Daily Inspiration Quote by Jessica Savitch

It lands like a throwaway line, the kind of “everybody knows” observation that trades on familiarity to feel true. Savitch, a pioneering broadcast journalist in an era when women on-air were still treated as novelties, isn’t just describing morning logistics. She’s sketching a tiny social contract: women are expected to arrive polished, men are allowed to arrive.

The sentence works because it smuggles a power dynamic into the language of common sense. “A fact of modern life” gives the claim the authority of weather, not culture. “It takes women longer” sounds like biology or temperament, when the real engine is expectation: hair, makeup, clothes, the constant risk of being judged as sloppy, unprofessional, “not serious.” Men’s shortcut isn’t efficiency; it’s permission.

Savitch’s context matters. In 1970s and early ’80s television news, image wasn’t an accessory; it was the job, and for women it was policed with a special ferocity. A male anchor could age into gravitas. A female anchor aged into scrutiny. So the “getting ready” gap becomes a quiet indictment of workplace standards that pretend to be gender-neutral while charging women an extra daily tax in time, money, and mental bandwidth.

There’s also a sly self-awareness here: as a journalist, Savitch knew how easily stereotypes become “facts” once they’re repeated with confidence. The line can read as a wink, but it’s a sharp one, pointing at the machinery that turns femininity into unpaid labor and then calls it natural.