Where the Rivers Run

“I’ve got a mind for business, and a body for sin.” So went the immortal lines uttered by Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) in “Working Girl.” It was 1988 and women everywhere were beginning to put down the coffee pot and lace up their power shoes, i.e. sneakers with socks over their nylon pantyhose, shoulder padded suit jackets flapping in the breeze.



We charged down the street from the parking lot to the municipal buildings, offices and law firms, briefcases in hand and determination rocking in our guts. For those of us who had not gone to college and were trying to work our way up through the ranks, it became the clarion call for those were looking for any kind of break, anything to spur us on to the next pay scale or bump in responsibility. I am woman, dammit, get the hell out of my way.


The movie ends with a fade out of Ms. McGill sitting at the desk of her new office, as a newly created Junior Account Executive, about to embark on a great journey of enlightenment and fulfillment. Carly Simon is belting out “Where the Rivers Run” and we are standing up, screaming with girl power and ready to take on the world. Unfortunately, we never get to see a sequel, and the movie itself seemed to be the pinnacle movie of her career. She didn’t do much of anything after that; perhaps her mercurial rise to the top was too quick, didn’t give the rest of us time to catch up. Life is never like the movies, and most of the time we go home disappointed.


I was somewhere in the middle of all that. I had the power shoes and the suits, but also had 5 kids at home. My mercurial rise never went higher than anyone else I worked with, and it wasn’t until I switched careers and opened a manufacturing company with my spouse at the time did I end up making any substantial money.


I think the best thing that came out of all that was that we (1) paved the way for our daughters and (2) realized it was all baloney anyway, and that even though you have to work hard, success + networking + really dumb luck = more money. Or another example is Worth divided by Tenacity and Spunk equals a Pay Raise. Like poor Tess McGill, I fear she may have been set up to fail, “The Working Girl” in the Man’s World probably didn’t get very far.


Nowadays, although there are no more Tess McGills out there who feel they need to sacrifice everything to get to the top. The focus is more on inner development rather than personal gain, family rather than familiarity. I think it’s a good trade off.


My life is vastly different that what I thought it would be when I was a working girl in 1988, and I am grateful for that. But I often wondered what life would be like if I had never put on the power shoes.