Your Cloudtopia is my Dream Matte mousse
On Nostalgia and Work
When I was younger, I thought that the epitome of adulthood was having your handbag on the passenger seat of your car. This would mean I had a car to drive myself wherever and whenever I wanted, (car) keys that meant I had somewhere to live that I may need to enter when other adults may not be present and a bag. With lots of pockets. Because, in my younger mind, a bag with pockets (on the inside) was the bag of an adult.
I often try to recall what media would have influenced my ideas of being a woman who works, I can only think of Friends and The Nanny. Mainly because they’re the shows, I watched growing up and have seen again since. Shows that showed women working, but also the safety in having a man with a wage, or even a mansion.
In my 20s this changed. In terms of characters, I became obsessed with CSI’s Catherine Willows, the Las Vegas Show Girl turned scientist worked hard and wasn’t embarrassed of who she was. The women in romcoms were journalists, photographers, doctors and bookstore owners. You knew they were always going to have money.
Eventually the fascination became not with Fran Fine but with Fran Drescher. The creator of The Nanny who was 36 in the first season. 36! Being in my 30s I could finally appreciate this. Appreciate the talent for creating a show, for being funny for the homage to I Love Lucy and for the references that are still ahead of its time.
The media has warped my impression of a career woman. They are harried or ice cold (Michelle Pfeiffer in One Perfect Day and Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada). They get cheated on for working too much (Anne Hathaway in The Intern), dumped for working too much and changing (Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada) or being forced to be smarter and work more (Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde). In Just Like Heaven Reese Witherspoon’s character spends majority of the film suspended in limbo, coming to terms with the fact that she doesn’t feel like she lived life enough when she has the chance. Too much work. Too much work to be a doctor.
Beauty and Lifestyle bloggers are women who dominate a field and make big business work for them. But often with influencers, the commodification of the daily means that they zero in on the products sold to women, to make money by selling these products to women. Whilst they may not prey on their insecurities, the insecure dynamic of an audience member and a content creator is a fragile eco system. Everything from their primer to the shoes can be linked down below. We work to buy the products that these women sell for their work and didn’t have to buy in the first place.
It’s an impressive situation.
One of my favourite pieces of content that circulates the internet is this sentiment below:
I’ve never once kept heels at my desk, put eyeliner on to smoke up my makeup look or sprayed perfume to signal post-work activities.
Magazines have done a lot to convince me of a lot of things when it comes to being an adult in the working world. I’ve been convinced of the ideal pieces for your work wardrobe, kept track of the best beauty products of any given year, read articles of what women keep in their bag (the original what’s in bag) as well as devouring numerous articles about how these women got to be where they are. I adored every one of these things, because each one allowed me to envision myself at an older age. Something I used to think about often. I always felt too old to be young and now I’m older I feel younger than I ever have. However, unsurprisingly, my projection of adulthood was hugely commercially driven.
Working and earning money was simply a means to an end to buy all these things I needed to be an excellent adult. The lip glosses, the bags, the book ends. Typing these words, I feel sad, and a little misguided.
A recent piece by Candice Wuehle entitled Work Bitch is about, and for this I quote the tagline, Charli XCX, Taylor Swift and Refusing the Fantasy of Effortlessness. The piece looks at these women pulling back the curtains on the work the physical body does and does in opposition to the work women normally expect of their bodies, to shrink, to be small, to see physical weakness as a sign of feminine strength. My (new) psychologist tells me there is no award for white knuckling life to get through the day. And I have no doubt that wishing your body was something different is much more work than supporting it to be what it needs to be. At the start of last year, I had a baby, and the work of guiding myself back to physical health feels overwhelming, I’m too busy forcing myself back to a prime optimum working mindset.
I’d never considered the physicality of my work (teaching) until I became pregnant. Prior to this I’d simply consider which day I could wear heels based on the work the class was doing, yard duty and how many hours I would be spending in the classroom as opposed to my desk. At the beginning of my career I worked in distance education, an option for students with health reasons, work reasons or limited subjects at school reasons. Early on I was warned about the Distance Ed Spread – the weight it was anticipated I’d put on sitting at a desk all day as opposed to walking around the school grounds. Given the catchy nature of the infliction, I remember it even now and I wonder if new grads are given the same warning. Though the school’s name has changed – perhaps that’s made it difficult to name.
I remember feeling stressed when watching movies and TV shows if people didn’t have work. A combination of concern for their financial position but also their self-worth. Acting is their job; I’d have to remind myself. They’re getting paid to be in the show, I’d tell myself. But I wouldn’t allow myself to think of all the times they wanted to be an actor and felt it wasn’t happening. I don’t think I ever allowed myself to be driven like m that. Even though when I graduated teaching I applied for hundreds of jobs.
My work bag has a couple of pockets. But not as many as I would’ve thought necessary. I have also carried my belongings to work in a plastic bag; in a tote I received as a freebie, and sometimes all the above all at once. I resonate with the women I see on their way to work. The handbag, the tote bag and the lunch box all separate. Not to mention the drink bottle so large it could be turned upside down and placed on the water cooler to hydrate the entire staff. I also went through a phase of thinking I needed a bag in my bag in case I left work and needed to carry things. I resonate with those reels that make fun of women entering their work for the day; the gym bags, the straws stuck on fingertips to signal fake nails, the black pieces of paper as a stand in for false eyelashes. The props are large for comedic effect but naturally the honesty of the image is the standout, I see myself and the women I know in those images, and I don’t even have false lashes or nails.
Teaching means I’m interacting with teenagers all the time. Young people who are on the verge of adulthood, but still looking at it and all its quirks from a distance. I try to reassure them that life is better after high school, but I realise I am being one of those people who in their minds hasn’t been young for a long time. I wouldn’t get it, plus, life is different now. I am acutely aware that they have to work it out on their own, I just want to tell them in a non suffocating way that they will work it out on their own. But I don’t.
I know that I’ve intertwined adulthood with work. The pairing is natural but not necessary. Perhaps one day I’ll unpick it and see my achievements as unrelated. Something to keep working on.
This is one of your best pieces! X