Wednesday 24 June 2026
LuElla D’Amico /

‘The Devil Wears Prada’ and the Problem of Female Ambition

What Miranda Priestly has to teach us about work and excellence.
Three professionally dressed people walk through a modern, brightly lit corridor with vertical light fixtures, the woman in the center wearing a gray blazer and glasses while adjusting her earring.
Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs, Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, and Stanley Tucci as Nigel Kipling in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2. (Photo by Macall Polay. © 2026 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.)

Movies made for and about women—not the films award shows insist are important, but the ones women actually love—are often treated with a kind of reflexive disdain by critics. The Devil Wears Prada 2, which many of my Gen Z and millennial friends have seen multiple times, has been no exception.

LuElla D’Amico is an associate professor of English and coordinator of women’s and gender studies at the University of the Incarnate Word. She is the author of Wondrous Reading: Encountering the Catholic Faith in Children’s Literature and writes widely on faith, girlhood, pop culture, and storytelling.

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