The devil may care

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA
By Lauren Weisberger
Doubleday, 360 pages

It was off to a bad start. Recently, I’ve been on this tell-all dirt book binge, where underlings sling the final arrow to their callous and bold-faced employers. Some were plain brilliant (How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young) and some were just plain bad (Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus). So the scales were basically set in weighing what was gold and what was essentially shit. When it comes to The Devil Wears Prada by Laura Weisberger, a bit of a decision-making process was needed.

Although in the end I decided it was north of bad, there were many situations that I could relate to, given that we were both working in the same industry. That kept me flipping the pages, plus the mindless and useless gossip that the novel was brimming with made it fun for the meantime given that I’m a full-fledged Page Six.com addict. But later on I felt tired of her rants. It was like being on four-inch stilettos all day long.

The Devil Wears Prada basically has no plot, just a grocery list of complaints and her different paraphrasing of the same brand of dread (guaranteed to come up every five or so pages). Weisberger used to work as the junior assistant for Anna Wintour, the bob-chopped editor-in-chief of American Vogue, the crown jewel of the massive Conde Nast empire.

In the book, her alter-ego Andrea, a Brown grad, has big dreams such as to write for the New Yorker. To attain it she knows that the perfect stepping stone is one that is unexpectedly offered to her, the job a million girls would die for (as stressed in the book oftentimes), to be the assistant of Miranda Priestly, editor-in-chief of Runway magazine. A job she accepts with great hesitation.

Andrea or Andy has the formulaic life of an uninspired heroine: the token best friend (who gets into trouble and later is cathartic in the turn of events), the background boyfriend, brushes with a sexy and rich stranger and of course the one-dimensional antagonist in the form of her uber-demanding boss, Miranda. There is no character development whatsoever, just incidents that are fruitlessly meant to add more meat to the anemic protagonist. Laura could have paid her readers a dollar a minute for reading every whine she uttered in this 360-page pity party. Instead, as modern American fairy tales would have it, she signed a six-figure movie deal to be made by Peter Hedges of Pieces of April fame. I wonder how that will turn out.

To work for the biggest fashion mag in the world she sure as hell is inept in spelling some of the biggest names in the biz (Bobby Brown, Alberto Ferretti, Christian Laboutin and the lasting theme of heroine-chic). Laura, or excuse me, Andrea never posed as a fashionista, however her insinuations that fashion writing is beneath her and considering the very brands surrounded her day and night, she should mind her p’s and q’s. Is this what New Yorker writing quality is as opposed to ditzy Vogue speak? I mean I admit I’m a lover of run-on sentences and oftentimes leave a vowel or consonant out of a word in the name of ignorance. What makes it annoying though is her snotty demeanor that she is a big shot college grad dirtying her nails in her boss‚ Chanel couture. What it lacks is the necessary self-deprecating humor that is absolutely vital in the elixir of sympathizing with the character. Toby Young, as assholic as he is, did it with remarkable aplomb. Plus her wit is as dry as an over-processed head of hair. There is a reason why I stay tuned to these dishy dirty tell-alls: Because the bitching more often than not is funny. Weisberger takes herself, in the context of being a juicy tell-all book, way too seriously. Plain ho-hum boring.

She depicts her boss, hardly a model of humanity, as a flighty, nonsensical witch. Miranda is so outrageous that she comes off as farcical, which I surmise she probably is in real life as well. Although she makes justifying statements (twice) about how Miranda is good at her job, it seems that Andy can’t seem to grasp the pressures on her boss. In reality Vogue (Runway in nether-fiction world) magazine generates a couple hundred million dollars for Conde Nast. It is the standard and there is extreme demand for its captain to keep it that way. Of course Miranda’s delilah! But yes, it does not excuse her from being such a bitch, but it also doesn’t excuse Weisberger from being such a brat. Although Miranda’s requests oftentimes are of impossible and inhumane nature, it’s hard to feel sorry for whiny Andy since she is on a Machiavellian streak herself, pilfering from the company and using her position to get what she needs. She even disgustingly paints herself as an angel by buying Starbucks for the homeless people using the company’s expense account. Just like a Jimmy Choo-ed Peter Pan.

She is condescending to those around her, feels the la-la-la world of fashion should never be taken this seriously (Andy, the fashion industry is worth billions, it’s more than just Gisele, whose name by the way is misspelled too) and that people just accept the feudalistic system of the industry (I share her sentiments but big deal publishing thrives on such an environment in reality – another sad fact).

I realize that working in media is completely different from all industries. Just like show business, there are a lot of egos to massage and a lot of quacks to evade. There is a definite ladder to climb, and in doing so a ton of brown nosing to do. It pays peanuts (unless you’re at the top), but the perks are phenomenal. However, there is a line wherein you sell your soul to the devil and where you keep your dignity. The job demands sacrifices, sacrifices of which people out of the industry find dumb. I realize this when my boyfriend listens to me do a Weisberger and complain about the delilahs of my job. To him it’s inane and trite (he’s an engineer after all), while to me it’s survival. He doesn’t understand why I put up with certain situations, why I can’t just dart out my serpentine tongue at will – it’s like politics, diplomacy is an absolute indispensable art in this industry.

In one situation Andy’s boyfriend tells her that she has a choice between ditching Miranda in Paris and being there for the most important person in her life, but Andy only sees a dead end. The modern world has a way of making us feel that our careers are the end-all and be-all of our existence then we look back see how it has sucked us dry. This is when I make an effort to get a hold of myself and know that there is always a choice.

So how does one prevent oneself from being an unethical and spineless whore? The invisible line is always drawn by one’s conscience and intrinsically you know when you have gone too far or have forsaken something vital to your dignity’s health. Ignore it and you commit moral suicide, pay heed to it you gain confidence to climb the ladder that is coated with thorns of massive insecurities. It is a very insecure industry, and not so coy about its condition as I have witnessed it only being a greenhorn and all. I’ve seen people damaged by it, friendships broken, lives ruined and eyes bagged with worry – and this is when I draw a big chalk mark on the floor and promise myself never to tread on such a ruthless plane.

Journalism is a noble profession. Noble like teaching, though it pays very little, its effect on others is colossal. There are those who give us the hard news, the well-educated opinions, then there are those who help others escape – to enjoy what we have by writing about the little thrills that life has to offer. Lifestyle journalists are not given the same merit as their front pager cousins because, well, it’s about stuff like fashion, beauty, food and travel. It’s not about the safety of the peso or the three kids raped by their father. Yet I always see people looking forward to grabbing the back pages of the newspaper. It offers readers comfort and ease in a time of tumultuous twists and turns. It is noble in its own unique way, granted that it is not tattered with negativity. This side of the fence never pretended to be anything more than inspiring people to live better by way of decorating their homes, clothing themselves, dining better and injecting humor in every opportunity.

Vogue has been this sort of escapist bible. It’s a different product from Time but not dumber. It’s a different world and speaks a different language. This is what Weisberger fails to understand. In such an industry, one lives and breathes it, although admittedly some do it to the extent of irreparable brain damage and think of nothing but the hottest new hemline all day. Do we cuss oil barons for talking about oil all day? So you can have your ditzes and you also have the inspiring figures such as Carmel Snow, Diana Vreeland, the numerous photographers and designers who have forever altered how people see the world even without them knowing it. Think how the sexually charged images of Guy Bourdin put sex in the mainstream, or how the rigid but breathtaking food shots of Irving Penn made us look at food as art.

Thank God that the local glossy industry is not as tenacious as the American industry. It’s much kinder, at least people still make an effort to make pinched smiles once in a while. When I first started in publishing, I was an editorial assistant to Ginggay Joven-de la Merced at Teen Philippines, who later became editor in chief of Youngstar magazine. I was scared and shy, that once during a shoot not knowing that I had to make a letter authorizing me to pull out from a certain store, I wanted to impress my boss by pretending to know it all and went to the store telling them I needed stuff for a shoot. They gave me a curt no. Knowing I had a shoot early the next day and dreading the disappointment I would inflict on my peers with my brilliant ignorance, I ended up buying all the cosmetics to be shot. It was only a few months later that I came clean, at which point Ginggay just laughed.

Imagine if that were Miranda – she would have probably cut off my head and dyed my hair strawberry blonde! My current editor respects my choice of subjects and constructively criticizes my fuck-ups. As opposed to Miranda, she always brings in the food to the office and not the other way around.

People here are not as ruthless as, say, New York society, perhaps because of where we humbly reside. It’s really hard to push your weight around in a third-world country unless you’re a dictator. People who do that end up looking ridiculous. If anything, people in the industry are on amiable terms granted you don’t perform a stunt that will win you the pariah of the year award. Although I am lucky enough not have worked with a Miranda, she does exist as I listen to other friends share stories that eerily echo Weisberger’s delilahs.

In the end, you realize that the path you choose is something you are solely accountable for. Weisberger made the choice to work at Runway and childishly threw stones at everything that she hated. Miranda in climbing the ladder chose to greet her success with haughty bitterness. In this case it’s hard to imagine anyone being happy that way. Weisberger noted that she never thought Miranda had real friends, just people higher up the ladder to suck up to and lower people that she treated condescendingly – if they were lucky. I notice that people who are like this more often than not stumble down the ladder as they backstab everyone miserably with their scuffy stilettos.

There many aspects in my job that I don’t necessarily find compelling and some even nauseating, a lot of it has to do with characters that douse the fun out of the job. But this is where I want to be; the world will always be filled with people like Miranda or sometimes even worse. Will complaining do anything? Why not just leave if it suffocates you and have the strength knowing that the situation you are in is not the only option. This is the main ingredient to what makes an unhappy person. It’s always your choice if you want to end up being a sell-out brat like Weisberger, a successful and icy bitch like Miranda or come out of any adversity in grand style.