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The Devil Wears Prada 2

Prada 2 hit all the right notes: top-tier performances, a storyline about working in the fashion and beauty industries, well written, great locations—all-around very well done. Lady Gaga is even in it. It’s the perfect mix of quality and entertainment. If you let go and have fun with it, it is truly a blast.

But one thing stood out to me. It was subtle, and once it popped up on screen, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

At What Cost?

Toward the end, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) tells Andy (Anne Hathaway) that if she writes a book, it should include how much of her children’s lives she’s missed. “People should know,” she says. “They should know there’s a cost.”

And then, in the same breath: “I love working.”

First, credit where it’s due. This is a movie about an industry: fashion, media, work, career. It didn’t have to touch family at all. Somebody in that writers’ room knew it would be a miss to leave it out, and they put it in anyway.

The Catholic Weekly put it well: the film “perhaps inadvertently” shows the consequences of choosing career over family. Miranda has twin daughters she hasn’t been there for. Andy, twenty years after the first movie, regrets never marrying and having a family of her own.

Two women, both at the top, and both paid for it.

The Other Cost

Here’s the part nobody says out loud. The cost isn’t only the family. It’s who you become.

Miranda is great at her job. She’s also famously cold, cutting, and hard on everyone around her. That’s the whole shtick of the character, and the movies glamorize it.

So is that what we’ve decided? Being great at your job is the whole point, even if it turns you into someone people don’t like? Money, status and competition can do that to anyone, men or women. On screen it’s glossy and entertaining. In real life it’s a lot less glamorous.

Maybe the Real Message

Watching it again in my head, maybe there’s something subtler in that moment. Miranda, at a career high, telling the one person she respects: keep working with me, yes,,,but don’t end up like me. Think about the family.

If that’s what they meant, it’s one of the most honest parts in the movie.

The Devil Wears Prada 2

At What Cost?

The Other Cost

Maybe the Real Message

Further Reading