To Market, To Market

Recently I attended a branding and marketing workshop at SAG-AFTRA where a group of twenty strangers were tasked with qualifying each other via a sheet of adjectives exhumed from what I can only imagine was a casting office in 1991.  Our facilitator was quick to insist these results would be paramount; I found our options, laced with misogyny and ethnocentrism, to be staggering.  Letter I’ll be writing to the union aside, the feedback I got from the group was in many cases to be expected.  Sure, I’m confident, mature, assertive, intelligent, outgoing.  Sure, I could play a wife, mom, leader; a college professor, attorney, therapist, flight attendant.  Other responses were proof positive that no, group think doesn’t always have the same conclusion: I look European/I look Midwestern.  I look upscale/I look natural.  To the three men who wrote in that I remind them of Uma Thurman, thank you, but I’m pretty sure you were just already thinking about Uma Thurman.  To sum it all up in a sentence, I’d say I am a confident, intelligent wife and mom who can play a professor or therapist.  I’m pretty sure the translation is I believably take care of men.  1991 casting adjective sheet, we need to get you back in class.