Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s “The Rape of Proserpina (Persephone)” (1621-22), white marble, Galleria Borghese
Years ago, I worked with a woman who was a very good writer. I remember one piece in particular, a column about a woman dying on the streets of Manhattan attended by strangers who belied the image of the cold-hearted New Yorker. It was a terrific piece of writing and I told this colleague as much. She snorted and shot me a look that suggested that and $1 would get her a cup of coffee. I took no offense. Her defining quality was a bitter frustration that stemmed from her being the mistress of one of the company’s higher-ups. Ironically, though her situation had gotten her foot in the door, it had also locked her into a clerical job for fear of the appearance of favoritism that the staff writing job she coveted would’ve surely provoked.
Apart from the clerical job, all her sleeping her way to the middle had really earned her was the contempt and merciless gossip of the women she worked with. I being a newbie and of a different temperament didn’t hate her. But I pitied her, which was perhaps far worse.
I was reminded of this writer when I read the latest front-page New York Times bombshell about Thomas Campbell being forced to resign as director and CEO of the financially troubled Metropolitan Museum of Art. The first article suggested that Campbell, a former tapestry curator, was in over his head trying to please a Modernist board and adapt the museum to the digital age. The second article explored why that may have been so, stating that Campbell’s “inappropriate relationship” with a woman in the museum’s digital department gave her a sphere of influence beyond her pay grade. Ultimately, the woman – unnamed to protect her privacy, The Times said, although The New York Post had no trouble exposing her – was laid off with a group of other people.
There are many kinds of inappropriate sexual behavior involving male bosses and female employees. There’s the kind I observed in which the woman doesn’t get much for her efforts. There’s the kind at The Met in which she got some of what she wanted but not for long. And then there’s the kind at Fox in which the woman wants nothing from the boss but to be left alone to do her job.
Whatever kind it is, it’s all bad. You never poop where you eat. This is a particularly important lesson for young women, because no matter what they may think, it is still not a level playing field. You have to be careful. Men have power and those with power want to keep it by using it on others.
The higher-up at the company I worked for was given an important job at one of its satellites. I don’t remember what happened to the mistress. But then, history is good at chronicling the powerful. The powerless, not so much.