Live-action faults

The other day, while doing some routine desk work, I was half-watching an online baking show streaming live on Facebook. Neither baker was known to me, but, these days, I enjoy watching true ‘live’ shows — no editing down to fit the time, no editing out of unsuitable or unfortunate comments, just the action happening in front of you: real people in real time doing the simple task of baking. Anything could happen!

Nothing happened, it turned out. Well, nothing related to the cupcakes being made, that is. That part went smoothly: The ingredients were measured out and mixed, the young host asked the not-so-much-older guest baker questions along the way, as they do, as is the reason for the show, really. The questions enabled the guest to plug her latest cookbook; standard fare on a baking show. But then one of the exchanges caught my attention and I brought my focus full-on to the screen.

The guest was burbling on about how unexpected her publishing success has been and how she can’t believe it, really, and how it, surely, must all be a fluke and how anxious she is about her new book. And the host piped in with, “Oh yes, we all have a case of imposter syndrome, don’t we?” She giggled a bit saying it, and the guest concurred, “Oh, yes!”, and then they both carried on with the baking, as if they hadn’t just scraped their nails down the chalkboard, proverbially speaking.

Imposter syndrome, a “diagnosis” first coined in the 1970s, is a serious matter, not something to toss out over frosted cupcakes with neither analysis nor concern. Search for the term in Google Scholar and, within 0.03 seconds, you’ll have more than 17,000 references to it.

According to Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey, writing in the Harvard Business review, Imposter syndrome means “doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud at work”. It might not surprise you to learn that the term is most often used in relation to women. Of those more than 17,000 references, almost 13,000 are specific to the syndrome in relation to women.

Anyone coming into an organizational system that, generally speaking, reflects the norms of privileged white male experience knows how challenging it can be to retain one’s own sense of ability and confidence in the face it. If we don’t look, think and act like the leaders and perpetuators of the system, it can be difficult to be ourselves and to hold our own, and it can be impossible to exert our own norms. Over time, we come to believe that we are the issue, that we don’t have what it takes, and that what ‘they’ are saying about us must be true: We are an imposter. We can’t do our job here.

Tulshyan and Burey argue that pathologizing “healthy nervousness” — a normal and natural feeling for anyone striving for success in the workplace — as a syndrome is problematic and especially so when it is most usually applied to women. They suggest it is biases such as misogyny, racism, and classism that prop up corporate systems of inequity, which often “value individualism and overwork”. The solution, they say, is to “fix the bias, not women”. And I agree. It is not something to toss off as a joke, because — not funny in any degree — it won't be solved easily. 

So when that young baking show host tossed out her comment about imposter syndrome and went on blithely baking the cupcakes, I lost my appetite for watching her make them. While the live broadcast satisfied my craving for a show of real life in real time, it also reminded me of just how annoying it can be to witness that very live action without any power to affect it.

Systemic change will take longer to bring about than it will to bake any number of cupcakes. Sad but true.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Cupcake Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash