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Welcome to ‘Showtime with Emily Maddick’, in which GLAMOUR'S Assistant Editor and Entertainment Director brings a unique perspective to the month's most hyped film or TV show. For September’s instalment, Emily takes on Disney+’s new film, Swiped, the biopic of tech giant, Whitney Wolfe Herd, co-founder of Tinder, who went on to create the feminist dating app, Bumble. Emily, who worked with Whitney as a consultant at the height of the ‘Girlboss feminism’ era, argues that while the film has been criticised for portraying a sanatised version of events, it also reveals Whitney to be a kind, compassionate and game-changing leader, who wasn't afraid to show weakness and vulnerability. And this, Emily says, is an accurate portrayal of the woman she got to know.
Swiped - the new Disney+ biopic starring Lily James portraying the rise and fall and rise again of dating app mogul, Whitney Wolfe Herd - once the youngest self-made female billionaire on the planet - has not had the greatest of reviews. It’s been described as ‘corny’ ‘hagiographic’ and ‘lacking in substance’, or as Variety puts it:
“Wolfe’s particular genius seems to have been for marketing. Maybe it’s appropriate that a movie about her plays like a marketing exercise: simplified, sanitised, suspect.”
I agree, to some extent, with all of this. Watching the film does feel like you’re being fed a one-sided, washed down, sugar-coated version of an origin story that was perhaps a lot more complex, nuanced and grubby. David Fincher’s Oscar-winning The Social Network, this is not. Although there are clear parallels between the two plots about the rise of Facebook and the rise of Tinder and Bumble.
In fact, one excellent review on Slant directly compares the two and raises some important holes in the handling of the original material.
“Swiped’s story sits right at the center of so many vital issues, and a smarter, braver rendition of it—that is, one interested in actually probing beneath the surface of things—might have yielded a film truly worthy of comparison to The Social Network. Instead, we get a piece of corporate hagiography that sweeps all those issues aside to celebrate another tech billionaire.” Ouch.
Despite all this, it truly is such an epic story; a legend of the (thankfully) now dead and buried, ‘Girlboss’ era of 2010s feminism - that any retelling of it, is going to be engaging. I really enjoyed seeing Whitney’s journey come to life on screen - one which I briefly had a front row seat at when I worked for her as a media consultant between 2016 and 2017 (more on this later.)
It’s 2012 and our plucky, headstrong and super smart 23-year-old heroine, Whitney Wolfe, is desperately trying to create a startup app that will help women connect with charitable causes. Having zero luck at a tech conference she’s gatecrashed, Whitney runs into Sean Rad - both comment on how their names sound like superheroes - and he takes a dim view of her philanthropic ambitions. Within mere days, thanks to Whitney’s tenacity and smarts, Rad appoints her Head of Marketing at his startup lab, Hatch Labs, where they’re working on, amongst many other ideas, a dating app called Matchbox. Whitney renames it Tinder, and the rest is history. And told from Whitney’s perspective, what a history it is! The app becomes a startup sensation, revolutionises the dating world (and also introduces the world to unsolicited dick pics) and makes millions within months. Whitney, the only female co-founder of four, becomes romantically involved with fellow co-founder, Justin Mateen. The relationship rapidly becomes toxic, Whitney ends it and then becomes subject to sexism in an increasingly ‘bro culture’ workplace. After leaving Tinder, she then sues them for sexual harassment, receives a reported $1million settlement with no admission of wrongdoing by Tinder or their parent company, IAC and signs an NDA which she is still bound by to this day. Whitney then suffers a period of 'depression and paranoia' while dealing with all the media furore and online trolling she receives in the wake of this. She falls out with her best girlfriend and former Tinder colleague, Teesha, played by Industry's Myha'la, who accuses her of only thinking only about herself in her pursuit of getting ahead and not considering her privilege. And this is one of the only times the film really skirts the issues at play with the individualistic nature of ‘Girlboss feminsm’ of this time, of which Whitney was a poster girl.
It’s only when Whitney starts brainstorming a female led networking app from her kitchen table that she is pulled out of her depression and into the orbit of a Russian tech billionaire (played by Dan Stevens with a dreadful Russian baddie accent) who answers all her (financial backing) prayers. Andrey Andreev, owner of what was then the world's largest dating app, Badoo, encourages and funds her plans for a feminist dating app, where women make the first move - and Bumble is born in all its shiny sunshine yellow glory. But it doesn’t take long before Badoo’s workplace culture is also then shockingly accused of being sexist and toxic with an investigative expose by Forbes magazine and Whitney parts company from Andreev. As I said, it really is an epic story. But is it entirely accurate? Debatable. While text goes up at the end of the film to state that ‘Whitney Wolfe Herd did not participate in this story’ due to the fact she is still bound by the NDA from Tinder, and Whitney herself has publicly stated that she even spoke to her lawyers about trying to get it ‘shut down’, finding it ‘weird’, I can't help but wonder that the PR and marketing folk at Bumble are going to be very happy with the result.
As I also said, I do have some skin in the game when reviewing this, which might make me biased towards Whitney’s story, as I briefly got to know her during this era. Between 2016 and 2017, I was a media consultant on her startup gay dating app, Chappy which was branded as ‘Bumble’s little brother’ and promoted as a safer and more relationship-centric space for gay men. Chappy - which is now defunct - was also owned by Badoo and the Russian squillionaire investor, Andrey Andreev. My time working for the brand came just before Andreev’s company was hit by the aforementioned allegations of sexism and a toxic workplace by Forbes (the scandal that is portrayed at the end of Swiped, which the company strongly denied.) It was also at the height of the ‘Girlboss feminism' era, the downside of which is not interrogated with nearly enough rigour in Swiped. This particular brand of feminism promoted ambition, self-branding and hustle, but has subsequently been criticised for co-opting feminist language to sell products or lifestyles and reproducing capitalist and patriarchal structures instead of challenging them. It's associated with burnout and toxic work culture, but more crucially, the movement is also widely seen to have ignored systematic issues like racism and class inequality to focus on the success of privileged women.
The biopic will follow the life of Whitney Wolfe, who also co-founded Tinder and called out its “pervasive dick pics”.
Girlboss feminism was undeniably flawed in many ways, yes. But to dismiss it entirely and dismiss Whitney’s important story in the canon of female founder origin stories would be unfair and undermines all the real progress that Whitney did make in terms of changes in business culture. And the law; such as championing the passage of Texas House Bill 2789 in the States, making the sending of unsolicited, explicit images a punishable offence.
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When I worked for her, I was impressed that she wasn’t afraid to reveal her weaknesses and insecurities. She would deliberate long and hard about the most minor of decisions, messaging me directly for my opinion or advice on how to handle the media. She displayed an authentic vulnerability and didn’t seem to feel like she needed to put on a steely front to lead, which was a breath of fresh air at that time. She listened to her team and she was open about the mistakes she made along the way and I found that this to be inspirational and also not something I had seen before in a leader. She was also not afraid to take on criticism and I remember (after a few drinks) once challenging her about the Bumble business model, ‘women make the first move’ saying that I had a tendency to agree with her detractors who thought that it was merely a marketing technique that co-opted feminist language and ‘empowerment’. Whitney was a brilliant sparring partner on this, and we also had many more chats over many a martini on misogyny, sexism and how she wanted to to change society for good. And even when we parted ways and she decided to take a new direction on a project we were working on together for Bumble, she was kind, gracious and generous in how she treated me. It really was a masterclass in leadership.
So if you’re looking for something to watch this week, I say swipe right on Swiped. For while they may not have got into the nitty gritty of a lot at stake in this story, it’s a nostalgia hit for 2010s and a fascinating insight into the tech world and the hurdles women faced and still face when it comes to sexism in the workplace. (And I'm not on the Bumble payroll still, I promise!)
**Swiped is streaming on Disney+ now. **
For more from GLAMOUR's Assistant Editor and Entertainment Director, Emily Maddick, follow her on Instagram @emilymaddick.
