My Mess Is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety

by Georgia Pritchett

The handy thing is, I didn’t have to bother with impostor syndrome because as a woman who didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge, I was treated like an impostor.

I was always the only woman in the room. But I often felt like I wasn’t there at all.

It can be difficult working in a male-dominated industry. It can also be absolutely fine. And I have never known anything else. But there are times when you are overlooked, your work is scrutinized and criticized in a way your male colleagues’ isn’t, and your appearance, clothes, and relationship status are also discussed and evaluated in a way that doesn’t happen to your male colleagues. Occasionally, I have been treated with outright hostility.

Every single woman I have ever met has at least one #MeToo experience.

I was becoming used to being ignored, interrupted, shouted over, or insulted. I kind of enjoyed the challenge, having to prove myself, work harder, bounce back, develop a thicker skin. But there was another kind of sexism too. One that is harder to identify and I think more pernicious. Shows and departments and companies and channels are often run by awkward, mumbling, socially inept men who don’t like making eye contact. I noticed this because I like to think of myself as an awkward, mumbling, and socially inept person and yet I wasn’t allowed into the inner sanctum. And it wasn’t because they don’t like women or they think women can’t write or aren’t as good as men; it’s because they want to work with other awkward, mumbling, socially inept men because they feel more comfortable with them. Women make them uncomfortable. And that isn’t a hate crime. But it is a problem.

I cannot overstate how incredible it was to sit in a room with women writers who looked a bit like me, dressed a bit like me, had similar life experiences and attitudes and opinions—it was really, really, really, pathetically validating. It must be what it’s like to be a white man all day, every day. Amazing!