It’s just the same, without the uniform

So we replace mum’s home-packed lunches, homework and teachers for more home-packed lunches (only we are responsible for the soggy sandwiches), homework and bosses.

Think you can escape the pitfalls of the schoolyard now you’re grown up. Think again.

The minefield of en vogue open-planned offices only encourages a more advanced version of popularity games and social cliques.

Who are you friends with? Whose mailing list are you on? It is school all over again. Only this time we are a little bit older and wiser.

Are you the bully or the bullied? Are you popular or still looking on from the outside?

Whether you think you’re above all of this is irrelevant. The jockeying for position exists regardless of your input. Your refusal to partake probably even drives the engine more so.

Office politics is a more grown-up replication of the school-yard popularity contest without the hormones. Friendship alliances are even more critical and wield stronger results. Whether it be a promotion or demotion, who you hang out with affects your grade just as much as it did in the class room. Let’s do the algebra a boss is unlikely to hand a sweet bonus to a minion they don’t like.

The rules don’t change either. You’ve got lots of friends – chances are people in the office are going to be nice to you. Why piss off Miss Popularity when she’s only going to talk to half the company about you at the pub?

And if you like watching it all from the edge, then observe and enjoy my friends, the persuasive techniques administered by those who value popularity as much as a job well done. It is more than butt-licking the boss, it is taking notes from the bible of How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s doing the coffee run, it’s dictating the after-work curriculm, it’s a well-worked finger on the pulse.

You see nothing changes after graduation – cool is still the currency that opens doors and sees a full inbox.

In essence, it is playing the game of perception. It is not enough in this competitive sphere to just be good at your job. You have to make others think that you are good at it too. And how do you do that? By determining and managing people’s perception of you.

What kind of person in the office do you want people to think you are? We all have an office persona – so what’s yours? And how do you make it work for you?

Are you the school-yard bully that scares others into doing a good job? Or do you go for the sycophantic approach and convince others you are from the wrong side of the tracks aiming for a better life? Or maybe you’re consistent and stick to the allure of the enigmatic loner you were when Clearasil was still your best kept weapon.

I am not saying its right; all I am saying is that it is foolish to deny its existence. Don’t think we’ve risen above all of that simply on the basis of our age/maturity. Just do the things you never had the balls to do at school because now you can.

Brain-washed into being sexy?

Have you ever wondered why there are so many photos of you on a night out doing a face that can only be explained as half Barbie-pout, half psycho-killer. Or my other favourite, is the ‘face’ of looking wistfully in the distance with lips a calculated distance apart to resemble the throes of an orgasmic moment.

I am charged and plead guilty to the above offences.

Maybe I could blame it on the beer, the wine, or the combination of the two. Or I could just face facts.

I am compelled to capture a moment that epitomises my innate sexual and sensual self. Or, so I try.

Do I do it because I think nobody else can see it? Or do I make the same mistake over and over again like Kylie and the botox because I am brain-washed into believing I SHOULD be sexy?

After all, a photo is immortal – it lives on longer than us. And so it is that the guilty pursue a long-lasting memory of being valued as sexual gods existing above the meek who can’t pull off the ‘face’.

I’ll face up to brutal facts again. I prize a photo of a perfect expression of me any day over a ‘nice’ shot with a friend.

We all know vanity is selfish and the feather to which we brush our egos, but what drives us to project our sexual self in photos as opposed to another self?

I have no immediate answers – so therefore I will revert to pouting while I ponder this question. Snap away if you will.

Sharks and brooches

I work in advertising and it is all sell, sell, sell, sell.

I am starting to think life itself is not that far removed. In particular, I am considering that putting yourself out there in the great wide ocean of dating draws similar parallels.

What scares me is the sharks.

And it isn’t the ones with the big fins and testerone – it’s the predatory females I am worried about.

The female sharks that have had their fair share of the pickings and want more – those are the ones that make diving in quite a peril. Swim at your own risk some might say.

Alright, enough of the loaded analogies. What I am talking about is the thirty-something woman. They are the ones that have played the game and yet confuse me so.

Why are they so hungry but predatory at the same time?

Why do they want to play survival of the fittest when they don’t feel they are at the top of the pack? Are they secretly in love with the downfall – biting off more than they can chew?

These women I see as powerful: great careers, good dining experiences, enviable wardrobes and a vast expanse of knowledgeable topics. All the things that I am sure I can reach over time. Yet they are there and not enjoying it so.

Their game is so much more complex than a man’s avoiding commitment and the next date.

I think women are just as confused about their feminity as men are confused with their loss of masculinity.

Women are far more sexual aggressive and proud of it. But it doesn’t really seem to go hand in hand on a practical sense. It is like taking out a designer bag whilst wearing track pants – it isn’t a match made in heaven.

I guess we haven’t quite learnt how to accessorize. And it is blaringly obvious we are getting it wrong. We should be proud of being sexually liberated while wearing the brooch of vulnerability. We should be sleeping around but taking into account that underlying all of that our instincts are motivated towards settling down.

We should be as open about our sexual exploits as we are by our need to feel taken care of.

Women have already fought the battle of washing up the dishes and having one night stands. But we haven’t won the fight of being independent women that can allow ourselves to let go for a man that wants to take care of us.