The Myth of Making It + Ballerina Farm Thoughts
Samhita Mukhopadhyay tells it like it is
It feels like we’re cresting a sort of elder millennial/young Gen-X reckoning: like a whole bunch of people (and women in particular) have arrived at a point in their 40s where they’ve not only left behind the guiding maxims of their 20s and 30s, but also found the time to write about the process — and what happens when you leave all the bullshit behind. We are certainly not the only micro-generation to go through this process, but we are the one doing it right now, and I’ve found the process of reading these books and essays and Instagram posts at once harrowing (it brings up a lot of shit) and gratifying.
It also makes me feel a warm sort of solidarity — like, yes, we all have to do this heavy labor of taking off all this workism/hustle culture armor, and we’re coming at it from different directions with different scars and different hang-ups, but we’re also doing it. I felt that way reading Jennifer Romilini’s Ambition Monster (her Culture Study Pod episode on Ben Affleck and ambition is coming your way very soon) and I felt that way about Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning — and was thrilled when Samhita agreed to come hang out in a Google Doc with me to talk about the book.
You can read an excerpt (on getting fired from her job at editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue) here — but I also highly recommend buying the book and supporting Samhita’s work. As you’ll see below, it starts as personal narrative — and turns into something quite different.
Let’s start with the promises of corporate feminism. I love these lines: “We were standing on the shoulders of the women who came before us, but the pantsuit was out, and frilly dresses paired with blazers were in. We were ready to work all day and all night. We had smartphones and social media and Uber and time management software . . . and Zappos. We were literally unstoppable.”
The false promises of corporate feminism feel SO OBVIOUS now, but were (and for many, remain) incredibly beguiling. What’s at the heart of the appeal, and how did that appeal speak specifically to you? And what, if anything, differentiates it from white feminism?
It’s just so much easier to believe you can overcome obstacles you may face rather than accept that we are often powerless over the forces that impede our success, whether it be access to networks, education, care help, or a pay gap. It’s compelling to buy into the idea that if you work hard enough you can conquer anything. And there is a truth to it, which is why it is such a compelling narrative.
And it certainly was to me: I worked really hard, harder than most of the people around me, because I had to—I didn’t have money, networks, access—so many of the things you need to be successful in media. I would wake up and write before work and network my ass off – attend every event, say yes to every panel, etc. And it helped! I got a book deal, I get asked to speak and write articles. But it also didn’t lead to some holy land of financial and/or emotional stability or security, and that’s how the cracks started to show for me. I followed the neoliberal feminist advice of getting ahead at all costs, and I was exhausted and what did I ultimately have to show for it?
It’s hard to say whether it is similar to or different from what is understood as white feminism—which I see as focusing on issues that primarily impact white women. Workplace feminism is a bit different because women of color usually have to work, and it fuses with class and minimizes racial differences to simply say if you work hard, you will have the same outcomes as everyone else. Whereas what is understood as “white feminism” often minimizes differences in women’s experiences, workplace feminism minimizes differences by peddling these narratives. Still, they are in some ways more accessible (even if the success is perhaps not). Does that make sense? In some ways, workplace feminism is more nefarious because it’s so much more pervasive and harder to identify because it can be obscured as a type of girl power hustle culture.
You write with great clarity about your reasons for accepting the position of executive editor at Teen Vogue, and I’m hoping you can talk a little about your ambivalence at the time, how you narrativized the choice, and what it felt like writing about it in retrospective (it seems to be a hinge point, but maybe it’s also….just a job you had for three years!)
I was ambivalent because media had broken my heart. I had just lost a job, and I was devastated; as I write in the book, “I started the job like you start a rebound relationship when you aren’t over your ex,” which led to a bit of disconnection. Still, I also knew intellectually that this was a huge moment for me and my career. I just felt so disassociated from the experience because I hadn’t really recovered from the trauma of losing my previous job. I didn’t want to take the job initially because I don’t think I fully understood what a big deal it was (a teen fashion magazine?? hmm) until I learned how much it had changed and how cool what they were doing was and then I was excited to be a part of it.
I’ve been talking a lot about how Teen Vogue wasn’t my “dream job,” but as a job, it was a dream in that what we were doing was so freaking cool, and it was really exciting to be a part of that. Some moments would pierce through, and I’d have an out-of-body experience like whoa am I really photographing the students from Parkland or whatever awesome up-and-coming actor, etc. But something was missing, something was always missing, and no matter how hard I worked or how many fancy shows I went to, that feeling never really went away. I will stop here and save the rest for my therapist.
I think you and I have similar thinking when it comes to hustle: we both think it’s a broken ideology, and we both understand that our past hustle, as soul-compromising as it often was, has also made us who we are today. As you put it: “I’d be disingenuous not to admit that my hustle helped me get to a place where I could have more control over what I was doing with my life.” Also like you, I realized during the pandemic that I didn’t want to work as hard as I was — I wanted life to feel more sustainable. I really struggle with how to hold both things as true and give advice to others. How do you think about these ideas, and what advice have you found yourself offering?
As I write in the book, I used to dole out the advice of “fake it till you make it” and I’ve been reflecting a lot about why I found that advice so helpful. Probably because I, like many women, especially those early in their careers, struggle with believing they belong somewhere. So if you pretend you belong, they will believe you. I’ve really come around to the idea that we need to acknowledge how much we have to offer, that we shouldn’t minimize who we are, what our questions are and how we contribute because of fear that we won’t be recognized or appear to be too confident when we don’t know everything. This is not about being overconfident and oblivious either, but I legit felt for the longest time I was the lucky one to get the opportunity to do the work I’ve been able to do and I still do believe I was lucky, but I was also bringing something special and unique to these situations and I should have felt confident in that.
The other piece of advice I’m really struggling to internalize but also believe and give is that I think we all just need to slow down. There is this expectation that when you start a new job, project, career, you have to hit the ground running and answer every question on day one and solve every problem ASAP. Sometimes, we need to let things roll out and see how they are received and let the answers come more organically. Again, really hard to internalize this advice myself but the desire to prove ourselves sometimes pushes against allowing the…universe to surprise us.
This is a way to talk about a whole lot in the book and also a follow-up question: What advice do you wish you could take back?
I don’t know that I’ve given advice that I wish I took back, although, as I answer in the last question: I probably wouldn’t tell a young woman to “fake it” anymore. But I think it’s ok that I did and I’ve had young women tell me they appreciated the advice and that it helped them. I’m more disappointed in the surrounding factors that make that good advice.
If there is anything I wish I could take back it’s the untenable standards I regularly held myself and sometimes those around me to. I stil struggle with it, I think I can have pretty lofty expectations about how passionate someone should be about work and I really struggle to understand when people are not. That probably makes me annoying lol.
I love that The Myth of Making It transitions into a pretty in-depth business book (the good kind of business book, not the LinkedIn bro kind of business book). You write at length about the significant limits of “diversity” hiring without actual shifts in leadership, culture, or accountability — and how both the labor and failure of DEI initiatives often rests on the middle managers of color hired/tasked with implementing them.
You’ve had a lot of experience with this, so I’m going to ask for some insight: if someone is dealing with this themselves right now, how would you tell them to proceed? Alternately: if someone knows one of their peers is dealing with this right now, how would you tell them to proceed?
My advice is that often as middle managers/people of color we are expected to solve a problem that we didn’t create and guess what, often we can’t fix that problem. So the first step is accepting that you can only do your best, but ultimately you likely can’t fix something like…systemic racism at your workplace. We can always create a safe place for people to express themselves and advocate to the best of our ability for their advancement/raise/promotion, but it is rare that we can control how much money is in our budget or where it goes or what other concrete things we can do to materially change conditions for our employees.
That said, in the book, I have a few ideas of things you can always do: give and receive honest feedback, work in solidarity with employees not in opposition to them, only go into management if you are ready to manage people (it’s wild this has to be said but it does), work to find ways to help your staff feel included and empowered and when it comes time for promotion or raise ask for the biggest one possible (it’s not your money, after all!).
And I think I’d add, advocating to your higher ups for the kinds of support you need to create the most inclusive workplace possible because generally, especially for DEI or any time of inclusivity effort, if it’s seen as the responsibility of only one person and not a group of people or invested in from higher ups, it’s not going to make a real difference in the company. That was a wonky business book answer maybe. Maybe I need to accept that’s what I’m doing! ●
You can follow Samhita on Instagram here and buy The Myth of Making It here.