This is not about taking sides in the “amateur” versus “pro” debate. This is about a highly praised book in the creative world that I recently picked up. The author, Steven Pressfield, is no stranger to acclaim, his debut novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was adapted into the legendary movie of the same name, directed by Robert Redford.
But as I kept reading Steven Pressfield’s Turning Pro, one thing kept nagging at me: Pressfield’s use of the pronoun “she.” At first, I saw it as a stylistic choice—a way to freshen up the overused “he” that has dominated writing for centuries—although modern writers tend to use “they” or alternate between “he” and “she.”
But the more I read, the more it struck me as a cliché in disguise. In Turning Pro, “she” is far from a neutral pronoun. “She” is the amateur—the embodiment of weakness, fear, and self-sabotage. “She” avoids responsibility, seeks validation, and numbs herself with distraction and addictive behaviors.
Pressfield’s amateur reads like a textbook description of a narcissistic or dependent personality disorder. It’s as if he took the diagnostic criteria from a psychology manual, stripped away the clinical framing, and rebranded it under the label amateur. Then he set up professionalism, “turning pro,” as the cure.
The problem is not just the oversimplification of turning complex psychological patterns into a moral failing, but the way gender enters the picture. By consistently using “she” to embody the amateur, Pressfield unwittingly reinforces a long-standing stereotype: the flawed, fragile, and irresponsible feminine versus the disciplined, higher-order masculine. Whether he intended it or not, the symbolism is hard to ignore.
For me, that’s where the book loses its power. What could have been a motivational call to grow and commit ends up reading like a rehashed cliché dressed up as wisdom. When a writer mixes pathology with personality and overlays it with gender bias, it doesn’t inspire me—it makes me want to close the book.
But I didn’t close it. I kept reading, and soon the “amateur” and the “professional” started to shift from “she” to “he,” back and forth, until the pronouns didn’t matter any more. At times, strangely enough, I felt as though I was reading some of my very own hidden thoughts.
I’ve heard the novel The Legend of Bagger Vance is outstanding. I didn’t read it yet, I just watched the movie. If you haven’t watched it, make sure you do, it’s truly inspiring. Who wouldn’t want to watch a movie with the younger versions of Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron, narrated by Jack Lemmon?
“As Bagger once said, it’s a game that can’t be won, only played… so I play… looking for my place in the field.”