Part 10 (1/2)

(Because, face it: It's one thing to want a Versace gown or an Armani tuxedo. It's another to actually have to wear it 24/7.) Plus, as with any shopping spree, we've got to be open to those offbeat possibilities, to the orange feather boa that actually looks fabulous with the old brown jacket.

”Love is like shopping,” says my friend Suzy, who's developed elaborate theories about the subject. ”It's like if you have to buy a dress for a fancy party. You usually look for something slinky and black, because that's what you're expected to wear, right? But then, as you're browsing, maybe you'll see this pink angora sweater on the sale rack. It's not what you're looking for, but you figure, 'What the h.e.l.l, I'll try it on.' And it looks great, so you buy it.

”Well, by the time the party rolls around, you still haven't found a slinky black dress. So you wear the pink sweater. You dress it up with a string of pearls, and it's just fine. In fact, you feel more comfortable and special in that sweater than you would in some tight black number. And soon that pink sweater becomes your favorite thing in your closet. You can dress it up, dress it down, and you always feel good in it. Maybe your mother will say to you, 'That's what you're wearing?' But so what. It's what's best for you.”

Well, the same holds true for finding a partner, she says. Sure, we may think a slinky black dress is our best bet. But the truth of the matter is, we may get far more mileage-and happiness-out of a fuzzy pink sweater.

So enough with those shopworn feminist theories that claim women will acquire power by acting like men. Enough with those pa.s.se a.s.sertions that women will acquire power by acting like earth mothers or s.e.x G.o.ddesses. The real deal is this: Women will acquire power by acting like shoppers. Whether we're dealing with our careers, our fortunes, or our love lives, I'm telling you: Live like a bargain hunter, rule like an Amazon.

Chapter 17.

Career Advice and Nail Polish If women can sleep their way to

the top, how come they aren't there?

There must be an epidemic of

insomnia out there.

-ELLEN GOODMAN Last year I got a call from my very hip younger cousin, Gail, out in San Francisco. She's the co-director of a pilot program for the homeless.

”I need some smart career advice, Cuz,” she said. (Yeah, we really do call each other ”Cuz.” We're dorks.) ”I'm meeting with the mayor's office tomorrow to see about securing an eighty-thousand-dollar grant for our program and, well, I'm just not sure about something-”

”What's the problem?” I asked.

”Well, do I remove my blue nail polish, or can I keep it on?”

”This is the career advice you want?” I said.

”Well, what else am I supposed to ask?” she said.

Zoiks. These days, sound career advice for young women is harder to come by than a bra that actually fits. Ironically, while we females are constantly bombarded with pointers on stuff like how to give a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b or get rock-hard abs just like Gwyneth's (”Just do six hundred stomach crunches a day! Weigh down your feet with cans of cling peaches!”), real Working Girl wisdom is so rare, some of us don't even know what it looks like.

Yeah, there are the inevitably pedantic relatives offering such gems as: ”I'm telling you, learn data processing. Any idiot can do it.” (Meanwhile their kids are still programming their VCRs for them.) There are career counselors who, by virtue of the fact that they themselves have made a career out of career counseling, inspire Zero confidence whatsoever.

And then there are the ”career” pages in women's magazines-which are terribly helpful if you want to know whether it's okay to have s.e.x with a co-worker on top of the photocopier.

On some level, it's as if our culture sill regards women's careers as hobbies-as slightly narcissistic diversions that we chicks take up in vain attempts to be ”just like men” or to s.h.i.+rk our responsibilities as mothers. Some people are still giving lip service to that demented Harvard study from over a decade ago that erroneously said women over thirty-five were more likely to be killed by terrorists than to get married (”Like there's a difference?” says one married friend). But they've conveniently developed amnesia about the study released in the late nineties that found career women are often more fulfilled than homemakers-and that their kids benefit from this. It's as if the culture still refuses to take us seriously, as if it's saying subconsciously, ”For G.o.d's sake, let's not encourage the broads!”

Plus, unfortunately, careers are one area in which being a blue nail polish-wearing, fabulously tatooed, beautifully att.i.tudinal SmartMouth G.o.ddess is not automatically self-empowering. To the majority of bosses, ”att.i.tude” is something that usually goes hand in hand with the word problem.

So, if you're a righteous babe just starting out on a career path, how might you navigate the terrain?

Since my friends and I have finally moved beyond entry-level positions, allow us to share some words of wisdom, straight from the cubicles, copiers, and corporate boardrooms...

a First and foremost, remember: The twenties basically suck. Lots of people will tell you that the twenties are the best years of your life. Do not believe them. They are either s.a.d.i.s.ts or morons.

The early twenties can be a real shocker, especially if you've been in school all your life. All the prescriptive ground rules of high school and college that everyone spent years b.i.t.c.hing about are suddenly gone, leaving you in free-fall. Suddenly, just when you're legally old enough to drink, you have to pay rent and taxes. Student loans come due. You're no longer surrounded by cohorts who are happy to stay up until 4:00 A.M. discussing Alice Walker and drinking Jell-O shots. The Big Three L's of adulthood-labor, love, and location-loom as a giant question mark.

If you're gay, you've got to deal with whether to come out to a whole new set of questionably intelligent and questionably progressive people. If you're straight, suddenly everyone's trying to fix you up with their dumb-a.s.s nephew and telling you that if you don't hurry up and settle down, you'll be bitter and lonely by the time you're thirty.

In the middle of all of this, you're expected to map out your future.

Is it any wonder that people in their twenties often have nervous breakdowns, develop hypochondria, get married too young to the wrong people, or voluntarily apply for interminable Ph.D. programs?

Look, since your twenties are basically going to be chaos anyway, do as my grandma said to do: Take advantage of them and use the time to get some real life experiences. Travel, if you can. Try a new city. Suffer through a bunch of humiliating entry-level positions in the name of ”comparison shopping.”

Waitress in a sc.u.mmy bar while you take voice lessons during the day or pursue your painting. Work for n.o.ble causes and nonprofits you believe in; chances are, like most do-gooder organizations, they'll pay you c.r.a.p, treat you like s.h.i.+t, and work you to death, but hey! It beats becoming a corporate weenie at twenty-three and working eighty-hour weeks for some crypto-fascist corporation that leaves you with zilch for a soul.

Now is the time when you can afford to experiment. For never again will you think it's kind of groovy to share an apartment with two other girls in the meat-packing district and eat dinner every night at bars that serve free ravioli and nachos during happy hour.

a At the same time, don't be an idiot. Being a ballerina is not a viable career if you have enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The rent does have to be paid. It wouldn't kill you to waitress.

a Watch out for law school. Be forewarned: Go to law school without a pa.s.sion for it and prepare to have a midlife crisis by age thirty. The most professionally miserable people I know are lawyers who went to law school because they had delusions of ”security” and didn't know what the h.e.l.l else to do. Sure, you can always ”do something” with a law degree. Like hang it on your wall while you go to work for a Web-design firm, run for Congress, or move to Berkeley to practice colonic irrigation (similar to law, actually).

a Watch out for Ph.D. programs in the liberal arts. Unless you are truly dying for a career in academia-that is, if you love to teach and research using phrases like ”postmodernist deconstructive valuations of the neocolonial hierarchy” and get paid thirty-two thousand a year to use them in places like Toadsuck, Arkansas (I'm not making that up)-do not, under any circ.u.mstance, go to Ph.D. programs in the liberal arts.

a Treat a career like a lover. Ideally, a career should get you hot and bothered. Why commit to doing something you hate? Like a marriage, it won't last if you're miserable. If you had a lover who lay around the house for years doing nothing but watching Star Trek reruns and drinking Mountain Dew, draining you of precious time and energy, you'd haul his sorry a.s.s to the curb. Well, ditto for any job like that.

a At the same time, stop whining. Everyone has to start somewhere. Recently, I met an eighteen-year-old girl who'd gotten a plum interns.h.i.+p with the State Department. ”It's okay for now,” she informed me, ”but I don't want to work there. I mean, I don't want some entry-level job or something.”

Or something? Honey, I wanted to say: you're eighteen. What do you think they should hire you as-the amba.s.sador to Burkina Faso?

Entry-level positions are crummy but inevitable. Most employers know that you only need the IQ of soap to make copies and change the toner cartridge. Although some will hire you because they actually derive pleasure from insulting your intelligence, others actually hire you with an eye toward grooming you for bigger and better things, provided you prove your mettle.

Either way, there's stuff to be learned by paying your dues. Arrogance, however, is not one of them. Sure, you might be able to design a Web site or make foreign policy better than the twits upstairs, but employers want to make sure you're a known quant.i.ty and a ”team player” before they hand you the keys to the company Cadillac or set you up in your own emba.s.sy.

a Overnight sensations have a terrible track record. Don't beat yourself up if you're not a wunderkind. Everybody hates a prodigy. Unless you're an athlete, actress, or physicist, you'll actually do better in your field if you're not stratospherically successful by age twenty-seven. If you reach your peak early on, where is there to go but down? Better to be like a fine wine than a flavor-of-the-month.