[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey guys, I'm Lindsay Ellis.
I am a Youtuber, film critic, and author.
And for the month of January, I'm
taking over Chelsea's Tuesday show
here on The Financial Diet.
And every week, we are talking about a different topic
surrounding pop culture and money.
And this week, we are talking about the archetypal girlboss.
Don't you see?
If Angelica is ever going to make it
in a male-dominated power structure,
she's got to eat, breathe, drink, and sweat self-esteem.
When it comes to personal branding,
coffee mugs that say yas queen, or still building
my empire sure are a thing.
But in media, we still struggle to show
women being professionally fulfilled without making them
sex-starved, relationship-damaged dragon
ladies, who we adore in meme form,
but are secretly kind of afraid of becoming in reality.
If we're talking about boss bitch career women in media,
the most emblematic are characters like The Devil Wears
Prada's as Miranda Priestly.
You have no style or sense of fashion.
Well, um, I think that depends on what your--
No, no.
Cold, distant, type A, and while excelling
in business, poor romantic partners, and worse still,
unmaternal.
Miranda Priestly is based on Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna
Wintour, the embodiment of a successful career woman.
But, you know, her husband gets upset because he's
Mr. Miranda Priestly.
There he is, waiting for her again.
Rather than putting the focus on his insecurities,
this is framed more as evidence that Miranda's methods
of dealing with people are toxic, because career first.
The film frames Andy as more sympathetic--
the enthusiastic protagonist who spends
most of the film as Miranda's assistant,
to ultimately leave the fashion industry altogether
to choose a new career path, because she doesn't
want to end up like Miranda.
We can trace this archetype to proto-Miranda characters,
like Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians,
and Alex Forrest from Fatal Attraction, who
herself is basically peak '80s feminist backlash.
You know that guy I've been obsessed with?
Well, I finally got up the courage
to throw acid on his car.
The successful, accomplished Alex
is driven mad by her obsession with Michael Douglas's weekend
penis, and becomes obsessed with the idea
of having a baby with him.
You're not going to have a baby.
Why not?
There's plenty of one-parent families.
At least they don't end in divorce.
She thought she could have it all.
Well, she was wrong, and she just
had to satisfy those biological urges through any means
necessary.
Daddy?
What?
[SCREAMING]
As Cruella de Vil once said--
More good women have been lost to marriage
than to war, famine, disease, and disaster.
Wrapped up in characters like this
is the idea that for a woman to succeed in business,
ultimately it comes at the expense of her children,
her partner, and her humanity.
In 1982, Helen Gurley Brown, the Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan
magazine released the book Having it All--
Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even if You're
Starting With Nothing.
It is a very dated, and in many ways, shallow
exploration of how an average woman could make it
in business, even if they were plain.
Despite the progress women have made in creating equality
in parenting, women are still usually the primary caretaker
in cis heteronormative relationships,
and end up doing most, if not all,
of the actual child rearing.
A report from the United Nations found that women still
shoulder nearly three times more of the work associated
with the home than men--
child care, elder care, cooking, cleaning, transportation,
and usually for zero pay.
And so while women now comprise almost half
of the American labor force, men aren't making up
for the imbalance in domestic work--
not always-- #NotAllMen--
but on average, which means that child rearing still
falls under the label of women's work.
So there's the cliche of having it all.
But the reality isn't much easier
now than it was in the '80s.
And owing to other forces, like rising childcare costs
and an unstable job market, in a lot of ways,
today it's actually harder.
The idea of having it all has by now
evolved into the equally editorially manufactured
concept of the girlboss.
The term girlboss came into widespread use
with Sophia Amoruso's 2014 autobiography #Girlboss,
which charted Amoruso's beginnings living
what she called a nomadic lifestyle to becoming
at one of the richest self-made women in the world.
The book told a rags to riches story
that was lauded as one of the defining
books for female entrepreneurs.
For Amoruso, being a girlboss was
a mix of humility, hard work, and gumption.
According to the book, the girlboss
who is willing to do a job that is below her--
and above-- is the one who stands out.
It's that attitude and behavior that will get you ahead.
Yep, that always pays off.
Right now, women make up 58% of the American workforce.
But when it comes to leadership positions at top companies,
only 25 of the 2018 Fortune 500 companies had women CEOs.
And for women of color or LGBTQ women,
the numbers are even more dismal.
Most of our mainstream depictions
of female CEOs or women in high positions are white cis women.
Therefore, most of our girlboss images
come from that depiction, which is not only
limiting, but ignores the fact that many women of color
have long been expected to work hard and play hard.
Under capitalism, women's societal progress
is often confused with putting women in positions of power
that enabled them to do basically
the exact same toxic things that male CEOs have done forever,
but, you know, it's OK, because girlboss.
Money equals empowerment.
And while material wealth can be invested into building
communities, it is more often than not a way
for individual people to elevate themselves.
Also, a lot of the advice that we
give women to become a girlboss assumes
that they have the means and the freedom to do so.
One of the pieces of advice that Sophia Amoruso gave
in #Girlboss was "in many ways, money spells freedom.
If you learn to control your finances,
you won't find yourself stuck in jobs, places, or relationships
that you hate just because you can't afford to go elsewhere."
While this is trueish, how many women
are actually able to have that much control
over their finances?
What if they have medical expenses that
aren't covered by insurance?
What if they don't have insurance to begin with?
So despite all this leaning in and girlbossing,
the jobs with the largest wage gaps
are still in business, management, sales, and the law.
Women also tend to move up the career ladder
at a slower pace than men.
We call this phenomenon the opportunity gap.
At the start of their careers, 74% of men and 75% of women
are in individual contributor roles.
However, a much smaller proportion of women
reach the manager or supervisor level or higher
by the middle of their career.
So there remains this particularly odious paradox
in that when a woman does try to advocate for herself,
her behavior gets her labeled as a betch,
even if that same behavior would get her male counterpart
labeled as a boss.
However, the respect of her male counterparts
demands that she still act like one in order
to be seen as an equal.
In the most recent season of Insecure,
the character Molly goes to work at a black legal firm,
and starts heavily asserting herself in the way
that her male colleagues do.
It's great to have a teammate as aggressive as Molly.
METRO will appreciate that.
At first, this draws the ire of her female co-workers,
because she aligns herself with male power.
But by the end of the third season,
when she attempts to usurp her male co-worker's top spot,
both sides turn against her.
By attempting to be a boss, she ends up
being scolded for being too much, which is not something
an ambitious man would deal with.
Don Draper on Mad Men, for example,
basically talks his way into a financially successful career
in advertising, even though he is a fraud.
Meanwhile, Peggy Olson is constantly
sacrificing and giving up pieces of herself
to be good at her job.
She gives away her child in season one
after getting pregnant by Pete Campbell.
And as she rises from Junior Copywriter to Copy Chief,
she struggles with Don's expectations
that she handles things like a man,
and fears that she might be turning into him.
I give you money.
You give me ideas.
But you never say thank you.
That's what the money is for.
In these situations, it is the man
who has to give the reins to the woman.
Don is Peggy's mentor, because who else is it going to be?
Yet we do not see Peggy actively bringing women up with her.
Women are expected to be better than that.
We expect them to be maternal, to be kind and reassuring.
They are hard on you for growth.
Which means not only are we often holding
these women to a much higher standard,
but we also have not given them any blueprint
of what a good female boss even looks like.
This is not all there is to the story, though.
For instance, the '90s series Living Single
featured four girlbosses.
Throughout the show, all of these women
date and go in and out of relationships.
But it's very clear that they are looking for relationships
where men fit into their world.
Bottom line is men are nothing but speed
bumps on the road to happiness.
There is no Ross-Rachel dynamic a la Friends,
where Rachel gives up her dream job for Ross.
Maxine and her love interest Kyle both start off the series
as almost too career-focused.
Maxine Shaw from Evans, Bell, & Associates.
Yes?
And both end up mellowing out.
When we see them again in the spin-off, Half & Half,
Maxine is still a bad ass lawyer.
This is is my co-star, Kyle Barker
and his aggressive bulldog of a wife.
But now she has a child.
Their family is based on a dynamic of equality,
where no one needs to lose themselves solely
to family or career.
It is one of the few representations
of women actually getting to have their cake and eat it too.
So we can't pretend that on the whole,
the whole family versus career dichotomy
is a construct, because the reality is that in most cases,
it is harder for women to find that balance.
But at the same time, pursuing your dreams
and becoming a leader in your field
doesn't mean that women should copy the toxic behavior
of their male counterparts.
Yes, girlbosses are still building their empire.
Here I am.
I got what I wanted.
But the thing about that is that no empire was ever
built without stepping on somebody else,
and that is a rather patriarchal approach to power.
So perhaps that's a blueprint that we should consider
throwing away all together, even if it doesn't
fit into a convenient hashtag.
So thank you for watching.
You can see the rest of the series linked
in the description when the episodes come out.
And you can also see more of my stuff
on my YouTube channel, which is just my name.
And also, you can see me on PBS Digital Studios, It's Lit!