Columbia B-School’s ‘Bitch In Business’

There’s nothing shocking about watching rich and powerful men behaving like entitled, boorish idiots – and getting even richer and more powerful by virtue of that behavior. That’s the way of the world. Ho hum.

What’s disturbing is watching women acting the same way because, if they want to get ahead, that’s often the only way to do it.

At our core, most of us men are mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging beasts. And that works for us. Aggression, ruthlessness, insensitivity, greed, and selfishness get us where we want to go – to the top of the heap, goddammit, and right now. We’re perfectly suited for the social and economic systems we live in, because we built them and mostly, we still control them.

WOMEN SWAGGER. SLAP THE OPPOSITE SEX’S BACKSIDE. AND SMOKE CIGARS INDOORS

A video parody by some Columbia Business School students, a take-off on a current hit song called “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor, shows women adopting the traits that allow us men to shimmy up corporate ladders, rake in gender-unequal piles of loot, and stand tall upon well-reinforced glass ceilings.

Here, in the Columbia “Bitch in Business” video, the women swagger. They slap the opposite sex’s ass. They smoke cigars indoors. They throw money around like confetti. They swill champagne from the bottle while well-formed and somewhat scantily clad members of the other gender wash a car.

“I’m tough as nails, and I’ll fight for my side, gettin’ called ‘bitch’ means I’m doin’ something right,” the video’s star says.

‘I DON’T NEED A HAND MIRROR’

Now, the parody is funny. And you have to admire a woman who says, “To those who fear a female with authority, guess I don’t need a hand mirror to look at a pussy.”

There’s a lot of truth in this video. We men still run the world, and if women want to succeed, well, they have to become like us.

We live in a competitive environment, under an economic system that’s essentially a drawn-out global cage fight over money, and as the woman in the video suggests while dangling a couple of 12 pounders at the bowling alley, he – or she – with the biggest balls wins.

THE REAL MESSAGE: WOMEN SHOULDN’T BE TOLD HOW TO BEHAVE

The Columbia video opens with the star sitting in front of a laptop at a boardroom table, while a series of voiceovers relates comments typically uttered when women in business get uppity. “People find your tone a little off putting. You should try to be warmer, and more nurturing,” one voice says.

Ultimately, the message of the Columbia video is this: women shouldn’t be told how to behave, and they’ll damn well do what’s necessary to succeed. “When we pitch a business get a fraction of the cash,” the star raps, “but I’ll still launch all the startups and kick all the ass.”

Admirable.

We men have used our aggression, our greed, our insensitivity, and our selfishness to keep women out of corporate boardrooms and business schools, to make them work harder for lower pay. We men have designed systems that reward ruthlessness, insensitivity, greed, aggression, and selfishness, and we’ve used those traits to deprive half the species of equal opportunities.

What this video shows, more than anything, is that it’s still a man’s world, and if women want to succeed, they’re going to have to do it on our terms.

It’s reality, but it’s sad. Women, look at us – watch us leer at the administrative assistant in the low-cut top, listen to us bray over sexist jokes while we knock back artisan sour mash, watch us roll our eyes when you open up your mouth at the weekly strategy meeting.

Do you really want to be like us?

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