Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes Plays the Privileged White Female Card

I’ll say this much for Elizabeth Holmes: She sure knows how to play the gender game. Is there a trope of modern womanhood that the embattled founder of Theranos hasn’t deployed?

First, she was the wunderkind of tech—the girl genius who socked it to the boys in Silicon Valley with her revolutionary medical invention. She epitomized the Lean-in ethos of the era: She “sat at the table” (actually, at the head of the table) and “faked it until she made it”—taking that mantra to a whole other level.

Now, facing federal criminal charges for allegedly doing just that—faking it—Holmes has ...