Death of the Girlboss: Fmr. Teen Vogue Editor on Redefining Women’s Success

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: We turn now to women in the workplace and what our next guest calls the myth of making it. In her latest book, the former Teen Vogue executive editor, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, recounts her personal journey climbing the corporate career ladder. And she joins Michel Martin to discuss how the girl boss culture can be in fact toxic, exploitative, and even sexist.

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MICHEL MARTIN, NPR, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Samhita Mukhopadhyay, thank you so much for talking with us.

MUKHOPADHYAY: I’m so excited to be here.

MARTIN: People who follow the mags will know your name. You were the editor of Teen Vogue. I mean, especially when kind of Teen Vogue broke onto the scene as having a bigger place in the culture. You had it all. I mean, you had the big shiny office. You had front row seats at the shows. I mean, these are some — the fashion shows I mean. These are the kinds of things some people dream about. So, when did you start to say to yourself, this is not necessarily what I want, or at least to question it?

MUKHOPADHYAY: Absolutely. I — you know, before the pandemic, I think there was this narrative that if you have a perfect job, you just work as hard as possible and everything you’re sacrificing is worth it because that’s the price of success. And while I was sitting front row, I knew I was living a dream. I was living somebody’s dream life. I just realized it wasn’t necessarily mine. And I was struggling with a lot of things, you know, behind the Instagram picture where I was — you know, I was depressed. I was unhappy. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was dealing with a lot of family issues that I had to kind of — some caretaking issues. And I started to realize in that moment that there was a discrepancy between what I thought it meant to make it and what it actually would mean to make it for myself. But I didn’t really have what I call, you know, the subtitle of the book, a reckoning around it until the pandemic hit. And I couldn’t go into the office. And the glitz and glamour of front row seats and, you know, dinners on the town and events at night and, you know, designers sending you clothes, once that faded and it was just me and a Zoom screen and a disgruntled staff, I realized that the job wasn’t necessarily making me happy. And I wasn’t alone, right? Millions of women started to ask the same question about why are we working so hard? Why are we “being pushed” to be so ambitious when ultimately, we’re tired and we’re burned out and we’re not actually seeing the financial or really, you know, material success that we should be seeing compared to how much we’re working.

MARTIN: Did that realization come all at once? Like, was it like a eureka moment or was it sort of a more gradual thing? Like, it’s just — I’m just curious, like, what the building blocks of it were.

MUKHOPADHYAY: There were multiple moments leading up to that moment. And I think a lot of women were feeling, you know, from — what I trace in the book, from the, you know, 2014, where there was this buzz and you had the kind of year of the girl boss and the year of the woman, and everybody was, you know, saying like anything is possible if you work hard, just lean in, right. Just girl boss through it, you know, get the right planner, be organized and you will get everything you want. We had Uber, we had Amazon, we had Zappos, we had everything. We were unstoppable, right. And so, you know, I think that, for me, personally, what had happened was I lost a job in 2017, and I was quite traumatized by that experience because I’d worked really hard to get that job. I didn’t really see the writing on the wall. Looking back, I probably should have. And it was an unceremonious layoff and I took it really personally and I had a really hard time recovering from it, because I took it as a referendum on all of the hard work that I had done and all of the sacrifices that I had made in my career. Rather than take a break and reflect on it, I dove headfirst into the Teen Vogue job. And I describe it in the book as a rebound relationship where I’m like, one place didn’t want me in a much sexier place. And so, I was so excited about that, not realizing that entire time that I kind of carried that trauma, that workplace trauma and that, you know, deep disappointment with me. And then that started to, you know, really corrode while I was in the job and in this really high-pressure job.

MARTIN: What do you think was driving you to begin with? What’s the root of this deep stem that you’re talking about here?

MUKHOPADHYAY: Part of it, I believe, is generational. I was raised in a time where, you know, the ethos was work hard, play hard, right? If you work really hard, then you will get that payday and then you can play really hard. I also am the child of immigrants. And there was this idea that, you know, I’m lucky to be here and I should take advantage of every opportunity that’s put my way. And the only difference between me and a man who gets the same opportunity is the hustle that I put into it and how hard I work. And so, I fundamentally believed — and at the core of it, and something I really uncovered while writing the book is I did fundamentally believe that I didn’t deserve the opportunities that were coming my way. And so, I was completely comfortable sacrificing — self-sacrificing to keep those opportunities. And I think one of the things I really learned in reporting out the book is how many women and how many women of color felt the same way, that rather than an organization be lucky to have them for their tenacity and hard work and focus and diverse perspective they might be bringing, they should feel grateful. And there are many infrastructures within the workplace that keep you feeling that way, right, to have you feel isolated in your own ambition, convincing women that there’s no hurdle that’s structural that a little hustle can’t overcome, that the right day planner or the right exercise class or the right, you know, Tupperware set or whatever it might be, it could not help you organize your life and overcome any hurdle when, as we know, many of them are structural, right? The pay gap is a structural problem. Lack of effective family leave is a structural problem. Yet, as women, we often internalize that we need to overcome those hurdles just by working hard. And so, that was really, I think, the root of how I started to believe that that’s why I had to sacrifice so much to be successful in my career.

MARTIN: Where do you think it came from to begin with? I mean, conservatives have been saying this for some time, that it’s really — this is feminism’s fault, that they sold women a bill of goods, and that they should kind of re-orient toward the home.

MUKHOPADHYAY: That was something I was really fascinated with in the book. Because I think we talk a lot about what’s happened in the last 10 years, but we don’t talk as much about what happened in the ’60s and ’70s and even the early ’80s, both from a policy perspective, but also in terms of where the feminist movement was and what was actually pushed to women as the narrative of the workplace. So, you had, you know, the Betty Friedans of the world that were saying, women who went to college, they ended up becoming housewives and they’re miserable, and we need to support them to go out into the workforce. That was for affluent white women, because we all know for those women to go into the workforce, women of color had to take care of their children, right? Who many of them were already working and would love the opportunity to stay home and be with their families, but didn’t have the ability to because they were out working. Later on, I was very fascinated by the writer Helen Gurley Brown, who was the long-time editor of “Cosmopolitan” magazine, and she had written a book in the ’60s called “Sex and the Single Girl,” which had made her quite famous. But the book she wrote in the early ’80s was called “Having It All.” And that book really was about how women can have it all. She was talking about how to still be, you know, an attractive woman while also being successful in her career. She actually didn’t have children, and she wasn’t talking about having children.

MARTIN: There is one thing that she’s sort of known for, which is sort of celebrating a woman as a sexual being, as you point out in your book. My read of it now was sexual in men’s terms, like being attractive to men. Why was she so fascinating to you?

MUKHOPADHYAY: To me, that was an example of taking the values of feminism, but trying to push them on a broader audience. And as such, she reached a broader audience, right? Helen Gurley Brown was really talking to pink collar workers, right? Secretaries in the city, administrative assistants, you know, women that were working as teacher’s assistants, you know, women that hadn’t really been spoken to you by the broader movement. And it worked, right? People were very compelled by the messaging and it’s still a phrase that we use today. Even if it — even if the origin of it is complicated, the way that we talk about it still frames how we talk about women and the workplace. And so, I guess to your point about what is the root of how we talk about this, when we transitioned from feminism as a collective movement, workers’ rights as a collective movement, to this individualistic idea that when you work hard enough, you can get ahead. Women start to become more competitive with each other. There was this idea that if I work hard, I can get that seat at the table. And I think that, in many ways, is the root of it. Whereas, you know, a feminism of the workplace, which could really be about our collective organizing turned into an individual pursuit, where, you know, the wink of an eye and, you know, the wearing the right suit and taking the right meetings would help you get ahead at work. And the advice is not fully wrongheaded, right? Like, we all know that there are certain strategies we can use in a traditional workplace that will get us ahead. But what does that do for women as a whole?

MARTIN: I’m just thinking about the fact that individualism has always been a part of this culture. So, I guess I’m wondering, like, why is anybody surprised that a certain cohort of women like that story for themselves, right?

MUKHOPADHYAY: I do think that for some women, it is the only narrative, right? There isn’t the opportunity to connect with other women around their experiences. You don’t — not every workplace can be unionized. Especially when I worked at Teen Vogue, you know, young women of color, they really bought into the ethos of hustle culture and kind of girl bossing. Because for them, that was a concrete way for them to get out of the lived experience that they were having and to change their material conditions. My argument is a little bit broader than that, right? I think we know that the individualism is the spirit of the American dream, right? What we’re seeing now is people are becoming very critical of that because they’re looking at older generations, especially younger people. And they’re like, well, you did everything you were supposed to do. You leaned in, you girl bossed, you try to have it all, and you still don’t own a house, you still have student debt, and I’m not going to sign up for that same social contract. That is not what I’m going to sign up for. And so, I think we are at this moment of a reckoning where we’re looking around and saying, why are we working like this if it’s not going to pay off and actually give us the happiness and the support and the stability that we deserve and that we need to live successful and functional lives?

MARTIN: Are men having such a great time?

MUKHOPADHYAY: I don’t think men are having a particularly great time. Part of my interest in women is both — it’s part memoir. So, it’s also my own experience as a woman navigating, you know, corporate workplaces. But also, women are still paid less on the dollar. Women still do the majority of care work. You know, mothers are still responsible for the majority of care work. And are you — really to me, mothers are where, you know, the cracks are really starting to show between our ability to take care of our families and have healthy families and our ability to be working and be ambitious in the workplace.

MARTIN: You talked with a number of diversity and inclusion experts for this book. That’s a term that I think a lot of people will have heard, especially if they do work in one of these big, sort of, corporations, or – – and obviously, there’s been a political backlash against these concepts. But what do you think those conversations add to what you’re talking about here? What did you learn from them?

MUKHOPADHYAY: You know, interestingly, there is new research that a lot of the DNI programs from that time have been effective, but some of them have been abandoned. And we’re seeing that, right? We’re seeing the loan laid off DEI officer who is — was the first to get cut in the newest round of budget cuts, right? And what, you know, has historically been understood as the business case for diversity, what we’re actually learning is that it’s a lot deeper than that, it’s a lot more complex than that. And not only do — is there a business case for diversity, but diverse environments make for better workplaces. They make for more creativity. They make for an opportunity for a variety of people to feel included. But there’s also a cultural value for diversity. And we know that, you know, there’s a changing face of the American population. We want to integrate and empower all of these different types of leaders, because when we do, we see that our teams work better together. They’re more comfortable with each other, they’re better people. You know, these are all values that are starting to become a lot more important in companies. And so, I was just very fascinated by the amount of money that has gone into the industry yet, how, at the end of the day, so many women and people of color still make less money. And so, what is the gap there? Why are we saying we’re invested in this? And then ultimately, we’re not actually seeing the material success of that. And so, that’s why I talked to so many experts, because I was really fascinated by how, you know, employees and really companies were taking on these initiatives, but why in so many instances they weren’t ultimately effective.

MARTIN: There’s a quote from the book that I wanted to run by you that struck a lot of us who read it. You said, “Making it is a myth to me, not because I didn’t make it. I did make it, and I’m still making it. I’m still on the hamster wheel. I still work too much. I still have such a hard time doing all the things that need to get done, let alone being able to think about the bigger picture. I have long been in a prison of my own ambition, stuck without a narrative for moving forward. And the change I seek, the change we seek, is not going to be accomplished with flowery day planners and how-to guides. It’s going to come from deep personal and collective transformations.” There’s a lot there. But just say more about that.

MUKHOPADHYAY: The quote around being in a prison of my own ambition is something that’s come up quite a bit. And, you know, really, what I mean to say there is my ambitions outweighed what were the resources, tools, and structures around me to support those ambitions. So, while I may have been very ambitious and I wanted to, you know, write books, write articles, have this great job, I was limited by the fact that I didn’t have, you know, any type of real support to help me with that, both at work, with my family, and, you know, just literally how many hours are in a day. And I think that’s something that a lot of people are struggling with, where they are ambitious, they want to do as much as they can possibly do, but there’s limitations to our time, to our material resources, to our ability, to our flexibility in the workplace, our ability to do any of the things that we really want to do. And that is where the reflection in this book really started, where I realized that I had internalized this idea that if I worked hard enough, I would make it. And I did, in a lot of ways, right? I made it. And — but I also was not happy in doing that and I did not see the kind of success that I thought I would. And for me, there was two pieces to that that I realized. The first was redefining how we see success and redefining what it actually means to make it. But the second was recognizing that I alone was not going to be able to overcome every hurdle and every experience or discrimination that I experienced in the workplace, that it was going to take me reaching out, building community, you know, whether that be some type of worker organizing or whatever that may be to actually change material conditions for employees.

MARTIN: And you’re also still a boss. I’m wondering if this whole kind of emotional, mental, spiritual journey that you’ve been on has changed the way you boss.

MUKHOPADHYAY: Absolutely, it has. One of the things that I’ve really learned through management is the different ways that you can be a manager that is mindful of this moment and all of the different ways that people are interacting with work and how to actually have them feel included and feel OK about whatever they’re grappling with in their life, that they don’t have to sacrifice everything for their job. And I do that through a series of ways. I mean, I’m really hands-on in terms of feedback. I am really structured in terms of, you know, what I have around expectations, what people are expected to do on the job and also to create an environment where people feel comfortable giving me feedback as much as I’m comfortable giving them feedback. And so, it’s a — you know, it’s a relationship, not a one sided, you know, dictatorship. And, you know — and so, that is one of the ways that I’ve tried to account for this moment. But I’ve also accepted that I alone can’t fix this moment. I can’t fix that how many people are miserable at work right now. I can’t fix then kind of money I have access to, the types of raises that I can give. And so, those are the places that I do step back. And I’m quite transparent about it. I’d say here’s what’s possible. Here’s what I can do. If you want to do this job, here’s what’s the reality of the job. Here’s how I can make it better for you, but these are the decisions you need to make. And the more frank I am and the more honest I am, I noticed the more engaged and, frankly, committed many of my employees tend to be because they also see themselves, they see that I’m being honest about my experience. And so, they feel comfortable being honest about their experience.

MARTIN: Before I let you go, think back to that young woman who you thought was kind of sold a bill of goods and kind of needed to get knocked around a bit before you realized that it was a bill of goods and you had to kind of figure it out. Can you kind of think back to that person and think what would you tell her if you could talk to that person? What would you — to that Samhita, what would you say?

MUKHOPADHYAY: At the time, I told myself to fake it until I made it. And what I would say now is don’t feel that you’re lucky to be there, they’re lucky to have you as much as you’re lucky to be there. And that there’s always an opportunity to make an impact and be invested in your work, but be honest with yourself about what your limitations are and what you’re able to actually do with the resources that you have. And don’t be so hard on yourself when you’re not meeting what you feel success looks like. To really calibrate what success is possible in an environment where you don’t have a lot of control over many of the things that are happening around you. And I think that’s the advice I would probably give. And the advice that I really hope people feel from this book, because, as I say, it’s not an advice book, but what I do hope people get out of it is that they feel a little less alone. I think one of the things that has really happened with workplace feminism or what academics have called this kind of neoliberal feminism is the belief that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and with hard work, you can overcome any obstacle you face. And that has left many of us alienated and feeling alone and feeling like failures, both in our families and in our careers. And the reality is, we alone can’t actually change many of the structures that we’re facing. It’s going to require collective, whether that’s organizing, talking, conversations, work wives, whatever that may be, we need collective community to overcome many of the things that we’re experiencing in the workplace.

MARTIN: Samhita Mukhopadhyay, thank you so much for talking with us.

MUKHOPADHYAY: Thank you.