Patron saint of women in tech
Packing for California was, for the
most part, easy. If I couldn’t wear it
in 100-degree heat or to my big tech
internship, it went into storage. With
near mechanical precision, I divided
my wardrobe into “leave” and “take”
piles.
But there was one item that
stumped me. Six months ago, my
friend sent me a tweet with a picture
of a t-shirt that read “Disgraced
founder
of
Theranos
Elizabeth
Holmes” — a shirt I now hold in
question. I bought it on a whim in the
middle of class after realizing I had
saved my credit card information to
Etsy. I thought it was ironic, perhaps
something to differentiate me from
my peers. “I’m not like other people
in tech,” the shirt would say. “I
can critique Holmes and start-up
culture.”
Elizabeth
Holmes,
with
her
faux deep voice, signature black
turtleneck
and
inexplicable
charisma, was an enigma even before
her crimes were discovered. She’s
the subject of best-selling books,
award winning journalism and even
a Hulu miniseries. At the age of 19,
Holmes dropped out of Stanford to
start what would become Theranos, a
biotechnology company that claimed
it could perform a suite of tests
with just one drop of blood. Later,
an investigation into the company
revealed the blood testing technology
didn’t actually work — but not before
Holmes had raised over $700 billion
in venture capital and defrauded
countless investors including former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,
future Trump Secretary of Defense
Jim Mattis, the DeVos family, an
ex-Wells Fargo chairman and two
former U.S. senators.
In a highly publicized trial,
Holmes was found guilty on January
3 of three counts of wire fraud
and one count of intent to commit
wire fraud. As former Theranos
patients expressed outrage at the
jury’s failure to find Holmes guilty
of defrauding patients, a squad of
internet cheerleaders rooted for
their favorite “femme fatale.” Some
fans even took it upon themselves to
wait outside the courthouse, eager to
catch a glimpse of their hero.
She raised millions of dollars on
lies. She built a multi-billion dollar
company on impossible claims and
shoddy science. She hurt innocent
patients.
She’s
a
girlboss,
the
embodiment of women in tech.
Commentators describe Holmes’s
deception and fall from grace as being
spectacular, even exceptional. It
certainly is — Holmes fooled some of
the brightest minds in tech, medicine
and finance and obtained a net worth
of over $4.5 billion before losing
it all. But there’s also something
about it that’s very reminiscent. If
you look closely, it’s part of a story
we’ve seen before. Holmes is women
in tech programs taken to their
natural conclusion. She is the most
extreme embodiment of a culture
that pushes women to emulate toxic,
male-dominated hacker culture and
pursue arbitrary markers of success
without meaningfully challenging —
or, to use a favorite term of the tech
industry, disrupting — the status quo.
***
Initially, I set the Elizabeth
Holmes T-shirt into the “maybe pile,”
along with a collection of skirts that
were probably too short to wear to
my corporate internship, sweatshirts
that were probably too warm for the
California heat and shoes that were
probably too impractical to walk
to the train station in. But it didn’t
feel like it belonged there — there
was nothing functionally wrong
with sporting “disgraced founder
of Theranos Elizabeth Holmes” in
the office. Rather, it clashed with
the ethos of Silicon Valley. I saw
the T-shirt as ironic, as tongue-in-
cheek. I knew I’d very well encounter
a number of former Theranos
employees in the Bay Area, but my
real hesitation was that I doubted
that they would see the humor in
it; I doubted that they would also
consider Holmes a toxic girlboss icon.
The girlbossification of Elizabeth
Holmes, I think, can best be
attributed to how depraved and
bereft
of
meaning
Theranos’s
downfall felt. Holmes came out of the
court case relatively unscathed and
the questionable business practices
she engaged in still run abound in
the start-up world. It’s so absurd
that it demands parody. Turning
Theranos and Holmes into a joke,
into a cultural moment, is the easiest
way to acknowledge her rise and
fall without really reckoning with
the factors that produced it. And
Holmes’s adoring, pseudo-ironic fans
certainly deliver.
At the same time that we were
collectively
rebranding
Holmes,
we began using the same terms to
describe women in tech initiatives.
Organizations
like
GirlTechBoss
emerged,
predicting
women’s
imminent takeover of big tech and
praising the cult of the “female
founder” — a Holmes-like figure who
embodies the role of the brilliant,
male, visionary founder with a
feminine twist. It all feels reminiscent
of early 2000s consumer feminism, a
perverse interpretation of women’s
empowerment that focuses on catchy
slogans and commodifiable T-shirts.
S T A T E M E N T
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4—Wednesday, June 8, 2022
If you were to walk into a grade
school library, there’s a good
chance that you would find a shelf
devoted to Judy Blume. Blume, a
prolific author best known for her
children’s books from the 1970s,
is a champion of addressing taboo
aspects of adolescence. Books like
“Blubber”, “Forever…” and “Then
Again, Maybe I Won’t” have long
opened a door for young readers
to learn more about puberty,
bullying, sexuality and more.
Although I, like many of her
fans, have only read a handful of
her books, it did not take much to
become a fan. Blume’s bestselling
— and arguably most famous —
book, “Are You There God? It’s
Me, Margaret,” is the main source
of my fondness for her. I first read
“Are You There God?...” when
I was around Margaret’s age; I
found the story of a pre-teen girl
who was contemplating many of
the same things that I was (friends,
bras, periods, religion) extremely
comforting. Her style and earnest
honesty are so distinctive that I
have enjoyed each of her books
that I have picked up, regardless of
my age.
Blume’s refusal to shy away
from taboo topics has made her
simultaneously
beloved
and
maligned. Her books have been
consistently
challenged
since
the 1980s, when the election of
Ronald Reagan spurred a wave
of widespread book censorship,
one much like the recent wave
of bannings this past year. Some
consider her books too graphic
because of their depictions of
sex, menstruation, birth control,
masturbation, etc. — so much so
that, at times, Blume has had to
travel with a bodyguard to her
events in response to numerous
hate-mail warnings.
Yet the things that made her
so unpopular with conservative
parents and lawmakers over the
years are what make her so adored
by fans: her frank, unflinching
discussion of topics that children
were concerned about, but that
they struggled to get information
about on their own.
In
an
interview
with
The
Michigan Daily, Jo Angela Oehrli,
a learning and children’s literature
librarian
who
manages
the
Children’s Literature Collection at
Hatcher Graduate Library, spoke
more about banned children’s
books and Blume’s presence on
those
frequently
challenged
lists. She talked about the ways
that books act as reflections of a
child’s
experience,
referencing
an essay by Rudine Sims Bishop
that refers to the way that books
can be “mirrors” or “windows”
—
reflections
of
one’s
own
experiences that help children
put their emotions into words, or
views into a person’s perspective
that is completely different from
their own.
HALEY JOHNSON
Statement Columnist
Read more at michigandaily.com
Read more at michigandaily.com
Design by Jennie Vang
KARI ANDERSON
Statement Correspondent
Design by Abby Schreck
Are you there, Judy?