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The Miranda Priestly Problem
Happy Hump Day {{first_name | Toaster}} 🐪 ,
There’s a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda Priestly delivers the now-iconic monologue about cerulean blue. On the surface, it’s about a sweater. But what she’s really saying is: you think you’re outside the system, but everything you choose has already been decided by it.
For a lot of women, Miranda isn’t just a character, she’s someone we’ve worked for.
The truth is, sometimes the hardest boss you’ll have isn’t a toxic man, it’s a woman. Not always, but sometimes women uphold the same systems we thought they’d help us challenge.
This dynamic doesn’t come out of nowhere and isn’t always intentional. It’s built over time through:
Projected perfectionism: the notion that many women in leadership had to be exceptional to survive. When they manage others, especially younger women, that same pressure can show up as hyper-criticism, a low tolerance for mistakes, and a “figure it out like I did” mentality.
Internalized patriarchal rules: many senior women didn’t rise through supportive systems, they navigated male-dominated environments that rewarded toughness, detachment, and conformity. So they learned that emotions = weakness and likability = not respected.
Scarcity mindset: when there were only a few seats at the table, competition was survival. Scarcity can linger through gatekeeping, withholding opportunities, and being harder on women than men. Not because they hate other women, but because they were conditioned to believe there wasn’t room for many of them.
Not every tough woman leader is a Miranda, and we’re not trying to villainize “older women bosses”, as there are many excellent women leaders out there. The goal is to understand the system that shaped them, so we don’t unconsciously recreate it. We can shift our thinking by:
Redefining what strength looks like in leadership. We don’t have to choose between being respected and being supportive. The best leaders can create both safety and accountability.
Challenging scarcity thinking. There is more than one seat at the table. The more women who rise, the less pressure there is to compete for “the one spot.”
Being who you needed early in your career. Not in a performative, over-corrective way, but in the small, everyday decisions like how you give feedback, respond to mistakes, and how you advocate for others.
Miranda Priestly didn’t become a Prada-wearing devil in a vacuum, she was shaped by an industry that demanded she be sharp and unshakeable. We don’t have to follow that script. We can write a different one, where power doesn’t mean isolation, and leadership doesn’t come at the cost of other women. Maybe that’s a sequel worth watching.
Disclaimer: we’re still going to see The Devil Wears Prada 2.
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