A decade and a half ago, I walked into my new office with a spare pair of heels and my Rolodex (heard of that?) to set up shop in what was pretty much my dream job: as the editor of the Glamour magazine (and it was only a magazine then; this was even before Facebook, folks). Now I’m about to pack up again for my next adventure, leaving this wonderful brand—which has me reflecting on where women were back then, where we are now, and what’s changed for the better or the…not so better.
If you believe the conventional wisdom right now, it’s a crappy time to be a woman. I get the pessimism: You can barely load your social feeds without encountering another story about rampant sexism in Silicon Valley/Wall Street/Hollywood; we all now know that having your boss ask you to give him a massage and watch him shower is not, as one would have thought, an unsettling scene from American Horror Story but just a regular Tuesday in the film world. The numbers are kinda grim too: Over the 16 years I’ve been at Glamour, Congress has gone from 14 percent to only 20 percent female; Fortune 500 CEOs are stuck at less than 7 percent. And as for the pay gap? Women still make 7 percent less right out of college than men with the same degree and background!
Dear world, to quote Miranda Priestly: By all means move at a glacial pace; you know how that thrills me.
But still, I’m an optimist. Partly because you have to be—why get out of bed otherwise? But partly because SO MUCH GREATNESS has happened over the last 16 years as well.
For one thing, women embraced the workaround, something we’ve always been good at. (I refer you to Deborah Sampson, who dressed as a man to fight in the Revolutionary War. She dug a bullet out of her own thigh to avoid being found out! Wait, is this not a comforting example?) Yes, big business may be bro-heavy at the top, so over the last decade, rather than tear their hair out railing against that, women have increasingly struck out on their own, with women-owned businesses growing at a rate five times the national average (making more money than the average too—yas, ladies!). Sure, film studios seem to be obsessed with the eleventh-grade-male audience, so talented women creators have headed to TV, where the odds that you’ll find a female director are now 13 percent higher than at the movies. You get the picture: For every closed front door, there’s a woman climbing in a second-story window in tennis shoes and a DGAF T-shirt.
All of that’s good news. But honestly? To me, the real change from 2001 to 2017 is in our attitude as women: our willingness to say how we feel, live how we like, and ask the world to keep up. Glamour has always prided itself on taking on a wide range of subjects. Over the last year alone, our team has covered the opioid epidemic, racial injustice, the attempts to defeat Planned Parenthood, and yes, the wage gap; while we are sometimes admonished to “stay in our lane,” our lane is women, so that means both lipstick and legislation are on the table. But some of the work I’m proudest of has started with you, our readers—who have urged us more and more each year to represent women fully and without judgment. When I look back at our covers of five years ago, I’m startled to see we used words like diet and skinny, terms I’d no longer employ, in part because of your loud cheers for language and images that project strength and inclusion. And your passionate feedback about Malala Yousafzai, whom we honored as a Woman of the Year in 2013, led us to start The Girl Project, an initiative for girls’ education that has now supported women in over 100 countries.
You’ve also pushed me personally. Years ago I wrote an editor’s note about style and included a picture of my five beloved great-aunts, all in sleeveless dresses, with a caption I thought was funny about how now I knew where my upper arms were headed. A reader emailed to chastise me. She thought my arms were fine, she wrote; why had I run myself down and invited others to be critical? I took her words to heart. We women are given to self-deprecation, either by habit (“this old thing?”) or as a tactic to keep others from finding you braggy (something men never worry about, but I digress). This rarely serves us well, and I resolved after that letter to stop. Why give the world a script to use against me?
I think if we’re going to get anywhere as women, it’s on all of us to support one another in real, not-just-a-hashtag ways and, like that reader, to respectfully call one another on our stuff. (We all have stuff.) Give compliments publicly. Take compliments publicly. Get behind women who speak out about their experiences. Rather than just think, Wow, she’s brave, ask her, “How can I help?” Once you are a boss—congrats!—wield your honcho powers wisely on behalf of other women, and take a tough look at your own biases. One seriously feminist business owner I know told me she recently realized that she had been checking women’s references more scrupulously than men’s, as if on some unconscious level she trusted men more. Each of us has hang-ups, so for your sisters’ sakes, examine yours.
My point: We all have to be leaders. Back in my early days at Glamour, on an indelibly sunny September day just weeks into the job, I found myself packed into a conference room with my colleagues, silent with disbelief as we watched the Twin Towers fall on TV. One staffer sat at my feet, and as he began to shake with sobs, I remember rubbing his back feebly, wondering what to do and when someone would show up to help us do it. In that moment I realized, of course, that I was supposed to be that someone, meant to calm and soothe and determine next steps. But what did I know?
I don’t know if I did my best that day, though our coverage of the female heroes of 9/11 gave our staff purpose during the dark weeks that followed. But I do know that was the day I began to truly feel like someone responsible for others. We all are, of course, and I hope our our Women of the Year show you the wildly diverse ways it can be done.
I’ve loved being in conversation with all of you over these last 16 years, and I don’t intend to stop. But my hopes for the world 16 years from now are simple. That we will have leaders who respect, value, and frequently are women. That my self-driving car will be able to parallel park better than I do. And that you—all of you—will be able to walk through any front door you want, knowing that inside there’s a massive party of other women ready to hand you the champagne and celebrate.
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