A friend of mine who works as a fashion journalist did an Instagram questions thing the other day and someone asked for career advice and she just openly said 'I started out with XX internship, here's the times my parents gave me money and I also went to private school'

I messaged to say good on her for being honest because so few people are and she replied like 'Wouldnt really be fair not to be, I wouldn't have my job otherwise'. It's sad that being honest about this stuff still seems like such a radical thing to do

It makes me really sad when I speak to 23 year olds who are really panicked that they aren't working in the field they want to when they're usually comparing themselves to someone who's parents made a second job out of getting their career sorted for them

When people aren't upfront about privilege it fosters this mentality that others haven't worked hard enough or been enterprising enough and so don't deserve to do what they want to do anyway, it's pretty horrible imo

(also my friend is great at what she does and is really hard working, lots of privileged people are ofc, but very few of them are willing to be honest about how much of a difference that 'foot in the door' makes and that its almost always sorted by parents)

Also how many times do you see advice like 'send friendly emails, be organised, do your homework' when like yes of course you should do that in any job but that is not how their career actually came into being