Much has been made in the media recently of the movie “The Devil Wears Prada” and its not-so-flattering portrayal of an icy New York City fashion magazine editor.
The boss, Miranda Priestly, played by a cool Meryl Streep, is the head of a fictional magazine, Runway, widely believed to be based on Vogue and its famously imperious editor, Anna Wintour.
Priestly has it all professionally, although her personal life is a shambles. She spends most of the movie berating her assistant, Andrea “Andy” Sachs–played by Anne Hathaway–insulting her wardrobe, her incompetence and her ignorance of fashion.
This has led some critics and writers to ask: Is this the future of the powerful female professional? Is this what young women working to get ahead have to look forward to? Backstabbing and haughty indifference to the strides women have made in a post-feminism world?
“I’ve always found it curious–and painfully sad–that women who supervise other women are so often willing to take all the `progress’ of feminism and fling it at their assistants as if it were a Chanel coat they couldn’t be bothered to hang up,” worries Meghan Daum in a piece about “Prada” recently in the Los Angeles Times.
But this movie is not about women in the workplace.
The movie’s stiletto really–though unwittingly–digs its heel into the 20-something new employee.
There’s a scene early in the movie in which the young hero, Andy, shows up for her job interview with onion-bagel breath.
She knows nothing about the job for which she’s interviewing or the supervisor for whom she would potentially work.
She even declares to her potential employer that she doesn’t really care about working there at all.
“I came to New York to be a journalist,” she huffs, after bragging about her degree from Northwestern University and the awards she won as a student. “Basically, it’s either this or Autouniverse.”
Sounds like a great hire, right?
Miraculously, she gets the job. We watch as Andy’s boss throws purses and coats at her while rattling off a list of seemingly impossible demands.
Andy struggles with dry-cleaning, surf boards, piles of Calvin Klein skirts, and Priestly’s steak lunches. She grudgingly comes in early, stays late, works weekends and forsakes her friends and family.
Why does she do it?
Not because she believes in what she’ll learn on the job, but because she believes in where the connections in her job will take her.
After just one day, Andy tells her boyfriend that she’ll stick it out for one year, when the contacts she’ll make through her powerful boss will get her any job she wants.
In other words, the only reason to take a terrible job you don’t want is if it’ll leapfrog you ahead of all the other schlubs trying to work their way up the professional ladder.
Experts see entitlement factor
This has been called the Generation Y “entitlement” factor. Some may say it’s part of playing the game. But it’s really about people who want to get ahead without paying dues.
Experts who study such things say many college graduates today don’t want to start working in the mailroom or its metaphorical equivalent, gripping their way up the corporate ladder the way their parents or grandparents did.
Nobody expects to stay at a job that long, and there’s no guarantee that the high-paying job will be there if they do.
These graduates want the high-paying, meaningful job now. They don’t want to waste their time working at the bottom, and even if they do, they expect to rise quickly.
“Generation Y doesn’t want to perform the menial tasks of entry level jobs and feels comfortable voicing its dissatisfaction. They are used to getting what they want,” wrote R.F. Wondrak and Paul N. Gooderham in “International Management: Cross-Boundary Challenges,” a 2003 book that addresses management problems and solutions.
They expect outsized salaries early, and are confident enough to make demands, despite inexperience and a real need for guidance, the authors wrote.
Workers of this generation, defined by most researchers as born between 1978 and 1989, generally have supportive parents who gave them constant feedback and valued their opinions.
They started looking for jobs in a flush economy, and they value family and free time more than the two previous generations, experts say.
Character took easy path
If Andy truly wanted to be a journalist, she could have taken her fancy degree and gone to work at a small newspaper or an alternative weekly.
She could have covered fires and chased ambulances and called up the coroner, like most young reporters do. She could have freelanced.
Instead, she tries to take the easy way in, even if it involves “degrading” herself as a personal assistant: Build the contacts, then launch her career at any magazine she chooses.
No wonder her boss can’t stand her.
It doesn’t matter that the female supervisor was mean, any more than it would matter if it were a male boss who was mean.
A confession is necessary here. I’m a late 20-something employee, and I’ve gotten my share of tongue-lashings. But instead of whining, I believe we young employees should bear it and learn.
A good hide-tanning is hard to forget, and so too the lessons that go with it. It builds character and thick skin, and frankly, sometimes saves time.
Give me harsh criticism and honest praise over mushy political correctness any day.
If you don’t want to know the conclusion to the movie, stop reading now.
In the end, Andy quits for a job at a fictional newspaper, the New York Mirror.
That’s no cause for cheer. Andy didn’t leave her job because she felt bad about trying to cheat the system.
She left it because she couldn’t stomach her boss, or the backstabbing workaholic she had become.
So good riddance, Runway. And good luck, Andy. I’m sure those bosses at the Mirror will give you a 9-to-5 workday, a month of vacation, only positive feedback and all the big-time stories you can sink your 22-year-old teeth into.
And don’t worry. When you tire of all that, I’m sure they’ve got a nice corner office that’s just itching to have your name on it.
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arozas@tribune.com
