If ever there was a perfect complement to my query today posted asking if there are Madwomen of Art—this is how it starts, by shifting self-evaluation through the patriarchal lens.

It makes you feel overexposed and invisible at the same time. It tells you to be desirable, then punishes you for noticing. It tells you attention is cheap, then acts like female worth plummets the moment it disappears. No wonder so many women end up exhausted. We were trained to treat being wanted as both a threat and a currency, then expected to perform that contradiction in public.

I believe there is another essay here for me to write. Something for my Sunday Reflections about taking this to the next level: What it was like to be in a boardroom, the only female, during the tail end of the actual Madmen of the agency era.

Stacked with these messed up values, let’s put on our corporate mini dress…