Excerpt taken from the book Street Smart by Dina LaPolt
Here’s a jarring thought: It’s a man’s world. Actually, it’s a white, straight man’s world. Every president of the United States has been a man. Most CEOs and chairpersons of boards of directors are men, and so are most billionaires. As of 2023 in the U.S., the number of women holding the prestigious role of CEO within Fortune 500 companies stood at a modest 52. To put this limited representation into perspective, women make up a mere 10.4 percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Out of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies, 37 of the CEO positions are held solely by white men. In stark contrast, only seven of the CEO positions in the top 50 companies belong to women. How great would it be for society if the statistics were flipped?
In 2023, a movie that Greta Gerwig wrote and directed called Barbie was released. It is a live-action film based on Mattel’s Barbie dolls. The movie starts off in “Barbieland,” which is a quintessential matriarchal society completely run by women. The Barbies demonstrate societal roles, showcasing careers like doctors, lawyers, judges, physicists, pilots, and more. The president of Barbieland, played by Issa Rae, is a Black woman. The men in this society play an obsolete role and their job is to “beach,” which is essentially sitting and looking pretty. By a strange turn of events, Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, must venture out to the “real world” to solve a crisis in Barbieland. To her dismay, when Barbie enters the real world, she discovers the cruel reality that a patriarchal, sexist, and misogynistic society exists beyond her world. Everywhere Barbie ventures, she sees that men hold all positions of power while simultaneously degrading and putting women down. Not too different from how I grew up.
Women rule Barbieland, and they all have positions of power and maintain the classic Barbie look, but Mad Men is the reality. Women still need to look like a Barbie in a Mad Men world, because Barbie’s world, where women are in charge of everything, is still a fantasy. To be really successful in a corporate business environment, women still have to be put together like Barbie.
As women age, they’re judged harshly for it. The older you get, the more you have to be put together. When I was in my early 30s, I wore hardly any makeup when I went to the office. Most mornings, I came right from my recovery meetings or a work-out class at the gym. But now I’m in my late 50s. I have to be more put together. In the later years, you become more conscious of how people relate to you.
How they perceive you is still important, especially in this day and age. You don’t want to be written off just because of age or what you look like. Sadly, us women are still dealing with that.
There are things we can do to change the male-dominated landscape, like engaging in activism and policy or effecting real change by creating awareness and changing and/or making laws. But here is a startling fact—the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was proposed in 1923 and finally passed in Congress in 1972 but was never ratified into the Constitution.
Under U.S. law, amendments to the Constitution must be ratified by three-fourths of the Senate and then the archivist of the United States (appointed by the president) must formally publish the amendment for it to be ratified. As of this writing, that has not
happened. The ERA would guarantee women equal pay and legal rights. On April 27, 2023, a full century after its introduction, the U.S. Senate again failed to ratify the ERA by a vote of 51–47. It required 60 votes to pass. Truth be told, since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, which decriminalized abortion nationwide and recognized a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion, the situation for women’s rights in the U.S. is the worst it’s been in over half a century. We are going backwards!
In the meantime, acceptance of this reality is the only way to turn lemons into lemonade. As they say in the rooms of recovery: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. As we seek to make change for ourselves, we must adapt if we are to rise, grow, and be successful within our current reality. So, if you want to be at the top of your game, learn how to play the game, the “man game.”
Most men love beautiful and stylish women, even gay men. Work it! Whether you’re a young business executive at a company or a creative person working in an art gallery, learn how to work within the Mad Men reality and move the needle for yourself. How do you do this? Through various means, like having a magnanimous personality and being able to “work the room,” but which only comes naturally to some people.
Women can control and manipulate some things, such as self-care and practicing wellness. Other than the traditional forms of health and wellness like fitness, nutrition, preventive doctor’s visits, and getting eight hours of sleep each night (which are all important) women also have more new and improved modern forms of self-care: fashion, medicine, surgery, and also through restoring and improving facial balance and harmony though “natural intention beauty guidance” as described by Medical Aesthetic Providers Vanessa Lee and Christine Son at The Things We Do.
Dina LaPolt is the founder of LaPolt Law, the only music and entertainment firm of its stature owned and operated by a sole female attorney. She leads groundbreaking wins like the Music Modernization Act, championing creators’ rights through fearless advocacy and bold legislative action. A lawyer, entrepreneur, activist, and inductee into Billboard’s Women in Music Hall of Fame. With grit and determination, anything is possible.
