We all know the story of the Sleeping Beauty. The version I remembered has it thus: The Queen and the King gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. At the celebration party, the Queen invited only 12 fairies because she only has 12 place settings. (I didn’t make this part up. That’s the version I read as a child and remembered…) The 13th fairy got wind of the party that she was not invited to and threw a tantrum, and the rest, as we know, is history… In the Disney version, the “wicked” witch was cleverly given the name Maleficent, a play between Mal (as in “malfunction” and “malice”?) and Magnificent.

I found out just now that there is going to be this big powwow meeting discussing new product ideas at my company, and two of my 3-person team were invited. Guess who is the only female of this whole group and the Engineering team and was NOT invited?

Was the 13th fairy really a WICKED faerie? Maybe she had just reached the boiling point when she was once again dissed by the Palace: apparently she is not as pretty, not as young, and she wears mostly black, unlike the other fairies. So perhaps she said to herself, “Enough is enough. This time I am going to speak up because I am PISSED AS HELL!”

WTF?

One of the Perils of Working while Female: once in a while, when I feel I absolutely need to speak up, I hesitate because I am afraid to sound like a woman scorned…