All Dressed Up and Someplace to Go
Contributed by City Girl of the London Paper (London)
As Oscar Wilde put so eloquently, “It’s only the shallow who do not judge by appearance.” And if this is the case, I suppose the City is full of deep-thinking philosophers.
Ambitious young City girls looking to enter the City of London have an added layer of complexity in their mission that the boys don’t. You not only need to act smart, you need to look it.
We women obsess about our appearance not because we are vain or frivolous. It is because history has taught us that if we don’t get our appearance right, people won’t stop talking about it. It becomes an endless distraction from everything else we want to talk about. That skirt one-inch too short is like a virtual mute button.
Few women would feel comfortable walking into the office nowadays without makeup. In fact, 90% of women in corporate fields wear make-up everyday. So are we all uber-competitive, sex-crazed amateur beauty queens?
Hardly. The unfortunate reality is that women in finance, or all professional fields for that matter, are too often judged on the form rather than the substance. The idea that I am wearing gorgeous Wolford tights is of more interest than what I have to say is a sad display that women, having made great strides in the public arena since the Suffrage movement of the early 1900’s, are still viewed as decoration and not the nails and the boards that help hold their banking ships together.
But being attractive on the outside is, paradoxically, crucial for the way it makes you feel on the inside. When we wear a smart suit, we send the world a message saying, “I respect myself – and so should you.” So right alongside brilliant business strategies, you’ll need glittering fashion accessories. But who has time to commit to a mesmerizing made-up face every morning, when time is a City Girl’s most precious commodity?
A common option many City women take in order to minimize their difference is to become an “honorary man,” adopting masculine norms and behavior and often, a variant of male business dress. For me, this meant wearing ties to work from time to time – a trend I sported flamboyantly, and was convinced would spread like wildfire. Many City women adopt less audacious forms of male dressing, however, not only to copy men but also to differentiate themselves from the secretaries.
But the more senior City women I spoke with found that playing male was both undesirable and unrealistic. One woman who had “made it” to director level remarked about the masculine strategy she had originally adopted, then gave up: “Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion – why should I try to be a little man? I’m not. It’s not happening. I’ll never be a guy as well as a guy can.”
Alas, we cannot clone City boys. And who wants to?
Beautiful article! From my reading, City Girl has gone past the outer shell of appearance and found the inner heart, which then is naturally reflected in one’s appearance. The trick is to let the heart shine stronger than the Wolford tights, but as a planet, we are getting there.
Very interesting points, which follow directly on to something I learned a while ago.
Men can be completely neutral in their dress. Unless he wants to be perceived as different, a man’s dress can be unremarkable, saying very little about who he is.
However, women are always making statements by their clothing, hairstyle, choices about makeup, jewelry, and so forth. Women literally cannot be neutral in their attire and appearance.
No real point in making this a “good” or “bad” thing – it just is. But as such, it’s something to be aware of, because once we’re aware of it, we can make conscious, instead of unconscious, choices.
Thanks for a great article!
Doesn’t it speak volumes that this article, despite its references to the “Suffrage” movement, ultimately is about how to dress? Sure, women (or “girls”) in the City don’t want to be guys, but if there is a point to be made on the substance of differences between the genders, let’s have an informed debate. But this article seems to point out simply that “you’ll need glittering fashion accessories”. Well, that’s a bit disappointing – on behalf of my daughters.
such an irony to read this article from city girl who’s the prototype of the superficial city parasite, trying to find her best “deal” among city boys. That’s her main activity by the way, she’s never worked in the city, well not office work anyway…