A Thigh Gap Manifesto

I’m disappointed in myself.

As a woman.

It’s not that I wasn’t inspired listening to Kristen Cavallo, Pam Hamlin, and Karen Kaplan talk about leading three of Boston’s biggest advertising agencies at a recent Doers Makers Innovators event at Boston University.

I was.

It’s not that I don’t have the talent to make it in the industry as a creative.

I do.

It’s not that I lie awake at night, agonizing that advertising has a testosterone problem.

I don’t.

It’s not that the first thing I noticed when Kristen walked on the platform was her thigh gap.

Oh, wait.

My first five minutes of How to Succeed in Advertising weren’t spent absorbing the knowledge and experience of three accomplished women. They were spent in the insecure space between my ears, questioning whether I’m hot enough for success.

I was physically there. But my mind was was taking a ride. She was running into my bathroom, jumping on the scales, and weeping. She was pulling at my clothing labels, and trying not to choke on the sharp inhale. She was staring in the mirror, assigning a ‘five out of ten.’ She was coasting on my bike, feeling too much sweat seep into my only ‘presentation outfit.’ She was standing at my gym’s squat rack, feeling my left thigh rub against my right.

One thought, manifesting in a hundred different, insecure ways: I don’t look like a female CEO, and I never will.

And then I was back in the auditorium, staring at a thigh gap, linking skinniness to success, and realizing that I’m the kind of superficial girl I hate.

And that’s exactly why we need more women in top positions in our industry. While the three brilliant women in front of me that night were conventionally beautiful, I’d bet my minimal bank balance that there are thousands of ‘five out of tens’ who sweat too much already working in the industry. Women who deserve leadership positions, and who deserve authority, and need to step up and own that potential, whatever that talent looks like.

I’m hopeful in a few years I’ll be one of them, because I don’t foresee staring at a thigh gap in my hallway mirror anytime soon.