In this month’s issue of Cosmopolitan, cover girl Jessica Alba talks about running her own business, The Honest Company, which she co-founded in 2011 and which is now valued at nearly $2 billion.
One would think, given the company’s success, that Alba would have earned the respect of her male peers by now, but the entrepreneur told Cosmopolitan that she’s constantly undermined by men who want to tell her what women actually want:
I’m in a man’s world in business. But I know what women want—[men] don’t…Whenever [male colleagues] question me in meetings, I’m like, ‘Go home and ask your wife. This is a pointless conversation. Go home and talk to her.’ When we were talking about package designs, I was like, ‘Are you really giving me notes on packaging for feminine care? I literally can’t with you.’
Obviously some men have periods and many women don’t, but it sounds like Alba is talking here about cis men trying to correct her on an experience she’s lived and they haven’t (and I’d bet my proverbial butt this argument was over box color).
Alba also spoke to Cosmo about the early stages of her acting career and her desire to be “as relevant as [the] men”:
Most of my life, I identified more with my masculine side. I was kind of aggressive and super masculine in my early 20s — even into my mid- 20s. I got boobs when I was young … and I was like, What do I do? … I was never the girl who they marketed. I was always feeling angry, like an imposter. I learned how to be cool with the feminine later in life.
Alba’s career path has has required her to work in extremely male spaces, so it’s interesting to hear her thoughts on traditionally masculine vs. traditionally feminine qualities, and to learn that she’s become more comfortable expressing the latter over time.
Thoughts, gang?
(via Jezebel, image via Shutterstock)
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