If the fandom has been a vindication of Weisberger’s experience, there is also a lingering sense of discomfort at the thought that some of the workplace conversations of 20 years ago are still continuing.
Nov 14, 2024 22:13 IST First published on: Nov 15, 2024 at 00:13 IST
The fairytale sheen of a glamorous job, the hidden ogre that is Monday mornings, bosses who keep one teetering on the edge of anxiety and inadequacy, and an out-of-sync work-life balance — of all the things that made Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 The Devil Wears Prada a runaway success, chief among them was that it made its urban working reader feel seen. Three years later, when the film rolled in, Anne Hathaway’s beleaguered Andy, assistant to fashion editor Miranda Priestly, could almost qualify as the working woman’s guardian angel, championing happiness over success, chic makeover be damned. The renewal of the franchise nearly two decades later — a sequel to the movie is being planned and a Broadway musical with Elton John scoring the music opens on December 1 — points to a sad truth: That the corporate slave continues to be gaslit in the name of productivity and creative satisfaction.
Weisberger had based the book on her own brief stint at the American Vogue as assistant to editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (played by Meryl Streep), the glacial, constantly disapproving, high-achieving diva. Fresh out of college with a flailing sartorial sense, the Louboutin-clicking, Versace-toting, size zero-championing statuesque world of high fashion and its bloated self-worth had left Weisberger winded. The book, satirising the toxicity she had survived, had been her coping mechanism. But when it had come out, the reviews had been unsurprisingly acerbic — The New York Times had termed it “bite-the-boss fiction”. Wintour, it is rumoured, has never spoken to her since.
If the fandom has been a vindication of Weisberger’s experience, there is also a lingering sense of discomfort at the thought that some of the workplace conversations of 20 years ago are still continuing. Gen Z’s rebellion against the productivity trap might come from their having gleaned an important lesson from the millennials: Between the corner office and work-life balance, there can be only one winner.
