“What the Hell is Water?”

What Barbie, Psychology, and a Story about Fish Teach Us About Why Good People Enable Bias

You’ve probably heard about David Foster Wallace’s oft-cited commencement speech​, which tells the story of an older fish, swimming by two younger fish. The older fish asks, “How’s the water?” After he’s left, one of the younger fish looks at the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”

Wallace used this story to underscore a profound point: the most consequential realities are not only hard to see, but also uncomfortable to discuss. In my talks about “the water” in the context of DEI, I often notice visible discomfort in the audience as we discuss a potential way to consider the water: all the things around us that assume as “default” a white man (and cis, heterosexual, fully-abled, neurotypical, and of high socioeconomic status).

I. Recognizing the Water: The Invisible Environment and Hidden Biases in Daily Life

We can see the water in ​automated sink faucets that fail to detect darker skin tones​, ​the lighting in medical settings that’s less effective at detecting scars on darker skin​, and airbag design and vehicle safety testing protocols based on men​.

The water is bologna sandwiches as “normal” lunch, and how kids are shamed to think their dumplings or curry are “weird,” by fellow students or even teachers. The water is around us every time the check at a restaurant is automatically given to the man, evidence of what I’ve described as a common mental auto-complete, where it’s assumed that men have the financial power, and by extension, that women do not.

No matter our identity, we all have parts of our experiences that deviate from societal defaults. But for some of us, “the water” is less noticeable; for others, our identity makes the water feel icy and inhospitable.

II. The Workplace Water: Unexamined Norms, Unequal Footing

Our workplaces reveal “the water” in restrictive norms about appearance — consider former First Lady Michelle Obama feeling compelled to avoid her natural hair because she knew the dominant culture was not ready to embrace it.

The “water” can include practices that prioritize time spent at desks over the impact of the work; the reliance on familiar referral networks over recruiting from a diverse candidate pool; and institutional norms that often disproportionately burden women and people of color with service tasks.

In many workshops, I’ve asked participants to identify “the water” they’ve seen and experienced in their workplaces. Their responses are always sobering, as they discuss the myriad ways that day-to-day reality doesn’t match stated institutional values for equity. Even more daunting is how difficult it is to change the water. Audiences talk about how efforts to bring “the water” into focus are frequently derailed by well-worn dodges, including: “That’s just how So-and-so is — they didn’t mean it.” “This is how we’ve always done things.” “Let’s not make mountains out of molehills.” “We’ll get to this later.”

III. Through Pink-Colored Glasses: What Barbie and Ken Saw on the Beach

“Are men aware of how often women are undermined daily in our workplace? Do they realize how widely and deeply America Ferrera’s Barbie monologue resonates?” A woman shared a version of this comment with me in advance of a recent training at her office, but it echoes what I’ve heard from women across organizations and institutions. Importantly, this sentiment persists even in workplaces led by women, underscoring the distinction between underestimation and underrepresentation.

The Barbie movie astutely depicts “the water” through a dichotomy — the magical Barbie Land where women wield power contrasted with our real world. For example, a telling moment occurs when Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s Ken first leave Barbie Land and step onto the Venice Beach sidewalk, facing very different realities. After her first encounter with catcalling, Barbie observes, “I feel kind of ill at ease. Like… I don’t know the word for it, but I’m…conscious, but it’s myself that I’m conscious of.” Of course, Ken’s experience is quite different: “I feel what could only be described as admired.”

In this scene, we see Barbie and Ken noticing the different water for the first time, or the gender norms familiar to women daily but often overlooked by men. For countless women viewers, scenes like this unleashed an onslaught of emotions — sadness, anger, hopelessness. But even more revealing: many women confess their frustration that a 2-hour film could make them feel truly seen, while the most important men in their personal and professional worlds fail to grasp the reality of what women face, an understanding gap that can feel alienating and make progress seem futile.

IV. The “You’re Overthinking” Dismissal: When Women’s Experiences are Tuned Out

“You’re overthinking things.” “You’re too emotional.” “Don’t be melodramatic.” Women continually share encountering responses like these when trying to discuss experiences of gender bias with men in their lives — whether partners, friends, relatives, colleagues, or supervisors. This includes men who want to be good allies, have mentored women, attended the Women’s March, and might even consider themselves “woke.”

Dismissals of women’s worries as exaggerated or melodramatic often feels most dystopian when it comes to how women are treated when we express (or predict) concerns over the loss of fundamental rights. But we see it in day-to-day office life too, as women find themselves victims of the “overthinking,” “too emotional,” or “too dramatic” accusation when discussing microaggressions they experience in the workplace.

It can be tempting to dismiss anything that’s got “micro” in the phrase — it if’s small, why does it matter? But those who experience microaggressions regularly realize there’s a cumulative effect, similar to how one mosquito bite might be a small annoyance but being covered by them is a different story.

Plus, small slights can lead to larger opportunity gaps down the line, as I discuss in this comic. Too often, women are advised to brush their concerns aside rather than have them heard. This can lead women to question themselves and internalize the bias, a major contributor to imposter syndrome and the confidence gap.

Why are women’s realities so readily dismissed, even by those who consider themselves “woke” and have good intent? There are several reinforcing factors:

• First, there’s the reality of different lived experiences — if one doesn’t personally face a given bias, it’s tempting to dismiss others’ struggles as true, but overstated.
• Second, it can be hard to escape enduring stereotypes painting women as irrationally emotional or fragile, needing to be protected from themselves.
• Third, there’s a misplaced belief that advising someone to stop focusing on their experiences of bias — whether it be a woman, a person of color, or any individual from a disadvantaged group — will somehow alleviate their discomfort.

In all these cases, the intent may be good, but the impact is not, tantamount to gaslighting women and denying the need for individual, cultural, and systemic solutions.

Additionally, these factors only scratch the surface.

At the core, the greatest challenge is getting past the discomfort we all can feel when confronted with harsh realities and our potential relationship to them. Similar to fish who know water exists but fail to grasp its all-encompassing impacts, it’s easy to recognize that bias exists but resist contending with its vastness or our role enabling it. Here, we can turn to psychology to understand the extent of mental acrobatics we’ll turn to unconsciously to block out realities that feel uncertain, threatening, or overwhelming.

V. Perceptual Blindspots: How Emotional Discomfort Leads to Denying the Truth

Social psychologist Robert Livingston explains the phenomenon of “perceptual defense,” where our brains take longer to process uncomfortable content compared to neutral material. For example, studies show participants take more time to recognize taboo words like “penis” or “whore” than innocuous terms like “broom” or “apple.” At an unconscious level, our minds resist taking in unsettling inputs. Livingston connects this defensive processing bias to racism, but it applies more broadly to shielding ourselves from any inconvenient realities that clash with our worldviews.

In my work, I’ve watched how this can happen with more sweeping worldviews (“Sexism still exists, but not in my organization or sector”) and ones that might seem mundane, but have deep consequences (a belief that “We can’t afford to slow down this hiring process” can lead to putting blinders on about the subtle biases in current practices).

Additionally, psychologists today still draw upon defense mechanisms Freud outlined — such as denial (rejecting facts), deflection (changing subject), rationalization (superficial explanations), and blaming (transferring responsibility)— to understand how our brains protect ourselves from emotions like shame, sadness, fear, or anger by unconsciously diverting our mental processes elsewhere. When we hear about bias and immediately deny its severity, deflect elsewhere, blame the victim, or rationalize it away, that’s our defenses at play. I call this “ego-driven logic,” because we fool ourselves into thinking we’re arguing from a place of reason, but in actuality, we’re speaking from unease and (typically unconscious) self-protection, rather than reasoned analysis and understanding. Ego-driven logic will go through all kinds of mental acrobatics to avoid emotional discomfort or threats to our self-image, worldview, or convenience.

None of us are immune from the allure of ego-driven logic, including those of us with marginalized identities. We may wrestle with recognizing our own potential roles in perpetuating harms, or protect ourselves by avoiding realities about the extent of biases and harm we face.

As we return to our discussion of how often women feel unheard, the most frequent question I hear from men, especially at senior levels, is: “but isn’t the problem that women fail to support one another?” Now, divisions among women certainly exist, both because humans and relationships are complex irrespective of gender, and also due to a myriad of systemic and cultural norms that pit women against one another. But despite good intentions, this line of questioning too often functions to dodge responsibility for examining one’s potential role in enabling harm or mobilizing change. Once again, ego protection manifests in ducking discomfort rather than progress. In this example, it can be easier for men to deflect to asking about women’s complicity, rather than focusing on what we all — including and perhaps especially men — need to examine more deeply about patriarchal systems, cultures, and mindsets.

VI. Progress Starts from Within: Finding Tools to Overcome Ingrained Resistance

So how do we see and act to change “the water” in our workplaces when ego protection and defense mechanisms are working against progress?

Leaders often want to solve the problem through policies and systems. These are important, but I’ve found that policies and systems end up focusing on the wrong root cause problems, suffering from lack of imagination or boldness, or are eventually subverted by loopholes or lack of compliance when we don’t begin with individual mindset change.

Jonathan Haidt talks about the difficulty of change through the metaphor of the elephant and the rider, providing another way to think about how we can inadvertently subvert our own best intentions. The idea is that we all have within us a Rider — our rational side. And an Elephant — our emotional side. The Rider is sitting on top, holding the reins; we think it’s in charge. However, consider how much bigger the Elephant is compared to the Rider. As Chip and Dan Heath put it in Switch, “Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. He’s completely overmatched.”

I’ve created a framework called The Conflict Foresight Model as one way of keeping the elephants in our heads from getting in the way of the type of growth and transformation that inherently involves discomfort — you can access the free framework here. When we bring compassionate curiosity to each “voice” in our heads that arises on emotionally charged topics, we gain wisdom into the root causes of our resistance and can turn them into catalysts for solutions.

Leaders can normalize discussion of emotions by acknowledging their elephants. They can also model their own vulnerabilities, share where they’re struggling, and create the space for others to do the same. For example, I encourage leaders who are facilitating emotionally-charged discussions with their teams to invite each member to go around the circle and identify both what they’re feeling excited about, and what they’re feeling worried or scared about: what are their elephants saying?

Both individually and in our workplaces, we can learn from a variety of multi-disciplinary approaches designed to help us grapple with emotional discomfort and respond from a place of reason, rather than reaction. I’m especially excited about methods from the imaginative arts. Research from psychologists and neurobiologists on how reading builds empathy and how art helps us think more boldly inspired how I use fiction and comics for difficult conversations, whether on DEI or other critical change topics. Other tools can include mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and anything that forces us to pause and notice our emotions rather than letting them control us. Research shows that even naming our emotions with precision, with tools such as feeling wheels, can lessen the negative effect they may have on us.

Take a moment to pause and consider:

What does “the water” look like in your workplace — for you, for your colleagues?

How can you bring greater awareness to the psychological defenses that may be at play in your conversations, thinking, and actions related to bias? This might include denial (rejecting facts), deflection (changing subject), rationalization (superficial explanations), blaming (transferring responsibility), and others.

Are there emotionally-charged topics in your workplace where you’re feeling resistance? What are the elephants in your head?

Who do you want to discuss this article with — to help process your own thoughts and emotions, gain new perspectives, and/or to create self-accountability?

Schedule time on your calendar in the next week to journal about these questions or to soundboard with someone you trust. Even better, make that a weekly practice.

It’s only through continuous inner work that we gain the true insight to pinpoint where existing systems need evolution and the courage to reshape them.

Learn more

• Check out my book, BEYOND LEANING IN, told through the point of view of characters across genders, for a deeper look at why gender bias exists despite our best intentions and how we need to revisit “cherished beliefs” that may be unwittingly causing harm at work.
• Visit my website <https://www.melanieho.com> for more about my interactive keynotes and workshops and how to work with me.
• Follow my comics on Instagram, and stay tuned for my forthcoming graphic novel: https://www.melanieho.com/the-inside-man