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Business
Why Vogue's Marissa Mayer Makes Leaning In Look So Bad
by
Stephanie S. Smith
"I helped build Google, but I don't like to rest on [my] laurels. I think the most interesting thing is what happens next,” said Yahoo CEO
Marissa Mayer in 2008
, while she was still at Google and had no certainty of what that glittering “next” might be.
Yet in
Vogue’s
September issue coverage of Mayer,
“resting” is exactly what Mayer is doing—in the photo shoot, that is. And for a woman who took the helm of Yahoo at age 36, who embodies the very modern portrait of “leaning in”— to borrow from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s terminology—the look is unbecoming. In fact,
Vogue’s
Mayer makes leaning in look altogether bad.
In a two-page spread, smart, strong and successful Mayer is positioned upside-down on a chaise lounge, flanked by rosebushes. And with this perplexing posture,
Vogue
effectively inverts these admirable qualities. With feet above her head, a hand awkwardly supporting her weight, hips twisted toward the camera, Mayer looks anything but in control of her situation.
You can be sure any woman who’s made it into
Vogue’s
September issue will look great in a dress, but idleness does not look so flattering on a global leader responsible for resuscitating a has-been tech force, for doubling company shares in her brief tenure thus far, for releasing more products in the past six months than Yahoo has created in the past five years, and even Yahoo’s remarkable surpassing of Google web traffic in July—which doesn’t even count traffic on Tumblr, Mayer’s biggest acquisition yet.
Her achievements don’t stop there. Marissa Mayer is not only the youngest but the first pregnant CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Even more to her credit, she did none of this with gendered motivation—she did it because, not as a woman, but simply as a human being, she “likes to code” and she does it exceptionally well.
As Dorothy Sayers argues in
Are Women Human?
“It is ridiculous to take on a man’s job just in order to be able to say that ‘a woman has done it—yah!’ The only decent reason for tackling any job is that it is
your
job, and you
want
to do it.”
Mayer knows this inherently, so much so that she says she rarely gives it a conscious thought. As the 20th employee at Google, Joseph Weisberg writes for
Vogue,
Mayer "was often asked how it felt to be the only woman on engineering teams. She’d answer truthfully: She hadn’t noticed." Yet now, as soon as
Vogue’s
September issue hit the stands, everyone seems to have noticed.
Many have cried foul on the inappropriateness of Mayer’s
Vogue
shoot—because it’s “seductive,” because CEOs don’t belong in fashion magazines, because she’s too pretty to be taken seriously. I’m not moved by these critiques so much. If Marissa Mayer wants to code, I won’t begrudge her for doing it in style. But I agree it’s inappropriate—not because of what she’s wearing—because of her posture. Because it’s a portrait of passivity.
Such a portrait grossly belittles Mayer’s capabilities and achievements as a powerhouse of pro-activity who has leaned in to every opportunity—and challenge—that’s come her way. To other professional women like me trying to give our all to whatever responsibilities are given us—regardless of gender—this misrepresentation of Mayer is discouraging. It seems to suggest that leaning in is a much more undignified, clumsy business than any women in the C-Suite ever let on. That perhaps, for us, the corporate ladder is too rigorous for skirts, and it might just be simpler and easier for everyone if we did our jobs by sitting still and looking pretty.
Historically, the postures of women have suffered far more scrutiny than that of men. As women, for this reason and many more, our postures matter. They are a statement of our identity and work. Posture, for example, is what fueled the women’s suffrage movement into fulfillment through their standing and marching for the right of women to vote. Posture was all it took for Rosie the Riveter in the 1940s to rouse a nation of war-weary women to meaningful vocation. More recently, posture is what caused an international outburst of thanks as Katherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, radically chose not to disguise
her post-baby belly
from a watching world. And to women everywhere who are choosing to lean in to their opportunities, their family, their career, posture matters.
But what matters most of all, in whatever posture we choose, is that we do it with dignity. This is where
Vogue
has failed, and we'd do well to learn from their mistake.
When women in our workplaces act on the courage to lean in, to give their all to whatever calling is given them, we need to recognize the dignity of such actions. Rather than downplay their gifts or ambition, we need to empower them in the muscle and tenacity it so often takes to live out their vocation fully, especially in male-dominated industries—from the Church to the C-Suites of Silicon Valley.
Stephanie S. Smith is a freelance writer, and editor for Barna Group, previously at RELEVANT Media Group. She lives in Orlando with her husband, and you can find her at
www.stephaniessmith.com
or tweeting
@stephindialogue
.
Editor's note: Photo taken by Mikael Jansson for
Vogue.
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