Bossypants

In her telling of how she gradually rose in show business, Fey focuses on the obstacles that stood in her way as a woman. These obstacles, she demonstrates, are not unique to show business; they are part of a patriarchal hierarchy that teaches girls at an early age to expect less for themselves than for men and to make decisions that will best placate the demands society imposes on them. Fey’s discussions of conventional beauty standards and motherhood help inform the lessons learned by her path to success, for the messages women absorb about their value in the world seep into their approach to their careers.

Girls are taught from a young age that their bodies fall short of society’s ideal. Fey encounters this message when she reads the “Growing Up and Liking It” brochure her mother gives her shortly before she begins her first period. It contains a series of hyper cheerful, unhelpful conversations between fictional friends, avoiding the actual physical, less pleasant practicalities. In “All Girls Must Be Everything,” Fey spends time discussing the strict but impossible standards of female beauty, how there is a “laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful” (22) and how the contradictory nature of these qualities prevents women from being able to achieve them.