Working Girl was Never About the Makeover
Tess McGill's real story isn't about ambition or romance. It's the argument for taking her seriously.
Tess McGill was sitting on the trading floor, watching her ideas get repeated back to her by other people. She never looks shocked, she looks like someone confirming something she already suspected.
The film isn’t about someone discovering they are capable, she already knew that and so did we. It’s about a woman discovering that knowing what to do isn’t the problem, being underestimated is.
I was watching Working Girl with my teenage son last weekend and it’s easy to miss how little of it is really about ambition. I admit, I love watching films that have some kind of connection to my own work. I’ve never been an Assistant or a Secretary but I have recruited them for a long time. When I watched this movie as a kid, I didn’t know anything about business or secretaries then but it was always a favourite.
What I could see then and now watching it when I am much older is that Tess isn’t chasing the corner office because it’s prestigious and will give her some kind of ego boost. She’s chasing it because she keeps having better ideas than the people who currently have those offices. She’s tired of watching other people take her ideas and knowledge and giving her no credit at all.
Tess reads the trade press, she understands the mechanics of the deal, not just the pitch but the structure of it and the reason that all of it would work together. She has been watching, listening and learning. I think that’s the detail the movie really gets right about the role and it’s what most movies get wrong about secretaries. She isn’t valuable because she’s loyal, hard working or great with people even though she is all three. She’s valuable because she understands the business just as well, in some ways, even better than the people she is supporting.
The support was never the celling, it just so happened to be the entry point. This has happened time and time again, it was just the first time I was aware of it.
I don’t think Hollywood has ever really quite known what to do with this kind of character. Secretaries on screen tend to fall into a narrow set of roles. They’re either the gatekeeper, the love interest or the villain’s right hand. Competence is usually the punchline, usually something like ‘she practically runs the place’, rather than the actual plot. That’s one of the reasons I love this film now, from this vantage point. It’s all about Tess, her life, her career and her insight into the businesses around her. Creativity looks different in different spaces.
Watching it now you can see that it looks a lot like an 80’s movie because it is. There’s a makeover, a man and a betrayal and redemption arc but underneath all of that it takes her competence seriously. It was rare to see that then and it’s not exactly common now either.
All the big shoulder pads, bigger hair and Manhattan skyline is a reminder of some of the great things about the 80s. Work looked glamorous and pretty exciting.
While the mechanics of her job have changed almost completely, many things haven’t. Tess’s world runs on phone calls, paper memos and information that has to be physically located. I remember those days and everything seemed to work pretty well, even if it did take a bit longer to find things out.
The modern equivalent of her role runs on a completely different set of tools but I don’t think that the value has really shifted. Even with AI joining our work places, we can see that the person who does this work well is still the person who understands the business better than their job title might suggest.
I think more than anything what’s changed is how visible the role is allowed to be now. Today it’s recognised as more strategic than it used to be but the shift is absolutely slow and uneven. We’re nowhere near finished.
Obviously her character isn’t a perfect symbol for anything but she’s a useful one because she gets at something that can be lost in serious conversations about this work. The frustration of being really good at your job and having that mostly unseen isn’t a new problem at all and it’s not a small one either. It’s usually just told as someone else’s story and not on the big screen.
She always knew, she just needed someone to look properly and I think a lot of people in business support roles can still relate today.
Until next time.
Henrietta x