Hard Day

No, it wasn’t the balancing act between pursuing the legitimate profit-optimizing goals of MagnaBiz and lying to the IRS, the FTC, and the SEC that gave Gracie Goodhead a hard day. (Such tasks came easily to her, for she always had a good head for figures, anyway.)

And it wasn’t the balancing act of wearing business attire sufficiently masculine so as to allow her nearer the glass ceiling of her Manhattan accounting firm, yet sufficiently feminine that none of her peers felt unduly emasculated.

Nor was it the balancing act of doing twice the work in a third of the time for 3/4ths of the pay of her male counterparts to seem only half as good, while preserving some energy for motherhood, spousedom, parents, siblings and the rest of the world outside the office.

Ditto the balancing act of allowing her last name to elicit some smiles and warmth from the barely-repressed horndogs around her, yet prevent the most egregious impositions and foul innuendos of the openly flagrant pigs in the sty.

And it was not really the balancing act of a hairdo that was long enough not to be butch-like, yet short enough not to be over-feminizing or over-sexualizing.

No — despite all that, it was simply the balancing act of staying atop the too-thin heels of her too-new shoes for 14 hours that gave Gracie a really hard day.