I woke up dreaming about Wilhelmina Slater today.
Wilhelmina was a character on the tv series Ugly Betty, played by Vanessa Williams. She’s a Creative Director at a major fashion magazine.
Wilhelmina’s devastatingly smart, sophisticated, fashionable…and mean as hell. In a nutshell, she’s the OG “Devil Wears Prada.”
But for most of the series, she’s contending with the fact that her boss has installed his son as Editor-in-Chief, a position she deserved and earned, and that he’s not really qualified for.
I’ve always thought of her as being the true hero of the series.
...but there’s something that makes me so sad about her.
She’s had to have “tough skin” and she faced obstacle after obstacle in her rise to the top. She probably felt like it could all just slip away at any moment if she didn't hold on tight enough.
Yet, a lot of time she used her power to fat-shame models, fire people over minor issues, and in general terrorize her staff.
It’s sad because it reminds me of real life, of course.
When you are a creative, it is easy to feel like there’s actually no good places to work where you won’t be endlessly disrespected, exploited, abused.
It’s easy to feel like that living that way is NORMAL.
And because it feels “NORMAL”…it’s easy to then continue the cycle when it’s your turn to run a team.
Because you feel like that’s how everyone’s expecting you to do it - by “running a tight ship”….which is code for, “watching everyone’s every move and making people suffer because that’s how you had it and why should they get treated any better than you did.”
I was thinking...we don’t have to keep doing things this way.
We…you and me…we can just decide NOT to.
In an industry obsessed with “disrupting”, I think that would TRULY be disruptive.
What do you say?
-Cathy