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by the team embraced as gospel the feminine clichés of the moment—sensuality, softness, “organic” shapes, pastel colors. Whenever one of us strayed from the accepted norms, proposing a less sugar-coated approach, you could feel reprobation from the group, as if we were under oath not to challenge hackneyed notions concerning gender. An hour into the meeting, I noticed one of the attendees, a quiet young man who had been sketching on a pad all along. Peeking over his shoulders, I realized that he was turning every single idea proposed by the group into a slick rendering. But all his drawings looked the same. Rocket-shaped variations of the feminine form, they reinforced the assumption we all took for granted: that women are attracted to shapes that reflect masculine fantasies of the idealized female body. I looked around the room: all the women took great pride in being mature, professional, and marketing savvy.Yet no one—including myself—was ready to give the kind of authentic feedback that might upset the client.When you are paid a four-figure day-fee as a consultant, you choose your battles carefully, and I didn’t feel that taking what would be perceived as a strident feminist stand would be constructive. But the next generation of designers, it seems, will be less cautious when asserting their gender perspective. In a recent design criticism exercise, graphic design students of a class I teach at the School of Visual Arts in New York—the majority of them female in their early twenties—bluntly assessed the design of an architecture magazine as being “not feminine enough.” “What exactly do you mean by ‘not feminine enough’?” I asked, amused and delighted by their candid appraisal. They needed no soul-searching to come up with answers. “Feminine means subtle, not obvious.” “Feminine means less goal-oriented—more open-ended.” “Feminine means more complex, and more insightful.” “Feminine means ‘Don’t tell me what to think’.” You can always count on students to teach you a valuable lesson.When refusing to be labeled as women designers, the smart women of my generation unwittingly embrace an oversimplification that’s typically masculine. Enough already. We are not images reflected in a glass ceiling.