Channeling Elizabeth Holmes
by Emily Starritt
Junior, Integrated Physiology Major
“You’re totally channeling Elizabeth Holmes vibes today,” my coworker told me one Thursday afternoon as I showed up to work in an all-black turtleneck with my hair up. The fuck??? I (shamefully admit) had no idea who on earth this was, so began my endless amounts of google searches.
The rest of that day I unraveled the saga of that is Elizabeth Holmes. I had learned that Elizabeth Holmes, on the surface, was “Forbes youngest self-made female billionaire,” from her invention of an at home blood testing kit. Her company was called Theranos. Theranos was designed to only take a few drops of blood and test for diseases like cancer, STD’s, etc. Without a lot of needle pricking. This company was worth $9,000,000,000 only to find out years later that it all was a complete fraud, and none of it actually ever worked.
Needless to say, that turtleneck has not seen the light of day since. I went about my daily life, come the following week, The Dropout, a Hulu original series based on the true story of Elizabeth Holmes pops up on my Hulu account. And of course, I immediately pressed start.
The Dropout stars Amanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews, Laurie Metcalf, and Stephen Frey. It portrays the dramatization of Holmes’s rise and fall of her company Theranos, based on the ABC Podcast, “The Dropout.”
While it’s utterly entertaining to watch a sociopathic CEO create a fake 9 BILLION DOLLAR company, The Dropout does something slightly amazing by also highlighting how women are put under a different sort of microscope in the world of STEM, as well as the business industry which is not something typically done in mainstream media.
The show begins with a peak into Holmes early life. We meet her mom, dad, brother, all that stuff that make her, her. We get a glimpse of Holmes upbringing that academics were very important. Holmes ends up going to Stanford, which she shortly drops out of to pursue her company of Theranos.
In the first couple episodes its clear that Holmes wants to be rich and famous. She has this thing called an ‘invention book,’ where she just writes down different ideas of inventions.
Seyfried portrays Holmes in the beginning as a smart, determined, regular ole Stanford gal, persistent to make it big, just like her knight in shining armor, Steve Jobs. And over the course of each episode, we watch as Holmes’s entire personality changes. A hardworking 19-year-old turns into to a cocky, arrogant, and downright deceitful woman capable of the unimaginable.
Scandals aside, something I noticed in this series was the amount of men Seyfried was surrounded by on a day-to-day basis. From her graduate lab at Stanford, to the final days meeting with the investors, they were all men. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with what Holmes did WHATSOEVER, but I have to give the woman credit for something. She bulldozed her way through a man’s world of business and STEM and did not stop until she got what she wanted, all while being fully clothed!!! This honestly is pretty difficult. In bell hooks Feminist Theory from Margin to Center, hooks says, “we live in an environment where we engage with feminist struggle alone with only occasional support or affirmation.” This is exactly what Holmes faces. Sure, she has her family, her friends, and again weird boyfriend, but she struggles at defying the feminist struggle alone. The feminist struggle being trying to survive in a world predominantly ruled by men. Scandals aside, that’s pretty badass.
The biggest take- home message from this series to me was what Dr. Phyllis Gardner, played by Laurie Metcalf says about “The Ugly Truth.” Dr. Gardner was at one time Holmes’s professor at Stanford, who was uh RIGHTFULLY SO, skeptical of her invention idea.
The Ugly Truth:
“You know how many times I’ve been told, ‘You can’t do it?; The sexism I’ve faced has been so naked and ugly, it’s just taken my breath away. But she [Holmes] thinks I didn’t support her idea because she’s had it easier than me because I’m what? I’m jealous of her?
I’m mad! I’ve supported women my whole career, and how many chances are women going to get to do what she’s doing, to be the CEO of a major startup? If she screws this up, we all look bad, and that is the ugly truth and that is unforgiveable.” To which William H. Macy as Richard Fuisz responds, “Well, it must be hard to be a woman.”
From this show, its shown that even women can cheat their way to he top. However, what happens after the top is pulled out from under you is where things are different between men and women. If this story was about a man, men would still be taken seriously enough to continue to be CEO’s. But as soon as woman screws up being “The Next Steve Jobs.” It’s Over. That’s it. Women can kiss that dream goodbye. Women are ultimately held to a different standard to men as Betty Freidan in The Feminine Mystique says, “they are chains that are made of misinterpreted ideas, of incomplete truths and unreal choices.” This ‘ugly truth’ exists because of these misinterpreted ideas. And I’m glad someone finally said it on tv.
Overall, the show had drama, awkward dancing, cringy accents by Seyfried, and one too many Patagonia vests. And for that, I’d recommend it to anyone,
