I Feel Glossier in This DMV

becoming a new me, enveloped in the scent of summer 2019

Jun 18, 2025

What does a girlboss smell like?

A peppery note sharp enough to draw blood; a layer of musk thick like war paint; a powdery floral beneath it all, a pleasantly plush center under the armor. She smells like Glossier You, and she’s editing a slide deck at the DMV.

Underneath the competing clouds of perfume and cologne, the midtown New York City DMV smelled clean. Like the hallways of my public university or the multi-purpose-room of an elementary school. Every detail was navy or aqua or grey, and seats were a hot commodity.

An automated voice summoned patrons overhead: “Now Serving: LR063” on an endless loop. A man who looked exactly like Bernie Sanders was beckoned to counter 17. There are a lot of men who look exactly like Bernie Sanders in New York City.

Much like the subway, the DMV is a great equalizer in a city of wild disparity. All walks of life lead to the DMV sooner or later. And here we all wait, on a sticky day in early June, for the robotic voice of God to call our ticket numbers.

Outfit choices ran the gamut:

Onitsuka Tigers paired with long denim skirts;
Alaia leather totes with buckled suede slip-ons;
too many pairs of crisp white Sambas to count;
long plaid cargo shorts and leather Nike Cortezes;
a canvas backpack covered in Disney pins;
fisherman sandals with linen button ups;
plastic pink flower pins and flaming low-rise Converse;
black Le Pliage totes in varying sizes;
and me, in a polka dot mini skirt and a pair of tasseled loafers, leaning against a wall taking notes on everyone else’s shoes.

I wandered around a bit feeling like I was breaking a rule — weren’t you supposed to stay put in these kinds of places? Isn’t there an unspoken vow to pick one spot and stay there with your head down until you were called?

A man in slacks, dress shoes, and a blue button up sat criss-cross applesauce on the tile leaning against a pillar. The DMV doesn’t play favorites: it brings finance bros to their knees, folding themselves into kindergartener positions on the floor, submitting to the bureaucracy like the rest of us.

The hottest accessory in the room was a bundle of faded documents worn like a clutch, knuckles white from keeping a tight grip. Social security cards, birth certificates, apartment leases, other necessary and near irreplaceable items that come in the flimsiest packages — all excavated from the back of a closet, I presumed, like mine were.

Along with my social security card, I found another treasure that morning I hadn’t seen in years: an almost empty bottle of Glossier You. On the day I was exchanging my Arizona license for a New York one, this was kismet.

I bought my first bottle of You in June of 2019 the day I touched down in the city to start a college summer internship with a stylist. After dropping my luggage off at my dingy Brooklyn sublet, I ate pizza for breakfast in Elizabeth Street Garden and beelined to the Glossier showroom on Lafayette (RIP). A bottle was $60 at the time, but I didn’t think twice about the purchase despite my dwindling student bank account and the impending doom of NYC grocery prices. It was a new me, a new You, a new us: me and the city.

The old bottle must have gotten shoved in this closet when I moved last year, I thought, or maybe it was the move before that?, and I spritzed myself gingerly before I walked out the door. Six years and four bottles of You later, I’d reached the final frontier of New York City becoming my government-official home.

My number was called only five minutes after checking in; I naively thought that was a good sign, but they only wanted to take my photo. I smoothed my frizzy hair and smiled. She clicked and thanked me without looking up from her screen. As I grabbed my purse off the counter, I instinctively touched my neck and realized my necklace clasp was showing (a huge pet peeve of mine). Of course it was. I have always had some sort of preternatural incapability of looking good in moments that matter. Graduations and weddings are where my bad hairs days and chin zits do their best work.

I slid my necklace around as I walked away, as if that would change the photo, and pulled out my phone to see if a Depop seller replied to an inquiry about vintage skirt measurements — it sold. Another quiet tragedy.

The woman in the Onitsuka Tigers and denim skirt was called to the counter and I snagged her seat. My silver-sneakered savior.

As I squeezed into the row, I caught a draft of You, only it smelled slightly different than it does on me. Sharper, more intense, with a bit more clarity. A You who had mastered Excel. A You who was polishing a slide deck in calf-hair mules at the DMV.

I wondered when she bought her first bottle and what she thought of the new versions (impossible to replicate a once perfect thing, imo). I wondered how long she’d lived in New York and whether she was as needlessly emotional as I was about this process. I didn’t dare ask though — she was on the clock.

bright sweatshirt is lowkey giving addison rae headphones on

I reported to counter 24 exactly 2 hours and 13 minutes after my scheduled appointment time. I handed over my documentation, I signed a couple things, and it was over in the blink of an eye. It — a ceremonious changing of the You. You live in New York, I imagined them saying to me as they handed me my new ID. And You have frizzy hair and a backwards necklace in your license photo. Turns out the ID comes in the mail two weeks later, and the temporary paper copy doesn’t have a photo.

I had to surrender my Arizona ID to the DMV — relinquishing a piece of my home of 10 years, an ID with my granny’s address on it. The address my mom had on her license growing up, the home where I learned to fry bacon and save the grease for biscuits, and the home in which my granny still lives and insists that she will live until she decides to crawl under the porch and die like a barn cat, with dignity. But I still have my Arizona permit in my wallet, with a 15-year-old me who always smiles back when I check up on her.

As I pushed through the revolving door and stepped into broad daylight, You lingered behind me. A You, a me, a city that is wildly different than six years ago, but in so many ways hasn’t changed. After all, we’re wearing the same perfume.