Thanks for writing Lisa. I read “Lean In” and thought it was a bit audacious that someone so privileged blamed me and all women for our lack of success. (She has changed a bit of her attitude now that she is widowed and doesn’t have an amazing partner to make her life easier.)

I grew up in the 60s and 70s and we were told “Now you can be anything you want to be when you grew up.” I wanted to be a designer. My choice of University was 100% because of the Design program (despite being the family alma mater). I spent years confused. I was good. I was on the AIGA Board. I was president of Women in Communications. I was program director for IABC’s Entrepreneur’s group. Networking is my sport. I played with the big boys! I could out-drink, out-cuss, and definitely out-produce and bat my eyelashes. I lived in Atlanta and worked for people who were so schooled in what they could legally say and not say that I didn’t realize that sexism was THE problem. One of my employees who was hired to do the boring stuff would get interviews and jobs my company couldn’t get.

UNTIL I got a divorce and spent months in my home town and was subjected to some of the most denigrating bullshit I’d ever heard. Outside of the Perimeter they can say and do anything. Sure, we’d like to hire you but will you get coffee? (We want you to do a $100K a year job, 20 years ago, for $16K and be our receptionist too.) I told them in my most honey-soaked Southern accent that I ALWAYS ask if anyone needs coffee when I go. They didn’t hire me.

I went back to Atlanta and started another firm. But at this point, I was more sensitive to the unspoken and less tolerant. And bored. So I ran away from home to grad school in London. I thought, well, maybe I could teach. I was the age of my classmates parents. It was hard physically and mentally. But I was enthralled.

I remembered I loved design.

I loved London. One of my BFFs from ATL moved over as a big deal in a huge global media firm and called me in for emergencies to fix things as a freelancer, but would not help me get a job. I was more valuable to her as her gopher/personal assistant than helping me get a job where I would be independent and successful. She had told me repeatedly that she was jealous of creatives and ya know, when people tell you who they are, listen.

ALSO, everyone should go be an immigrant in another country. Even as a white, Anglo, otherwise privileged person, it sucked to try to find work.

Out of options, and visa expired, I came home. I took time off. I had enough work from my non-profit clients to scrape by, thankful to my siblings who gave me my Mom’s house.

Ironically, I’m about to start another firm. Of all people, my ex-husband, who tanked my first firm, has leveraged me as an asset. I told him that before I meet the clients just say “Michelle is a bitch. But every time you think she is bitchy, think ‘and she is going to make me loads of money.’”

I don’t have any answers. I have never made the money that my male (or even married women) peers have made. But I like my work. Good thing, because I’m going to be doing it for ANOTHER 30 years.

We need to talk. We need to educate. We need to HIRE EACH OTHER! Offer advice. MENTOR. I have asked women to mentor me who made it big and they said NO. Who the hell is too busy to carve out an hour or two a month to encourage someone? Men don’t do that! I try to talk my young friends OUT of majoring in graphic design—go make things in industrial design.

Sometimes I want a baseball bat to use on these asshole aged frat boys who don’t understand that MY business is just as important to me as theirs. (AND I make them money.) And no, I am not flattered that a few want to sleep with me even though I’m old and fat. I was a cheerleader and even with a cracked hip can still kick hard and high.

With all this struggle, I’m happy with who I am. I won’t ever be a Pentagram partner (my goal when I got out of undergrad) but I’m glad a couple are my friends. I’m glad that I’m less than an hour from the biggest airport in the world, my phone will ring wherever in the world I am and I can stop, do a project, and hand my backpack with my MacBookPro to the coat check at the Tate Modern and have a weird, wonderful life.

If I had known it was going to be this hard, I would have majored in painting.

I wonder if there is a .bitch designation for urls? Thank you all for your time. If you need to talk, call me.