In The Myth of Making It , Samhita Mukhopadhyay Talks Ambition, Work, and Career Myths
We’ve all pretty much concluded that work sucks. During the pandemic and in the shaky years since, some problems have come into sharper focus: We’re overworked, underpaid, burned out, uninterested in being girl bosses but also not entirely thrilled by the prospect of frittering our one wild, precious life away working in lazy girl jobs. So now what?
In The Myth of Making It, author Samhita Mukhopadhyay takes a hard look at the narratives we tell ourselves about work and success, and considers how we can begin to undo the worst of them. Mukhopadhyay lays out how women in particular have been sold a brand of corporate feminism that prioritizes individual ambition and advancement while requiring us to constantly make sacrifices for work, pretending our lives outside the office don’t exist.
Mukhopadhyay drew from her own experiences as executive editor at Teen Vogue (where, full disclosure, she was my boss) while writing The Myth of Making It, which is equal parts personal reflection and an analysis of the structural issues that can make our work lives feel so impossible. The author gives an unflinching account of the challenges she experienced while running a magazine, losing her father, caring for her sick mother, and watching the world dissolve into the chaos of 2020. (There are also a lot of fun, gossipy anecdotes about life in upper management at Condé Nast.)
Rather than focus on title or salary, the book suggests, we can try to work toward a healthier, more collective vision of success. We can prioritize supporting our colleagues, building worker power, and, crucially, forging identities and interests that are separate from our jobs. “These little acts of recognition, of connection, of collective resistance,” Mukhopadhyay writes, “can go a long way toward creating the culture of work we have long been craving.”
I recently caught up with the author via phone to talk about all of it.
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Teen Vogue: So much of the book is about challenging the often conflicting narratives imposed around work: You need to find meaning in your job, you can do anything, your worth is tied to your paycheck, and so on. How can we reset those expectations, especially for young people going into the workforce?
Samhita Mukhopadhyay: I’m trying to bridge the gap between momentum and excitement [about labor organizing] with what I think is this general, growing frustration with work. It's really easy to share a bunch of lazy girl memes and be like, "I hate doing my job," but that's not ultimately going to make you happy. There might be periods in your life when you can “quiet quit” or check out or just work for a paycheck, but to live a life of meaning and impact — one that's in alignment with the politics I think a lot of Teen Vogue readers espouse — what does that actually look like?
The thing I talk about in the book is this idea of the “margin of maneuverability,” right? What is the space between these theoretical understandings and criticisms of the workplace and the reality of the places where we're working? I was really careful to not have it be like another girl boss manifesto, where you're like, "But now that you know, go and do this.” It’s like, I just need to take a deep breath and say, "Here's what's possible, here's what's not. Here's how it'll affect my life, and how it could affect broader labor conditions."
TV: You talk a lot about the anxiety you had working at Teen Vogue and Condé. In your mind you'd made it, but you still felt like you were faking it. There's no title, no age, no Gucci bag that makes you feel like, Okay, I've made it. I'm done, it's good. What do you want readers to know about that feeling?
SM: I write a lot about my appearance in the book and my experience being in an environment that very much upholds a specific definition around beauty, and how I sit in that. I’m really facing how much I had internalized that success was not just what happened on paper, it was not just the job, but also how you looked, and that you had to look the part to play the part.
That hasn't changed, right? It's legal to discriminate against fat people. I think New York just passed legislation that actually does identify it as a form of workplace discrimination, to [give people] some legal recourse. But what you look like, how you dress, what your class background is, what your race is, these are all ways that we're coded in the workplace.
It's a very seductive narrative. A lot of the girl boss, gaslight, gate-keep [stereotype] — the kind of truest form of the girl boss, she's super hot. She's going to SoulCycle. She fits the part, but most of us don't. It [creates] this inordinate pressure that, I think, continues to perpetuate this idea of what does it mean to be a successful woman. Literally, what does it look like to be a successful woman?
That's changing in a lot of ways. I think people are rejecting it, but I still think there is this pressure. I felt it acutely because I worked in a really specific place that creates the images we're held to.
TV: We know the generation wars are kind of a scam; they undermine intergenerational connections and the struggles we have in common. But I agree with you that here are some different approaches to work and professionalism between generations, largely because of things like student debt, the expectation of being able to retire, what was going on when particular generations came of age. Can you talk about some of the differences you’ve seen?
SM: I am socialized as a Gen X'er-slash-geriatric millennial, as they call us. I grew up in the era of [legendary Cosmopolitan editor] Helen Gurley Brown, and then Sex in the City — this type of girl power where it's like you can do whatever you want to, you just have to hustle for it. You work hard to get ahead. Your work is as valuable as the man next to you, but because you're already going to be devalued, you have to work twice as hard to get half as far.
That was just understood, right? Because it was 30 years ago… I had to work as hard as possible because there were 100 people in line for that same job. That's doubly true in an industry like we're in, a creative field, where there are so many people that want jobs and so few jobs for them.
I didn't have any boundaries with work. I was very comfortable working above and beyond, basically allowing my own labor to be exploited, my ideas to be exploited in the service of a bigger dream — that this would somehow get me to a place where I would find happiness and own a home and pay off my student debt — and all of those things that we now know are lies.
I very much bought into it, so subconsciously and so deeply that it's hard for me to deprogram myself.… People who are teenagers right now are coming out of college, they are looking at us and being like, "You did all this. What did it get you?" Right? “You destroyed the economy, you destroyed the environment, student debt is astronomical, there are no jobs. Why should I fall for this? It's a scam.”
I do think that difference is generational. I think there is a lot to learn from that criticism because they are basically identifying this idea, this mythology we've been force-fed, that if you work really hard, all of these things you've been told since you were five years old would happen for you. That's not the case. As the American dream has kind of unraveled, so has our commitment to that hustle.
The way that plays out in the workplace is that while it's important to have this kind of theoretical understanding of why work is bullsh*t, it actually hasn't changed work and how much you have to work.
We're in an interesting tension point right now, when a lot of these things are not happening at the systems level. It's not like organizations are changing and they're like, "You know what? These people are making a good point. We should really change the way that work is structured." Instead, it's become even more of a rat race, where there's the people who are willing to do whatever and then the people who are kind of seen as not willing to do it. But we don't have a language for how to hold anyone accountable about this stuff.
TV: You talk about the “Gen Z is lazy and entitled and doesn't wanna work” trope, but also how you’ve seen high schoolers bring resumes to Teen Vogue events and younger colleagues — especially young women of color — work so hard. There's a scarcity mindset, too, and this need to hustle because there are so few jobs. Can you talk about that a bit more?
SM: Both things are happening, but [it gets lost] because of the generalized hatred of young people and the media's bias toward always trying to identify where young people are wrong.... You see it in all the coverage of the [campus] protests. You see it definitely in how we talk about work, this kind of assumption that it's coming from a place of entitlement, which sometimes it really is, but a lot of times it's a legitimate criticism of a system that was set up for them to fail.
One of the things I try to highlight in the book is that there are young people who are taking that momentum — like [Starbucks Workers United founding member] Jaz Brisack organizing a Starbucks — who are taking their college education, their privilege, and saying, “I'm actually going to work to create better systems.”
TV: This is my last generational question, but I'm interested in your discussion of the boundaries around our personal and professional lives. Obviously, we are all people outside of work. Everyone has stuff come up in their personal life that looms larger than work at various points, but there's also criticism of Gen Z for oversharing at work.
What feels like a reasonable balance there? To what extent is keeping boundaries helpful for preservation of some sense of self outside of work?
SM: Part of that is the breakdown between the idea of the professional and personal, because our professional lives have seeped into our personal lives. We're checking email at 10:00 at night, taking phone calls when we're at dinner. The professional has kind of crept into the personal, and the reverse has happened too. Our personal lives have kind of come into the workplace.
I believe that if we had a more comfortable relationship with the reality that people, especially women, have care-work responsibilities, familial responsibilities — to normalize that, and to normalize that for fathers as well — and [could] say that, "Work is not your life. Your whole life is your life. Work is a part of your life. You have friends, relationships, families, you have children, and all of these things," that it wouldn't feel like there was so much pressure on being perfect at work and for work to be your life.
In some ways you do want to have an environment where people feel comfortable being open and honest about what they're going through, but then it's also a slippery slope.… Some of this is a response to the expectation that work is supposed to be everything for us.
TV: Let's return to the personal vs. collective question, which comes up repeatedly. You say some of what we need is structural — paid family leave, equal pay, strong and functional unions — and some is individual, like figuring out what makes you happy at work.
There's that great question you share from adrienne maree brown: “How much do I actually need” at work or financially? One answer you come to is that there are seasons when different things will matter more. Is there anything else you want to say on that?
SM: That's kind of always been true, but women and people of color have been penalized more for those types of things. Women are looked over for promotion when they take maternity leave, or it's not considered appropriate workplace behavior to have to leave early to take care of a parent.
I do think there are different times in your life when you can be committed to work and different times you can't be, but I also think people really push themselves to try not to have those interruptions because they're so focused on advancing in their career.
That's what the “lean in” neoliberal feminist advice has long been — just push through, push through, push through. Part of what I'm arguing in the book is to just recognize and be at peace with [those different phases], but also, work to create [professional] environments that understand and recognize the ebbs and flows of how life unfolds for people.
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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