Carol Lee
In the work environment, we move through the corporate world with tactics of seduction by leveraging womanhood to one’s advantage; this translates to sexual capital. As an archetype, the office siren acknowledges that there is capital in being seductive in the labour market, and identifying yourself as an office siren is a mask in which this role is performed in order to secure social and economic capital. The office siren recognises the dominance with which sexual capital governs mundane activity and puts it to the test. Per theorist and researcher Alex Quicho, there is an advantage to playing into their girlhood as a way for girls to negotiate their environments by acting as vulnerable prey but also agents of desire. This is how the office siren negotiates networks as vulnerable prey, and all prey needs to understand its environment intuitively if it is threatened by predation or teach us skills to negotiate.
Lacanian lack is the idea that what is desired is being itself, where “desire is a relation to being to lack”. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek further adds to the Lacanian lack by holding that the object of our desire is what sets our desire into motion. In application, the office siren is what sets our desire into motion in the office. For the most part, it is fictional due to sexual capital operating as a hidden force, and there is never an overt recognition of the operation of sexual capital.
Office Siren Fashion
The office siren is primarily a performance using clothing and attitude to control their office lore. Pieces contributing to the office siren performance include bayonetta glasses, blazers, pencil skirts, stockings, kitten heels, and tailoring. Women transmute masculinity in the office by wearing the same attire as men. Still, it acts as pieces of the ‘power suit’ or bids of masculinity wrapped in the female figure as a means of empowerment in the office.
Prada, in particular, engages in a play on uniform attuned to the frequented space of the office with its ugly chic, intellectual, and utilitarian take on clothes; it also creates a desire for the subversion of the everyday woman’s production of normal and pure life. This is seen in Prada’s FW 2023 Collection, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons “gave importance to real jobs” through their interpretation of the uniform of real women with “real jobs, real life”. The collection consisted of straight-lined skirts, utilitarian shirts with front pockets, grey and white suits, and toned-down ballet pumps. Prada is formidable and then indulgent; Prada does not capture the narrative of a defined Prada woman but makes clothes reflective of women for women to wear. Prada enhances the complexities and textures of being – a woman like Miuccia Prada - capturing the realism of womanhood that does not infantilise them. This contrasts with designers like Valentino, who design to enhance femininity's overt and visual representation. Valentino’s clothes and world-building only reflect a fraction of womanhood, as womanhood is not always feminine, soft and pretty.
Prada FW 2023 at Milan Fashion Week
The visual representation of sexual capital to me is tied to the essence of polished sensual sexuality and luxury of Tom Ford’s Gucci, the office siren off duty. Tom Ford’s Gucci era ushered glamour and audacious sensuality, which held both modernity and seduction in the palms of their hands. Models had their hair slicked back, wearing tight pencil skirts, tight satin figure-hugging shirts, and bondage-strapped high heels to the Gucci Autumn 1996 show with the infamous black and white bone hip cut-out dresses. Collections had daring silhouette cuts and clothes that embodied sensuality, which fashion critic Tim Blanks said Gucci’s collections combined the “notion of the power of sin”. In application, the office siren on duty holds the power to sin but does not sin, restrained as the Prada woman.
Tom Ford for Gucci FW 1996 shot by Mario Testino
Sell-outs?
The question remains of whether girls are sell-outs if we use our inner office siren and leverage our sexual capital. However, it would be ironic to label women who play into their sexual capital at work as sell-outs, as we have no choice but to participate in the labour market and earn a living. For the most part, to be within a corporate world known as a place that prioritises monetary capital and moral flexibility and then labels the use of sexuality as being a sell-out would be the biggest irony.
The office siren trend is in contrast to the rise of the trad-wife movement, where doing innately trad-wife things like cooking, seen through influencers such as Emily Mariko’s silence where she is just making food without speaking, enables the viewer to project traditional notions of femininity onto them as they are mediums themselves. Here, femininity is wielded without an overt display of sexuality; Emily Mariko just makes money by being attractive and doing feminine things. However, the distinguishment is that Emily Mariko’s TikToks are different in aesthetics of how she portrays herself. There is no overt presentation of seduction, but she still uses her sexual capital to make money as a cooking influencer.
Sexual capital in this trad-wife configuration becomes something to retreat in and out from, diverting the projection of seduction into just femininity. This contrasts with the office siren, who is self-empowered and turned instead into seduction in looks and feminine charisma. However, it must be noted that sexual capital is not mutually exclusive to the different aesthetic portrayals of women, as it is something that can be retreated to and from.
Sexual capital exerts more influence than where credit is due, but perhaps the notion of it not having overt credit makes it more subtly illustrious. And at the end of the day, everyone is just a girl.