Choosing a filter that looks right, but doesn’t look too fake. Perfecting the art of casual dressing to look like you haven’t stood in front of your wardrobe for too long. Slaving away to prepare for an interview, but talking down your achievements once you’re there. Why are we trying to make our lives look effortless, when they’re often far from it?
The careful curation of social media has turned success into something that seems easily attainable, with little effort. But the reality for most women working overtime, managing teams, co-ordinating start-ups and attending 50 meetings a day – often in male-dominated industries – requires much more hard graft that it might appear.
If you’re putting in the hours, you shouldn’t be afraid to say so. For many young women, the race to get ahead begins in school when competiveness edges its way into classrooms – particularly when UCAS applications are being sent off to universities that can ultimately accept you based on your potential. This pressure to overachieve aged 17-18 continues throughout university, applying to uber-competitive grad schemes and internships where you have to prove you’re their no. 1 (with thousands of people often applying for one place).
In BBC Three's new series Clique, ambition becomes a ruthless desire to get to the top - with dark, unforseen consequences * (see the video below for more info on the show...)*.
But IRL, rather than stepping back and letting the boys do it, it seems there’s been a huge shift in attitudes among ambitious women who are no longer allowing old-boy networks get in the way of their success.
Sophie Amoruso, author of #Girlboss, says you have to ‘be your own idol’ in order to make it in the business world. Her best-selling book says it ‘takes a special kind of stubbornness to succeed as an entrepreneur. Energy spent focusing on others is time much better spent focusing on you’. It’s that level of resilience that’s required to get ahead, no matter what sector you’re working in.
Angelica Malin is the editor of About Time, an online lifestyle magazine which features carefully-curated lists of things to do in London. The website publishes specific and concise lists of the best cocktails in the capital, for example, and Angelica’s business idea started with a clear vision.
‘From the beginning it was really important that our tone was authoritative. We were saying to our readers – forget about doing that, it’s about time you were tried this,’ she said. ‘We didn’t want to overwhelm people with choice, and it worked. People like to be bossed around.’
Launching the site when she was just 22, I asked what she thought of ambition in young women. ‘It’s really weird, because ambition in one of those qualities that girls want to see in a guy, but it’s usually not seen as an attractive quality in girls. You only have to look at every season of The Apprentice to see that it’s the ambitious women that are harder to warm to.’
For this reason, being called ambitious is something that some women try to shrug off, for the same reasons why the word bossy gets a bad press.
Likeability might be a factor in this. Angelica added it might be the reason why women reject the ambitious label: ‘There’s a stereotype that being overly ambitious isn’t very feminine, something that’s not a helpful mindset in the business world when you’re trying to negotiate bigger deals and get a better cut on things. Girls need to stop being scared of not being liked if they want to be successful.’
Angelica also said that men’s attitudes aren’t always particularly helpful when you’re trying to make your mark: ‘I’ve had too many experiences of boyfriends feeling intimidated by my success, who bring the conversation back to them when I talk about my achievements at work, for instance. There are lots of men out there who try to intimidate ambitious women, when really they’re the ones who feel intimidated.’
Did she feel like anything was holding her back at the start? ‘Looking back now, I wasn’t even slightly scared, it didn’t cross my mind,’ she said. I feel like fear comes more naturally with age. When you’re straight out of uni, straight out of school – that’s the best time to do it. Your early 20s are the best time to try this stuff out, and go for it.’
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Created by Jess Brittain (Skins), Clique is about two best friends - Holly and Georgia - who are drawn into an elite clique of alpha girls led by lecturer Jude McDermid in their first few weeks at university. Brittain says: “Clique is about the different ways ambition plays out in young women at university. It’s a heightened version of a certain type of Uni experience, pulled from my time at Uni, then ramped up a few notches into a psychological thriller. Clique goes to some pretty dark places but returns, always, to the key female friendships of our central characters.”
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.