Jeez! Goodbye, youthful idealism.
Happy birthday, Rachel! You are an amazing Writer
Hope you splurge and treat yourself when you get your first paycheck of your well deserved raise
She should get herself some of that brand-name Saran Wrap. Live it up.
I love, LOVE the whole Autostraddle team, don’t get me wrong…. you’re just my favorite, Rachel. Happy birthday you awesome person, you.
Happy birthday Rachel! Thank you for writing articles that make me smarter every time I read them.
I made a small contribution to the campaign, and if it’s still going when I have money again (car fixing, dentist appointments, oh my!) I will definitely up my donation amount.
(… Also, happy birthday!)
I just want to say as someone who knows Rachel in the real world, I would say those pictures are pretty accurate. Especially the outfit.
Happy Birthday kid!
Oh my goodness you were a cute kid. Happy Birthday Rachel!!!!!!
Long Live August-born Queers! haha
Happy Birthday Rachel!
(You were born 6 days earlier than me LOL)
Happy Birthday Rachel! You were an absolutely adorable child and still are a very cute human being! I donated a couple of days ago and I’m considering donating again once I get paid on Wednesday. I probably will. :) You really deserve to have a decent salary and I so so hope we can give you one!
if there is anyone who can read those quotes and not want to give rachel a job…well, i just don’t know what to do with them
Am I the only one who assumed this was about the other Rachel?
Rachel consistently posts the best content; logical, hard-hitting, insightful. All the editors and contributors deserve to be salaried but Rachel FTW.