Last femmebots media pick of February is #inventinganna by screenwriter, producer, and author @shondarhimes — I watched this Netflix series twice because I got fascinated by all the storytellers involved, from the series creator herself, to the New York Mag journalist, to the bad girl main character Anna Delvey, who I weirdly related to…then realized she is basically the same archetype as Dr. Nutmeg (see headline above).
Like Anna Delvey, Dr. Nutmeg changed her identity and story in diff cities.
Posing as Femmebot 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc, etc, Nutmeg desperately tried to “make it” in tech and film until she finally self-imploded and had no choice but to lose the Femmebot personas and get real.
In an interview with no one, Dr. Nutmeg said:
“Thank God I never did anything that landed me in jail…😬😇 But this Delvey character is AMAZING! She has been out of jail since January 2023 and is currently shooting a Reality TV show called, “Delvey’s Dinner Club.” Ugh! SO JEALOUS!!!
Dr. Nutmeg
Yes, Dr. Nutmeg is SO jealous of this woman’s catlike resilience cuz homegirl made mistakes, went to jail for four years to pay for those mistakes, pissed off some people along the way, and is still coming out on top with her own reality TV show, art exhibition, book deal, etc etc.
The point? If you are a woman also trying to make it in art or film or whatever industry you’re in this series is worth a watch or re-watch because it’s not the men who bring Anna Delvey down — it’s her girl friend, ie, another woman, who betrays her while trying to break barriers set up by men. Yea. Girl on girl crime.
It’s the kind of story that reminds all of us to think twice about jealousy, competition, and the power we can either leverage or abuse, for or against each other, in our respective journeys.
Me? Totally guilty. Apparently I couldn’t bear to face my jealousies when I was coming up, so I outsourced those unwanted feelings to a character called Dr. Nutmeg. I did things I regret now like:
- Betraying a friend in Miami because I wanted to be her.
- Starting a fight with a woman in film school because she was not ashamed to show vulnerability.
- Trying to network with the 1% so that maybe, just maybe, my vision of a TV show about women of color in tech would become a reality, but regardless of which percent of the population you’re in, no one wants to be used for personal gain.
Yea.
Confessions of a mad scientist who builds Femmebots right here on a blog no one reads, woot!
Thanks to another female creator (Shonda Rhimes) for diving into the psychologies we’ve never had the budgets to explore. I can safely drop my Dr. Nutmeg mask, look in the mirror, and see all the darkness in full color. It’s super hard, something I’ve been trying to do more honestly since I came home to Orlando and started Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Apparently the root cause of my “bad” Anna Delvey style behavior was borderline personality disorder. According to the Interwebs, the root cause of Anna’s bad behavior was narcissistic personality disorder. Yea. I guess all us founders tend to have personality disorders.
How does jealousy play out for Anna Delvey vs. Dr. Nutmeg?
Anna’s best friend, Rachel Williams, who incidentally also wanted to be famous, joined forces with the DA and sold her out. Sure, Anna kinda deserved it, but dang — your best friend calling the cops on you? I can’t imagine it…
But this girl wanted so badly to be famous, she was willing to play dirty.
In my case, I was so jealous of a woman I met and befriended in Miami, I unconsciously wanted to steal her life. I became friends with her boyfriend, allowed him to hit on me, confessed to her that I had feelings for both her and the boyfriend, moved in with them and became their girlfriend in a polyamorous threesome, then left, did not say no when he followed me.
Why did I betray my friend and try to steal her life?
When I think about it now, I realize she had both love AND a glamorous lifestyle that I wanted for myself, and I didn’t know how to get it without stealing. I broke girl code. Big time. Because one — the guy was a doofus and I did not love him; two — she did love him and I went behind her back and stole him. Ugh. So disgusting writing that. Makes me ill.
And so, this past January, while Anna Delvey was getting out of jail, I was in Miami celebrating the birthday of a dear ride or die girlfriend who also knows the girl I betrayed. I’ve been jealous of her. She has been jealous of me. We’ve gotten into fights and arguments and misunderstandings. Regardless, we always made up and encouraged and supported each other since our friendship started more than 20 years ago. I can’t imagine ever betraying her.
We are like Anna Delvey and her other friend Neff. Loyalty and friendship forever.
I realize now it’s because there is true love between us, whereas there was never true love between me and the girl I betrayed…
“You’ll say and do things people don’t agree with, things that may not be ethical, not realizing you’re saying and doing those things because you are in the process of learning everything you need to learn to be a the human you are underneath even though you’re trapped by other humans’ rules and expectations.”
Dr. Nutmeg