Warm Take: Strong Female Lead. March 1, 2020
That Nyong’o was atop a list of the world’s most beautiful people does not invalidate the reality for many dark-skinned black women any more than Mark Zuckerberg making a billion dollars invalidates the value of college for millions. Indeed, any system of oppression must allow exceptions to validate itself as meritorious. How else will those who are oppressed by the system internalize their own oppression?
Tressie McMillan Cottom’s essay “In the Name of Beauty”, in Thick (Bookshop.org)
Even glossy women’s magazines now model skepticism towards top-down narratives about how we should look, who and when we should marry, and how we should live. But the psychological parasite of the ideal woman has evolved to survive in an ecosystem that pretends to resist her. If women start to resist an aesthetic, like the overapplication of Photoshop, the aesthetic just changes to suit us; the power of the ideal image never actually wanes.
Jia Tolentino’s essay, “Always be Optimizing,” in Trick Mirror (Bookshop.org)
Fall 2019
February, 2020
Fast Company gave Audrey Gelman space for ‘Where I got it wrong’: The Wing’s Audrey Gelman confronts the realities of rapid growth. It took me back to my April 2019 observation: “Successing while projecting a Stunningly Beautiful Pregnancy” is a trap.
I sometimes use an Excel spreadsheet to untangle my thoughts. Here’s what I came up with.
Fast Company had Gelman’s story under “Strong Female Lead.” Yesterday I clicked the tag, and got this main image.
Aaaahnd, the sidebar.
On March 1, 2020, Gelman was the main image.
So, thanks, Fast Company, for some low-key gaslighting.
Basically telling me — to my face — that, like the Netflix algorithm, you will serve up what I “like” as an infinite stream of consumable, friction-free content.
Then, I asked myself, was Gelman really The First Pregnant CEO to appear on a business magazine cover? I dug around.
A History of Pregnant Celebrities Posing Naked on Magazine Covers: Pulling a "Demi Moore" and posing with a baby bump since 1991, by Summer Lin at Elle offers a helpful slideshow of 13 visible women, pregnant and nude on magazine covers.
Slide 13 is Serena Williams, which sent me back to the internet. Was she a CEO when she appeared on the cover of business-adjacent Vanity Fair?
I mean, yes. I didn’t spend the time to figure out when she started an investment fund and a clothing company, I don’t care. Managing her athletic career alone is an executive endeavor I can’t begin to fathom.
Online bios of Serena that float to the top of the internet basically disappear her non-athletic experience. Wth.
She may be the GOAT, but “Female Founder?”
I’ve written about Fast Company before, reflecting on Harriet Rubin’s role in their founding. Harriet is also disappeared from any version I can find of the FC origin story.
Who gets to be a Female Founder?
What must a Female Founder do to thread herself through the eye of the needle – when the needle is a combination of the internet, forces of capital, racism/sexism, and possibly actually building and running a business that will survive?
When I talk with people who have started companies — that is, if I think they’re listening to me — I tell them not to try hard to be part of “startup culture.” It brings a lot of ideas into your organization that may not comport with your own values.
If I knew Audrey and her partner, I’d tell them, drop 98% of the energy and effort required to perform the role of Female Founders. (Including trying to keep us informed about your company’s internal workings.)
Instead, devote it to building your team, developing your people, and serving your customers. What you’re trying to do is hard enough as it is.
Delivering results to these stakeholders is more important than presenting an image of your process.
And I say this, selfishly, too, as someone who is looking for a space to call my work home.
And of course, to save a lion’s share of your energy for your loved ones.
Thanks for reading! I’m writing these Warm Takes somewhat conversationally, informally, to share a reaction to something I read recently.
Kind of like I would with folks I’m working with.
So if you have thoughts, reactions, etc. please do let me know.
And please forgive loose thoughts, typos and imperfections. I’m trying to crank these out while drinking my Sunday morning coffee. And only in those weeks when I’ve seen something notable.
P.S. If watching the stock market is your thing, I really like Brian Lund’s newsletter, The Lund Loop.
