The Devil Wears Prada

I LOVE the movie ‘The Devil Wears Prada.’ I think I’ve watched it way too many times, but it has such good lines in it and it is so relevant to the life of a media student. I think the job in it would be interesting to have. The main character, Andee, is a smart young girl with a journalism degree that ends up landing a job as the second assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of a top international fashion magazine. "A million girls would kill for that job" is the phrase that Andee hears repeatedly from countless colleagues of her boss. Except she's not in it for the fashion. She just wants to endure the position long enough to put it on her resume. She doesn't care about fashion to a point where she wears random pieces of clothing to her office.

The part when Miranda completely tears up Andrea about this sweater that she’s wearing. Oh man. Miranda and someone who I assume is an art director are picking out a belt for a photo shoot or something, they have to decide between two similarly colored belt. "They're just so different," the art director says with such desperation, and Andee chuckles as she writes in her little notebook. Miranda turns to her and asks why she's laughing. Andee replies that the two shades of blue are quite similar. Miranda just kills me at this point. She goes off on a spiel about how the precise colour of blue of Andee's sweater has symbolism and how it's ironic that even though she had just thrown it on in the morning almost as if to represent she didn't care what people think, that specific colour of blue has special symbolic significance in the fashion industry. She essentially TEARS her apart. And the fact that NO ONE cares about Andrea because she's just a second assistant, that kills me. When she’s even crying because she couldn't help her boss, Nigel (a coworker) does not even pity her. In a way he helps her by not feeling sorry for her, and essentially calling her unfashionable, ugly and fat.

It kind of reminds me of what Mark said in class about people who are interested in fashion are not the ones who will be getting jobs in fashion. When Miranda is interviewing Andrea, Andrea starts to explain how she did her fourth year thesis on something about the janitor’s union, and Miranda just completely cuts her off. She doesn't even care what Andee has to say about herself. All she sees is the fact that she has horrible fashion sense and doesn’t even really know about the fashion magazine she is getting hired for. It sort of reminds me of myself in a way because I don’t pay much attention to fashion, and I am just one of those girls that doesn’t like shopping the way other girls do... I don’t know. I think that’s one thing that makes me special. There are so many things that girls, err.. 'young women' occupy themselves with that I don’t find relevant or helpful to my development as a person. Take body image for example. Yes, sometimes I can have problems with my body but I’ve pretty much accepted myself for who I am. I don’t know, I guess I figure I would be the girl that gets a job in the fashion industry because I would mention my paper on environmental awareness or the 17-year war in Northern Uganda that is making the lives of children there very difficult. Those are the things that interest me now, at this point of my life, ad I’m pretty sure that in 3-4 years from now I’ll still be interested in similar things. I just think a job like that, working for someone who they call the 'Dragon Lady' would be hard, especially if you hardly know anything about fashion, and I'd be up for the challenge.

“Well, let me know when you’re whole life goes up in smoke.” -Nigel