The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning

We can bury the girlboss, but what comes next? The former executive editor of Teen Vogue tells the story of her personal workplace reckoning and argues for collective responsibility to reimagine work as we know it. "As I sat in the front row that day, I was 80 percent faking it with a 100-percent-real Gucci bag." Samhita Mukhopadhyay had finally made it: she had her dream job, dream clothes--dream life. But time and time again, she found herself sacrificing time with family and friends, paying too much for lattes, and limping home after working twelve hours a day. Success didn't come without costs, right? Or so she kept telling herself. And Mukhopadhyay wasn't alone: Far too many of us are taught that we need to work ourselves to the bone to live a good life. That we just need to climb up the corporate ladder, to "lean in" and "hustle," to enact change. But as Mukhopadhyay shows, these definitions of success are myths--and they are seductive ones. Mukhopadhyay traces the origins of the