Not Safe For Work: Author of the viral essay 'My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I am a writer'

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behind the glitter and the justice, everyone is tarnished and compromised - including even our narrator.

With her sun-bleached Hollywood setting, Kaplan transports us to another world - one which is achingly familiar. When I started the job, one of the projects represented by my agency was under option with a production company where I knew a senior executive. People previously unaware of the terms “implicit bias” and “microaggressions” have now attended training sessions about them and know that they are bad. So when you land a job in television, you're ready for anything: pulling all-nighters, leaning on your powerful mother's contacts, keeping your boss happy whatever - and whoever - the cost.This read like The Devil Wears Prada set in Hollywood, as she starts off thinking that this is a job to tide her over, get her mother to stop bugging her and then she’ll get a real job. The nuances of our lead character’s co-dependent, majoritively toxic, mother-daughter relationship are also looked at in depth and reveal how much this affects all areas of both of their lives. I felt personally that I’m just a little bit out of the age range for this as some of the situations in the book were fairly obviously on the way and she just didn’t seem to pick up on the cues.

Everyone likes to speak loudly and frequently about how committed they are to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and on screen.From my perch outside my boss’s office, I saw how little my personal opinion mattered, how interchangeable and dispensable I was. Despite (or, more accurately, because of) its gritty, often raw depiction of a shocking reality for so many women, Not Safe for Work pulled me in. I left my job at the TV network to go to graduate school, during which time I wrote a novel about a Hollywood assistant and the slippery slope of complicity.

If I thank him for his congratulations and leave it at that, am I demonstrating complicity, failing to practice what I preach?I loved that the ambiguous ending flipped things onto you and made you think about what you would do if you were ever faced with an unfair, difficult situation. Opening sentence: The thing about Los Angeles is that it’s awful and I hate it, but when I’m there, nowhere else exists, and I can’t imagine leaving. You will work whenever you are asked to, you’ll do whatever you’re asked to, you won’t complain, you’ll wait your turn for promotion and most importantly for the females; you’ll stay looking pretty. It is now, perversely, easier to handle and respond to a boss who grabs your ass than one who has never laid a hand on you or done anything That Bad but just continuously undervalues you and forces you to pretzel yourself into a very specific socially acceptable shape and gradually over time you find yourself full of self-loathing and despair and the most confusing part about it is you don’t think you have the right to feel this bad or complain because no single thing that happened to you was So Terrible and haven’t you heard, there are starving kids in Africa and actresses whose lives were destroyed by Harvey Weinstein?

This month, when my book was published in the US, he sent me a congratulatory message, saying how thrilled he was for my success. When someone senior tells you how pretty you look, you smile and thank him – and make a mental note never to wear that dress alone with him again. My plan was to work my way into the halls of power and then fling the doors open wide for those who had been excluded. But the truth is that I feel most comfortable and empowered on the page, expressing myself at a safe distance and after extended reflection. It’s an ugly truth, and one that’s difficult to discuss in the nuanced way it deserves, but women are often better foot soldiers of the patriarchy than men.I thought the project had a lot of promise and wanted to see if there was anything I could do to push it forward. When rumours of an assault start to circle the office, and your close friend confesses her own disturbing experience, you know there is plenty to gain from staying silent.