What ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Taught Us About Ambition

There's a scene at the end of The Devilware's Prada where the character Miranda Priestley, a famed and famously demanding fashion editor, gives her young assistant Andy a rare compliment.

I see a great deal of myself and you.

This comment comes after a turning point in the movie where Miranda has just saved her own career by brutally betraying someone who has been enormously loyal to her. So Andy is horrified by this comparison, and she rejects it.

She says she's not sure that she wants to be like Miranda.

I mean, what if I don't want to live the way you live?

And it'll be ridiculous, Andrea, everybody wants this, Everybody wants to be us.

But does everybody want the glamorous, punishing life at the center of this story. That's the central question of the movie and this episode. I'm Susie Banacarum and I'm Jessica Bennett, and this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped.

Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.

Today, we're talking about the Doublewaar's product and the way it depicts women's ambition. But we're also talking about how a cautionary tale about sacrificing everything for your job ended up glamorizing.

Exactly that dress.

As we've said, we're talking about the Doublewars product today, a movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway and this fraught relationship they have. Anne Hathaway is a recent college grad, it's her first job, and Meryl Streep plays her famous and powerful boss. And this is a circumstance you and I are somewhat familiar with in lots of different variations.

No comment, no comments, Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, We've both worked for some famous and powerful women, some not so famous, but certainly complicated women.

Is how I would describe a lot of them.

I think that's partially why I feel so connected to the movie. And it is a movie I have seen countless times. It came out in two thousand and six, and I honestly can't tell you when I first saw it. I don't remember if I saw it in the theater. But have you seen the movie? Do you remember kind of what you thought about it or what you've thought about it over the years.

I mean, I, of course saw it, and I think it came out at a time when I had just moved to New York and had dreams of becoming a journalist, so I was very interested from that perspective.

Obviously, it's like not that true to life, but it's.

Really fun, though I forget a lot of the details.

So can you give me the cliff Notes version?

Yeah, I think the more recent version is spark Notes, but same thing. I will give you a little summary of the movie. So Andy, who I've said is played by Anne Hathaway, has moved to New York right after college to pursue a career in journalism.

She was the editor in chief of her college paper.

She has this dream of working at the New Yorker or someplace serious like that.

Of course, this is what all my students want to do also.

So Andy goes to interview at a big publishing company, thinking she's going to get a job at some serious place, but randomly the hr person tells her there's availability to be the second assistant to Miranda Priestley, who is the editor in chief of Runway Magazine, which is a fashion magazine. That character is played by Meryl Streep and is widely understood to be a very thinly veiled depiction of Anna Wintour,

Fashion or fashion magazines.

She gets the job because she sort of has this moment while she's standing in Miranda Priestley's office where she pitches herself as hardworking and smart and Miranda decides to give her the job.

Okay, so we all know Miranda's just brutal as a boss, but paint us a little bit of a picture. She's pretty terrible.

She's cold and demanding, and she makes really unreasonable requests that are essentially impossible, Like at one point, she demands that Andy find a flight for her during a literal hurricane, and it's like, why can't you get me out of here? And then there's another example where she demands that Andy get her the unpublished manuscript of the next Harry Potter book for her daughters, and Andy actually achieves that one.

Wants, which is not dissimilar from what these types of bosses actually do promise in real life.

No, I mean, it's exactly what these bosses do promise. So initially she fumbles, and she doesn't really hide her disdain for fashion, Like there's all these moments where they're doing fittings and she's kind of like making a face or snickering, and that is very much noted by Miranda, who finds it super annoying. And then there's this first assistant played by Emily Blunt. So Andy is the second assistant. Miranda has two assistants, and that's a seniority thing. The

I'm sorry, do you have some prior commitment, some hideous skirt convention you have to go to.

But one of the other fashion editors, played by Stanley Tucci, takes Andy under his wing and she goes from being this unfashionable rube to hot and stylish.

Of course, could have predicted that.

And in the process she becomes seduced by the environment and this desire to please Miranda. So that is the context of the movie, and that is where we are when we get to this scene that we played at the top of the episode.

Yeah, okay, so the scene. What drew you to this scene in particular? Well, I love the scene.

I think I always have, but over time I've become kind of more drawn to it because it really encapsulates for me, the central tension in many women's careers, in my career, in the careers I see of my friends, I think, when you're young, you do want this life. You want to be hugely successful, you want these big jobs, but you don't really fully understand the sacrifices you're going to make.

You're told that there.

Will be sacrifices, but as you go through you see what that really means for your life, and that is really complicated. So this dynamic, this tension between them is a reflection of I think something that we all struggle with internally, really.

And the scene begins where this tension is playing out. Yeah.

So the scene comes at the end of the movie after Andy has gone through her transformation.

Yeah, her fashion transformation.

Now she's wearing like amazing clothes and has like a great haircut, and she does look I will say, imtegrable. And she has seemingly bought into this world and kind of in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way, you see that all of her relationships are in tatters. She keeps ditching her friends and family, and she and her boyfriend have just broken up because she's so obsessed with her.

Work, obsessed with their work.

I feel like that's also another frequent plot line and these types of things. It's like the boyfriend can't Hannah, how devoted to your career?

Yeah, I can't handle it.

And they're in Paris for fashion Week, and even coming on this trip to Paris is supposed to be an indication that Andy has lost her way because it is Emily, the first assistant who is supposed to go on this trip. It is a huge deal to go to Paris fashion week, and Emily has been talking about it for months, and now Andy has gone instead because Miranda has taken a liking to her and has said to Andy, you can come to Harris instead, but you have to tell Emily.

Oh right. She's like pitting them against each other.

And now in Paris, Andy has discovered that Miranda is about to be fired and replaced by a much younger European editor, and she's desperately trying to get to Miranda to warn her. And then, unbeknown st Andy, Miranda has already been aware of the plan and has outmaneuvered the publisher by getting the younger editor another job.

And it's a particularly.

Brutal move and moment in the movie because Miranda has saved herself by giving the job that had been promised to the character played by Stanley Tucci to this other editor to get her out of the way. And so Stanley Tucci, who is this really loyal deputy who's worked for her for years, who you see in an earlier scene is so excited about this new role now is

And then she says to her.

I see a great deal of myself and you.

And obviously Miranda means this as a compliment, but you can see just by the reaction on Andy's face that she does not hear it as a compliment, and she objects. She says, but I would never do what you did, Miranda, and Miranda reminds her that she already did to the other assistant she replaced to go on this trip.

That was different. I didn't have the choice. No, you choose, you choose to get in you want this life. Those choices aren't necessary. But what if this isn't what I want?

I mean, what if I don't want to live the way you live? And don't be ridiculous, Andrea. Everybody wants this, everybody wants to be us.

It's so funny because she truly can't conceive a world in which people don't want what she has and what she has to do to hold on to it.

So yes, yeah, it is. It's a very poignant moment in that way.

Because Andy has realized that she's doing the same thing.

Right, And just to finish this moment, when they arrive at the event they're going to, Andy turns and leaves Miranda alone. And while she's walking away, Miranda calls her, and you see Andy look at her phone and it shows Miranda's name, and Andy throws her phone into a nearby fountains. Right, so she's like relinquished this life. And we don't know how she gets back to New York.

And back in New York, we see.

Andy go to a job interview at a newspaper, a serious publication.

She has said she's back in Dowdy Close, although.

Still with a much more fashionable touch. I will say, she still has the fabulous haircut. And so this editor who is interviewing tells her that he's reached out to Miranda for a reference, and you kind of see the look across Andy's face and he says he received a note back saying that Andy was the biggest disappointment, but he'd be an idiot not to hire her, and ultimately that's how we know this is a cautionary tale. Andy has made a deal with the devil, the devil in Prada.

So obviously this movie is not high art, right.

It's like, I don't want to make it seem like we're going into the ins and outs of this movie, because I think it's the best movie ever made. But it is the real chic flick that isn't centered on a man. It's about a girl and her ambitions and

Yeah, I mean it reminds me of like there's those movies about female ambition in a way from the eighties, Like I'm thinking about Baby Boom and wasn't there Working Girl?

Yes, those are both movies I love, and they are both about women trying to make their way in their working life. But in both those movies, the romance is still very central, and they do end up with a hot guy at the end, right, and that is seen as part of the happy ending. And here the happy ending is that she gets the job she wants, Right, That's a really big difference.

Did you relate to Andy in watching it at the time, Like I remember, Yes, I too wanted to be a serious journalist, but I don't know that I ever thought I would be capable of walking away in the same way she did.

I definitely didn't relate to that.

I mean, I felt like I had to do whatever it took to succeed, and I was willing to do that. I was not the girl who was going to throw her phone in the fountain. I had you know, bills to pay and student loans and did what I had.

To Immigrant mentality probably too, Yeah, definitely immigrant mentality.

I did not feel like I was in a position where I had a safety net, so there was no place to go.

I mean, I guess that's the fantasy aspect of this movie, is that most people are not in the position to throw their work phone fountain and just hope they're going to get another job.

And I actually I went back to my LinkedIn because I couldn't remember where I was in my own career.

Yeah. So in two thousand and six, I was working at ABC News.

At that time, George Stephanopolis was the host of This Week, which I think he still hosts sometimes, and I did have a very intense female boss who definitely had some Miranda Priestley like demands.

Okay, so now you have to tell us what kind of demands those were.

One thing that seems very Miranda like is that she needed her daily papers to be unwrinkled, So before she came in, her assistant would put her papers on her desk and she had to make sure she got only unwrinkled copies, which I'm not even sure how you guarantee that I know she wasn't ironing them. So that's like a very funny thing. She must have gone to the newsstand and like selected.

Oh unwringkled copies of the papers. I thought you just met papers in general. Oh no, the newspapers, like the newspapers, So she had to like make sure she wasn't getting the top one at the BA she'd like dig.

Yeah, she doesn't make sure that whatever the New York Times or New York Posts she was picking up, they were pristine. And we had a very intense rule that you would get in trouble for if you didn't. When you sent an email on the two line, the names had to be an order of seniority, Like if I send an email to two people and one of them was junior, they had to be second on the chain.

Or I think that I do do that, like I don't die.

I don't do it too, but I think that I do do that because it just kind of makes logical sense. But I'm sure younger people who wear email was not their primary with Queen Caanner who came up on slack probably think that's insane.

Yeah, And I also do that still too, just because it's locked into my brain.

I can't get it out of my brain.

But the other one that I think is particularly funny is if we had a cake in the office for someone's birthday, the assistant had to make sure to hand out the pieces of cake in the order of seniority's.

So many ways, so like true hierarchy to everything, like very higher.

It was this kind of obsession with order right like it things had to be a very specific way, which just were not chill at all.

I will say though, that with so many of these stories, it's like there are plenty of male bosses that do this kind of shit too, maybe not with the cake, or maybe it's like they're the menus just playing out in different ways, but we don't necessarily call them demanding in the same way we just call them.

Then, well, I will tell you a great story I know, like this about a mail boss at ABC is. I have a friend who was an assistant to an executive producer and he used to make her follow him to the bathroom and he would continue to shout notes at her through the door and she'd have to like take notes while he was peeing, which is disgusting.

But yeah, I don't remember anyone ever calling that guy a diva.

And to be clear, this is a woman who I enjoyed working for enough that I went to work for her again. Right, She gets demanding and difficult, but I saw that as just the way you had to be to be in these jobs. I didn't have a lot of examples of people in these jobs who were kind.

And compassionate and wanted to like coddle me. This was the deal.

And also, for what it's worth, if you're running a company or whatever the job may be, you probably don't have time to coddle your assistant and on like, on some level, maybe I'm sympathetic a little bit to some of this. Cancel me, am, I remembering correctly that this movie was based on a book.

Yes, it was based on a best selling book of the same name. It was written by Lauren Weisberger, and the book came out in two thousand and three. Okay, And the book was itself a cultural phenomenon.

It was really popular.

It came out at the peak of the chick lit era, and most relevant is that Weisberger had actually been Anna Wintor's assistant at Vogue, which is why it was so widely understood that Winter Tour was the inspiration for Priestley.

It's probably worth spending a little time for those who might not know as much as we do talking about who Anna Winter is.

Yeah, so she is not just the editor of a fashion magazine. She has literally been called the single most important figure in the three hundred billion dollar global fashion industry. As you might expect from a famous fashion editor, she has a very distinctive look. You know, this classic bob that she's had for years, with fangs. She's often seen wearing sunglasses. She's always flawless. And I was actually thinking,

Isn't that crazy? Thirty five years ago? Is she the longest servant?

Like that's a huge amount of time for an editor in chief To be clear.

I mean, most people last two years in a job in media, right, So the fact that she's been a top the most famous fashion magazine in the world for thirty five years is really an achievement and just wild. I mean, she's been in that job longer than a lot of people have been alive. And she was promoted in twenty thirteen to Conde Nasts artistic director, so she

Yeah. I remember watching that documentary about her. What was it this September Issue.

Yes, there is a documentary about her called The September Issue.

It was released in two thousand and nine.

And the thing about Anna is she's very much seen as a visionary, as someone who can see things coming down the line and lead rather than follow. So she's credited with seeing the power of celebrity culture really early in the cycle and realizing before other people did that it made sense to put celebrities on the cover. You used to be models on the cover of fashion magazine. It's Anna who's really credited with changing that.

And she runs the met Gallet too, right, which is like the biggest celebrity event of all.

Yes, she throws the net Galut, which is a benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Costume Institute.

It's the first Monday in.

May, which means fashions, the biggest night is finally here.

You know, just running that would make her a huge cultural figure. Celebrities are desperate for invites to that. Yes, so it's really hard to overstate her power and influence. But also she is famously inaccessible. She is famously kind of known to be someone with very high standards.

Isn't the rumor that if you are an assistant or a junior editor person at Vogue, you are not allowed to make eye contact with her in the elevator?

That's what I've always heard.

Yes, I've heard that you're not allowed to say hello to her or make eye contact. And frankly, that's been true of other bosses I have had, So that does not surprise me as a rumor.

I feel like that could very much be real.

Okay, so how close to reality do we think the book and the movie an actual Anna Winter are.

That's a great question. The Devilware's product is technically fiction.

So I reached out to Samita Muka Patai, who worked for Anna Wintour as the executive editor at teen Vogue, and it happens to also be the author of an.

Upcoming book on women and work and ambition.

Of course, Samita was an editor, so she obviously had a very different job than Andy did in the movie. But here's how Samita describes being interviewed by Anna Wintour.

I was very anxious to meet her.

It just was never a position I ever thought I'd be in which would be to interview with her. And when I had that opportunity, unlike Andy, I researched like crazy for how I would show up that day.

You prepared, Yeah, I prepared.

And there were multiple articles written about what to wear and what not to wear the first time.

You meet Anna. So what are you supposed to wear and what are you not supposed to wear? Right?

Well, interestingly, a lot of the articles say not to wear black, that she doesn't like black, and this has kind of been like a long rumor for her that

Practically wore it hanging around my neck.

None of it was necessary, Like she really just wanted to talk about my editorial experience and like my taste in like culture. So it was definitely one of those myth busting moments obviously, and she wasn't wearing sunglasses.

Either, by the way.

Okay, I love all the behind the scenes interview stuff, but I have to say, the points to me to made about Andy not preparing for her interview is like the least relatable thing to us as journalists, Like why would you not prepare for an interview where you're trying to prove you want to be a serious journalist?

Yeah, it's so weird to me, Right, you would at least just do some research. And also it's hard.

To believe that any woman in America who wanted to work in media would just not know who the editor of the biggest fashion magazine in the world was. Like, that is still a big job in media any person in America.

Yeah, it feels true.

But the idea that Anna is actually a much more complex character than the cultural characterization of her isn't surprising, right.

Or the cultural caricature of her in a way. Yeah, and that's something that I feel like you discuss a lot in your work.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's something we keep coming up against in this podcast, which is there's often more complexity to the characters we're looking at, actually with women.

Yeah, And I think we've seen that a lot with people like Robin Gibvens, whose identities are so flattened by these characterizations of them, or Britney Spears who had her

Yeah, isn't there a famous scene where Miranda Priestley sort of schools Andy in how she got her sweater or something like that.

Yes, the speech you're thinking of is the Cyrillian speech, which is a color blue. They're in a meeting and someone has presented Miranda with two belts, and Andy has snickered, and so those two belts look exactly the same to me, and she's sort of expecting everyone to be like, haha, yes, but Miranda is really icy in her retort.

You select, I don't know that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back.

But what you don't know is that.

That sweater is not just blue.

It's not torquois, it's not lapist, it's actually ceruleum.

And it was introduced on this runway and that runway until you fished it out of some bargain basement. It's like a very funny moment, and that speech has become pretty famous because it does, in a really succinct way, explain why fashion does have meaning in people's lives, why our lives are all impacted by the way fashion works.

Right, And so she's basically saying, you think you chose that sweater, but actually, let me tell you that sweater chose you.

Yeah, exactly, Susie.

I want to go back for a moment to the Miranda character in the book, because the book is actually pretty vitriolic.

I mean I reread the book last night, actually, and it is so vitriolic, like kind of in a shocking way to me now looking back it points book Andy calls book Miranda a bitch. She talks about how much she hates her. I mean, my takeaway from the book is that the author hated working for Anna Wintour.

Not a lot of complexity, It's like, that's what it is.

Yeah, it's a pretty one dimensional character and she's just awful. And interestingly, the limo scene is not in the book at all. The ending plays out completely differently. So in the book, the way their relationship ends is that Andy says to Miranda, fuck you, Miranda, fuck you.

Wow.

She's fired obviously for swearing at her boss. And the whole thing in the movie about how Miranda writes her a good reference and there's kind of this redemption moment from Miranda that doesn't happen in the book at all.

Okay, so this is like a revenge totally essentially, like She's She's chin.

It's like a revenge fantasy. Right. I don't think this happened in real life.

So I think this is like the book she's written about what she wishes she had done when she left Vogue, right, I mean, that's what it feels like.

Is a reader for sure?

So do people like this book? Is the book bad? What's the response?

Like?

I mean, the book is controversial, much more so than the film because it is really a takedown. And I guess at this time it was seen as sort of bad manners to gossip about your former boss in this way, which feels kind of quaint now like in the post Cocker era.

But it's like literally aronde.

Yeah.

But The New York Times actually had two negative reviews of this book, and the first one was written by famed critic Janet Maslin where she refers to it as a mean spirited gotcha of a book, and the other one is called Anna Dearist, and it has this line that is so interesting because I think in a lot of ways it encapsulates kind of what we're talking about

Hmmm, I bet that was written by a woman.

Yes, it was written by a woman, And I think it is the truth that these jobs do come with isolation and pressure.

It is a reality that it's not quite so simple.

And so the movie really makes an effort to humanize Miranda in a lot of ways.

Right moving Miranda is more complicated. Yeah.

The director has actually said that early versions of the script even felt too vengeful, and I suspect what he is leaving kind of unsaid in that is that's because the book was vengeful, right, It was this like really mean spirited book. So when it comes time to make the movie, the movie is being made by people who probably have had these senior positions right there, are two scenes that give you a real window into Miranda's personal life and what her career has cost her on that front.

Actually, I had forgotten until you were mentioning the Harry Potter part of the movie that she even had daughters like that too. Is an interesting thing because you expect a woman of the stature, or a woman who behaves like this to be this career as who doesn't have a family, right.

And what's kind of interesting in this moment in the movie is that when Andy expresses sympathy for her and says, you know, is there anything else I can do? Miranda kind of snaps back into being her self, you know, for lack of a better way of putting it, and she just says, yes, your job, And that is kind of the encapsulation, right, Like she's had this moment of vulnerability, but then she has to keep going, Like what choice

She can't fall apart.

And you know, EW did an oral history of the film and the director said something that I thought was really interesting. He said that in his vision, Miranda is the heroine of the piece, not the villain, because it's a coming of age story for Andy to learn about what it takes to be great at something, Isn't.

That So that's interesting?

Yes, So it's really about how she Miranda was ultimately successful, not just a terrible visit, right, Like, it's really.

A movie about what it costs to be Miranda and teaching Andy that she may not think it's okay, but Eventually she's gonna have to make some of these hard choices too, And that is really why the Limo moment is so critical to the film and why I chose it. It's fundamentally a film about what it costs to have this kind of life, this kind of career, the isolation, the pressure, and that's something I think Meryl Streep really conveys in this portrayal, and why in a lot of ways,

So Susie, we you know, obviously both related to this movie. I think when we first saw it in a different way than we might now, Like back then we were aspiring journalists or young journalists, and now we're more the established journalists. So I was curious for you, I mean, you have run really big newsrooms, You've been a boss in a lot of these jobs. What do you think the costs of that success have been for you? If any?

I think for me the costs are really personal in terms of just how I operate in the world, Like it takes a lot out of you just physically to do these jobs, you have to be willing to work just an enormous amount of hours, and you have to be emotionally available to a very large group of people because you're managing a big team, and all of those

I think is what the studies say that says leaders are sociopaths.

Yeah, there's one study I remember reading the claim that as many as one in five business leaders have some psychopathic tendencies.

So that's twenty percent. I'm so surprised by that.

So I think if you are able to have that kind of separation from you and the people whose lives you you know, to some degree hold in your hands when you're managing a large team, I think it can be a lot easier. But for me personally, that has been a real struggle, and I think it kind of has re oriented me in terms of how I think about ambition and whether or not I want to have these big jobs, whether or not I think these big jobs make sense anymore.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the headline here is that we hold women leaders to higher standards. Like I guess Miranda Priestley, I don't know that she was in a position like you were speaking of where she really cared about the emotional well being of her entire staff. It was more like she was in charge of she had these assistants. But like, we expect women leaders to be nice, and we don't expect male leaders to be nice.

Right?

And so you know, she clearly put andy or her assistance or whatever in precarious situations.

But that's happened a million times before.

And so I think that what me know is that there's this likability trade off for women, like the more power they gained, the less we like them, statistically proven time and time again. And it applies to business or it applies to politics, and so women are always having to adjust their demeanor to try to make up for this. And I think what Miranda Priestley, he represents as someone who wasn't willing to adjust her demeanor, and thus she was kind of like a frigid ice cool.

Ice queen pitch. But is that fair? You know, It's a little more complicated than that.

Yeah, And I do think this is something when you're a woman in a leadership position, you're constantly trying to thread the needle on right, because on the one hand, you need to be somewhat decisive and you need to be someone who moves things through. You can't just be like spending all your time being emotionally accessible or whatever. But on the other hand, I think my entire career I have been given the note that I need to

Well, that's kind of what you need to be a leader, in fact.

But as I've gotten older, I can see when it has an impact on someone, and I try and dial it down because I recognize that not everyone can deal with that well.

And that's part of the pressure.

Right You're in charge of all these people and to some degree they're well being, but you have to discipline. There is hard stuff. Sometimes you have to do layoffs. Thankfully I've never had to do that, but I can imagine that's hard no matter who you are.

Oh god, I can't believe you've never had to do a layoff. That is really lucky in this media environment. But just even aside from those pressures, it's just hard to show up as your best self every single day. Right, Sometimes you just don't, or you make mistakes and the stakes feel higher because you're the boss and everyone's paying attention.

Right, Like a bad day can have more extreme consequences.

Yeah, I mean everyone I know in the leadership position struggles with that at times. And actually we have a friend who runs a newsroom who said to me recently, it's not fun to be in charge anymore. And that makes sense to me. Right, people are just so self conscious all the time. They're so worried they're going to do something that's going to get them canceled in some way.

Which I guess is good on the one hand, like that we're all more conscious of creating the kind of workplaces we want to be in, but it's also complicated.

I think part of the reason I have sometimes felt like I'm groping around in the dark trying to figure out how to be a good leader is that there just weren't a lot of great.

Examples of leadership.

You know. Most of the leadership I saw was Miranda Priestley type leadership.

From men and women.

So it's not like there were all these models for me that I could be like, Okay, here's who I'm trying to be. I was sort of trying to figure it out on my own. I'm still trying to figure it out to some degree.

Yeah, and there's still not great models, to be honest.

I mean, I think that's why we've seen a lot of women leaders who rise up really quickly and then immediately get shot down. Yeah.

And that actually leads me to something I want to talk about, which is the whole girl boss thing from a few years ago. I've always joked that all these toxic girl bosses were just women who saw the Devilwar's praduct and instead of seeing it as a cautionary tale, they saw it as a path to success.

Right.

They agreed with Miranda Priestley that everybody wanted this life, that for better or for worse, she is a depiction of unapologetic female power, and we don't see that a lot.

So they emulated it. Wait, should we define the girl boss?

So this was a term that was popularized in twenty fourteen when Sophia Amarusso, who had founded a wildly successful company called Nasty Gut, wrote a book called girl Boss, and girl Boss was framed as the reaction to lean In, which was Sheryl Sandberg's blockbuster.

Debating Sparti shrl Samdberg, her brand new book is generating a kind of feminist firestorm.

She calls it leaning in, gunning for the corner office, not the cubicle.

And so if Leanan was saying, like, you know, go strive, rise up the corporate ladder, girl Boss was saying like, no, actually, you can be scrappy. You don't have to come from money. You can do it your way, and over time there was this generation of leaders who rose really quickly and were very you know, media savvy. They were all very attractive. They like started populating the cover of every magazine and they were sort of heralded as this new generation of

Right, Because there's also that meme gaslight girl boss gatekeep right, Like it's basically talking about how the girl bosses were actually also positions of privilege and they sort of gate kept other people out of the arena. But I feel like part of what the issue is is there isn't really a clear definition of what a girl boss is.

I mean, it's a fake word, Like it's a made up word that was created as a joke and then became a real thing, And like why are we calling women girl bosses anyway, they should just be bosses. So I sort of am like, you can't define that, Like it came to represent a striver.

Right, like a very earnest striver who embraced a certain kind of corporate feminism. Yes, and equality in this world was just like getting to be the boss. You were an unapologetically ambitious woman like Miranda, but with a feminine twist. So like, if you're a girl boss, you're less threatening in a way. Right, You're certainly not the crazed, desperate career women of the eighties we talked about in the news Week marriage episode. Right, You're not Glennon Close in

Well, and in some ways the media and society has enforced that by adding girl in front of your title.

But ultimately the girl boss, as you said, was pretty limited. And Amanda Mull wrote a great piece in the Atlantic where she talked about why that was. So there was some idea that there was equality just based on advancement, right, it kind of ties capitalism up with female equality, which I think feels inherently flawed. And then she said something that I thought was really smart, she said. The girl Boss argued that the professional success of ambitious young women

Yeah, I mean, I think it's slightly more complex, Like a lot of these stories and quote unquote downfalls were flattened a bit in the media narrative. I'm actually profiling Sophia now for a piece for l and so it's been interesting to actually dig into what really happened versus how the media that I hate saying, yea, we are the media portrayed it. But certainly it represented something right,

And I think also what you're saying is is that these power structures were built by men. So if these women were replicating these power structures, it wasn't like they were doing something unique. It's just the case that if you're a woman, you're more likely to face an immediate backlash. Look at Elon Musk, I mean, he has had a million of these kinds of complaints around him.

Right, Or Adam Newman of WeWork or Travis Kalanek of Uber.

And all three of those men are fine.

And actually Semita muka pot I, who we spoke to earlier, and as I mentioned, is right a book about women work and Ambition also talks about the hypocrisy she sees in the Girl Boss downfall.

I'm always cautious when we too eagerly tear women down. I'm not going to all women's matter this or something obviously, like women are capable of the same heinous atrocities and labor oversights as men. But I do think that when we go after women for a specific behavior that is considered completely normal in men, you know, my eyebrows raise a little bit. I'm like, yes, no leader should be toxic. We should absolutely be creating environments that are equitable. We

Samita has written about how while the girl boss concept is flawed, it did provide a model for women who don't always see a path to leadership, like women of color and people like Samita and I are often excluded from those kinds of spaces. So there are some things about this that weren't all bad. But you know, any model of female leadership generally does eventually face a backlash, right, I mean, we've just seen that in this country, any kind of female advancement eventually faces a backlash.

Yeah, And in fact, I think we're seeing that more now, Like after these girl Bosses, these so called girl bosses toppled, a lot of the investment to female founded companies actually went down.

By the way, investment to female companies was always really low. And that's also partially what was kind of interesting about this being a media sort of created story. Women receive I think less than two percent of VC funding, so there were never a huge number of girl Bosses to start with. So the disproportionate attention they got in the beginning and then in the backlash is also indicative of something which is we love a story about a woman rising and then folly. That's just the thing we love

I mean, pretty big a deal that she like she's not the type to stand down or apologize.

I don't think Yeah, I don't think so either, But I think this was obviously a more serious allegation in.

Some way well, and then also interesting that she was able to keep her right.

She get her job after that apology, right.

Unlike the girl bosses who've kind of toppled and then maybe found their way back in some smaller way, she has stayed on top of the Conde Nast editorial operation. And obviously I don't want to conflate white supremacy bias with slightly toxic or even very toxic behavior. This is obviously a deeper issue, but it shows that she had sort of gone from being immune to this kind of criticism.

Yeah, maybe they have more sense than we did.

And you know, it wasn't just Anna who set these standards, but as arguably the most powerful person in fashion, she did play a large role.

In this kind of centering.

The other thing, too, is that, in particular for women of color, but really for any marginalized group, is that you are often forced to represent your entire demographic.

Right, So if you're a gay leader, there's also this expectation. If you're a translator, it's like you're doing more than just your job. You're representing an entire category of people, and your success or failure carries out weight. And I do think to some degree that gets back to this idea or this thing I was saying at the top, which is it does feel like you're carrying a lot of weight in these jobs. You know, you're not immune

Was letting down, letting much more than just my own mental health, you know. I mean, yeah, more than just yourself or your employees.

You're letting down like everyone who strived to be in a role like that and who maybe had not gone the opportunity well.

And also the other thing I think is that you recognize that you are the representation for a lot of people, like I recognize that.

In those roles.

There were women in the newsroom who saw me in that role and were like, oh, I can do that too. So if I did it poorly or I was not a good example, that I was not setting a good example for them. I was not giving them a path because they were like, well, I don't want to be that bitch, you know.

So, which is terror I mean terrifying. Yeah, it on you, like I do think it does take a real toll.

I mean, I'm someone who struggles with a lot of anxiety. I have in my life had very serious depression, and it is the case that when I am in these jobs, it triggers a lot of those issues for me. And the reason I often leave these jobs is because I've gotten to a point where I no longer feel like I can balance and I need to sort of step

You know, where does all of this leave us?

Like if we're not going to be the Miranda Priestley's, we're not going to be the Sheryl Sandbergs, We're not going to be the girl bosses, Like what's left now?

Quiet quitting, great resignation.

It's like, I feel like it's kind of the end of ambition in my mind, right, I think, well, do we want to have it all? I don't want to have it all anymore. I just want to have enough.

So, as you know, I am very skeptical of all of these little phrases enter into No, it's not the end of ambition.

And also when we talk about ambition.

Are we really just talking about women's ambition, like nobody asks, is it the end of ambition for men? That's true, And yet these trends, these memes, this kind of linguistic popularity of terms like yeah, lazy girl jobs or quiet quitting or I don't dream of labor. Like everything that you see on TikTok these days, which is essentially anti work rhetoric, is largely being pushed by people of all genders.

So I don't know.

I do think that like gender bias even into the way that sometimes I talk about this issue. But I also think that, you know, there's a little bit of like delightful in a way idealism when it comes to young people, but also naivity about the fact that like, all right, kids, you gotta work. Yeah, yeah, I want to be a lazy girl too. I'd love to bedrod all day, Like that would be awesome.

I don't want to have a job. I know, i'd be great. God, let's just sell there all day. Yeah, Like what other terms can we insert here?

You know, but like you still need money to live and I know that like sure, we'd want to reject capitalism and blah blah blah, but like, we're still living in a capitalist society, and so I take some of this anti work rhetoric with a grain of salt, though I do believe that hopefully by questioning things like this girbast culture or hustle culture, or the way that we have devoted our entire beings and entities to work over the past ten twenty year, yours is a good thing.

Yeah.

I want to throw to Semeta one more time because she had something interesting to say about this too. Workplace hierarchy isn't really going anywhere anytime soon, right, Like, we have to figure out how management structures that are equitable, that work, that play to people's strengths, that support them in being as innovative and creative and impactful as possible. That's why I think we're frozen in time right now, because we know that we don't want this kind of

I think we all go through phases. We have to do that.

But that's not a model for women's advancement in the workplace.

Right.

It's a problem and it's a wake up call for working conditions, but it's not ultimately a strategy that's going to be successful or make us happy if that's ultimately the goal.

I think Samina is right, and this isn't the end of ambition generally, but it's hopefully a workplace shift that is happening, Susie. Where does that then leave you?

I mean, I guess what I'm doing is projecting to some degree, because maybe it's just the end of my ambition. Like maybe the reason those memes speak to me is that I have come to kind of want a quieter career when where I have less responsibilities, one where I get to chat with you.

But I will just say, that's not unambitious.

That's a different kind of ambition, And so I think part of the problem is that we have come to define ambition in these really rigid ways that involved yeah, climbing for the corporate ladder, being a boss, like having a big team, being in management, and there are so many different ways to be ambitious, and so I guess that's what kind of gives me hope to what you're saying.

Oh, yeah, that's actually a really good point. I've never thought about it that way.

It's true that I'm not lacking in any ambition, it's just my ambitions have really changed. I'm not trying to get the bigger job. I'm not always trying to get the bigger paycheck. I'm just trying to do work I love, and work that feels creative, and work that I hope is kind of meaningful or it's certainly at least meaningful to me, even if it's not that for everyone else. So that's actually a nice way to think about where that leaves us, and maybe we leave it there.

Susie, I want to use our next episode. We're going to be talking about what it means for a woman to be quote.

Past her prime, which I don't think happens for the record, but we are going to talk about aging and what that means for us, but also just how women are treated as they age in the culture. So I think it's going to be a really interesting one.

This is in Retrospect. Thanks for listening.

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