Carolyn Kepcher has said of this season's "Apprentice" female contestants that they made her ashamed to be a woman. And if anything helped bolster her thesis on this week's show, it was desperate contestant Ivana actually yanking off her skirt on Wall Street for $20.
One of the oldest jokes in the book is about the man (some say Churchill, others George Bernard Shaw) who asks a woman if she'd sleep with him for a million dollars. When she says yes, he asks if she'd sleep with him for five dollars, and indignant, she exclaims "What do you think I am?"
The famous answer? "We're already established what you are, ma'am, now we're just haggling over the price."
Ivana didn't even make them haggle. It was, quite possibly, the lowest moment for the female gender on a show that has seen more than its share.
Think about the successful businesswomen you know. Think about the successful women you know. Is there any circumstance, short of their child or spouse being held at gunpoint, at which they would accept $20, drop trou, and spin around in their underwear on Wall Street?
What has happened to "The Apprentice" women?
Taking care of businessOn this week's show, Jenn and Sandy definitely made the choice to play up their sex appeal by dressing in similar, slightly provocative outfits. But the red tank tops, skirts, and strappy heels they chose wouldn't have been out of place on a shopper in Bloomingdale's.
Jenn and Sandy were indeed able to sell 50-cent candy bars for $5 apiece, but they definitely relied on charm, the novelty of transforming themselves into near-twins, and a PG-rated bit of sex appeal. "Buy some candy from the eye candy," Sandy laughed in the van. But as Jenn insisted, "We were presentable. We were selling to children, families." They also utilized a gaily painted M&Ms van, which probably drew some attention all on its own.
It's understandable that Ivana, visualizing losing yet another challenge as project manager, felt frustrated and outgunned. She's not the kind of girly-girl that Jenn and Sandy are, and in most corporations and boardrooms, that's just fine.
But "The Apprentice" boardroom is no regular boardroom. This is a game show, in a sense, and creative thinking is supposedly rewarded. (We know that's not always true, but it is the theory.) Jenn and Sandy would have earned no creativity points from me if they'd just sexed themselves up and tried to sell candy that way, without the twin angle. They still might have won, but doing so wouldn't have said anything about their abilities.
What was creative about Ivana, Kevin and Kelly's selling methods? Sure, they sold candy, patting themselves on the back for catching the morning subway rush, but they also all hung around together. Was there a rule against splitting up? Since Apex had one more member than Mosaic, wouldn't it have seemed reasonable to send all three members to different locations, each with a third of the inventory? Maybe one of them could have hit NYU between classes ... students have a weakness for chocolate. How about selling outside a movie theater and encouraging patrons to smuggle the bars inside and beat high concession prices? (Although no movie I've ever been to has charged $5 for a 50-cent piece of chocolate.)
Yet when Ivana was being beaten, and knew it, she turned not to the creative mind that she later bragged about in the boardroom, but to desperation. The women were using sex appeal, so she somehow thought she'd up the ante. But had she taken one second to visualize the big picture, was there any way she could have imagined herself taking the reins of one of Trump's projects after that whole "I see London" fiasco was captured on tape?
Is it all in the casting?Reality shows obviously cast for conflict, often for looks, and overall, for the kind of people they think will do interesting things. Ivana's stunt may have been interesting, in one definition of the word, but it was interesting in the way that a train wreck is. In fact, had she been in the correct age group to be cast on dropping her skirt would have earned her more camera time, not a firing.
Not all of the women on "The Apprentice 2" have been quite so embarrassing. Until she was fired over a $10 loss, was rather impressive. Sandy may have had a handed to her on a silver platter, but she rose to the challenge. And despite being criticized for flying under the radar, Jenn M. has managed to keep her cool week after week.
But many of the women now fired (Jenn C., Stacy, Maria) highlighted the worst stereotypes about their gender. They fought, backstabbed, and mouthed off as if they were auditioning for a sequel to "Mean Girls." It's considered acceptable to compete heatedly on these shows, but there was a cruelty to the way the women went about it. The men competed, but you felt that at the end of the day they could shake hands, throw a basketball around, and part friends. The women reminded us of the very worst days of seventh grade.
And speaking of seventh grade, watching Ivana twirl around, I had to wonder if she even for a second thought of her family, of her parents seeing this scene. In a he wrote of a hardened homicide detective who kept always within him the thought: What would my mother think if she could see me now? Apparently Ivana, and many of the women who've been fired so far on "The Apprentice," either don't think that way, or they have remarkably open-minded families.
It's disappointing that the women who do shine in the business world aren't represented on "The Apprentice." The women who set examples in my personal world not only do their gender proud, but their humanity. They're small-business owners who give back to the community, teachers who reach out to their students, doctors who donate hours of their time. They're as professional as any man, sometimes against greater obstacles. (What was that they said about Ginger Rogers? She did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards, and in high heels.) These women do their parents and families proud every day.
Yet they wouldn't screech at each other over petty differences, and they certainly wouldn't strip down for $20, so you'll never see them on "The Apprentice." Which, I suspect, is just fine with them.
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC.com's Television Editor