Real talk from Maria Bartiromo
From a fascinating (in my opinion, but I am obviously biased because of
my job) story in the November 2008 issue of Vanity Fair-- covering the
female reporters on CNBC:
Dressed conservatively in a khaki Escada pantsuit, with a green T-shirt and burgundy Manolos, [Maria Bartiromo] seems not to notice the women in the tiny dresses as she stops to give her autograph to an elderly gentleman visiting the exchange. She thanks him and turns to climb the stairs to CNBC’s mezzanine studio when a Fox correspondent rushes up to her.
She is wearing towering heels, tons of makeup, and a scarlet dress so tight you can see her underwear line and unbuttoned to expose her black lace bra. “Hi, Maria!” she shrieks. Maria’s eyes pop open, but then she smiles and kisses her. It’s only later that she says she was “taken aback.” The Fox reporter is a friend, and insisting that her name not be published, she says, “I did tell her, ‘Don’t ever show up here with your skirt up your butt and your shirt down low like that.’ I said, ‘It’s a distraction, it’s ridiculous, and it’s not what you want.’ I don’t know who’s telling her to do this, [but] there are a lot of women doing that.”
As someone who goes to a lot of financial industry events, I can attest to the fact that a lot of women are indeed doing that-- especially in Silicon Valley, it seems.
Maria, by the way, is obviously aware of her looks and uses them to her advantage in her career-- she has made moves to trademark the term "Money Honey," after all-- but she knows where to draw the line between being feminine and attractive and being just plain unprofessional. I love that in this interview, Maria calls a spade a spade-- and puts her remarks on the record with the VF writer.
Dressed conservatively in a khaki Escada pantsuit, with a green T-shirt and burgundy Manolos, [Maria Bartiromo] seems not to notice the women in the tiny dresses as she stops to give her autograph to an elderly gentleman visiting the exchange. She thanks him and turns to climb the stairs to CNBC’s mezzanine studio when a Fox correspondent rushes up to her.
She is wearing towering heels, tons of makeup, and a scarlet dress so tight you can see her underwear line and unbuttoned to expose her black lace bra. “Hi, Maria!” she shrieks. Maria’s eyes pop open, but then she smiles and kisses her. It’s only later that she says she was “taken aback.” The Fox reporter is a friend, and insisting that her name not be published, she says, “I did tell her, ‘Don’t ever show up here with your skirt up your butt and your shirt down low like that.’ I said, ‘It’s a distraction, it’s ridiculous, and it’s not what you want.’ I don’t know who’s telling her to do this, [but] there are a lot of women doing that.”
As someone who goes to a lot of financial industry events, I can attest to the fact that a lot of women are indeed doing that-- especially in Silicon Valley, it seems.
Maria, by the way, is obviously aware of her looks and uses them to her advantage in her career-- she has made moves to trademark the term "Money Honey," after all-- but she knows where to draw the line between being feminine and attractive and being just plain unprofessional. I love that in this interview, Maria calls a spade a spade-- and puts her remarks on the record with the VF writer.
On language
A couple of thoughts:
1. Where did the pejorative meaning of the term "womanizer" come from? Bear with me if I sound a bit Carlin-esque, but the definition of the suffix "-ize" is "to treat in a certain way; to make into."
By definition, then, wouldn't a womanizer be someone who treats me like a woman? After being with one, would I be *more* of a woman?
Sign me up! I mean, how and when did that term come to mean something bad?
2. A CEO I talked to this week told me that, despite his company's impressive revenues and growth, he and his business partner are hardly ever approached with takeover bids because of their reputation for being "cantankerously independent."
Needless to say, he was a very cool interview subject, even if it didn't provide the most juicy M&A story. "Cantankerously independent" seems like an awesome way to go about life in general.
1. Where did the pejorative meaning of the term "womanizer" come from? Bear with me if I sound a bit Carlin-esque, but the definition of the suffix "-ize" is "to treat in a certain way; to make into."
By definition, then, wouldn't a womanizer be someone who treats me like a woman? After being with one, would I be *more* of a woman?
Sign me up! I mean, how and when did that term come to mean something bad?
2. A CEO I talked to this week told me that, despite his company's impressive revenues and growth, he and his business partner are hardly ever approached with takeover bids because of their reputation for being "cantankerously independent."
Needless to say, he was a very cool interview subject, even if it didn't provide the most juicy M&A story. "Cantankerously independent" seems like an awesome way to go about life in general.
Alec Baldwin on wanderlust
I found myself appreciating (and, surprisingly,
identifying closely with) Alec Baldwin in the latest profile of him
in the New Yorker. A key outtake:
Seriously-- if you have a conversation with me for any decent amount of time, I start saying these exact same things. I want to do *so much*, but I also dream of doing absolutely nothing. I'll fantasize about 'taking my hand off the wheel' for a while and doing no work of consequence at all. At the same time, I love being a reporter-- and I'd also love to own a bed and breakfast in Bruges, or operate a lighthouse in Mendocino County, or be a jazz singer in Tokyo, or a screenwriter in Los Angeles, or a personal trainer, or a masseuse... and I genuinely believe I'd be great at any of these endeavors.
In my senior year high school yearbook, I wrote that in 10 years I'd be "Playing serious [career] hardball in New York City, dating a high-profile lawyer, a hip-hop mogul, and Prince William." It was obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek, and I still have a few years left to get such an active love life... but it's an example of a general lifestyle wanderlust to which it seems Mr. Baldwin could relate.
“I always think, What if you just took your hand off the wheel, and slowly, over time, it all went away, and your life became about, you know, ‘Is the mail here yet?’ I always think about that.” But this dream of disengagement quickly gave way: in the space of a few minutes, sitting in weak sun on a New Jersey driveway, smoking a cigarette, Baldwin imagined himself as the restaurant critic of the Times; the proprietor of an inn near Syracuse; and the presenter of a classical-music show on public radio. “I could do that,” he said, and he wasn’t exactly joking.
...“To sit there in the studio and just say”—a rich radio voice— “ ‘And now Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.’ Click. Hit a button, and then you sit back and listen, and they pay you for that. And I can’t imagine they pay you as much as the movies, but to me it’s getting to that point where there’s just something else I want to do. I don’t know what it is.
Seriously-- if you have a conversation with me for any decent amount of time, I start saying these exact same things. I want to do *so much*, but I also dream of doing absolutely nothing. I'll fantasize about 'taking my hand off the wheel' for a while and doing no work of consequence at all. At the same time, I love being a reporter-- and I'd also love to own a bed and breakfast in Bruges, or operate a lighthouse in Mendocino County, or be a jazz singer in Tokyo, or a screenwriter in Los Angeles, or a personal trainer, or a masseuse... and I genuinely believe I'd be great at any of these endeavors.
In my senior year high school yearbook, I wrote that in 10 years I'd be "Playing serious [career] hardball in New York City, dating a high-profile lawyer, a hip-hop mogul, and Prince William." It was obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek, and I still have a few years left to get such an active love life... but it's an example of a general lifestyle wanderlust to which it seems Mr. Baldwin could relate.
