[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!
