Bold Moves

Talking bold and owning your skin: With Tracey Spicer

It was wonderful to sit down with journalist and advocate Tracey Spicer. In 2017 Tracey released her autobiography and gave a well-known TED Talk ‘The Good Girl Stripped Bare’. Tracey talks about stripping back the layers to really own your skin and live your truth.

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I worked at Network Ten. I was sacked after returning from maternity leave. It was then that I had to make a life-changing decision: should I sign the press release to say I had chosen to leave for family reasons (which would have been an absolute lie) or should I take the bold step of taking Ten to the federal court? The latter would start a national conversation in the media about pregnancy discrimination (which was affecting one in two women in the Australian workplace) — and that’s exactly what I did.

I don’t actually see myself as a courageous person, nor did I ever see myself as that bold person. Growing up I was always very much the ‘good girl’ not wanting to cause waves — just study hard, do well at school, be the good daughter, and be the good friend, all of that kind of stuff. Whenever I made a move it was like I had this thing inside me that once she shook off the shackles of being the good girl, motivated by seeing injustice and wanting to do the right thing, there was simply no other choice but to take action.

I still occasionally get crippled by the ‘good girl syndrome’, even though I was brought up by a non-sexist father and have an equalist ...