Entry 4: Title Significance

The book Bossy Pants, by Tina Fey, is a memoir about Ms. Fey’s life, and current career as the head of the show 30 Rock. The main reason the book is called Bossypants is because a large part of it is about the obstacles Tina Fey has to face while learning to manage other people. Someone she learned a lot from is one of her former bosses, Lorne Michaels, who gave her a lot of helpful advice such as, “Don’t hire anyone you wouldn’t want to run into in the hallway at three in the morning” (127) and “Never tell a crazy person he is crazy” (128).

While the word bossypants usually has a negative connotation, Tina Fey associates it, in a positive way, with who she has become. For example, she calls the strategies she uses to manage her office “my bossypants managerial techniques” (175).  She also feels that by becoming the boss of such a popular comedy show she has overcome some stereotypes placed on women. For example, Tina Fey used to act with an improv group called Second City, where she was told by a director that “the audience didn’t want to see a sketch with two women” (217). She proved him wrong because her Sarah Palin sketch was watched by ten million people.

The picture on the cover also says a lot about women in the work place. The cover shows Tina Fey’s head on the body of a guy in a suit. The man in the suit is someone a person would usually associate with the word Bossypants, and by putting her head on his body Ms. Fey is showing how she is breaking stereotypes. The title Bossypants represents the person Tina Fey has become in the world of comedy, despite the obstacles she has had to face.

Word count- 303