Why Can't We Be Friends?

Last night I finished reading The Devil Wears Prada. It reminded me very much of The Nanny Diaries. A morally upstanding, witty, and fun woman in her early 20s ends up working for the female boss from hell and the job takes over her life. Both stories are funny in what we hope are exaggerated descriptions of how these shrewish women make life hellish for our young and optimistic heroines. In both stories the protagonist escapes with her integrity in tact, but the books are unsatisfying in that the evil boss never actually sees the error of her ways. Yeah sure, we're comforted by the fact that money doesn't buy you happiness. The boss will forever remain small-minded, friendless, and joyless. But I really wanted the boss to change, to grow, to say, "Yes, Andrea, you're right, I am a terrible person, I have no friends, I'm shallow, I treat people horribly." And then to see them somehow get better.
What is up with that? Why do I care? Why don't I just want the evil witch to go down? I do want them to go down, I was happy Andrea told Miranda, "f-ck you" although it seemed out of character since she hadn't uttered that phrase anywhere else in the book. Beyond that though, I wanted Miranda, and Mrs. X, to come back up changed people.
Perhaps I'm softening with age and trying to see both sides of the equation. Maybe it strikes a chord with my women's college upbringing. Aren't the authors propelling their female protagonists forwards at the expense of these other women? Haven't the authors created stereotypes of the worst kind? Why are these women the enemy? Aren't they just victims of a system that assumes women can't hold positions of power unless they wear a dress-size of zero and behave like battle-axes?
Or perhaps I'm just taking a beach read too seriously.

songs: Why Can't We Be Friends? • artist: War