PRINCESS BUSINESS WOMAN: A FairyTale with Photos

PRINCESS BUSINESS-WOMAN

Once Upon a Time, there was a young girl who graduated from college with only a filofax, leather briefcase, pair of navy pumps and a smart navy suit with shiny gold buttons as her most prized possessions.   This young girl wanted nothing more than to be a “Business Woman.”   Just like Melanie Griffith in “Working Girl” and that blond lawyer-woman on “L.A. Law.”

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But when she moved to Los Angeles, the only job this young woman got was that of a secretary, fetching poppy-seed muffins for and fielding profanity-laced emails from her psychotic boss at NBC.  In the castle of primetime, she toiled late nights running calls from the car and slaved early mornings prepping “Must Review Today” folders for the crazy, evil boss-lady until she ran out screaming one morning and never came back.

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For a few weeks, she drank a lot of $2 Chilean wine.  She chased her sexy sailing instructor down to Santiago.  She came home alone.  She read a lot of Ayn Rand.  She worked a few more jobs.  Got a few more promotions.  She even got an Associate Producer credit on a real television show. One year later, she left the Industry to raise her children.   But she never got her own business cards.   She never really got to be the “Business Woman” she’d always envisioned herself to be.  

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Until yesterday.

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For the simple price of a Southwest plane ticket, that little girl grew into a Princess.  She packed her navy suit, picked up her freshly-minted business cards from Uprinting.com and made her way to San Francisco for her first business trip.  To a conference, no less.  This is the fairy-tale story of her glamorous rise to the top.   This is proof that dreams do come true.  Kind of. 

Chauffeur drives Princess to airport. Chauffeur looks strangely like Princess.  (See “The Prince & The Pauper”)

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Since flight was cancelled and Princess was re-routed, she arrives late to hotel.  Her King-room has been given away.  Princess gets upgraded to VIP floor. Princess learns that her Queen-room is a handicap room with double peep-holes.  (See “Snow White and Seven Dwarfs”)

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Princess takes a shower in her handicap bathroom but realizes too late that the water doesn’t stay in the wheelchair accessible shower pan (”cause it’s a handicap pan).  She mops up 3 inches of water flooding the bathroom. With no dry towels left, she air-dries her body with the blow-dryer.  (See “Cinderella”)

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Princess orders Gourmet Dinner on silver-tray from a servant who charges $15 for his delivery services. She eats her steamed ‘green vegetables’ and mashed potatoes while watching a rerun of “The Office” in her lower-than-normal-to-floor Queen bed.  She falls asleep shortly after the potatoes re-congeal in her stomach but the room is too hot, then it is too cold, the comforter falls to the floor and doors slam noisily in the hall all night.   REM sleep is elusive.  (See “The Princess and the Pea”)

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Princess wakes early and hits snooze 3x’s until she’s (almost) late for Registration & Opening Keynote. She makes coffee in her room (using 4 creamers to make it palatable).  She dons her navy pantsuit and runs to the Ballroom.  (See “Cinderella” again)

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Priceless Jewels and Treasures are bestowed upon the Princess, justifying the $1000+ Registration fee, for sure.

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Horns blare. Criers hark. Music Soars. The Metropolitan Ballroom I doors open. Wait.  Oops. The Princess is registered for Track II.  That’s in the other Ballroom, isn’t it?  Excuse me. Pardon me.  Oh.  Where is everyone?  Oh, I’m early.  There are 7 sessions today?  That’s a lot of sessions.  We’re in this room all day?  But there’s no windows. (See “Rapunzel”)

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Princess is exhausted… I mean, EXHILARATED by the 7 hours of speaking sessions.  Eager for the sight of real light, she heads out into the streets of San Francisco and stumbles upon a fine culinary experience.  She takes it “To Go” back to her hotel room and tears the dinner to shreds.  (See “Little Red Riding Hood”)

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With her hunger satiated, the Princess realizes she’s too tired to shower.  Her feet ache.  Although she has a ton of email to catch up on, she just wants to watch 30 Rock on tv.   She tells herself she’ll do her work in the morning.  (See “Pinocchio”)

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The Princess treats herself to a $45 can of not-quite-cold beer out of the mini-fridge. It’s a special occasion, after all.  She just lost her Business-Trip virginity.  She’s a real Business Woman now, damn it.  She’s a Business Princess! The Princess finishes her beer, then falls asleep until her I-phone alarm kisses her awake in time for Day II of the Affiliate Marketing Conference S.F. 2012.  (See “Sleeping Beauty”)

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And Princess Business Woman worked happily ever after.

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Spoiler alert, ladies: If you’re not exhausted, you’re not doing it right

Anyone can be a kick-ass working mom a la Sheryl K. Sandberg.  Just drop the Martha Stewart-suggestions for hand-made toilet paper, agree to stop competing for the “harder working spouse” title against your husband and be prepared for total & utter fatigue.

Yes, after biting my tongue for the last two weeks, this is my official response to the flurry of “Women-pull-up-your-bootstraps-marry-a-good-mate-bear-children-break-the-glass-ceiling” discussions running rampant around Facebook IPO news (you can only keep an alcoholic out of the bar for so long…)  Oh wait.  Those discussions have been running rampant around every “female near business” news story I’ve read since graduating from an all-girls highschool.  The hairstyle is different but the sentiment is the same.   The only real difference now… I order my drink straight-up and without an umbrella.

If you want to have it all, prepare to be tired and overwhelmed.

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Oh look.  I just realized my title is a double-entendre.  Ha!  That’s funny, except when you think about it in a working mom kind of way.  Exhaustive sex & working mom life go together like peanut butter and cashmere.  But I so digress.

Back to my main point.

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1.)  Who is Sheryl K. Sandberg?

I first learned about SKS last July in a detailed New Yorker article.  She’s the charismatic, smart, accessible, soon-to-be-billionaire COO of Facebook.  She’s a mom to two young children.  She’s an advocate for working women, especially in leadership positions.  Her 2010 TED speech has 1,000,000+ views.  Her opinions on getting “women to the table” and balancing work and family are both cult-able and divisive.  She is the current spokeswoman for the female executive with kids.  Love her or hate her, women should know her name.

2.)  The Simple Truth About Working Moms

It’s hard to be a woman.  Same way it’s hard to be a man.  It’s hard to be a productive, involved human-being — let alone a successful, attractive middle-aged one (that’s why plastic surgery exists… but again, I so digress).  The simple truth is that everyone has it tough.  No one is getting off easy.

This weekend, my husband and I duked it out on who does more juggling work and family.  I do the grocery shopping on Sunday nights and he makes the coffee every weekday morning.  I conduct conference calls at 8 pm (after the kids go to bed) and he responds to business emails at 5 am (before the kids wake up).  I pack the lunches.  He loads the dishwasher.   I check-in with the teachers.  He checks in with the stockbroker.  Neither one of us gets enough exercise or haircuts or compliments.   And we’re successful.  We’re in the upper 1%, we have a housekeeper who does the laundry and we send our kids to private school where we know they are getting a good education.  Yet, we feel guilty that we don’t spend enough quality time with the kids, we are stressed about the overflowing inbox that didn’t get completed today, we are annoyed that the other one didn’t bring in the mail, we wish we had more time as a couple (our love-life would be totally bereft without our nightly menage-a-trois with Jon Stewart) and we often bemoan the loss of our social life (who has the energy to go out on a Friday night for drinks with friends?)

Being a working mom means the score is even.  Everyone is stressed.  Everyone is exhausted.  Did you really think it would come easy?

3.)  The Complicated Truth of Stay-At-Home Moms

Sure, I have days when I think, “In my next life, I’m coming back as a man of the establishment married to me.”  That’s the gig.  All the freedom of being a man at the top of the pyramid with a woman like me running my house and family?!  I could then leave for my penthouse office with the calm certainty that my children were in the most capable, intelligent, caring-yet-firm, creative-yet-organized, playful-yet-mature hands.  You see, I’m hugely egotistical that no one could do a better job than me raising my kids.  That’s part of the problem that SKS doesn’t address.  If you’re a woman ambitious with her career, chances are you’re ambitious with your child-rearing.

I don’t have any solutions on how to juggle the two.  Truth is, I think I suffered low-level depression over the last 8 years of full-time stay-at-home momming and now, I am suffering from wake-you-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night stress of a business start-up.  Life is a catch-22.  Nothing comes easy.  I used to harbor resentment that my husband had a growing career while I excelled at block-and-crayon management and now, I harbor fears that my children are suffering from chicken-nugget overdoses & outsourced babysitter bus pick-ups.  Yes, I have all the responsibilities of running a business AND all of the responsibilities of raising two kids.  But so does my husband.  He might not be the one who’s buying the uniforms or making the cupcakes for the bake sale, but he’s explaining the concepts of electrons at breakfast and reading the stories at bedtime.

I’m happy that SKS has gone big and it’s great that she’s talking so openly about her experience.  I just think the discussion is getting bogged down in semantics.  Rich or poor.  Male or female.  Working or not-working.  Having a family is a HUGE responsibility that takes time and resources.  Having a big career is a HUGE stress that takes energy and focus.  Both require sacrifice.  Both require supportive spouses. Both require getting out there and being tired.  Is any of this really new news?

4.) The short rant about Martha Stewart

No blog post about moms in the boardroom would be complete without a mention of Martha Stewart.  In order to juggle the demands of  a working mom’s life, all reference and knowledge of Martha Stewart needs to be expunged from the cerebral cortex.  Otherwise, the burden of “pretty-ifying” life threatens the entire species.  It is impossible to make cupcakes that look like ladybugs, wrap christmas presents with hand-stamped papers, disinfect your bathtub with hand-squeezed lemon juice, and throw a Superbowl party with homegrown heirloom tomato salsa AND raise two kids AND get the VP promotion AND have a meaningful marriage.  Something has to give.  I love that Martha Stewart was a working Mom and a successful entrepreneur but if you look closely at Sheryl Sandberg’s many speeches, she never once shares a recipe for shaping a shrimp skewer into an origami swan.

I’m just saying… women can have it all but you have to be very careful how you define “all.”