Written By: Rylee Thomas
The corporate girlboss movies of the early 2000s had a little extra kick to them. My favorite film in this particular genre is The Devil Wears Prada (2006), based on Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel of the same name. In this film, the talented Anne Hathaway plays Andy Sachs, a twenty-two-year-old recent college graduate living in New York City, who was (get this!) an English major. (She’s just like me for real.) After trying and failing to get a job as a journalist for a “serious” newspaper, Andy finally lands every girl’s dream job: the assistant to the editor-in-chief of the high fashion magazine Runway, Miranda Priestly, played by the iconic Meryl Streep.
However, Andy soon comes to believe that her job may be more of a nightmare than a dream. Miranda is the titular devil wearing Prada, and she spends a good portion of the film torturing Andy by assigning her impossible-seeming tasks. She is a loosely camouflaged version of Cruella De Ville, who, like Miranda, refuses to fit neatly into the traditional version of a domestic woman that society demands. However, fans still debate whether the powerful, demanding Miranda is the villain of Andy’s story or the feminist hero who rescues Andy from the people in her life who try to drag her down.
Personally, I’m a staunch Miranda supporter. She’s a perfectionist who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it, which makes her a role model for women aspiring to succeed in the corporate world. The Devil Wears Prada highlights the absurdity of the fact that a woman aiming for perfection in her professional life becomes typified as the devil. To young women who want to become the best versions of themselves, Miranda is an awe-inspiring role model. She knows everything there is to know about her industry, and she runs a tight ship. She motivates everyone to be better than they are. Miranda, though not without her flaws, helps the fashion-challenged, smart but inexperienced Andy transform herself from an overlooked college grad into a successful, polished young woman with newfound assertiveness, perspective, and thoughtful self-presentation. Miranda accepts nothing but the best from her employees, and this influences Andy to do her best work. When someone asks you to accomplish the impossible, you can either capsize, or you can do what you need to do and surprise yourself. Andy chooses to surprise herself, and she emerges as a more capable, confident person because of it.
I first watched The Devil Wears Prada as a little girl in late elementary school, but I read the Lauren Weisberger novel several years later when I was in high school. I loved both the film and the original novel, but the film changed the ending of the story ever so slightly, humanizing Miranda more than Weisberger does in the novel. In the book, Andy never quite grasps why we should care about Miranda and everything she has worked to build. While Andy grows as a professional in both the movie and the book, her journey in the novel has more to do with her perseverance against Miranda rather than the inspiration she takes from Miranda. However, in the film, Andy grows to sympathize with Miranda and side with her, attempting to defend her from those who seek to tear down her success.
Yet, Andy’s character growth, in both the film and the novel, comes with so much depth. Andy’s boyfriend, Nate, tries to restrict her ambition, but Andy’s ambition has also gone in a direction that celebrates the unfairness of female beauty standards. Nate is, in part, the force that pulls her back from becoming the epitome of the toxicity she once abhorred. At the same time, though, the power in The Devil Wears Prada is in Andy’s agency and critical reflection. In both versions of the story, Andy’s ultimate choice to quit her job is wholly her own, because she uses her experience working for Miranda to find out who she wants to be. And that person is a journalist for a paper like The New Yorker or The Washington Post, not a fashion editor operating in an industry defined by backstabbing and sucking up.
At the same time, though… what an industry! I have to say, I admire Andy’s tenacity and agency in deciding that what she wants is to be part of something that, for her, is bigger and more selfless than working for a glamorous fashion magazine. For my part, I often tell my friends and family that I would have happily sold my soul to be Miranda’s right-hand woman. I hate the idea of losing my identity to a job, but I love that Miranda gets to be a powerful woman who is excellent, fashionable, and respected. She doesn’t have to be nice. She just gets to be successful, because she has put in the work and she has incredible talent.
Still, I think all people should be nice. In no universe should women have to conform to ridiculous beauty standards, betray their coworkers, or neglect their relationships to be successful like Miranda and the what-might-have-been version of Andy. “Having it all” is an unattainable ideal, as the ending of the film ultimately proves.
Nevertheless, despite everything, I love the girlboss corporate fashion fantasy. It’s nostalgic to me, and when Miranda finishes the film with her iconic line to Andy, “Everyone wants to be us,” I can’t help but feel that she might be right about that. The Devil Wears Prada will always be the comfort movie that allows me to indulge in the most sparkling version of who I want to be.
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