The Handmaiden works for the boss. She cozies up to whomever it is — male or female - and derives her power purely through affiliation. In preteen society, every popular girl has her handmaiden. The pattern is not so very different in business. One is likely choose to be the handmaiden of a power figure when one has little confidence in one's own competence. The more other-directed one has been in life (pleasing parents with good grades, or pleasing authority figures through service and obedience), the easier it is to continue playing this role in professional life. More often than not, the power figure subtly reinforces the asymmetrical power relationship, because it is both useful and flattering.

The Male Impersonator is more manly than Larry Ellison. She dictates, swaggers, and exercises tight control over information flow. Whether she wears feminine power suits or black leather pants, her message to others is, "don't mess with me or I'll have your ass." Her dual is the Queen Mother, who hides her black-widow power behind an effusive display of nurturing care. She deftly deploys the tools of affiliation and exclusion to train others to need what she has to give. The indirect nature of her power makes it at once deniable and irrefutable.

Of all these dysfunctions, the Best Friend may be the most tragic type of female manager. Girls, more than boys, are raised to depend upon the approval of their peers and to be seen to be fair and "nice." A manager who needs also to be a Best Friend must preserve the good feeling of every employee no matter what the cost. She and her organization become paralyzed in the absence of consensus.

Well, nobody's perfect. I can see something of myself in every one of the stereotypes I just described. Despite our disabilities, the women and men of Purple Moon were remarkably dedicated to the company's social goals as well as to its financial health. I don't think the irony was lost on any of us that the path to business success would require that we address within ourselves those very difficulties that our products tried to speak to in the lives of little girls.

After the company closed down, we had a wake for Rockett at my house. Each of us spoke, and as founder I delivered the final eulogy. Rockett's little plastic body was laid out on an antique table in my living room in her own miniature locker. Black candles, bouquets of purple irises, and a seriously depleted bottle of Irish Whisky flanked the casket. I poured a shot for myself and one for Rockett in a plastic medicine cup that had belonged to one of my daughters. "We're always trying to heal something — lousy childhoods, raw deals, crappy self-esteem. We were trying to heal something when we made her." I lifted my glass and the roomful of former Purple Moon employees followed suit. "To us."

My daughters stepped up to the table and took up the little coffin like pall-bearers. People wept openly as the body passed. The procession marched solemnly upstairs.

Then the miracle occurred. Like an angel, Rockett descended slowly from above, transformed. Her lavender sweater had disappeared beneath a billowy, hot-pink gown. Pink-feathered angel wings fluttered as she was lowered on a piece of pink yarn by giggling girls on the landing. A cheer rose from the assembled artists, writers, animators, producers, marketers, and kids. Rockett was going to join Barbie in the afterlife, where, we hoped, she would kick some bright pink butt.

The coffin – with Rockett still in it – is in the top of my closet now. My little girls have become teenagers, spinning slowly away into their grown-up lives. I've begun to rediscover the joys of teaching and writing. I've had quite a few interesting consulting gigs since Rockett went upstairs, but none of the consumerist crap that passes for "our industry" these days has tempted me to make another passionate, all-consuming commitment. Not yet. This little red-headed girl is now a middle-aged "veteran" of Silicon Valley. I've learned some chops, and there must be something worth doing out there. Any day now, humanism will be fashionable again.