8-06-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians --
Starter Job #170 (Yuppie Culture in NYC, beyond style. . .)
Looking
back, it would seem that yuppie fashion wasn’t meant to be sexy because that
might threaten the balance of power and the status quo because, as a wise
person was known to say, “Women have half the money is this world, and all the
pussy.” Translated: if sex is power, and money is a given, the sex can be
withheld as a bartering chip (a la Lysistrata) -- so sex IS the true power.
But,
Power (with a capital P) always was and is sexy and so, the powerful players in
the yuppie world didn’t have to dress sexily, no sirree. At times I’d look at
outfits some of the women in offices wore and thought them quite deplorable. .
. but then again, there will always be those who can’t help but choose
unflattering clothes. Their talents are to be found elsewhere, in other ways. .
. so who am I to talk?
I
always strove to dress in very classic, unexciting ways, with preppy blouses or
sweaters, jackets, skirts and shoes. . . I really liked a pair of 2-inch heeled
loafers that I had, and classic black pumps with no more than 1 ½ or 2-inch
heels. My hair was always in some sort of medium-length pageboy, as I feel most
comfortable with hair that’s non-attention getting. Maybe it was because I had
to get work in places where they needed people to not stand out and look sort
of bland. Sure, I can play that part: bland girl in a glam office.
But
then again, even though these palaces of power were well heeled, places where I
worked weren’t in glamour fields: they were mostly investment firms (Lehman
Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs), some architecture offices, and the
large pharmaceutical firm, Bristol Myers-Squibb. I worked uptown and down, but
preferred downtown.
The
World Trade Centers -- and World Financial Center -- were cool places to be
working in the ‘80’s. In the proximity of Wall Street and all that downtown
Manhattan history, I couldn’t help but feel the excitement in the streets and
on the subway.
But the
things I had to do in most of these offices were so easy I used to laugh,
inwardly, that they paid me to work. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment