Writing for Mother Jones, Tasneem Raja says Holmes developed "a site for women interested in both fashion and how the models were treated.

She built it into a traffic behemoth, with 32 million monthly pageviews and beloved features like Photoshop of Horrors and Crap Email From a Dude.

"[1] Rebecca Carroll described Holmes's Jezebel launch as drawing "immediate attention with its off-color humor (similar in tone to Gawker, but more so a refreshingly new tone altogether), feminine bluster and fearless, pointed criticism of mainstream women’s magazines, an industry in which Holmes worked for many years, for perpetuating unattainable ideals of beauty and an endless (heterosexual) preoccupation with men.

She has been a columnist for the New York Times Sunday Book Review[3] and has previously served as editorial director at Fusion.

In 2018, Topic won two prestigious National Magazine Awards, making Holmes the third Black editor-in-chief to ever receive the honor.