Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of things that actually make money, sat down for a filmed power breakfast with NBC's Today show. Aside from a fib at the start — that she doesn't think of herself as a female Googler, when that's how she's listed in her corporate bio, and how she introduced herself, quite recently, to ABC News, It's a good performance — no nervous tics, no creepy laughs captured on camera. But it's missing something.

Mayer makes a convincing argument, at least on the surface, that gender-neutral policies are the best way to advance women's careers. It would have been more impressive if she'd talked honestly about the very real discrimination women — or at least women who aren't Marissa Mayer, ex-girlfriend of cofounder Larry Page — face at Google; how unevenly those policies are enforced by poorly trained managers; and how Google's culture shunts many women into classicly female roles like sales and operations.

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