more than one in three women

Hi!

TW: Sexual assault.

In light of a sexual predator winning a Grammy, I thought I’d chat about my experience in Hollywood as a woman and in working in corporate.

For context, in college I studied business administration with a concentration in business analytics (an alternate name being how many times can we use the word ‘business’ in the title without sounding fake), and I worked in a few business jobs through internships and full time. In Hollywood, I lived and worked for about a year and a half after my short stint in corporate America.

In ~the business world~, there were many instances where it felt like the workplace was a boys club. One example is when my manager projected a male co-workers dating profile on his office TV and commented on the young women’s bodies. He literally would say if a woman looked fat in her photos. It was pretty disgusting.

There would also be countless golfing networking events. *Shockingly*, and this may be hard to believe, I don’t golf and I have no desire to learn. I don't even like mini golfing. Frankly, I find mini golfing to be a boring, uncreative, and tortuous way to spend a summer afternoon, but hey let’s save that hot take for another day.

Anyways, back to the boys club at the water cooler. More often than not, in work teams I’d be the only woman, and during lunchtime, every conversation would revolve around sports and/or drinking. Now listen, maybe the places I worked at weren't the right company culture for me, or maybe I’m not interested in sports and that’s a me problem, but either way I felt like there were barriers of belonging in the workplace.

Hollywood, however, felt like a more extreme example.

As soon as I got to town, I wanted to network. Take the gal out of business school but can’t take the business school out of the gal, as the saying goes (?). As eager as I was to get out there and paint the town red, the realities of this endeavor soon sank in.

Oftentimes, what I thought would be a casual meet up for coffee became an awkward dance around blocking advances. A few months in and I would get ready for meetings with trepidation as I wondered what the other person's intentions were. Rather than getting to act in a will-they-won’t-they relationship trope in an Emmy award winning single-cam comedy, I instead dreaded a will-they-won’t-they hit on me at a Starbucks Reserve.

My excitement for networking slowly diminished, as did my excitement for a Starbucks Reserve (I mean, does anyone actually like nitro cold brew?). What I realized is that you can choose not to go to these networking meetings to “protect” yourself from uncomfortable experiences, but likely you won’t get further in your career since Hollywood is such a “I know a guy who knows an Important Guy™” business. And yes, the Important Guy™ is almost always exclusively a guy.

If you do choose to go, you risk feeling demoralized and objectified. Even worse, the interaction could backfire in the sense that the guy becomes bitter because you don’t reciprocate their advances, and therefore you’ve burned a bridge. Or even WORSE (and thankfully I have never experienced this*), you could be assaulted.

Now I know that In the past I’ve gaslit myself into feeling flattered by these “harmless” situations. I should be grateful I even have the opportunity to network! It’s a privilege to make connections. It’s a privilege to even get a meeting!

But let me tell you, I didn’t move 3000 miles to get hit on by Jo Schmo who works in the CAA mailroom. I moved to make art for a living, to explore the human condition through performance, connect with other creatives, and entertain people, dammit!

And there’s another point of this too where I feel like I shouldn’t even write about this or have these thoughts because this seems like such… champagne problems. But I know my feelings are valid, and I want to push myself to be more open about issues women face. If I’ve faced sexism in the mere year and a half I was in the business world and in Hollywood, I’m sure as shit that many other women have experienced what I have and worse. The only way we can make change in these industries, or any industry, is if we speak up about it.

Circling it back to the Grammys, the fact that a man who has assaulted multiple women just received one of the most prestigious entertainment awards is disgusting. Sexism is systemic and pervades all industries. I wish there was a silver lining to this news, but all we can do is keep sharing our stories, fight for legislation that protects womxn, believe survivors, and hold abusers accountable. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have a voice and I won’t stop speaking until the day I die.

With love,
Emily