I was talking with a friend last night over dinner about some of the toxic experiences she's had in her new job and something really stayed with me: it can be hard to call out bad behavior when it’s disguised by seemingly harmless motives.

Take, for example, my friend’s new coworker who kept speaking very publicly about her "amazing wigs" during staff meetings (she's a Black woman). The comment seems like praise on the surface when it's really a microaggression in sheep's clothing, whether the amazing wigs commenter realized that or not.

My friend noticed that the guy making these comments wore a toupee to work, so in a recent meeting when he brought up the wig thing again, she just smiled back: "thank you! I've always wanted to compliment this to you publicly, but you have some amazing wigs yourself!" His smile melted like the Wicked Witch of the West, and he never brought up the wig thing again.

That's the version of this dynamic you can actually call out in a meeting. The harder version is the one that never gets clocked at all — the list that quietly excludes, the byline that never gets offered, the sponsor who never shows up because the thought of looking past their own circle never occurred to them in the first place. That's what today's lead story is about.

For today's paid newsletter, I talk about some of the other invisible challenges women face at work from the perspective of several music journalists working in a mostly male-dominated industry. I also got an exclusive on a new anti-AI magazine, an update in the Dianna Russini saga, and the story behind the explosion of new true crime series for today's Seen and Heard.

xoxo,

Stephanie

Last week, a story about the best music critics in the industry caused a spirited debate on X. Of course, with lists like these there will always be dissenters with their own hot takes on who’s the best. But people were also quick to point out one problematic omission: there were hardly any women interviewed for the piece. 

This isn’t surprising in the least. The lack of visibility for women in criticism is a real issue, sadly a pretty common one I saw during my time covering music. But chalking it up to sexism overgeneralizes what’s really going on. The problem is a lot more complicated than just that. To really understand why this exclusion happens, I asked several women music journalists to share their experiences — and I'm sharing some of my own, too.