Speaker 1: There's a scene at the end of The Devilware's Prada
Speaker 1: where the character Miranda Priestley, a famed and famously demanding
Speaker 1: fashion editor, gives her young assistant Andy a rare compliment.
Speaker 2: I see a great deal of myself and you.
Speaker 1: This comment comes after a turning point in the movie
Speaker 1: where Miranda has just saved her own career by brutally
Speaker 1: betraying someone who has been enormously loyal to her. So
Speaker 1: Andy is horrified by this comparison, and she rejects it.
Speaker 3: She says she's not sure that she wants to be
Speaker 3: like Miranda.
Speaker 2: I mean, what if I don't want to live the
Speaker 2: way you live?
Speaker 4: And it'll be ridiculous, Andrea, everybody wants this, Everybody wants
Speaker 4: to be us.
Speaker 1: But does everybody want the glamorous, punishing life at the
Speaker 1: center of this story. That's the central question of the
Speaker 1: movie and this episode. I'm Susie Banacarum and I'm Jessica Bennett,
Speaker 1: and this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit
Speaker 1: a cultural moment from the past that shaped.
Speaker 3: Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: Today, we're talking about the Doublewaar's product and the way
Speaker 1: it depicts women's ambition. But we're also talking about how
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale about sacrificing everything for your job ended
Speaker 1: up glamorizing.
Speaker 3: Exactly that dress.
Speaker 1: As we've said, we're talking about the Doublewars product today,
Speaker 1: a movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway and this
Speaker 1: fraught relationship they have. Anne Hathaway is a recent college grad,
Speaker 1: it's her first job, and Meryl Streep plays her famous
Speaker 1: and powerful boss. And this is a circumstance you and
Speaker 1: I are somewhat familiar with in lots of different variations.
Speaker 3: No comment, no comments, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We've both worked for some famous and powerful women,
Speaker 1: some not so famous, but certainly complicated women.
Speaker 3: Is how I would describe a lot of them.
Speaker 1: I think that's partially why I feel so connected to
Speaker 1: the movie. And it is a movie I have seen
Speaker 1: countless times. It came out in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: and I honestly can't tell you when I first saw it.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if I saw it in the theater.
Speaker 1: But have you seen the movie? Do you remember kind
Speaker 1: of what you thought about it or what you've thought
Speaker 1: about it over the years.
Speaker 5: I mean, I, of course saw it, and I think
Speaker 5: it came out at a time when I had just
Speaker 5: moved to New York and had dreams of becoming a journalist,
Speaker 5: so I was very interested from that perspective.
Speaker 3: Obviously, it's like not that true to life, but it's.
Speaker 5: Really fun, though I forget a lot of the details.
Speaker 3: So can you give me the cliff Notes version?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the more recent version is spark Notes,
Speaker 1: but same thing. I will give you a little summary
Speaker 1: of the movie. So Andy, who I've said is played
Speaker 1: by Anne Hathaway, has moved to New York right after
Speaker 1: college to pursue a career in journalism.
Speaker 3: She was the editor in chief of her college paper.
Speaker 1: She has this dream of working at the New Yorker
Speaker 1: or someplace serious like that.
Speaker 3: Of course, this is what all my students want to
Speaker 3: do also.
Speaker 1: So Andy goes to interview at a big publishing company,
Speaker 1: thinking she's going to get a job at some serious place,
Speaker 1: but randomly the hr person tells her there's availability to
Speaker 1: be the second assistant to Miranda Priestley, who is the
Speaker 1: editor in chief of Runway Magazine, which is a fashion magazine.
Speaker 1: That character is played by Meryl Streep and is widely
Speaker 1: understood to be a very thinly veiled depiction of Anna Wintour,
Speaker 1: who is the famed longtime editor of Vogue magazine. Okay,
Speaker 1: so despite this amazing opportunity, Andy knows nothing about.
Speaker 3: Fashion or fashion magazines.
Speaker 1: She gets the job because she sort of has this
Speaker 1: moment while she's standing in Miranda Priestley's office where she
Speaker 1: pitches herself as hardworking and smart and Miranda decides to
Speaker 1: give her the job.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we all know Miranda's just brutal as a boss,
Speaker 3: but paint us a little bit of a picture. She's
Speaker 3: pretty terrible.
Speaker 1: She's cold and demanding, and she makes really unreasonable requests
Speaker 1: that are essentially impossible, Like at one point, she demands
Speaker 1: that Andy find a flight for her during a literal hurricane,
Speaker 1: and it's like, why can't you get me out of here?
Speaker 1: And then there's another example where she demands that Andy
Speaker 1: get her the unpublished manuscript of the next Harry Potter
Speaker 1: book for her daughters, and Andy actually achieves that one.
Speaker 1: But Andy is determined to survive this job for at
Speaker 1: least a year because everyone keeps telling her that a
Speaker 1: million girls would kill for this job and that if
Speaker 1: she can just stick it out and succeed that Miranda
Speaker 1: will be able to help her get those serious jobs
Speaker 1: she really.
Speaker 5: Wants, which is not dissimilar from what these types of
Speaker 5: bosses actually do promise in real life.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, it's exactly what these bosses do promise.
Speaker 1: So initially she fumbles, and she doesn't really hide her
Speaker 1: disdain for fashion, Like there's all these moments where they're
Speaker 1: doing fittings and she's kind of like making a face
Speaker 1: or snickering, and that is very much noted by Miranda,
Speaker 1: who finds it super annoying. And then there's this first
Speaker 1: assistant played by Emily Blunt. So Andy is the second assistant.
Speaker 1: Miranda has two assistants, and that's a seniority thing. The
Speaker 1: first assistant is more senior than the second assistant. And
Speaker 1: Emily Blunt is just hilarious in this. She steals a
Speaker 1: lot of the scenes, and she just cannot understand Andy,
Speaker 1: like she doesn't think she's deserving of the job, she
Speaker 1: doesn't understand her fashion. She's just kind of like, Miranda's
Speaker 1: decided to hire you, but I'm just putting up with
Speaker 1: you essentially.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, do you have some prior commitment, some hideous
Speaker 4: skirt convention you have to go to.
Speaker 1: But one of the other fashion editors, played by Stanley Tucci,
Speaker 1: takes Andy under his wing and she goes from being
Speaker 1: this unfashionable rube to hot and stylish.
Speaker 3: Of course, could have predicted that.
Speaker 1: And in the process she becomes seduced by the environment
Speaker 1: and this desire to please Miranda. So that is the
Speaker 1: context of the movie, and that is where we are
Speaker 1: when we get to this scene that we played at
Speaker 1: the top of the episode.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, so the scene. What drew you to this
Speaker 5: scene in particular? Well, I love the scene.
Speaker 1: I think I always have, but over time I've become
Speaker 1: kind of more drawn to it because it really encapsulates
Speaker 1: for me, the central tension in many women's careers, in
Speaker 1: my career, in the careers I see of my friends,
Speaker 1: I think, when you're young, you do want this life.
Speaker 1: You want to be hugely successful, you want these big jobs,
Speaker 1: but you don't really fully understand the sacrifices you're going
Speaker 1: to make.
Speaker 3: You're told that there.
Speaker 1: Will be sacrifices, but as you go through you see
Speaker 1: what that really means for your life, and that is
Speaker 1: really complicated. So this dynamic, this tension between them is
Speaker 1: a reflection of I think something that we all struggle
Speaker 1: with internally, really.
Speaker 3: And the scene begins where this tension is playing out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the scene comes at the end of the movie
Speaker 1: after Andy has gone through her transformation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, her fashion transformation.
Speaker 1: Now she's wearing like amazing clothes and has like a
Speaker 1: great haircut, and she does look I will say, imtegrable.
Speaker 1: And she has seemingly bought into this world and kind
Speaker 1: of in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way, you see
Speaker 1: that all of her relationships are in tatters. She keeps
Speaker 1: ditching her friends and family, and she and her boyfriend
Speaker 1: have just broken up because she's so obsessed with her.
Speaker 3: Work, obsessed with their work.
Speaker 5: I feel like that's also another frequent plot line and
Speaker 5: these types of things. It's like the boyfriend can't Hannah,
Speaker 5: how devoted to your career?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't handle it.
Speaker 1: And they're in Paris for fashion Week, and even coming
Speaker 1: on this trip to Paris is supposed to be an
Speaker 1: indication that Andy has lost her way because it is Emily,
Speaker 1: the first assistant who is supposed to go on this trip.
Speaker 1: It is a huge deal to go to Paris fashion week,
Speaker 1: and Emily has been talking about it for months, and
Speaker 1: now Andy has gone instead because Miranda has taken a
Speaker 1: liking to her and has said to Andy, you can
Speaker 1: come to Harris instead, but you have to tell Emily.
Speaker 3: Oh right. She's like pitting them against each other.
Speaker 1: And now in Paris, Andy has discovered that Miranda is
Speaker 1: about to be fired and replaced by a much younger
Speaker 1: European editor, and she's desperately trying to get to Miranda
Speaker 1: to warn her. And then, unbeknown st Andy, Miranda has
Speaker 1: already been aware of the plan and has outmaneuvered the
Speaker 1: publisher by getting the younger editor another job.
Speaker 3: And it's a particularly.
Speaker 1: Brutal move and moment in the movie because Miranda has
Speaker 1: saved herself by giving the job that had been promised
Speaker 1: to the character played by Stanley Tucci to this other
Speaker 1: editor to get her out of the way. And so
Speaker 1: Stanley Tucci, who is this really loyal deputy who's worked
Speaker 1: for her for years, who you see in an earlier
Speaker 1: scene is so excited about this new role now is
Speaker 1: stuck still at Runway Magazine with her. And now Andy
Speaker 1: and Miranda are in a car together and Andy is reeling
Speaker 1: from this because she has seen all of this go down,
Speaker 1: and Miranda acknowledges that she saw how hard Andy tried
Speaker 1: to warn her and was impressed by that.
Speaker 3: And then she says to her.
Speaker 2: I see a great deal of myself and you.
Speaker 1: And obviously Miranda means this as a compliment, but you
Speaker 1: can see just by the reaction on Andy's face that
Speaker 1: she does not hear it as a compliment, and she objects.
Speaker 1: She says, but I would never do what you did, Miranda,
Speaker 1: and Miranda reminds her that she already did to the
Speaker 1: other assistant she replaced to go on this trip.
Speaker 2: That was different. I didn't have the choice. No, you choose,
Speaker 2: you choose to get in you want this life. Those
Speaker 2: choices aren't necessary. But what if this isn't what I want?
Speaker 4: I mean, what if I don't want to live the
Speaker 4: way you live? And don't be ridiculous, Andrea. Everybody wants this,
Speaker 4: everybody wants to be us.
Speaker 5: It's so funny because she truly can't conceive a world
Speaker 5: in which people don't want what she has and what
Speaker 5: she has to do to hold on to it.
Speaker 3: So yes, yeah, it is. It's a very poignant moment
Speaker 3: in that way.
Speaker 5: Because Andy has realized that she's doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: Right, And just to finish this moment, when they arrive
Speaker 1: at the event they're going to, Andy turns and leaves
Speaker 1: Miranda alone. And while she's walking away, Miranda calls her,
Speaker 1: and you see Andy look at her phone and it
Speaker 1: shows Miranda's name, and Andy throws her phone into a
Speaker 1: nearby fountains. Right, so she's like relinquished this life. And
Speaker 1: we don't know how she gets back to New York.
Speaker 1: We don't know anything else, right, but she has like
Speaker 1: walked away in the middle of like the most important
Speaker 1: week of Miranda Priestley's year.
Speaker 3: And back in New York, we see.
Speaker 1: Andy go to a job interview at a newspaper, a
Speaker 1: serious publication.
Speaker 3: She has said she's back in Dowdy Close, although.
Speaker 1: Still with a much more fashionable touch. I will say,
Speaker 1: she still has the fabulous haircut. And so this editor
Speaker 1: who is interviewing tells her that he's reached out to
Speaker 1: Miranda for a reference, and you kind of see the
Speaker 1: look across Andy's face and he says he received a
Speaker 1: note back saying that Andy was the biggest disappointment, but
Speaker 1: he'd be an idiot not to hire her, and ultimately
Speaker 1: that's how we know this is a cautionary tale. Andy
Speaker 1: has made a deal with the devil, the devil in Prada.
Speaker 1: She's lost her way, she's disappointed her friends and family,
Speaker 1: but by the end, she's seen the air of her ways.
Speaker 1: She's saved herself, and luckily for her, because it's a fantasy,
Speaker 1: she's reaped the benefits anyway, She's now gotten this other
Speaker 1: job because Miranda has still given her her seal of approval,
Speaker 1: which it is a fantasy, right, So it is the
Speaker 1: fantasy we all have that that boss, he was terrible
Speaker 1: to us, secretly thought we were amazing, right, Like that
Speaker 1: is the redemption we all want.
Speaker 3: So obviously this movie is not high art, right.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't want to make it seem like
Speaker 1: we're going into the ins and outs of this movie,
Speaker 1: because I think it's the best movie ever made. But
Speaker 1: it is the real chic flick that isn't centered on
Speaker 1: a man. It's about a girl and her ambitions and
Speaker 1: figure out what she wants. The boyfriend's storyline is a
Speaker 1: secondary plot point and they don't end up together, right,
Speaker 1: And the role of Miranda Priestley is not something we
Speaker 1: saw a lot in this way, right, a woman who
Speaker 1: is highly successful, unapologetic, fully in charge, and is really
Speaker 1: seen as a leader in this industry.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it reminds me of like there's those
Speaker 5: movies about female ambition in a way from the eighties,
Speaker 5: Like I'm thinking about Baby Boom and wasn't there Working Girl?
Speaker 1: Yes, those are both movies I love, and they are
Speaker 1: both about women trying to make their way in their
Speaker 1: working life. But in both those movies, the romance is
Speaker 1: still very central, and they do end up with a
Speaker 1: hot guy at the end, right, and that is seen
Speaker 1: as part of the happy ending. And here the happy
Speaker 1: ending is that she gets the job she wants, Right,
Speaker 1: That's a really big difference.
Speaker 5: Did you relate to Andy in watching it at the time,
Speaker 5: Like I remember, Yes, I too wanted to be a
Speaker 5: serious journalist, but I don't know that I ever thought
Speaker 5: I would be capable of walking away in the same
Speaker 5: way she did.
Speaker 3: I definitely didn't relate to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I felt like I had to do whatever
Speaker 1: it took to succeed, and I was willing to do that.
Speaker 1: I was not the girl who was going to throw
Speaker 1: her phone in the fountain. I had you know, bills
Speaker 1: to pay and student loans and did what I had.
Speaker 5: To Immigrant mentality probably too, Yeah, definitely immigrant mentality.
Speaker 1: I did not feel like I was in a position
Speaker 1: where I had a safety net, so there was no
Speaker 1: place to go.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess that's the fantasy aspect of this movie,
Speaker 5: is that most people are not in the position to
Speaker 5: throw their work phone fountain and just hope they're going
Speaker 5: to get another job.
Speaker 1: And I actually I went back to my LinkedIn because
Speaker 1: I couldn't remember where I was in my own career.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in two thousand and six, I was working
Speaker 3: at ABC News.
Speaker 1: At that time, George Stephanopolis was the host of This Week,
Speaker 1: which I think he still hosts sometimes, and I did
Speaker 1: have a very intense female boss who definitely had some
Speaker 1: Miranda Priestley like demands.
Speaker 5: Okay, so now you have to tell us what kind
Speaker 5: of demands those were.
Speaker 1: One thing that seems very Miranda like is that she
Speaker 1: needed her daily papers to be unwrinkled, So before she
Speaker 1: came in, her assistant would put her papers on her
Speaker 1: desk and she had to make sure she got only
Speaker 1: unwrinkled copies, which I'm not even sure how you guarantee
Speaker 1: that I know she wasn't ironing them. So that's like
Speaker 1: a very funny thing. She must have gone to the
Speaker 1: newsstand and like selected.
Speaker 5: Oh unwringkled copies of the papers. I thought you just
Speaker 5: met papers in general. Oh no, the newspapers, like the newspapers,
Speaker 5: So she had to like make sure she wasn't getting
Speaker 5: the top one at the BA she'd like dig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she doesn't make sure that whatever the New York
Speaker 1: Times or New York Posts she was picking up, they
Speaker 1: were pristine. And we had a very intense rule that
Speaker 1: you would get in trouble for if you didn't. When
Speaker 1: you sent an email on the two line, the names
Speaker 1: had to be an order of seniority, Like if I
Speaker 1: send an email to two people and one of them
Speaker 1: was junior, they had to be second on the chain.
Speaker 3: Or I think that I do do that, like I
Speaker 3: don't die.
Speaker 5: I don't do it too, but I think that I
Speaker 5: do do that because it just kind of makes logical sense.
Speaker 5: But I'm sure younger people who wear email was not
Speaker 5: their primary with Queen Caanner who came up on slack
Speaker 5: probably think that's insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I also do that still too, just because
Speaker 1: it's locked into my brain.
Speaker 3: I can't get it out of my brain.
Speaker 1: But the other one that I think is particularly funny
Speaker 1: is if we had a cake in the office for
Speaker 1: someone's birthday, the assistant had to make sure to hand
Speaker 1: out the pieces of cake in the order of seniority's.
Speaker 5: So many ways, so like true hierarchy to everything, like
Speaker 5: very higher.
Speaker 1: It was this kind of obsession with order right like
Speaker 1: it things had to be a very specific way, which
Speaker 1: just were not chill at all.
Speaker 5: I will say though, that with so many of these stories,
Speaker 5: it's like there are plenty of male bosses that do
Speaker 5: this kind of shit too, maybe not with the cake,
Speaker 5: or maybe it's like they're the menus just playing out
Speaker 5: in different ways, but we don't necessarily call them demanding
Speaker 5: in the same way we just call them.
Speaker 1: Then, well, I will tell you a great story I know,
Speaker 1: like this about a mail boss at ABC is. I
Speaker 1: have a friend who was an assistant to an executive
Speaker 1: producer and he used to make her follow him to
Speaker 1: the bathroom and he would continue to shout notes at
Speaker 1: her through the door and she'd have to like take
Speaker 1: notes while he was peeing, which is disgusting.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't remember anyone ever calling that guy
Speaker 3: a diva.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, this is a woman who I
Speaker 1: enjoyed working for enough that I went to work for
Speaker 1: her again. Right, She gets demanding and difficult, but I
Speaker 1: saw that as just the way you had to be
Speaker 1: to be in these jobs. I didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of examples of people in these jobs who were kind.
Speaker 3: And compassionate and wanted to like coddle me. This was
Speaker 3: the deal.
Speaker 5: And also, for what it's worth, if you're running a
Speaker 5: company or whatever the job may be, you probably don't
Speaker 5: have time to coddle your assistant and on like, on
Speaker 5: some level, maybe I'm sympathetic a little bit to some
Speaker 5: of this. Cancel me, am, I remembering correctly that this
Speaker 5: movie was based on a book.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was based on a best selling book of
Speaker 1: the same name. It was written by Lauren Weisberger, and
Speaker 1: the book came out in two thousand and three. Okay,
Speaker 1: And the book was itself a cultural phenomenon.
Speaker 3: It was really popular.
Speaker 1: It came out at the peak of the chick lit era,
Speaker 1: and most relevant is that Weisberger had actually been Anna
Speaker 1: Wintor's assistant at Vogue, which is why it was so
Speaker 1: widely understood that Winter Tour was the inspiration for Priestley.
Speaker 5: It's probably worth spending a little time for those who
Speaker 5: might not know as much as we do talking about
Speaker 5: who Anna Winter is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she is not just the editor of a
Speaker 1: fashion magazine. She has literally been called the single most
Speaker 1: important figure in the three hundred billion dollar global fashion industry.
Speaker 1: As you might expect from a famous fashion editor, she
Speaker 1: has a very distinctive look. You know, this classic bob
Speaker 1: that she's had for years, with fangs. She's often seen
Speaker 1: wearing sunglasses. She's always flawless. And I was actually thinking,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I've ever seen her in casual clothes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I humbled Anna Wintour and jeans, And apparently she
Speaker 1: does have genes because I found some pictures of it,
Speaker 1: and she looks great in them. But she is sort
Speaker 1: of in your mind if you've seen lots of images
Speaker 1: of her, which I have, but I'm sure you have too,
Speaker 1: this very polished person. And she became the Vogue editor
Speaker 1: in chief in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3: Isn't that crazy? Thirty five years ago? Is she the
Speaker 3: longest servant?
Speaker 5: Like that's a huge amount of time for an editor
Speaker 5: in chief To be clear.
Speaker 1: I mean, most people last two years in a job
Speaker 1: in media, right, So the fact that she's been a
Speaker 1: top the most famous fashion magazine in the world for
Speaker 1: thirty five years is really an achievement and just wild.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's been in that job longer than a
Speaker 1: lot of people have been alive. And she was promoted
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen to Conde Nasts artistic director, so she
Speaker 1: doesn't just lead Vogue anymore. She is the editorial leader
Speaker 1: of all the titles of Conde Nast, which include The
Speaker 1: New Yorker and Vanity Fair and Wired and a bunch
Speaker 1: of other things.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I remember watching that documentary about her. What was
Speaker 5: it this September Issue.
Speaker 1: Yes, there is a documentary about her called The September Issue.
Speaker 3: It was released in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: And the thing about Anna is she's very much seen
Speaker 1: as a visionary, as someone who can see things coming
Speaker 1: down the line and lead rather than follow. So she's
Speaker 1: credited with seeing the power of celebrity culture really early
Speaker 1: in the cycle and realizing before other people did that
Speaker 1: it made sense to put celebrities on the cover. You
Speaker 1: used to be models on the cover of fashion magazine.
Speaker 1: It's Anna who's really credited with changing that.
Speaker 5: And she runs the met Gallet too, right, which is
Speaker 5: like the biggest celebrity event of all.
Speaker 1: Yes, she throws the net Galut, which is a benefit
Speaker 1: for the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Costume Institute.
Speaker 3: It's the first Monday in.
Speaker 5: May, which means fashions, the biggest night is finally here.
Speaker 1: You know, just running that would make her a huge
Speaker 1: cultural figure. Celebrities are desperate for invites to that. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it's really hard to overstate her power and influence.
Speaker 1: But also she is famously inaccessible. She is famously kind
Speaker 1: of known to be someone with very high standards.
Speaker 5: Isn't the rumor that if you are an assistant or
Speaker 5: a junior editor person at Vogue, you are not allowed
Speaker 5: to make eye contact with her in the elevator?
Speaker 3: That's what I've always heard.
Speaker 1: Yes, I've heard that you're not allowed to say hello
Speaker 1: to her or make eye contact. And frankly, that's been
Speaker 1: true of other bosses I have had, So that does
Speaker 1: not surprise me as a rumor.
Speaker 3: I feel like that could very much be real.
Speaker 5: Okay, so how close to reality do we think the
Speaker 5: book and the movie an actual Anna Winter are.
Speaker 3: That's a great question. The Devilware's product is technically fiction.
Speaker 1: So I reached out to Samita Muka Patai, who worked
Speaker 1: for Anna Wintour as the executive editor at teen Vogue,
Speaker 1: and it happens to also be the author of an.
Speaker 3: Upcoming book on women and work and ambition.
Speaker 1: Of course, Samita was an editor, so she obviously had
Speaker 1: a very different job than Andy did in the movie.
Speaker 1: But here's how Samita describes being interviewed by Anna Wintour.
Speaker 3: I was very anxious to meet her.
Speaker 6: It just was never a position I ever thought I'd
Speaker 6: be in which would be to interview with her. And
Speaker 6: when I had that opportunity, unlike Andy, I researched like
Speaker 6: crazy for how I would show up that day.
Speaker 3: You prepared, Yeah, I prepared.
Speaker 6: And there were multiple articles written about what to wear
Speaker 6: and what not to wear the first time.
Speaker 3: You meet Anna. So what are you supposed to wear
Speaker 3: and what are you not supposed to wear? Right?
Speaker 6: Well, interestingly, a lot of the articles say not to
Speaker 6: wear black, that she doesn't like black, and this has
Speaker 6: kind of been like a long rumor for her that
Speaker 6: she's just like prefers color and brightness. Upon meeting her like,
Speaker 6: I don't think it would have mattered at all what
Speaker 6: I wore, and so it was kind of like it
Speaker 6: was like deeply humbling to be like, oh, it's like
Speaker 6: this big character that exists that's larger than life character,
Speaker 6: but you're actually just like a person that's trying to
Speaker 6: make the proper business and editorial decision for this brand
Speaker 6: that you oversee. It was a big wake up moment
Speaker 6: because I planned so much for what I was gonna wear,
Speaker 6: and I bought myself a Gucci handbag and I.
Speaker 3: Practically wore it hanging around my neck.
Speaker 6: None of it was necessary, Like she really just wanted
Speaker 6: to talk about my editorial experience and like my taste
Speaker 6: in like culture. So it was definitely one of those
Speaker 6: myth busting moments obviously, and she wasn't wearing sunglasses.
Speaker 3: Either, by the way.
Speaker 5: Okay, I love all the behind the scenes interview stuff,
Speaker 5: but I have to say, the points to me to
Speaker 5: made about Andy not preparing for her interview is like
Speaker 5: the least relatable thing to us as journalists, Like why
Speaker 5: would you not prepare for an interview where you're trying
Speaker 5: to prove you want to be a serious journalist?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so weird to me, Right, you would at
Speaker 3: least just do some research. And also it's hard.
Speaker 1: To believe that any woman in America who wanted to
Speaker 1: work in media would just not know who the editor
Speaker 1: of the biggest fashion magazine in the world was. Like,
Speaker 1: that is still a big job in media any person
Speaker 1: in America.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels true.
Speaker 1: But the idea that Anna is actually a much more
Speaker 1: complex character than the cultural characterization of her isn't surprising, right.
Speaker 3: Or the cultural caricature of her in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's something that I feel like you discuss a
Speaker 3: lot in your work.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's something we keep
Speaker 5: coming up against in this podcast, which is there's often
Speaker 5: more complexity to the characters we're looking at, actually with women.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think we've seen that a lot with
Speaker 1: people like Robin Gibvens, whose identities are so flattened by
Speaker 1: these characterizations of them, or Britney Spears who had her
Speaker 1: complexity denied and was just dismissed as crazy. And in general,
Speaker 1: I think that's what's really smart about this movie, going
Speaker 1: back to Double Warsprata, which is that it takes something
Speaker 1: that is also dismissed as frivolous and for women fashion
Speaker 1: fashion magazines, and it explores the ways in which they're
Speaker 1: actually serious and worthy of examination.
Speaker 5: Yeah, isn't there a famous scene where Miranda Priestley sort
Speaker 5: of schools Andy in how she got her sweater or
Speaker 5: something like that.
Speaker 1: Yes, the speech you're thinking of is the Cyrillian speech,
Speaker 1: which is a color blue. They're in a meeting and
Speaker 1: someone has presented Miranda with two belts, and Andy has snickered,
Speaker 1: and so those two belts look exactly the same to me,
Speaker 1: and she's sort of expecting everyone to be like, haha, yes,
Speaker 1: but Miranda is really icy in her retort.
Speaker 7: You select, I don't know that lumpy blue sweater, for instance,
Speaker 7: because you're trying to tell the world that you take
Speaker 7: yourself too seriously to care about what you put on
Speaker 7: your back.
Speaker 2: But what you don't know is that.
Speaker 3: That sweater is not just blue.
Speaker 7: It's not torquois, it's not lapist, it's actually ceruleum.
Speaker 1: And it was introduced on this runway and that runway
Speaker 1: until you fished it out of some bargain basement. It's
Speaker 1: like a very funny moment, and that speech has become
Speaker 1: pretty famous because it does, in a really succinct way,
Speaker 1: explain why fashion does have meaning in people's lives, why
Speaker 1: our lives are all impacted by the way fashion works.
Speaker 5: Right, And so she's basically saying, you think you chose
Speaker 5: that sweater, but actually, let me tell you that sweater
Speaker 5: chose you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Susie.
Speaker 5: I want to go back for a moment to the
Speaker 5: Miranda character in the book, because the book is actually
Speaker 5: pretty vitriolic.
Speaker 1: I mean I reread the book last night, actually, and
Speaker 1: it is so vitriolic, like kind of in a shocking
Speaker 1: way to me now looking back it points book Andy
Speaker 1: calls book Miranda a bitch. She talks about how much
Speaker 1: she hates her. I mean, my takeaway from the book
Speaker 1: is that the author hated working for Anna Wintour.
Speaker 3: Not a lot of complexity, It's like, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a pretty one dimensional character and she's just awful.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, the limo scene is not in the book
Speaker 1: at all. The ending plays out completely differently. So in
Speaker 1: the book, the way their relationship ends is that Andy
Speaker 1: says to Miranda, fuck you, Miranda, fuck you.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: She's fired obviously for swearing at her boss. And the
Speaker 1: whole thing in the movie about how Miranda writes her
Speaker 1: a good reference and there's kind of this redemption moment
Speaker 1: from Miranda that doesn't happen in the book at all.
Speaker 5: Okay, so this is like a revenge totally essentially, like
Speaker 5: She's She's chin.
Speaker 3: It's like a revenge fantasy. Right. I don't think this
Speaker 3: happened in real life.
Speaker 1: So I think this is like the book she's written
Speaker 1: about what she wishes she had done when she left Vogue, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what it feels like.
Speaker 3: Is a reader for sure?
Speaker 5: So do people like this book? Is the book bad?
Speaker 5: What's the response?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: I mean, the book is controversial, much more so than
Speaker 1: the film because it is really a takedown. And I
Speaker 1: guess at this time it was seen as sort of
Speaker 1: bad manners to gossip about your former boss in this way,
Speaker 1: which feels kind of quaint now like in the post
Speaker 1: Cocker era.
Speaker 3: But it's like literally aronde.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But The New York Times actually had two negative reviews
Speaker 1: of this book, and the first one was written by
Speaker 1: famed critic Janet Maslin where she refers to it as
Speaker 1: a mean spirited gotcha of a book, and the other
Speaker 1: one is called Anna Dearist, and it has this line
Speaker 1: that is so interesting because I think in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways it encapsulates kind of what we're talking about
Speaker 1: in a larger sense. Here she had a ringside seat
Speaker 1: at one of the great editorial franchises, but she seems
Speaker 1: to have understood almost nothing about the isolation and pressure
Speaker 1: of the job her boss was doing, or what it
Speaker 1: might cost a person like Miranda Priestley to become a
Speaker 1: character like Miranda Priestley.
Speaker 5: Hmmm, I bet that was written by a woman.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was written by a woman, And I think
Speaker 1: it is the truth that these jobs do come with
Speaker 1: isolation and pressure.
Speaker 3: It is a reality that it's not quite so simple.
Speaker 1: And so the movie really makes an effort to humanize
Speaker 1: Miranda in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: Right moving Miranda is more complicated. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The director has actually said that early versions of the
Speaker 1: script even felt too vengeful, and I suspect what he
Speaker 1: is leaving kind of unsaid in that is that's because
Speaker 1: the book was vengeful, right, It was this like really
Speaker 1: mean spirited book. So when it comes time to make
Speaker 1: the movie, the movie is being made by people who
Speaker 1: probably have had these senior positions right there, are two
Speaker 1: scenes that give you a real window into Miranda's personal
Speaker 1: life and what her career has cost her on that front.
Speaker 1: In the movie, at one point, Miranda is having an
Speaker 1: argument with her husband and Andy walks in, and the
Speaker 1: argument is about how she's missed a lunch with him,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, I could tell everyone was
Speaker 1: looking at me and thinking, there he is waiting for
Speaker 1: her again, which feels, you know, like a thing a
Speaker 1: lot of women go through when they're more successful than
Speaker 1: their partner. And then later in Paris, there's this very
Speaker 1: vulnerable scene where she tells Andy she's getting a divorce.
Speaker 1: Miranda's without her usual armor, she has no makeup on,
Speaker 1: and she's in a robe, and she talks about knowing
Speaker 1: what they will write about her. Dragon Lady, career obsessed
Speaker 1: no Clean, drives away another mister Priestley, and she tears
Speaker 1: up as she laments what it will do to her daughters.
Speaker 5: Actually, I had forgotten until you were mentioning the Harry
Speaker 5: Potter part of the movie that she even had daughters
Speaker 5: like that too. Is an interesting thing because you expect
Speaker 5: a woman of the stature, or a woman who behaves
Speaker 5: like this to be this career as who doesn't have
Speaker 5: a family, right.
Speaker 1: And what's kind of interesting in this moment in the
Speaker 1: movie is that when Andy expresses sympathy for her and says,
Speaker 1: you know, is there anything else I can do? Miranda
Speaker 1: kind of snaps back into being her self, you know,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better way of putting it, and
Speaker 1: she just says, yes, your job, And that is kind
Speaker 1: of the encapsulation, right, Like she's had this moment of vulnerability,
Speaker 1: but then she has to keep going, Like what choice
Speaker 1: does she have? You know, she is the editor of
Speaker 1: Runway at Paris Fashion Week.
Speaker 3: She can't fall apart.
Speaker 1: And you know, EW did an oral history of the
Speaker 1: film and the director said something that I thought was
Speaker 1: really interesting. He said that in his vision, Miranda is
Speaker 1: the heroine of the piece, not the villain, because it's
Speaker 1: a coming of age story for Andy to learn about
Speaker 1: what it takes to be great at something, Isn't.
Speaker 3: That So that's interesting?
Speaker 5: Yes, So it's really about how she Miranda was ultimately successful,
Speaker 5: not just a terrible visit, right, Like, it's really.
Speaker 1: A movie about what it costs to be Miranda and
Speaker 1: teaching Andy that she may not think it's okay, but
Speaker 1: Eventually she's gonna have to make some of these hard
Speaker 1: choices too, And that is really why the Limo moment
Speaker 1: is so critical to the film and why I chose it.
Speaker 1: It's fundamentally a film about what it costs to have
Speaker 1: this kind of life, this kind of career, the isolation,
Speaker 1: the pressure, and that's something I think Meryl Streep really
Speaker 1: conveys in this portrayal, and why in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: Andy feels hopelessly naive to me. You know, even when
Speaker 1: I saw this the first time, it seemed to me
Speaker 1: like Andy had a lot of growing up to do.
Speaker 5: So Susie, we you know, obviously both related to this movie.
Speaker 5: I think when we first saw it in a different
Speaker 5: way than we might now, Like back then we were
Speaker 5: aspiring journalists or young journalists, and now we're more the
Speaker 5: established journalists. So I was curious for you, I mean,
Speaker 5: you have run really big newsrooms, You've been a boss
Speaker 5: in a lot of these jobs. What do you think
Speaker 5: the costs of that success have been for you? If any?
Speaker 1: I think for me the costs are really personal in
Speaker 1: terms of just how I operate in the world, Like
Speaker 1: it takes a lot out of you just physically to
Speaker 1: do these jobs, you have to be willing to work
Speaker 1: just an enormous amount of hours, and you have to
Speaker 1: be emotionally available to a very large group of people
Speaker 1: because you're managing a big team, and all of those
Speaker 1: things take a toll on you, right. I think there
Speaker 1: are people that can do these jobs that don't have
Speaker 1: that experience, that learn to have a set of clear
Speaker 1: walls where they're not sort of taking in a lot
Speaker 1: of the energy around them. Or frankly, I think we
Speaker 1: know because there have been studies that a lot of
Speaker 1: leaders are actually sociopaths or psychopaths.
Speaker 3: I think is what the studies say that says leaders
Speaker 3: are sociopaths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's one study I remember reading the claim that
Speaker 1: as many as one in five business leaders have some
Speaker 1: psychopathic tendencies.
Speaker 3: So that's twenty percent. I'm so surprised by that.
Speaker 1: So I think if you are able to have that
Speaker 1: kind of separation from you and the people whose lives
Speaker 1: you you know, to some degree hold in your hands
Speaker 1: when you're managing a large team, I think it can
Speaker 1: be a lot easier. But for me personally, that has
Speaker 1: been a real struggle, and I think it kind of
Speaker 1: has re oriented me in terms of how I think
Speaker 1: about ambition and whether or not I want to have
Speaker 1: these big jobs, whether or not I think these big
Speaker 1: jobs make sense anymore.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think that the headline here is
Speaker 5: that we hold women leaders to higher standards. Like I
Speaker 5: guess Miranda Priestley, I don't know that she was in
Speaker 5: a position like you were speaking of where she really
Speaker 5: cared about the emotional well being of her entire staff.
Speaker 5: It was more like she was in charge of she
Speaker 5: had these assistants. But like, we expect women leaders to
Speaker 5: be nice, and we don't expect male leaders to be nice.
Speaker 5: So was Miranda Priestley kind of a bit sometimes? Like yeah,
Speaker 5: but if she was a man, would we call her
Speaker 5: a bitch or would we just call her demand decisive?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: And so you know, she clearly put andy or her
Speaker 5: assistance or whatever in precarious situations.
Speaker 3: But that's happened a million times before.
Speaker 5: And so I think that what me know is that
Speaker 5: there's this likability trade off for women, like the more
Speaker 5: power they gained, the less we like them, statistically proven
Speaker 5: time and time again. And it applies to business or
Speaker 5: it applies to politics, and so women are always having
Speaker 5: to adjust their demeanor to try to make up for this.
Speaker 5: And I think what Miranda Priestley, he represents as someone
Speaker 5: who wasn't willing to adjust her demeanor, and thus she
Speaker 5: was kind of like a frigid ice cool.
Speaker 3: Ice queen pitch. But is that fair? You know, It's
Speaker 3: a little more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I do think this is something when you're
Speaker 1: a woman in a leadership position, you're constantly trying to
Speaker 1: thread the needle on right, because on the one hand,
Speaker 1: you need to be somewhat decisive and you need to
Speaker 1: be someone who moves things through. You can't just be
Speaker 1: like spending all your time being emotionally accessible or whatever.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I think my entire career
Speaker 1: I have been given the note that I need to
Speaker 1: soften myself. I need to be less blunt, I need
Speaker 1: to work a little less quickly and assume that people
Speaker 1: aren't always following Like. Those are notes I've gotten repeatedly
Speaker 1: in my career, and I think I really struggle with
Speaker 1: that still because I am not naturally like a very soft,
Speaker 1: sweet person, you know. It's like I am pretty blunt
Speaker 1: and straightforward, and I sort of think that's one of
Speaker 1: my strengths.
Speaker 3: Well, that's kind of what you need to be a leader,
Speaker 3: in fact.
Speaker 1: But as I've gotten older, I can see when it
Speaker 1: has an impact on someone, and I try and dial
Speaker 1: it down because I recognize that not everyone can deal
Speaker 1: with that well.
Speaker 3: And that's part of the pressure.
Speaker 5: Right You're in charge of all these people and to
Speaker 5: some degree they're well being, but you have to discipline.
Speaker 5: There is hard stuff. Sometimes you have to do layoffs.
Speaker 5: Thankfully I've never had to do that, but I can
Speaker 5: imagine that's hard no matter who you are.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I can't believe you've never had to do
Speaker 1: a layoff. That is really lucky in this media environment.
Speaker 1: But just even aside from those pressures, it's just hard
Speaker 1: to show up as your best self every single day. Right,
Speaker 1: Sometimes you just don't, or you make mistakes and the
Speaker 1: stakes feel higher because you're the boss and everyone's paying attention.
Speaker 5: Right, Like a bad day can have more extreme consequences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean everyone I know in the leadership position
Speaker 1: struggles with that at times. And actually we have a
Speaker 1: friend who runs a newsroom who said to me recently,
Speaker 1: it's not fun to be in charge anymore. And that
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. Right, people are just so self
Speaker 1: conscious all the time. They're so worried they're going to
Speaker 1: do something that's going to get them canceled in some way.
Speaker 5: Which I guess is good on the one hand, like
Speaker 5: that we're all more conscious of creating the kind of
Speaker 5: workplaces we want to be in, but it's also complicated.
Speaker 1: I think part of the reason I have sometimes felt
Speaker 1: like I'm groping around in the dark trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to be a good leader is that there
Speaker 1: just weren't a lot of great.
Speaker 3: Examples of leadership.
Speaker 1: You know. Most of the leadership I saw was Miranda
Speaker 1: Priestley type leadership.
Speaker 3: From men and women.
Speaker 1: So it's not like there were all these models for
Speaker 1: me that I could be like, Okay, here's who I'm
Speaker 1: trying to be. I was sort of trying to figure
Speaker 1: it out on my own. I'm still trying to figure
Speaker 1: it out to some degree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's still not great models, to be honest.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think that's why we've seen a lot
Speaker 5: of women leaders who rise up really quickly and then
Speaker 5: immediately get shot down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that actually leads me to something I want to
Speaker 1: talk about, which is the whole girl boss thing from
Speaker 1: a few years ago. I've always joked that all these
Speaker 1: toxic girl bosses were just women who saw the Devilwar's
Speaker 1: praduct and instead of seeing it as a cautionary tale,
Speaker 1: they saw it as a path to success.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: They agreed with Miranda Priestley that everybody wanted this life,
Speaker 1: that for better or for worse, she is a depiction
Speaker 1: of unapologetic female power, and we don't see that a lot.
Speaker 3: So they emulated it. Wait, should we define the girl boss?
Speaker 5: So this was a term that was popularized in twenty
Speaker 5: fourteen when Sophia Amarusso, who had founded a wildly successful
Speaker 5: company called Nasty Gut, wrote a book called girl Boss,
Speaker 5: and girl Boss was framed as the reaction to lean In,
Speaker 5: which was Sheryl Sandberg's blockbuster.
Speaker 3: Debating Sparti shrl Samdberg, her brand new book is generating
Speaker 3: a kind of feminist firestorm.
Speaker 4: She calls it leaning in, gunning for the corner office,
Speaker 4: not the cubicle.
Speaker 5: And so if Leanan was saying, like, you know, go strive,
Speaker 5: rise up the corporate ladder, girl Boss was saying like, no, actually,
Speaker 5: you can be scrappy. You don't have to come from money.
Speaker 5: You can do it your way, and over time there
Speaker 5: was this generation of leaders who rose really quickly and
Speaker 5: were very you know, media savvy. They were all very attractive.
Speaker 5: They like started populating the cover of every magazine and
Speaker 5: they were sort of heralded as this new generation of
Speaker 5: women leaders. But a lot of their businesses failed, a
Speaker 5: lot of them were criticized for various things, and so
Speaker 5: ultimately that term now is more of a pejorative, Like
Speaker 5: it's used on TikTok to like criticize people who are
Speaker 5: seen as too ambitious. There's that phrase, don't girl boss
Speaker 5: too close to the sun. They had too much unbridled
Speaker 5: ambition and came to bite them in the ass.
Speaker 1: Right, Because there's also that meme gaslight girl boss gatekeep right,
Speaker 1: Like it's basically talking about how the girl bosses were
Speaker 1: actually also positions of privilege and they sort of gate
Speaker 1: kept other people out of the arena. But I feel
Speaker 1: like part of what the issue is is there isn't
Speaker 1: really a clear definition of what a girl boss is.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a fake word, Like it's a made
Speaker 5: up word that was created as a joke and then
Speaker 5: became a real thing, And like why are we calling
Speaker 5: women girl bosses anyway, they should just be bosses. So
Speaker 5: I sort of am like, you can't define that, Like
Speaker 5: it came to represent a striver.
Speaker 1: Right, like a very earnest striver who embraced a certain
Speaker 1: kind of corporate feminism. Yes, and equality in this world
Speaker 1: was just like getting to be the boss. You were
Speaker 1: an unapologetically ambitious woman like Miranda, but with a feminine twist.
Speaker 1: So like, if you're a girl boss, you're less threatening
Speaker 1: in a way. Right, You're certainly not the crazed, desperate
Speaker 1: career women of the eighties we talked about in the
Speaker 1: news Week marriage episode. Right, You're not Glennon Close in
Speaker 1: Fatal Attraction. You're like a fashionable and millennial pink feminist.
Speaker 5: Well, and in some ways the media and society has
Speaker 5: enforced that by adding girl in front of your title.
Speaker 1: But ultimately the girl boss, as you said, was pretty limited.
Speaker 1: And Amanda Mull wrote a great piece in the Atlantic
Speaker 1: where she talked about why that was. So there was
Speaker 1: some idea that there was equality just based on advancement, right,
Speaker 1: it kind of ties capitalism up with female equality, which
Speaker 1: I think feels inherently flawed. And then she said something
Speaker 1: that I thought was really smart, she said. The girl
Speaker 1: Boss argued that the professional success of ambitious young women
Speaker 1: was a two birds, one stone type of activism. Their
Speaker 1: pursuit of power could be rebranded as a righteous quest
Speaker 1: free quality, and the success of female executives and entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: would lift up the women below them. But that's not
Speaker 1: really what we In fact, even the person who popularized
Speaker 1: the term girl boss, this woman, Sophia Marusso. She eventually resigned.
Speaker 1: The company went into bankruptcy a couple of years after
Speaker 1: that book came out, and there were a number of
Speaker 1: complaints about discrimination and toxic management, accompanied by lawsuits from
Speaker 1: her employees.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think it's slightly more complex, Like
Speaker 5: a lot of these stories and quote unquote downfalls were
Speaker 5: flattened a bit in the media narrative. I'm actually profiling
Speaker 5: Sophia now for a piece for l and so it's
Speaker 5: been interesting to actually dig into what really happened versus
Speaker 5: how the media that I hate saying, yea, we are
Speaker 5: the media portrayed it. But certainly it represented something right,
Speaker 5: and I think she wasn't the only one. In fairness
Speaker 5: to her, there were a slew of other examples of
Speaker 5: female leaders who were lauded as girl bosses or who
Speaker 5: leaned into that branding eventually came under scrutiny and were
Speaker 5: forced to step away from the companies they founded. Just like,
Speaker 5: off the top of my head, there's the CEO of Glossier,
Speaker 5: the luggage brand away to that woman who ran things Underwear.
Speaker 5: I think you know, there was a shift at a
Speaker 5: certain point in what was perceived as acceptable boss behavior,
Speaker 5: particularly for these companies and these founders who had brandoned
Speaker 5: themselves as socially conscious, if not overtly feminists.
Speaker 1: And I think also what you're saying is is that
Speaker 1: these power structures were built by men. So if these
Speaker 1: women were replicating these power structures, it wasn't like they
Speaker 1: were doing something unique. It's just the case that if
Speaker 1: you're a woman, you're more likely to face an immediate backlash.
Speaker 1: Look at Elon Musk, I mean, he has had a
Speaker 1: million of these kinds of complaints around him.
Speaker 5: Right, Or Adam Newman of WeWork or Travis Kalanek of Uber.
Speaker 3: And all three of those men are fine.
Speaker 1: And actually Semita muka pot I, who we spoke to earlier,
Speaker 1: and as I mentioned, is right a book about women
Speaker 1: work and Ambition also talks about the hypocrisy she sees
Speaker 1: in the Girl Boss downfall.
Speaker 6: I'm always cautious when we too eagerly tear women down.
Speaker 6: I'm not going to all women's matter this or something obviously,
Speaker 6: like women are capable of the same heinous atrocities and
Speaker 6: labor oversights as men. But I do think that when
Speaker 6: we go after women for a specific behavior that is
Speaker 6: considered completely normal in men, you know, my eyebrows raise
Speaker 6: a little bit. I'm like, yes, no leader should be toxic.
Speaker 6: We should absolutely be creating environments that are equitable. We
Speaker 6: should not expect people to work and sacrifice everything. None
Speaker 6: of those things are sustainable. They are not things that
Speaker 6: we should support in workplaces. But also they are a
Speaker 6: result of under resourced environments. Right often women led companies
Speaker 6: don't get as much money as male led companies. Definitely
Speaker 6: true for startups in a ridiculous way. And then you
Speaker 6: add to that these kinds toxic dynamics or leaders that
Speaker 6: don't have enough experience to successfully lead in those kinds
Speaker 6: of environments, or a lot of times people that would
Speaker 6: fit into this Girl Boss mold the very characteristics that
Speaker 6: make them good for those roles. Are literally what makes
Speaker 6: them bad as leaders. Yeah, you know, so like being
Speaker 6: like judiciously committed to your vision, being really good on stage,
Speaker 6: being really good in the press. It's like those people
Speaker 6: are monsters behind the scenes, right. But putting that to
Speaker 6: the side, the majority of women that are starting businesses
Speaker 6: aren't these kind of quote unquote girl bosses, right. They're
Speaker 6: young women that are trying to find their voice and
Speaker 6: their name or a lot of times women become entrepreneurs
Speaker 6: because they hit the glass ceiling at work and they
Speaker 6: were not getting the recognition that they deserved, and so
Speaker 6: they decided to go out on their own. And so,
Speaker 6: you know, it is worrisome when you focus a lot
Speaker 6: on a small number of people when there's this kind
Speaker 6: of like broader ecosystem of women trying to create things
Speaker 6: on their own terms.
Speaker 1: Samita has written about how while the girl boss concept
Speaker 1: is flawed, it did provide a model for women who
Speaker 1: don't always see a path to leadership, like women of
Speaker 1: color and people like Samita and I are often excluded
Speaker 1: from those kinds of spaces. So there are some things
Speaker 1: about this that weren't all bad. But you know, any
Speaker 1: model of female leadership generally does eventually face a backlash, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've just seen that in this country, any
Speaker 1: kind of female advancement eventually faces a backlash.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And in fact, I think we're seeing that more now,
Speaker 5: Like after these girl Bosses, these so called girl bosses toppled,
Speaker 5: a lot of the investment to female founded companies actually
Speaker 5: went down.
Speaker 1: By the way, investment to female companies was always really low.
Speaker 1: And that's also partially what was kind of interesting about
Speaker 1: this being a media sort of created story. Women receive
Speaker 1: I think less than two percent of VC funding, so
Speaker 1: there were never a huge number of girl Bosses to
Speaker 1: start with. So the disproportionate attention they got in the
Speaker 1: beginning and then in the backlash is also indicative of
Speaker 1: something which is we love a story about a woman
Speaker 1: rising and then folly. That's just the thing we love
Speaker 1: in this country. Also, it's probably worth noting that, in
Speaker 1: terms of the backlash, the Miranda Priestleys or in the
Speaker 1: real world, the Animinturs of the world didn't emerge completely unscathed,
Speaker 1: but interestingly not really about their years of boundaryless or
Speaker 1: potentially inappropriate leadership styles. You know, I think when Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter happened, there was a lot more focus on
Speaker 1: the ways in which fashion and fashion magazines really reinforced
Speaker 1: a certain kind of wayness. And you know, Anna did
Speaker 1: have to apologize for that. In June of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: after facing a lot of criticism, she issued an apology
Speaker 1: for not doing enough to address diversity issues at Vogue,
Speaker 1: and she said, I want to say plainly that I
Speaker 1: know Vogue has not found ways to elevate and give
Speaker 1: space to black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators.
Speaker 1: We have made mistakes to publishing images or stories that
Speaker 1: have been hurtful or intolerant. I take full responsibility for
Speaker 1: those mistakes.
Speaker 5: I mean, pretty big a deal that she like she's
Speaker 5: not the type to stand down or apologize.
Speaker 1: I don't think Yeah, I don't think so either, But
Speaker 1: I think this was obviously a more serious allegation in.
Speaker 5: Some way well, and then also interesting that she was
Speaker 5: able to keep her right.
Speaker 3: She get her job after that apology, right.
Speaker 1: Unlike the girl bosses who've kind of toppled and then
Speaker 1: maybe found their way back in some smaller way, she
Speaker 1: has stayed on top of the Conde Nast editorial operation.
Speaker 1: And obviously I don't want to conflate white supremacy bias
Speaker 1: with slightly toxic or even very toxic behavior. This is
Speaker 1: obviously a deeper issue, but it shows that she had
Speaker 1: sort of gone from being immune to this kind of criticism.
Speaker 1: At the point in which the doublewares Prada is made,
Speaker 1: it didn't lead to some kind of backlash towards her, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't believe you treat people this way. It was
Speaker 1: considered kind of charming or funny or whatever. And now
Speaker 1: she's sort of gotten to the point where she's not
Speaker 1: given a pass completely in that way. And actually that
Speaker 1: same year, in twenty twenty two, a few months later,
Speaker 1: The New York Times published a really lengthy piece asking
Speaker 1: if her diversity push had come too late, and former
Speaker 1: employees said that Anna had fostered a workplace that sidelined
Speaker 1: women of color, and you know, she had helped set
Speaker 1: a standard that favored white, eurocentric notions of beauty, which
Speaker 1: you know isn't a surprise. That's something you also see
Speaker 1: in the movie, right, there's a real central focus in
Speaker 1: the movie about a very sort of classic beauty standard.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of focus on on thinness in the movie.
Speaker 1: There's like this famous line where Emily, the first assistant, says,
Speaker 1: I'm just one stomach flew away from my goal weight,
Speaker 1: which is like a thing me and my friends always
Speaker 1: jokingly say to each other people, Yeah, everyone says that, right,
Speaker 1: or or said maybe gen Z say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe they have more sense than we did.
Speaker 1: And you know, it wasn't just Anna who set these standards,
Speaker 1: but as arguably the most powerful person in fashion, she
Speaker 1: did play a large role.
Speaker 3: In this kind of centering.
Speaker 5: The other thing, too, is that, in particular for women
Speaker 5: of color, but really for any marginalized group, is that
Speaker 5: you are often forced to represent your entire demographic.
Speaker 1: Right, So if you're a gay leader, there's also this expectation.
Speaker 1: If you're a translator, it's like you're doing more than
Speaker 1: just your job. You're representing an entire category of people,
Speaker 1: and your success or failure carries out weight. And I
Speaker 1: do think to some degree that gets back to this
Speaker 1: idea or this thing I was saying at the top,
Speaker 1: which is it does feel like you're carrying a lot
Speaker 1: of weight in these jobs. You know, you're not immune
Speaker 1: to the understanding that you're not just representing yourself. Like
Speaker 1: when I was given the opportunity to run newsrooms. I
Speaker 1: was almost always the only woman of color or the
Speaker 1: first woman of color to have that opportunity in that role.
Speaker 1: So I was clear that I wasn't just you know,
Speaker 1: doing a job, but I was also representing a kind
Speaker 1: of progress. And if I did it badly or if
Speaker 1: I embarrassed myself, I.
Speaker 3: Was letting down, letting much more than just my own
Speaker 3: mental health, you know. I mean, yeah, more than just
Speaker 3: yourself or your employees.
Speaker 5: You're letting down like everyone who strived to be in
Speaker 5: a role like that and who maybe had not gone
Speaker 5: the opportunity well.
Speaker 1: And also the other thing I think is that you
Speaker 1: recognize that you are the representation for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: like I recognize that.
Speaker 3: In those roles.
Speaker 1: There were women in the newsroom who saw me in
Speaker 1: that role and were like, oh, I can do that too.
Speaker 1: So if I did it poorly or I was not
Speaker 1: a good example, that I was not setting a good
Speaker 1: example for them. I was not giving them a path
Speaker 1: because they were like, well, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: that bitch, you know.
Speaker 3: So, which is terror I mean terrifying. Yeah, it on you,
Speaker 3: like I do think it does take a real toll.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm someone who struggles with a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 1: I have in my life had very serious depression, and
Speaker 1: it is the case that when I am in these jobs,
Speaker 1: it triggers a lot of those issues for me. And
Speaker 1: the reason I often leave these jobs is because I've
Speaker 1: gotten to a point where I no longer feel like
Speaker 1: I can balance and I need to sort of step
Speaker 1: away to recenter myself. And I think that is a
Speaker 1: good segue into kind of where we are now in
Speaker 1: terms of how we're thinking about work as women and
Speaker 1: where women's ambition is.
Speaker 3: You know, where does all of this leave us?
Speaker 1: Like if we're not going to be the Miranda Priestley's,
Speaker 1: we're not going to be the Sheryl Sandbergs, We're not
Speaker 1: going to be the girl bosses, Like what's left now?
Speaker 3: Quiet quitting, great resignation.
Speaker 1: It's like, I feel like it's kind of the end
Speaker 1: of ambition in my mind, right, I think, well, do
Speaker 1: we want to have it all? I don't want to
Speaker 1: have it all anymore. I just want to have enough.
Speaker 5: So, as you know, I am very skeptical of all
Speaker 5: of these little phrases enter into No, it's not the
Speaker 5: end of ambition.
Speaker 3: And also when we talk about ambition.
Speaker 5: Are we really just talking about women's ambition, like nobody asks,
Speaker 5: is it the end of ambition for men? That's true,
Speaker 5: And yet these trends, these memes, this kind of linguistic
Speaker 5: popularity of terms like yeah, lazy girl jobs or quiet
Speaker 5: quitting or I don't dream of labor. Like everything that
Speaker 5: you see on TikTok these days, which is essentially anti
Speaker 5: work rhetoric, is largely being pushed by people of all genders.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 5: I do think that like gender bias even into the
Speaker 5: way that sometimes I talk about this issue. But I
Speaker 5: also think that, you know, there's a little bit of
Speaker 5: like delightful in a way idealism when it comes to
Speaker 5: young people, but also naivity about the fact that like,
Speaker 5: all right, kids, you gotta work. Yeah, yeah, I want
Speaker 5: to be a lazy girl too. I'd love to bedrod
Speaker 5: all day, Like that would be awesome.
Speaker 3: I don't want to have a job. I know, i'd
Speaker 3: be great. God, let's just sell there all day. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like what other terms can we insert here?
Speaker 5: You know, but like you still need money to live
Speaker 5: and I know that like sure, we'd want to reject
Speaker 5: capitalism and blah blah blah, but like, we're still living in
Speaker 5: a capitalist society, and so I take some of this
Speaker 5: anti work rhetoric with a grain of salt, though I
Speaker 5: do believe that hopefully by questioning things like this girbast
Speaker 5: culture or hustle culture, or the way that we have
Speaker 5: devoted our entire beings and entities to work over the
Speaker 5: past ten twenty year, yours is a good thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to throw to Semeta one more time because
Speaker 1: she had something interesting to say about this too. Workplace
Speaker 1: hierarchy isn't really going anywhere anytime soon, right, Like, we
Speaker 1: have to figure out how management structures that are equitable,
Speaker 1: that work, that play to people's strengths, that support them
Speaker 1: in being as innovative and creative and impactful as possible.
Speaker 1: That's why I think we're frozen in time right now,
Speaker 1: because we know that we don't want this kind of
Speaker 1: unfettered ambition at any cost. Toxic workplay is all bad,
Speaker 1: all bad words. We know we don't want that, but
Speaker 1: we don't know how to apply that in our lives yet.
Speaker 1: I think that's led to this trend in like quiet
Speaker 1: quitting or lazy girl jobs, or people really calling it
Speaker 1: in at work, which ultimately isn't going to actually make
Speaker 1: people happy, right, What actually makes you happy in your
Speaker 1: life is living a life of integrity and authenticity and joy.
Speaker 1: When you're checked out of something, you're not finding joy
Speaker 1: in your life, and that's fine.
Speaker 3: I think we all go through phases. We have to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 6: But that's not a model for women's advancement in the workplace.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: It's a problem and it's a wake up call for
Speaker 6: working conditions, but it's not ultimately a strategy that's going
Speaker 6: to be successful or make us happy if that's ultimately
Speaker 6: the goal.
Speaker 5: I think Samina is right, and this isn't the end
Speaker 5: of ambition generally, but it's hopefully a workplace shift that
Speaker 5: is happening, Susie. Where does that then leave you?
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess what I'm doing is projecting to
Speaker 1: some degree, because maybe it's just the end of my ambition.
Speaker 1: Like maybe the reason those memes speak to me is
Speaker 1: that I have come to kind of want a quieter
Speaker 1: career when where I have less responsibilities, one where I
Speaker 1: get to chat with you.
Speaker 3: But I will just say, that's not unambitious.
Speaker 5: That's a different kind of ambition, And so I think
Speaker 5: part of the problem is that we have come to
Speaker 5: define ambition in these really rigid ways that involved yeah,
Speaker 5: climbing for the corporate ladder, being a boss, like having
Speaker 5: a big team, being in management, and there are so
Speaker 5: many different ways to be ambitious, and so I guess
Speaker 5: that's what kind of gives me hope to what you're saying.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, that's actually a really good point. I've never
Speaker 3: thought about it that way.
Speaker 1: It's true that I'm not lacking in any ambition, it's
Speaker 1: just my ambitions have really changed. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: get the bigger job. I'm not always trying to get
Speaker 1: the bigger paycheck. I'm just trying to do work I love,
Speaker 1: and work that feels creative, and work that I hope
Speaker 1: is kind of meaningful or it's certainly at least meaningful
Speaker 1: to me, even if it's not that for everyone else.
Speaker 1: So that's actually a nice way to think about where
Speaker 1: that leaves us, and maybe we leave it there.
Speaker 5: Susie, I want to use our next episode. We're going
Speaker 5: to be talking about what it means for a woman
Speaker 5: to be quote.
Speaker 1: Past her prime, which I don't think happens for the record,
Speaker 1: but we are going to talk about aging and what
Speaker 1: that means for us, but also just how women are
Speaker 1: treated as they age in the culture. So I think
Speaker 1: it's going to be a really interesting one.
Speaker 3: This is in Retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
Speaker 1: about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 1: Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com or find
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Speaker 5: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
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Speaker 3: If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on
Speaker 3: our Instagram, which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 1: and at Susi b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Speaker 1: Feminist Fight Club and.
Speaker 3: This Is eighteen.
Speaker 5: In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media.
Speaker 5: Lauren Anson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 5: engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharon
Speaker 5: Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers from iHeart are Ana Stemp and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is from Pentagrams. Our mixing engineer is Amanda
Speaker 1: Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are
Speaker 1: your hosts Susie Bannacarum and Jessica Bennett.
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