Confessions of a Career Girl: Episode 18

So while I told myself I would get up this morning and go to the gym, my body failed me, and I didn't wake up until 6:15. Still, I was thrilled, because getting in the shower at 6:15 meant getting out of the shower at 6:30 which meant being dressed by 7:30am, which meant being on time for work!! I caught a 7:45 bus, only to arrive at work at 8am on the button and discover that........ I didn't have to be in until 8:30. Of course. The world wouldn't be a sane place if my attempts to be on time didn't turn out to be for naught, right?

Anyway... last week, I had a heated debate with a group of my male colleagues about the merits of being a well-dressed professional. Being a main street banker, I asserted, doesn't have to mean wearing over-sized top coats and ill-fitting suits. Wall Street does not have some kind of exclusive ownership over all things bespoke! Every man should know that

• A suit's shoulders should hug their own, otherwise it is too big.
  
• A suit jacket should contour your body, so get thee to a tailor!
  
• There should be less than a fist-sized space between the buttons and his chest.
  
• Side vents make you look slimmer, are more modern, and allow the suit to move much more--so you can go smaller
  
• The sleeve length should rise a maximum of an inch above your shirt-sleeve (standard is to have a quarter of an inch peaking).
  
• The three-button suit is the classic choice but should only be buttoned in the middle
  
• The two-button suit should only be buttoned at the top

Simple enough, right? Apparently not. I was told that looking nice is not only irrelevant to someone who isn't a Wall Street bigwig, but it's also career suicide. One male coworker told me that we are all essentially "indentured servants" and that dressing like we have taste means upstaging the system. Wearing a nice suit, he said, is like picking your boss up in a better car than he has. I scoffed at this idea. "Ludicrous!" I exclaimed. I was horrified. Truly. That idea is obviously a stretch, right?? There is nothing wrong with looking nice...

A couple of days later, two female managers pulled me aside and told me that they were of the opinion that my attire is "inappropriate". My heels, they said, are always too high. My stockings, they claimed, should only ever be brown or black, maybe grey if I'm feeling frisky. There is too much eccentricity, they lamented, in my look. "You can never go wrong with a pantsuit," they said. "You don't want the way you look to be a distraction," they said, "you have to conform to what everyone else is wearing," they said. "You won't get promotions or be invited on sales calls," they said. "This is a conservative company," they said.

I looked from one blandly dressed manager to the other and the next 15 years of my life flashed before my eyes. Me? Relegated to pantsuits and kitten heels and black or brown nylons?? Can someone please tell me how it is that I blinked and ended up living up my worst nightmare?! I can admit that some of the things I wear do push the envelope. Turbans to set off my menswear chic. Candy-colored stockings to add a pop of color to the drab greys and blacks of winter. Extreme discrimination against any heel below 4inches. I walk the edge of every single line that I can, but that is who I am.

How can they woo you here under the illusion that they celebrate and value diversity if in reality they want us all to look the same as soon as we get here, or else face a fate of a promotion less career?? And I know that it's not all "them", it's the demographic they are trying to make money off of. The dry-@ss conservative Pennsylvanian client whose millions they would like to have a piece of.

Well, eff that. If I'm in an industry and geographic area where fashion is considered merely a "distraction", then it is becoming painfully obvious that I'm in the wrong industry. Hillary Clinton, pantzilla?? That ain't it. No, Ma'am.