Being a young, successful woman with plenty of accomplishments under your belt comes at a price. Just because you’ve done more in fewer years than many of your peers doesn’t mean people can make baseless assumptions about you, but they do it anyway. Here are just 10 of the ridiculous things people think about you at any given time:
- You were lucky. People assume because you managed to get yourself through college, or because you’ve been promoted early on in your career, that you were simply “lucky.” Well, if luck requires a lot of hard work, then yes, you were.
- You knew somebody. Another version of the “lucky” myth is that you knew somebody in the company/college that helped you get ahead. For most of us, this just isn’t true and we entered our jobs as friendless as the next person.
- You slept your way to the top. The ever popular rumor that happens so much more often in movies than in real life. In all honestly, you probably didn’t sleep at all, with anyone. You were too busy hauling ass.
- You don’t really know what you’re doing. Cool, how about you go tell that to my degree/job title/boss, and if you could back that up with hard evidence and facts rather than your BS opinion, that’d be great.
- You’re manipulative. The only way you could have possibly gotten to where you have is through manipulation and underhanded tactics, apparently. Of course, hard work, dedication and ambition had nothing to do with it — that’d be ridiculous.
- You’re not as good as your male colleagues. And they’ve got a sneaky suspicion you were only hired to even out the male to female ratio.
- You’re an intern. For the fifth time, I’m not an intern. Been there, done that, paid my dues, now can we move on about accept that I’m a fully-fledged member of this team?
- You hate all men. Because there’s no way a successful young woman could also be a well-adapted human being, too. And because succeeding at your own career can’t be about you, it has to involve men in some way, like everything else in life.
- You identify as a feminist. I mean, ideally, you would, but it’s not necessarily part and parcel of the whole “successful woman” identity.
- You must have to sacrifice a lot to be where you are. Nope. You’ve still got my family, friends, and partner (possibly a kid or two running about!). Is it assumed that men have to sacrifice a lot to be successful? No? Well, the same rules apply!
