by Gracie Remington
I’ll admit that I tuned in to watch the debut episode of Bravo’s “Kell on Earth” because I was curious to see how life and work at a high-profile PR firm would play out on television. I had heard that Kelly Cutrone was a take-no-prisoners businesswoman with pro-feminist leanings and an interesting (albeit ghostwritten and slightly simplistic) book about surviving the turbulent world of fashion. Unfortunately, the premiere showed the offices of People’s Revolution, Cutrone’s firm, to be barely functioning and plagued by constant passive aggressive attacks and poor/nonexistent communication. For all of the things Cutrone says about empowering younger women, she clearly was not doing so in her own office, as she neglected to delegate tasks properly or give her employees proper instructions. Everyone seemed to be flailing around, and after the show’s end, I was shocked that this system of chaos had managed to survive as a successful business venture, given the complete absence of anyone with any sort of managerial skills.
That aside, I was encouraged to find out that despite her failings within her own office, Cutrone continues to vocally support the empowerment of women and strives to change conversations surrounding various aspects of modern-day womanhood. In the most recent episode of her show, she apparently went shopping for sex toys at Babeland, a scene that was initially only going to appear in the online episode until Cutrone contacted Bravo and asked them to air it on TV. “It was important to me that we spread the message that shopping for sex toys is okay,” she told Page Six. “I thought it was perfect. This isn’t something we should be ashamed to discuss.” In her interview with Babeland, Cutrone expands her argument, claiming, “Our show is about women and power, and now housewives are going to watch me shopping for sex toys, and see it as a fun and celebratory thing.” In the interview, Cutrone also offers a series of amusing anecdotes surrounding the airing of the clip and her own experiences with sex toys in her adolescence and adulthood.
I applaud Cutrone’s insistence on including the clip in the live broadcast, and wholeheartedly support her efforts to make discussions of sexual pleasure and satisfaction more acceptable in public discourse. However, I find that the disparity between her public persona of “empowering and empowered feminist” and her disorganized and scattered work identity destabilize her claim of helping other women. If she truly wants to empower, she should start with those in her office.
Cutrone’s scatterbrained office persona may be a result of Bravo’s editing wizardry, but its existence nonetheless prompts a variety of questions surrounding the presentation of self-identified feminists in mainstream media. Why is it that Cutrone is depicted as so unmoored in her own office? Given that she is in charge of a PR firm that oversees fairly important clients in the fashion world, she must have had (and probably still has) it together enough to sign said clients and keep them happy. Despite the fact that her company is presented as barely staying together, there must exist some level of cohesion, or else it wouldn’t exist. Furthermore, is the editing a consequence of her very feminist public persona? While I’m not about to blame Bravo for depicting her in a particular way on her show, I find the distinction between the hard-working, empowering Kelly Cutrone and the disheveled, disorganized office head to be disheartening. Must feminists be depicted as coming apart at the seams in order to be palatable to a broad audience? Must messages of female empowerment be tempered by images of poor managerial skills to make them acceptable? Most importantly, why are so few people commenting on Cutrone’s lack of managerial skills, instead only emphasizing her pro-women stance?
