Taya interviews Greta

Welcome to Part One of our Get to Know the Founders series! We thought it would be fun to give readers a chance to learn more about the Uterish cofounders’ lives outside of Uterish. Part One is a Q&A by Taya about Greta. 

When you were a kid, what did you imagine doing as an adult? 

I have always really loved animals, so for a long time as a kid I wanted to be a vet. I specifically wanted to be a caterpillar veterinarian for a minute because I felt I was identifying an underserved community (the injured caterpillars). 

Little Greta!

What are a few favorite memories during quarantine? 

My sort of standard answer to this question is that I unexpectedly got to live at home with my younger brothers for an extra year when I didn’t anticipate getting to (since I wasn’t planning on living at home again, and they’ll both be in college starting this fall anyway). So a lot of my great quarantine memories have to do with that extra family time––I think a good example is that one evening early quarantine, my brother Oscar politely asked that he get kidnapped, so he went for a walk around the block and then my youngest brother Max, my dad, and I chased him in the car and kidnapped him (as requested). I also got very into different crafts over the past year, including: making all of my own bread, various sewing projects, pressing flowers, and making earrings. 

Name your top three current favorite music artists. 

Right now? Japanese Breakfast, Blood Orange, and Pinegrove.

How do you want people to remember you?

If I could choose just one thing, I think it would be “adaptable,” because right now I am not very good at being accommodating. So ideally by the time I’m at a place where people are remembering me (who???), I would have accomplished my life goal of chilling out a little.

What’s your love language? 

I’m definitely a Words of Affirmation person––love to talk, have always loved to talk. But also I have developed a theory which is: you can have a different predominant love language for giving and receiving affection. I have developed this theory as a means for describing my near-feral enjoyment for giving gifts to other people, which does not proportionately match my casual enjoyment when receiving gifts. That said, I am very bad at the follow-through necessary to really execute good gift-giving, so maybe that means something also?

If you adopted a dog, what would you name it? 

Very relevant because I have been very much on an “adopting a dog” train for the past few years now. The answer from my heart is Pickle, but absolutely no one is on my side about this being a great name.

Current-day Greta and her family dog, Harper.

What are your thoughts on the Twilight saga? 

I have spent quarantine reading the entire Twilight saga, and my main thought is that it’s exhausting. My second thought is that I would like to speak to Stephanie Meyers’ editor. I have to say, my perception of the entire series was drastically shaken when I found out that Meyers is Mormon––it totally changed everything for me. In a great way! Suddenly this whole book is about normal temptation and sin, and Edward being like “I can’t have sex with you or I’ll literally kill you” becomes a lot funnier. Like what a dramatic metaphor! Also, I think the unsexiest thing in the absolute world is the idea of another person’s body being literally as hard and cold as marble, and every time Bella talks about it turning her on I have to mentally divest from the conversation. I’m definitely Team Jacob, though neither he nor Edward are that enthralling to me, and I haven’t finished the series yet...so the jury is still out.

Greta reading the Twilight saga for the first time as an adult.

How would you describe your clothing style? 

Underdeveloped.

Which news sources or reporters do you consume news from? 

As we know, I am super into newsletters. I really enjoy receiving my news that way because then I feel less invested in the “keep updating Twitter to see what happens next” mentality, and can sort of read from a bunch of different sources at my leisure. My classic roster for “news” is Ann Friedman’s weekly newsletter, Signal by GZERO Media, Money Stuff by Matt Levine, and What a Day by Crooked Media. 

What are your top three favorite books of all time? 

All time is too hard to answer and three is too few, so I’m going to completely cheat at this question. Some favorites are: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, Beloved by Toni Morrison and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. A current favorite is Real Life by Brandon Taylor. Wow, looking back at this list makes me laugh. 

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received recently?

You have to always give people the option to opt in.

What does Uterish mean to you? 

What a hard question! Uterish is such an extension of myself at this point, it literally encompasses everything I do and think about. At its core, Uterish is an opportunity for self-growth, a mechanism for accountability to my community, and a way to increase the general level of good I put out into the world. That’s probably the most concise way I can put it.

The day Uterish became a nonprofit!