The pressure to conform to the firm culture – which was largely white and male - was palpable. That culture required that all attorneys relinquish any sort of life outside of the office so that we could work 16-hour days. It permitted male attorneys to refer to each other by nicknames or last names, as if they were fraternity brothers or members of an all-male sports team, to comment on the physical appearance of their female colleagues, and to try to seduce those women while in the office or on firm outings. Any woman who was promoted was commonly thought to have “slept her way to the top.”

While it did not start out that way, my photo project evolved into a mediation on the five years that I spent at that firm.   Almost all of the photographs in the book are staged – photographed at my husband’s law firm – we met in law school.  I used my husband, my sister, my art school friends and my husband’s lawyer colleagues to create photographic images that, while not necessarily depicting actual events, reflected how I had felt as a female attorney while I was at the firm. 

I demonstrated the challenges that women face in the corporate workplace by focusing on how men and women physically occupy, act within and decorate the space.  Men act as if they own the place – whether they are in the conference room, standing in the hallways, waiting for the elevator, sitting in their desk chairs.  They use their facial expressions, hand gestures and body language to assert their dominance. And, they are always surrounded by mounds of important looking paper.

Women, on the other hand, act as if they have just arrived; they are late; they are lost; they are stressed; they are on the corporate treadmill with their heads cut off.  And, they are surrounded by objects that reflect on their personal appearance and wellbeing. 

Although corporate workspaces may seem more accommodating today, that is hardly the case. Men continue to be promoted in greater numbers. Although more women than men graduate from law school, less than 20% of all big firm equity partners are women. Those female partners make one third less than their male counterparts. Women are compelled to choose between having families and getting ahead, a choice that most men do not have to make. And, as the #MeToo movement has shown, sexual harassment is still alive and well.

It was important to me to approach the themes in my book with a sense of humor. My own law firm experience was so over-the-top that it is laughable. Moreover, stridency can be off-putting. Humor, on the other hand, can serve as an invitation to dialogue. And ultimately, that’s what I want the book to do – to add to a conversation that has been going on for years and needs to continue.