This is Stuff You Like, you can call me Ursa, and since it’s about time for the September
issue-
By which I mean, you know...it’s September, I figured we'd take a Second Look at The Devil
Wears Prada.
Honestly, I could go on and on about this film, which is weird, because I don't really...LIKE
it all that much.
There’s so much in there with the friends and the boyfriend and that blond guy and the
selling your soul for shoes thing that makes me kind of ragey, but I just can’t look
away.
Because there’s so much really good interesting stuff in there to talk about too.
Not to mention the stuff which I both enjoy AND feel conflicted about.
At the same time.
For example, The Devil Wears Prada treats the fashion industry as something other than
entirely frivolous.
My favourite part being that speech on cerulean.
Which is nice because treating fashion as frivolous is a nice way of delegitimising
people’s interests.
And by people’s, I mostly mean women’s.
Because man, some people take sports really really seriously, and obviously, like fashion,
you can have a career in playing sports or sports journalism or sports commentating or
any of those things.
There isn't a vast cultural movement of people going 'sports are stupid, throw rocks at them!'
Obviously there are subcultures who think that sports are stupid and you should throw
rocks at them, but overall, sports are a...legitimate thing to like.
And while fashion is also a major, major industry, it’s treated more lightly than sports are,
even though clothes are a thing that we have to wear.
So treating the fashion industry as legitimate is...good...BUT...
The fashion industry itself does fill me with equal parts fear, loathing and fascination,
so I'm still kind of conflicted about this.
On the one hand: pretty!
But on the other hand: EVERYTHING IS ABOUT THE PRETTY!
NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!
NOTHING!
Be pretty and thin and white and exactly what we tell you to be and also rich because you’ll
need to be to buy all of this crap that we're telling you is essential.
Like I said: conflicted..
But the plot of the Devil Wears Prada goeth thusly: Andy Sachs wants to be a journalist
but the only job on offer is gofer for exceptionally demanding fashion magazine maven Miranda Priestly.
Andy sucks, starts trying, becomes actually interested in the work, is alienated from
her friends and boyfriend, quits, and gets the job she wants thanks to her talent plus
a recommendation from Miranda.
Also maybe gets back with the boyfriend even though he’s moving to Boston for work AND
I WILL GET TO THAT.
The reason I’m so fascinated with the movie is not because of the high fashion or the
designer labels or the pretty shoes, but the women.
The male characters tend to spark anything from mild amusement to hardcore irritation,
but I just can’t look away from Andy and Emily and especially from Miranda Priestly.
And though, as I said last time, the movie does a really ham-handed job of the whole
‘selling your soul for shoes’ thing, which is something that makes me mad enough to spit,
the women still win in the Devil Wears Prada.
They get what they want.
Even minor character Lily is shown as having a gallery show, which is presumably helpful
for her career.
Skipping out the crappy selling your soul thing, Emily gets what she wants when Andy
leaves: she continues working at Runway, next year she’ll probably get to Paris, and she
gets a big pile of designer clothes.
Not to mention that cattiness and sarcasm aside, Emily is a model of professional behaviour.
She helps Andy, she shows her what to do, she gives her generally good advice.
Another movie with two assistants might have had them trying to cut each other down, but...no,
Emily knows that Miranda Priestly does not tolerate sloppiness in any form, and so when
Andy messes up, Emily picks up the slack.
Albeit begrudgingly.
And Miranda herself?
In an industry requiring ridiculous standards she has not only survived but THRIVED.
Not to mention building herself an extensive network of people who owe her, and people
whose careers she has nurtured.
Miranda has the world’s most off-putting manner and I don’t think we’d be buddies,
but while she is, as one of the Chez Apocalypse commenters put it, willing to step over bodies
in order to advance, she does brings people with her.
In late spring and early summer there were a huge number of articles about a piece of
research from Columbia Business School which was talking about Queen Bee Syndrome, and
how it was based on one study from the 70's and...I should probably explain what it is,
right?
Queen Bee Syndrome is the name for the female boss who keeps all of her other female employees
down.
Just as there can only be one queen in the hive, so there can only be one queen in the
workplace, and so bosses who are female, it was thought, will try and keep all the other
women in the office down and sabotage their careers in order to stay on top.
Thing is, having done a study looking at large numbers of businesses over 20 years - instead
of a single survey in a magazine - they found that there's really no...factual basis for
this.
Are there female bosses who will try and keep their female employees down?
Sure, but we call those people 'bad bosses' or possibly more accurately just 'terrible
people'.
Regardless they seem to be the exception rather than the norm.
The reason I bring this up is that more than one newspaper which decided to cover the story
gave Miranda Priestly (and included a little picture of Meryl Streep) as an example of
a Queen Bee boss.
Which is very very far from the truth.
Like, kind of the opposite of the truth.
Miranda is mean and ruthless, but she is also someone who particularly nurtures people she
sees as talented.
And frankly she doesn’t have time to hold the hands of people who can’t meet her standards.
Miranda may HATE French Runway’s Jacqueline, who wanted to take her job, but Miranda doesn’t
wreck her career for it.
She gets Jacqueline a better job, one she really wants.
Though that does require Miranda rescinding her Stanley Tucci recommendation, which kinda
has to suck for Stanley Tucci.
But she didn't have to do that, she could easily have gone to the head of the company
and said ‘look at all these people who will leave if I leave!'
But instead, she finds Jacqueline a job she really wants more than the one she's gunning
for, and thus carrot AND stick, and everyone is happy.
INCLUDING Jacqueline.
To circle back around to the point: what Miranda wants is to do good work, to see other people
do good work, and to have a life which she enjoys, and she, for the most part, achieves
all of those things.
Aside from the undeniable suckitude of divorcing, she’s still has, in no particular order:
a career which she loves, a dog, steak for lunch, two children she adores and excessive
amounts of money.
She has paid a very high price for success, yes, but she still gets almost all of the
things she wants, almost all of the time.
And then...then we have Andy.
I mean, Andy’s arc is all ‘being a ruthless tall poppy like Miranda is bad, I should instead
focus on my friends and boyfriend...wait, who’s leaving town for his job?
And I’m supportive of this, even though he was a total jerk about MY career advancement?
You see what I mean about mixed feelings, right?
Some of the movie I really love and some of the lines are really sharp and funny, but
some of it you just want to go...uuuurgh.
Andy, if your boyfriend were half so supportive as you are of him and way less of a whiny
crybaby I would like him much better.
Yes, you change when you have a demanding job and yes, not always for the better.
But he works in THE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY, what, he doesn’t understand busting your butt
and being ambitious?
Clearly he does or he wouldn’t be so happy about GETTING THIS NEW JOB WHICH HE HAD TO
APPLY FOR AND INTERVIEW FOR AND GAH...
SIGH.
But then again...Andy still gets what she wants.
She gets to work as a journalist off the back of a recommendation from Miranda.
She may or may not get back with the boyfriend who annoys me intensely, though not as much
as that blond guy, but, again, that’s what she wants.
Andy doesn’t want the multimillion dollar house badly enough to chase it, and that’s...OK.
However, if Andy were the only woman in the movie, her arc would be tiresomely samey.
‘I don’t really want a demanding career, my relationships are more important’ is...not
a terrible story, but it's one that we've seen so many times that it gets kind of...old.
And it's a very...lady...story.
The book presented much more one-note characters, and so I liked it less, but the movie presents
Miranda Priestly in particular as a flawed and complex human being, who gets what she
wants, and WIELDS POWER and generally LIKES HER LIFE, and that’s...rare.
Emily, Andy, Miranda, even Jacqueline: they get what they want.
And given that much more sympathetic portrayal of Miranda there's a much broader...set of
acceptable options, if you understand me.
The option which our main character takes is in one sense the typically feminine one
of emphasising the importance of family and friends.
But in another sense it's her getting exactly the kind of job she wanted, so really in the
end what’s the big deal?
Like I said the last time we talked about The Devil Wears Prada, through stereotypical
2nd wave ball-breaker Miranda’s nurturing of her career, Andy now has the choice.
And she gets to choose the job that she really wants and her friends and family, so...win?
And while the movie doesn’t shy away from the price of Miranda’s success, it could
have judged her much more harshly for it, and it doesn't.
It's a much more sympathetic portrayal than that of the book, which is basically, 'My
boss is an unspeakable...bee.'
Sometimes I think that the movie is attempting to show the complexity of the options before
women in the modern day, and sometimes I think it just can't make up its mind what it's doing.
But that ambiguity is probably what makes it so interesting.
After all, if it were just a straight ‘woman abandons demanding career for boyfriend etc’
what’s interesting or revolutionary about that?
All right, that's everything for this episode.
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See you next time!