The Empress Has No Clothes

It's funny, in a slightly pathetic way, to reflect now on the shenanigans I pulled while trying not to look, act, or think like a 50-something person at my office. I badly wanted to make the final leap into my company's senior executive ranks and worked like a Trojan towards that end, but as I passed 50, people five to ten years my junior started getting the recognition and rewards I wanted for myself, and I began to feel stalled.

I pushed harder and harder -- too hard, especially after I entered my 50th year and my internal promotion clock was ticking loudly enough to wake the dead. I routinely logged 60-hour weeks, much of it head-down in my office scratching away at the endless stream of administrivia or restlessly warming a seat at 'required' meetings which gulped six hours of my schedule every single day. I trotted between the four buildings on our corporate campus as much as five times a day for meetings. I had no time for myself, my staff, or, really, much of anything besides the mounting chorus of deadlines and responsibilities that my job entailed.

When my annual 360-degree feedback survey reported that I was seen as overly focused on my own goals and lacking consideration for peers and staff, I was assigned an executive coach. I knew this was not an entirely benign event -- at my company, coaches were often a token nod to fairness, a way of saying, "See? We're giving her all the help she needs, and every chance to change!" even as management is drafting a bad performance review. They were handed out like baby aspirin to hapless executives who got any negative upper feedback from one or another died-in-the-wool malcontent among their staff, because our management's devotion to fairness was tepid compared to its flaming passion for avoiding lawsuits.

Nonetheless, I needed to lighten up my image somehow, so I listened to my coach, who was former CIA psychiatrist possessing a clear eye for corporate politics and considerable experience with the games played at my particular bureaucracy. He told me that my ability and performance record were solid as a rock, but, unfortunately, I'd gained a reputation for being as hard-headed as a rock, too. I wasn't generally viewed as a strong team player because I couldn't be counted on to follow the plays unless my boss or I called 'em. In the end, my coach's advice was simple: catch flies with honey -- smile more, laugh more, dress more casually, speak more softly, be with my colleagues and staff more, show more interest in the needs of others, share more of the warm person my friends and family knew.

How wildly ironic! The armour of stern discipline and relentless task focus I wore in the workplace was donned to hide and protect a too-nice, sentimental caretaker underneath. I grew up in the kind of dysfunctional household that breeds codependency, and my role was that of good little girl who gets along somehow without bothering anyone else. I care too much about what other people want and too little about what I want, when it comes right down to it. I am a softie, a pushover, the person who compulsively offers to help everyone else and asks for nothing more than maybe a smile in return. I was trained for loyalty, self sufficiency, and obedience. Being in command is only possible for me when I can view it, too, as a form of servitude: to corporate mission, to division goals, to department deliverables.....and then I am indeed singleminded in my resolve to serve, and unsympathetic with all those who waver from such dedication to task.

I felt thoroughly misunderstood, but on the other hand, if shedding my cold armour for something warm and fuzzy would help accomplish my career objectives, fine with me. It would be a snap for me to show warmth and cheer, far easier than it had ever been to suppress that part of my nature. Within six months, my coach reported that people around me were astonished by how I'd "changed". Suddenly they saw me as caring, supportive, reliable, approachable, even funny!

And only I knew what a price I was at risk of paying. The more open and accessible to others I was, the more I also was drawn into enabling their needs at the expense of my own. It was inevitable for a person like me. The old armour had merely minimized the number of people I let get close enough to trigger my Pavlovian response of helpfulness and self-sacrifice. Without it, I was dangerously vulnerable to users and manipulators. I still needed some kind of competitive edge, and it had to be something less threatening than my former unflinching drive for results. What now, I wondered?

My coach recommended new packaging. "For people to see you differently than in the past, you need to look different any way you can," he said, "as well as speak and act differently."

So I paid more attention to clothes, shoes, nail polish, makeup, exercise, diet, and hair cut and color at 54 than I ever did at 24. I lost twenty pounds and two dress sizes, raised my hemlines 3 inches, strutted around in really high heels, and (gasp) even stopped wearing pantyhose, which for someone as traditional as me was tantamount to going without a bra. (At least I didn't do that. Instead, I spent three hours and $400 in Victoria's Secret one evening buying push-up bras and discovering thong underwear.) I got purses to match my shoes, and jewelry to complement my outfits, and essentially treated myself like a Barbie doll to be dressed and primped from head to toe. I was the one of the best-dressed women in the whole company: everything was coordinated, somewhat sophisticated, a little form-fitting.

There was one pair of 4" open-toed black and white patent leather stiletto heel shoes that probably were over the top, I admit. I just couldn't resist the sexy little twitch of my hips that walking way up on tippy-toes gave me, and my legs were still long and slender enough to show off. I also greatly enjoyed being taller than my new executive management, as if literally looking down at them gave me some sort of control over what they could do to me. I liked the feeling so much that soon I found myself with several pairs of 4" heels; I could loom over these guys any day of the week.

"I just want to look good for my years," I said, disingenuously, when someone commented on how I'd changed my style from basic sensible corporate drone to snazzy happenin' business gal.

I was more than a little proud of being a borderline size 4 with well-defined abs instead of tummy fat, but I knew a woman with over 50 years of life under her belt had to be careful how much "younger" she dressed before it became the wrong kind of eye-catching. And anyway, the bags under my eyes and deepening marionette lines bracketing my mouth pegged me as a matronly sort no matter what kind of glad rags I draped on my svelte-by-iron-will frame. I stopped losing weight when I heard one too many murmurs of concern over how gaunt I appeared; without a facelift, which I simply couldn't figure out how to accomplish undiscovered, the thinning skin on my face and neck needed some underlying fat to help it resist gravity!

I never actually lied about my age, however. I liked how surprised people seemed when they learned I wasn't in my early 40s, as so many said they had assumed. And I certainly didn't want anyone to think I was some kind of sad aging woman trying to deny the harsh realities of time. My appearance became, for me, a sort of metaphor of adaptabilty. I think I wanted people to see I could be and do almost anything when I put my mind to it. Maybe if my updated facade caught the new upper management team's eye, they'd also look hard enough to see my talent and upward potential.

Truth was, I labored under the massive delusion that looking good was more than half the battle; throughout my career I'd noticed that, all other things being even anywhere near equal, a very attractive woman had the edge over a drab or slovenly one. Wouldn't that still work at midlife?

And it's true, once I'd spiffed up my act, I received a lot more attention than I had in a long time. I was getting compliments right up until my short, cold-eyed new boss informed me I was being led out to pasture on my long stiletto-heeled legs. In fact, I looked quite stunning the day Human Resources collected my signed severance agreement, my Blackberry, my security badge, my laptop, and my executive office keys.