Poignant subplot of E5 of Fleishman Is in Trouble in which Libby was struggling to break the glass ceiling at the mens magazine where she'd been working for 15 years and the implied sexism there. This provoked me to Google Taffy Brodessor-Akner, the author of the book and writer of the show, where I discovered she worked for GQ before writing her book. The interesting thing for me watching this episode was that I could see how hard it must have been for a woman at a magazine like GQ -- because as hard as it was for her to climb the ladder there as a woman, it was equally impossible for me to even get in as a black man, and I guess what you would call today a 'straight-presenting' black man. Because in the 90s and early 2000s, the only black men at Conde Nast, which owns GQ, were very flamboyantly and ostensibly gay men -- and there were only three or four of them. Of course, today you can't pass what passes for a magazine display without seeing black faces on all the covers and seeing names like Darnell and Kaneesha in the bylines. At an age where almost no one buys print magazines anymore, suddenly not only is black culture sellable, but black editorial talent is viable. At nearly 50 and as far away from the cultural pulse today as I once lived and breathed at the center of it, and often even ahead of it, I don't see myself trying to find my way back in there. Just an interesting observation watching this episode because, while I at one time 20-25 years ago would have given almost anything for Libby the character's job, I can see how the hierarchy of discrimination works as a function of cultural ownership.
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