Men get to fail. Women get judged.

July 22, 2026, Letter #29

Hey Reader,

I need to get something off my chest. I’ve been talking this for yearsss with my trusted circle and now I'm including you.

🎧 Listen on Spotify / Apple — ooooh child with a reflection at the end... 😮‍💨

Men get to fail.

They get to fail and be called bold. Inventive. A visionary who was just early. He burns the whole thing down and the story becomes a comeback story with a press tour and book deal.

A woman fails and the story becomes her character.

I have never met an exceptional woman who hasn't once completely burned it all down. Who hasn't once said, fuck it. This life needs to feel good to me. It needs to serve me. It needs to be a life I actually love.

And the moment she says it out loud, the moment she prioritizes herself, sets the boundary, chooses the different life, she gets judged.

Because people can no longer label her.

There are people who got comfortable with a version of you. The role you played in their life. When you decide to play a different role in your own life, they read it as betrayal.

And this is what I need you to know. What you're feeling is not in your head. It has a name, and it has receipts. ⤵️

💸 RECEIPTS 💸​
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​The women's economy, the data, and what I'm paying attention to so you can become lethal.

♀️ He's Skilled, She's Lucky.

Researchers who studied how we explain other people's success literally titled the paper "He's Skilled, She's Lucky." He earned it. She got lucky. Same result, two different stories.

There's another one I think about all the time. They took the profile of a real, wildly successful venture capitalist and handed it to a class of students.

Half of the students got her real name, Heidi. Half got the name Howard. Same wins. Same words. Nothing changed but the name. The students respected them the same. But they liked Howard. Heidi came off as, well. A bitch.

The only thing that was different, was the name on the page.

(source: Columbia, 2003)

🧗🏽‍♂️ The Glass Cliff

And when things actually fall apart? Women get handed the wheel right as the car goes off the road. Researchers named that one too. The glass cliff.

Companies are measurably more likely to put a woman in charge when the numbers are already bleeding. Then when it fails, she absorbs the blame, whereas a man, he would have been shielded from. And she gets fewer chances to try again.

Read that again. He gets protected. He gets funded a second time. He gets called a maverick, an experienced leader, a serial entrepreneur.

She gets a reputation.

We are living in a time where men have defrauded institutions, policies, laws, and human rights, walked away with millions, and kept every ounce of their standing or position.

And a woman, when she has a season of stumbling, when she's unsure, when she is minding her own business trying to figure it out, we don't hand her grace. We hand her judgment. We gossip. We take someone else's fabricated version of her and we never once go back to the source.

This is why more women are entering their villain era.

Not because they turned cold. Because they got tired. Tired of staying in the lane. Tired of being pleasing. Tired of being digestible.

So let me be the one to say it. Welcome. 🦹🏽‍♀️

Do you know what's actually good about being here? You finally know exactly who you are. And, you know exactly who your people are.

Hot take: Villains make money. Because "villain" is just the word they hand a woman the second she stops being convenient.

It's a costume they put on you to turn you into something you're not. And I'd bet my whole life on this. The people who chose not to see you, not to celebrate you, not to support you, they don't actually know you.

If the thing you want to point all your energy at for the rest of this year is this, becoming fully who you are and refusing to apologize for it, I built a room for exactly that.

📢 It's called F*ck Around and Find Out. It's not for titles. There is nothing to be in there but honest.

It's for the woman who is done putting herself second and ready to figure out what happens when she puts herself first. Not alone. Not shamed or judged. Surrounded by women doing the same brave, terrifying, awkward, funny AF thing at the same time.

August is right around the corner. Doors to the full experience close July 28 at 3pm PT.

​Come find out →​

This is a season of reinvention. Of boundaries. Of choosing yourself in a world that quietly profits from you choosing everyone else first.

I hope through all of it, you remember who the fuck you are.

Until the next letter,
Vanessa

P.S. In the current FAFO cohort, one of the daily non-negotiables is movement. Listen to the podcast episode of this letter while you go for your morning walk. I'd love to know what you think and it would mean a lot if you subscribed. ❤️