I read Forbes Woman pretty regularly because I find many great writers there covering issues of interest to business women. I even aspire to write there myself, but I have a dirty little secret to share about this valuable online publication and many others who cater to professional women. The secret is that I started InPower Women in large part as a reaction against them, because I believe the time for marketing to professional women based on fashion is over.

There are plenty of the Debbie Downers who look at the exodus of women from the corporate ranks and see bad news. If your priority is getting women in to socially, politically and economically powerful positions, this IS bad news. But what if you just want to have a life? Be happy? Be self-actualized? Discover what work-life balance might mean for YOU? More and more, women – especially in their 30’s - are swelling the self-employed marketplace, and it’s no wonder. Until companies make it easier for all employees – women and men – to juggle their increasingly demanding responsibilities in a WHOLE life, more women will be tempted out on their own. That’s the new work-life “balance” discussion this past summer was all about.

Last week, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton Professor extraordinaire and former State Department Policy Director, took a break from writing about Syria and US-Mexican relations to write a sincere and heart-felt article in The Atlantic lamenting the reality that as women move into powerful positions – the kind that demand “no life” of whomever takes them regardless of gender – “having it all” becomes impossible. She questions whether we’ve sold Gen-Y women a load of bunk with the “you can have it all” claim. The article, entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” also gently takes Sheryl Sandberg (COO, Facebook) to task for encouraging young women to lean in and go for the top spots as though if they don’t it’s a bad thing (as expressed most clearly in her TED talk and Barnard graduation speech last year.

This month while I’ve been giving my eSeminar to the amazing and brave people intent on developing their own Authentic Leadership Style, I’ve been exploring deep and powerful dimensions of authenticity and sharing them on my blog. One of the elephants in the room when we talk about authenticity is emotional discomfort and even fear. We assume that being authentic – and taking off our “corporate mask” – to allow our authentic self to shine at the office means revealing weaknesses about ourselves that can undermine our career and success.Of course we’re all capable of undermining ourselves, but honestly the only times I see this happen as a result of taking off the corporate mask is when I (or others I know well) have gotten our authentic selves so out of sync with our masked selves that seeing the two “in the same room” (so to speak) is a shock. And when this happens, the dramatic gap is already undermining our success. It’s just that because we have our mask on, we usually don’t see it (though others usually do). In my experience, taking off the corporate mask can only strengthen you.