Reading about Jamie Tarses gives me vertigo.
The fast rise and fall of the 33-year-old ABC Entertainment president is a cautionary tale for women.A New York Times Magazine article featuring Tarses on the cover, in flowing Armani and flowing mane of curls, quoted Hollywood types suggesting that sexism might have played a role in the crash of the first woman ever to run the entertainment division of one of the big three networks. Certainly Hollywood is a very sexist place. Worse than Washington, and that's saying something.
But the truth is, Tarses was in over her hair. She was not hired because she was a woman. ABC executives gave her the top job because they felt she had talent developing shows with a Gen-X "sensibility."
Desperate ABC execs prayed she could answer that burning question: Whence the next David Schwimmer?
Writing about Tarses' vertiginous drop, Lynn Hirschberg describes the ABC president as girlish, feline and flirty.
Now there is nothing wrong with flirting at the office. It can be the route to lifelong happiness or at least bring joy to a dreary day.
But flirting in the '90s is complicated and perilous. Because of nervousness about sexual harassment and a deeply ingrained double standard, flirting must be done with sophistication, subtlety and judgment.
Relations between men and women at work will always be fraught, no matter how many regulations are passed. The uneasy circling between the sexes is rooted in this dynamic: Women always fear that men are going to keep them from getting some advantage because of their sex. Men always fear that women are going to get some advantage because of their sex.
Women don't always talk about this, but they all know that they will, on occasion, get some extra attention because of their gender, or because they're charming or clever or attractive. They are willing to accept the benefits that come when a boss is taken with them.
But often the woman views that attraction as icing, while the man mistakes it for the cake. There is a school of thought that sexual harassment is merely bad manners. But women (and occasionally men) must be protected from behavior that is offensive or vengeful.
Many men are terrified of women with power, and women know if they flirt they seem less intimidating. A Fortune magazine article last year profiled seven successful businesswomen, noting that they all knew how to "skillfully exploit" their sexuality. At 61, Charlotte Beers of Ogilvy & Mather was described as a flamboyant flirt.
Margaret Thatcher flirted, turning presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush into swains. But she did it with authority. And Madeleine Albright is a master at flattering powerful men's egos.
Tarses' mistake was not that she used feminine wiles but that she used them ineptly.
She reportedly got out of her NBC contract after Michael Ovitz, then at Walt Disney, leaked that she had been sexually harassed by NBC's West Coast president, Don Ohlmeyer. But it is wrong for a woman to use that charge opportunistically.
Once at ABC she dissolved into a stereotype, a helpless girl who wanted men to make her big decisions and make her tough phone calls. She treated male agents and her boss Robert Iger, according to their irritated accounts, like boyfriends or dates. She allowed a reporter to listen in on her private phone calls with Iger. She also leaned on her boyfriend, Robert Morton, the former Letterman producer, giving him a $2 million production deal.
Now she may want millions, like Ovitz, to go away. But it's Hollywood, so Tarses may end up with a better job. Out there, failing can get you even further than flirting.