Polly Vernon
What shape is your ambition? I’d never thought about mine in shape terms, until last week, when Kevin Roberts, chairman of advertising group Saatchi and Saatchi, resigned, after a row which began when he said of women: ‘their ambition is not vertical, it’s this circular ambition, to be happy…’ A lot of people considered this a blatantly sexist utterance, which I agree it is; when one man makes a sweeping statement about All Women, what can it be but sexist? Roberts’ comments tacitly promote the idea all women basically want babies, that those babies derail our careers, but that’s OK, as they fulfil us in a way work never could – and that no man ever allowed family to come between him and his ascent to the top of his profession. Obviously, it’s more complicated. I’ve known unambitious men whose essential impetus was: I do this because I have to, and sometimes I get free lunches. And I’ve known nakedly ambitious women. I mean: back-stabbingly, colleague-trampling, Machiavellian and scheming; craven in their pursuit of power, women who stop at very little to rise as vertically as they can. Women who may or may not have babies. I didn’t like ’em much. There’s a couple of them who owe me, who will know my vengeance one day. And they prove Roberts wrong.
I don’t think Roberts should necessarily have stepped down because of his comments. When someone says stuff like that, they open a wider debate. They make us look at the nature of our happiness, the ‘shape’ of our ambition, and how we integrate the two, gender irrespective. Take my ambition, for example. It isn’t vertical or circular. It noodles about. It’s like a plateau with unevenly spaced spikes; a wonky star outline undone and laid flat. Apart from when it meanders off down a new path, just to see what happens. Or when it gets fixated on The Money, and ditches all creative integrity to see how rich we can get. Or when it takes the foot off the pedal because it’s sunny and there’s lolling-about to be done. Or when it wonders why we’re not more famous, like that other writer, and ties itself up in ugly, anxious, chippy squiggles, but then it remembers comparing yourself with anyone else is always bad juju. The shape of my ambition would best be described as Irregular Pokémon, Dancing On Its Own. Roberts didn’t mention that sort.