Success Quote by Andrea Jung

Andrea Jung lands this line like a throwaway joke, but it’s really a critique of how power gets gendered in corporate life. The surface move is comic: mascara as the absurd little luxury waiting at home after a day of boardrooms. The punchline - “a male CEO can’t do that” - isn’t about cosmetics; it’s about the narrow emotional palette allowed to men in leadership and the constant interpretive burden placed on women who lead.

The intent is to puncture the myth that CEOs are supposed to be austere, singularly “serious” creatures. Jung frames femininity not as a liability to be overcome, but as an ordinary part of a life that includes ambition. It’s a sly reversal of the usual corporate advice to women: don’t be “too” feminine, don’t give anyone a reason to doubt you. Instead, she implies that the real limitation is on the male side: a male CEO is trapped inside an image of authority that forbids small pleasures and self-expression, at least publicly.

The subtext is strategic. By choosing mascara - specific, intimate, slightly trivial - she signals competence doesn’t require adopting masculine performance. She also exposes the double standard: women CEOs get scrutinized for appearance, yet are expected to treat that scrutiny as irrelevant. Context matters here: Jung’s career at Avon, a beauty company often dismissed as “women’s work,” forced a constant negotiation between the feminized marketplace and the masculinized prestige of executive power. The line turns that tension into a wink, and the wink into a weapon.