Mila Kunis has written a thoughtful and interesting essay about workplace bias in Hollywood. While there are some parts of her essay which are very Hollywood/LA-specific, the root of the issue is universal, which is the awful expectations put on women in the work force, the feeling that it only takes one douchebag dude to ruin your career, the fact that a man’s word carries more weight than a woman’s word, and more. I’m not going to republish the entire essay, but you can read it here on Ashton Kutcher’s A-plus site.

“You’ll never work in this town again.”

A cliché to be sure, but also what a producer threatened when I refused to pose semi-naked on the cover of a men’s magazine to promote our film. I was no longer willing to subject myself to a naïve compromise that I had previously been willing to. “I will never work in this town again?” I was livid, I felt objectified, and for the first time in my career I said “no.” And guess what? The world didn’t end. The film made a lot of money and I did work in this town again, and again, and again. What this producer may never realize is that he spoke aloud the exact fear every woman feels when confronted with gender bias in the workplace.

It’s what we are conditioned to believe — that if we speak up, our livelihoods will be threatened; that standing our ground will lead to our demise. We don’t want to be kicked out of the sandbox for being a “bitch.” So we compromise our integrity for the sake of maintaining the status quo and hope that change is coming.

…Throughout my career, there have been moments when I have been insulted, sidelined, paid less, creatively ignored, and otherwise diminished based on my gender. And always, I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt; maybe they knew more, maybe they had more experience, maybe there was something I was missing. I taught myself that to succeed as a woman in this industry I had to play by the rules of the boy’s club. But the older I got and the longer I worked in this industry, the more I realized that it’s bullsh-t! And, worse, that I was complicit in allowing it to happen.

[From A-plus]

She goes on to describe another incident where, in the midst of pitching a project to producers, those male producers started an email chain where they diminished her to merely Ashton Kutcher’s soon-to-be wife and baby-mama. That happens editorially too, and it’s something I’ve tried to become more conscious of, how we define women and how we describe women through their connections to men. So-and-so is “his wife” or WhatsHerFace is “the mother of his children.” Those are sexist microaggressions, as Mila describes, and they’re part of the implicit gender bias within every level of our society. Mila’s point is that she’s a rich, successful actress and it still happens to her, so how bad is it for women without her privilege, access and fame? Which was also the point of Jennifer Lawrence’s letter last year.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.