Not Safe For Work: Author of the viral essay 'My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I am a writer'

Product Information

I loved that the ambiguous ending flipped things onto you and made you think about what you would do if you were ever faced with an unfair, difficult situation.

Throwing items in the office, and particularly in the direction of your employees, is now off limits. Rape law and sexism were common dinner table topics in my childhood, and I knew about implicit bias before I knew about blowjobs. I wanted to know what the characters were feeling and what their next move was going to be and I think that was done really well. Not Safe for Work explores how women are victimised, judged and silenced and forever having to balance not speaking up when, for example, they’re abused or harassed, if the person who did it to them is more powerful. When someone senior tells you how pretty you look, you smile and thank him - and make a mental note never to wear that dress alone with him again.It is now, perversely, easier to handle and respond to a boss who grabs your ass than one who has never laid a hand on you or done anything That Bad but just continuously undervalues you and forces you to pretzel yourself into a very specific socially acceptable shape and gradually over time you find yourself full of self-loathing and despair and the most confusing part about it is you don’t think you have the right to feel this bad or complain because no single thing that happened to you was So Terrible and haven’t you heard, there are starving kids in Africa and actresses whose lives were destroyed by Harvey Weinstein? The writing is fresh and stylish and the conversational tone helps the thought-provoking narrative zip along. My plan was to work my way into the halls of power and then fling the doors open wide for those who had been excluded.

But certain gendered instincts – people pleasing, playing peacemaker, considering another person’s comfort a precondition for my own – served me well.

Ambition bites back in Isabel Kaplan's Not Safe For Work, a novel that hits close to a few recent news events . Otherwise, too many people will remain silent because they will decide it’s not worth the discomfort and emotional fallout of making a fuss about a minor comment. This read like The Devil Wears Prada set in Hollywood, as she starts off thinking that this is a job to tide her over, get her mother to stop bugging her and then she’ll get a real job. When someone senior tells you how pretty you look, you smile and thank him – and make a mental note never to wear that dress alone with him again.

Only after the fact did it occur to me to wonder why a male executive would ever think it appropriate to give a female employee a goodbye kiss at the end of the work day, regardless of where on the face his lips landed. You will work whenever you are asked to, you’ll do whatever you’re asked to, you won’t complain, you’ll wait your turn for promotion and most importantly for the females; you’ll stay looking pretty. People previously unaware of the terms “implicit bias” and “microaggressions” have now attended training sessions about them and know that they are bad.A novel which makes us examine our own complicity, while also weaving in threads of tenderness, drive and office-based humour which at times feels delightfully absurd . You know, the kind of uncle who spends a little too much time with the young women and gives goodbye kisses that land too close to the mouth. I ran open-armed into a burning building hoping if I moved quickly enough, I’d be spared the flames. It’s a high-wire balancing act of mixed messaging – no easy feat, but I have so many years of practice.