This scene is regularly touted as a wonderful example of a boss eviscerating an employee who’s not taking her job seriously. Meryl Streep does amazing acting in bringing the mercurial Miranda Priestly to life, opposite of the fashionably clueless Andy Sachs, played by Anne Hathaway. Miranda simply shrivels Andy without once raising her voice, or losing her dignity, and completely displays her disdain at Andy’s insolent sniggering in the background while Miranda was making a decision about which belt to use for a photo shoot.

Here’s the exact quote from the movie.

Miranda Priestly: Something funny?

Andy Sachs: No. No, no. Nothing’s… You know, it’s just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. You know, I’m still learning about all this stuff and, uh…

Miranda Priestly: ‘This… stuff’? Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select… I don’t know… that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise. It’s not lapis. It’s actually cerulean. And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent… wasn’t it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.

It’s a brutal take down, yes, but personally I think Miranda’s long explanation doesn’t drive home a point. She narrates in great detail how a color worn by everyone has passed through a lot of channels, and that ultimately, it was one of the many decisions made in that room. But so what? The world would still be revolving around the sun if the fashion gurus didn’t select a color. In her scenario, Andy would obviously be wearing a sweater of different color.  Her speech feels like a self important puff piece to boost her ego, to make sure that everyone in the room know just how far reaching her decisions are.

However, I agree that Andy needed to be taken down a peg. It doesn’t matter that her job, a junior personal assistant to Miranda, wasn’t her dream job, or something she only took out of desperation. The company she was working for was the leading magazine brand in the field of fashion – everyone working there was at the top of their game. The best thing Andy could have done was to keep quiet and listen. But no, she just had to rudely snigger in the background and explain to everyone how she’s so clever to spot that the two belts are of the same color. It’s just disrespectful to people who’ve dedicated their lives to their profession, even if its something I don’t agree with.