The gloves are off
The women of DEFY's advisory board are fighting for change and apologizing for nothing.
BY JULIE LAWRENCE
I have a dream...team.
When I started DEFY, I knew that I couldn’t make it happen on my own; I needed help. I had a vision – that a group of brilliant women would form an advisory board to help educate and empower my readers, and frankly, to lend credibility to the whole damn thing.
What has materialized from that pipe dream is something that has defied (no pun intended) all of my expectations. The women you will meet in this interview are the most educated, experienced and coolest group of badass women you will ever find in one place.
They come from different sectors, industries and backgrounds, but they have one very important thing in common: they are ready for change. And the best part is that they want to use their expertise and experience to give you the skills to stand up, be your authentic self and trust your own voice.
I want you to get to know them. Allow them into your lives, so that they can help each and every one of you in the way they have helped me. These women are the best teachers you’ll ever have, so listen up, because class is most definitely in session.
In their own words
It was a Zoom call months in the making; getting these accomplished trail-blazers in one place at one time is no easy task. It proved to be well worth the wait as they spoke candidly about where they’ve been and where they want to go.
The conversation was equal parts hilarious, heart-breaking and infuriating as they shared their unique experiences with misogyny, both in and out of the workplace.
One thing is certain: they held nothing back. So strap yourself in and enjoy the ride
JULIE: WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO GET INVOLVED WITH DEFY?
KELLEY: I love the word defy. Every day of my life is an act of defiance. I think many women feel that way. I can only speak for my own personal experience as a woman of color, but there’s so many moments of my life where I have been marginalized. For so much of my career I’ve had to defy expectations and so much of my life is about showing up in defiance, of just being yourself. So that word resonated with me and a magazine that helps women embrace and embody that is something I’m always going to be behind.
KIRSTEN: I spend a lot of time talking to women, some of whom are in advertising, some of whom are in other industries. And I often get the sense that they feel that everything’s been fixed. That there are no more problems to solve, that they are going to have smooth sailing throughout their careers. But then as their careers progress, slowly, incident by incident, it becomes clear that is not the case.
For me, as I got older, instead of those incidents getting fewer and far between, they got more frequent and more serious. One of the reasons that I was really interested in working on DEFY is that I think that women need more tools; often there is a way to do it, we just do not know how. And this is a great way to get that information into women’s hands.
MAKINI: DEFY is about unapologetic women who are ready for change. The unapologetic part spoke to me. For the longest time I didn’t know how to use my voice, and after my sister passed away, I had to find my own voice. And in doing so, I realized like there are so many women out here that don’t even realize the strength of their voice. I’m so used to being in rooms where I’m not heard even when I do speak, because I’m either soft spoken or I’m the only woman or the only black woman. I like to look at those circles now where it’s all run by old white men. And I will find my way in there to say: “hello, your narrative is not the only narrative”.
MARCI: It took me until I was almost 50 to realize that it’s actually a healthy thing to defy what you’re told. And there’s a lot of power in that. I always thought I was this warped puzzle piece that didn’t fit into the puzzle, but then I realized, no, it’s just I was in the wrong puzzle. It’s such a strong thing to defy what society wants me to be and to defy people’s expectations.
LISA: Who hasn’t been in a situation, in a corporate environment or even as a self-employed person, where you are sexually harassed? My manager once said to me, “we’re five minutes away from six different hotels” and I was “what did you just say?” It’s emmeshed in our culture to be quiet, so we are not prepared when it happens. So, I think it’s great to have this vehicle to help women navigate that.
PRIYA: For me, I spent so long not being defiant. I spent most of my life doing what people told me I should do: work hard, keep your head down, don’t make a fuss. It’s only in the last couple of years that I found this defiance and found power in it. When you told me about DEFY, I absolutely loved it. It really resonated with me. And something I learned on my own journey was that the times when I was going through the hardest things were the times when I felt the most alone because I didn’t have people that I could turn to who had experienced the same thing. This magazine will let us share our stories and give each other hope.
JENNIFER: The idea of being an unapologetic woman really speaks to me because for so long I was the good girl from the Midwest. I took all of the comments and criticism and I swallowed it. I just took it until I couldn’t take it anymore. I think one of the beautiful things of experience and aging is the gift of wisdom and speaking in your truth. I’m thrilled to be in alliance with these women and to learn from other women about their stories.
KAREN: I want all women to be free from the prisons that we keep ourselves in. I’m so excited to come on board with a group of women that are rallying for other women to be able to speak your truth, and not be held back by all of the “shoulds”. I hate the word should. I want every woman to be fully who she is. I can teach anybody how to be confident on the outside, but I want to advocate for women understanding that it’s possible for what’s happening on the outside to match the inside.
JULIE: LET'S GET INTO THE REASON WE'RE ALL HERE...MISOGYNY. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR EXPERIENCE?
KIRSTEN: I’ve dealt with everything from deeply sexist advertising to being mistaken for an administrative assistant when I was a very senior level person. Often. But the most toxic part was knowing that you were the turd in the punch bowl. You walk through a room that was filled with guys, they’re all having fun, talking about whatever the hell they’re talking about. And suddenly the conversation dies when you show up. It’s like mom showed up at the keg party. Nobody was telling you directly that you didn’t belong. Nobody was telling you that you’re less qualified or lesser than them. It was really just this sense of it’s not as much fun when you’re around, just feeling like people were looking for ways to get you out of room or make plans that didn’t involve you. It’s subtle, but it’s sinister at the same time because all of those moments when you’re not around, that’s when a lot of the business is getting done. You are not part of it and you never will be.
KELLEY: There’s nothing scarier than a woman who is competent and who takes up space. My first job was at a maximum-security prison and it wasn’t the inmates I had trouble with, it was the guards and the prison system itself. What I ended up learning much later, when I could put language to it, is what was off putting to the people was that I showed up and I showed up competent. I didn’t know to hide myself and the level of disruption that caused to the system of men in toxicity and misogyny, that was like, how dare you be competent and ruin everything? That theme followed me right up into the C Suite. How dare you show up, be good and demand to sit at the table and to be present? I feel like that’s what misogyny is.
MARCI: I remember my first job was working at Club Med in Mexico. I was like 19, and this man had been hired and nobody told me. So, all of a sudden, this man that I’d never seen before came barreling towards me and he pushed me up against a wall. He stuck his tongue down my throat and told me not to tell anyone. That’s not the thing. We’ve all had shit like that happen. The thing that I will never forget is I did tell on him. I went to the only female in charge and instead of helping me, they made my life a living hell. I think that there’s this thing of not feeling like we need to be one of the guys at the detriment to other women.
LISA: Whole corporations are misogynistic, like the actual corporate structure, and we’ve accepted it. So, there is this internalized misogyny that women take on and I want to help people understand why that’s happening.
PRIYA: I remember the first newsroom I worked in and I was the only woman of colour. We would have these meetings where we would talk about ‘what’s the top story of the day?’ I literally remember my news director coming in and he would only look at the men and ask “what do you think we should lead with?” And then with me, he’d be like “you look nice today, here’s what I want you to lead with.” I knew at the time this is wrong and it doesn’t make me feel good, but I wasn’t thinking of the word misogyny. It all took such a toll on my confidence. It made me feel like my opinion was not valued and maybe I’m not as smart as everybody else.
JENNIFER: My experience through my whole career has been women that have hated on me. The executive males have been kind and open to trying new things. And it’s been the women that are just like so angry, staring at you like, why are you getting that role? Or why are you getting that job? They would turn purple from anger. One woman wouldn’t even look me in the eyes in meetings. It took another female TV personality who was coming off the plane with us at the Oscars, who looked me in the eye and said, Hey, Jen. That moment she saw that it was okay to talk to me.
LISA: I’m not sure if that’s internalized misogyny or that person was just a bitch!
MARCI: No, I get that. It’s the competitive thing. When a man comes into a dinner party, we don’t think anything. But if another woman comes in, we’re thinking is she prettier than me? Is she better than me? It happens all the time and it’s not right, but we’re trained to think we’re never enough.
KAREN: Unless I am completely oblivious, I haven’t felt a lot of misogyny from men I have worked with. It is shocking. My role is being an advocate for other women that have experienced it.
MAKINI: In 2018 I was a candidate in an election and every interaction I had was like an old men’s club and I always felt like I was walking into a men’s locker room. They would all stop talking and look and you and be like “you’re cute”. I even remember being at a town hall and this man had it out for me and he would ask me “How did you get nominated? How did you become a candidate?” He was obviously trying to imply that I didn’t belong there. And when I was in real estate, I was the only black woman in the office and coming in, dressed professionally, the comments that the male agents would make were terrible. I left that industry for different reasons, but to this day a former co-worker from that office sends me a private message commenting on my appearance whenever I post a picture.
JULIE: SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? WHAT CAN WE DO?
KELLY: I think we’ve all done a lot of disservice to men as well. Misogyny is robbing everyone, not just women and what it has robbed men of is character development and fulfillment. So, they are having shallow emptier lives. They have no ability to form connection or friendships, whereas women form friendships. Men don’t do that. Misogyny causes a lack of connection and there’s a lot of fear and a lot of feeling endangered. And there’s nothing more dangerous than a powerless person in power. These billionaire white dudes have the most access but feel the least empowered and that’s scary.
Understand that it’s all coming from emptiness. So, don’t hate on other women, talk to Jennifer who’s fabulous. Build a community to teach men how to have fuller lives while you go off and have your full life.
KAREN: The most important thing is to say something – anything at all – instead of just letting it go. It’s not going to be perfect the first time, it’s going to be uncomfortable and weird, but you have to speak up.
MARCI: I think it’s so important for women in leadership roles to really stand up and be fucking leaders. That way women will feel comfortable reporting because they trust that something will be done about it.
LISA: We need to constantly be learning and understanding things like internalized misogyny so that we can change. A lot of people don’t know what it means and it is so engrained.
KIRSTEN: If you need a lawyer, hire a woman. If you need a handy person, hire a woman. If you need a plumber, hire a woman. And for the love of god, go to a female gynaecologist. DEFY
Julie Lawrence
Julie Lawrence is a marketing and communications specialist and journalist from Halifax, NS. She is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of DEFY Magazine.