BEFORE
The
Fire
There’s A
Flicker
They call it ‘Professionalism’. I call it ‘toxic beauty standards’.
They said dress for the job. Apparently, I wanted to be unemployed.
The moment I walked in with a bold lip and a straight spine, the office air changed. Not the AC — The atmosphere. Overnight, I wasn’t a new hire anymore. I was a type. Too confident. Too put together. Too much.
Basically, corporate wants you visible enough to take notes, but invisible enough to never need credit.
God help! if you laugh, like really laugh especially in a meeting. Suddenly it’s ‘unprofessional’. Like joy needs to be scheduled between finance reviews and feedback loops.
This isn’t about lipsticks. Or outfits. Or energy. It’s about performance.
An act women have been forced to master in heels, with a smile, for decades.
You’re not just reading a blog. You’re reading the fine print they never printed.
I’ll choose meetings to start with. Not the agenda. The ritual. How I rehearsed my tone like it’s a monologue.
Say ‘just a thought’ so you don’t sound like you have authority. Smile when you disagree so it doesn’t get called ‘attitude’.
Every time I was about to speak, I scanned the room like I was looking for exits, not allies. Because it’s corporate sweetie, not a safe space and that was a given.
They told me to speak clearly in meetings. So I did. But what they didn’t tell me and apparently forgot to print in the employee handbook, was the secret language of unspoken rules. Rules everyone who’s been in corporate longer than a chai break somehow knows. Rules no one taught a noob like me who showed up with ambition and winged eye-liner and thought that was enough.
You have to be clear but not intense. Loud enough but not too loud. Otherwise, you’re not leadership material. You need to hold space don’t you dare dominate.
Basically, walk in like a woman who’s been trained to say: I know what I’m doing, but I swear I’m not here to steal your job or breathe audibly.
Oh! and how can I forgot. Even if you jump through every flaming hoops in heels and hit every single mark they laid out and still survive the meeting without getting eye twitches.
They’ll say: “She’s a bit much, she needs to tone it down.”
This is a gamble and corporate is the house. And the house always wins!!! Every move is wrong unless you play it with silence.
One time, I was given a lecture about how I am too honest for corporate. TOO HONEST!!! Tell me, what does that even mean?
Apparently, in corporate you don’t just tell the truth. You translate it.
You can’t say what you mean. You find a version of it that won’t cause a panic, softens the blow with disclaimers. You quote rage in bullet points. Basically, you don’t speak. You negotiate clarity.
Okay then…so I’m expected to be curated and contained. They say girl math is confusing? Babe, girl math has nothing on corporate girl logic.
See, corporate loves a lie that sounds like loyalty. So when you tell the truth, don’t wait for applause. You might get punished. Not directly. Not in an email or an outright no. But in the quiet freeze-out. The right kind of wrong. The one wrapped in corporate slogans and LinkedIn humility.
I mean pick a lane, darling! Your opinion on me is more complicated than my closet on a Monday morning which by the way, is now built entirely around dress codes that HR won’t say out loud, but will definitely email you about.
If you’re ever been told you’re “too much”, darling your’re exactly who CHIC GEEK writes for.
Oh!!! Almost forgot. While we’re sipping this tea let me tell you this isn’t just in our head. Harvard Business Review confirms women who are considered attractive do get hired faster but are judged harsher.
In corporate, fashion isn’t about looking cute. It’s about looking unfireable. Dont’t dress so sharp so no one questions your sharpness but look put together so that no one asks if you’re okay three times before 11 AM.
But be careful honey, you don’t want to end up as a punchline in a Slack thread you’ll never be invited to.
Because the second I walked in with a red lip, “Is it a big day?”
“Nope, it’s just Tuesday. And yes! I’m wearing a bold lip for no reason at all. Maybe because I like my face loud. Confident. Put together. Maybe because I can”.
And kajal? Apparently, it’s either a personality trait or a medical concern. No kajal: “Didn’t sleep?” “What happened to you?” “Are you okay?” Wear it: “Are you filming something later?”
Did the sight of my mascara triggered a compliance alert?
There’s no winning! You see, makeup was never meant to be about vanity. It was war paint. Concealer for the deadlines that stole our sleep. Mascara to keep eyes open even when our souls are fried.
We don’t wear it for compliments. We wear it so no one offers us peppermint tea for being ‘low energy’. Truth is, they expect us to be Attractive but not distracting.
And confidence, by the way? Not a bonus. Apparently, That might be the entry ticket.
The only reason I sounded like I knew what I was doing was because I rehearsed my line in the bathroom mirror twelve times. “Say it like a suggestion, not a demand”,“Add a soft smile”,“Blink like a friendly squirrel”,“Now go”. Still, they called me fiesty. That’s where it got a little sticky.
I want to as to you all, how did a smile become lethal to our existence. You see, there is a corporate approved smile that has to land warm enough to say, I’m nice, but not here to start an uprising. Because one accidental smirk? Suddenly Deepak from finance is hovering like my contour sent him an invite. “No brother, this bronzer wasn’t for you”.
Somehow, my version of friendly gets filed under flirtatious. I mean make me understand how one stray eye contact with a smile intact helped me seduce Raj from procurement.
We’re not here to fit in, we’re here to stand out. Join the Chic Geek list.
I always knew I wasn’t built for beige cubicles and midweek mediocrity. But hey, learning has a price, right? Mine came wrapped in a shiny lil ID badge.
DAY ONE : New city. Big brand. Even bigger dreams. I didn’t just walk in. I arrived. Fresh heels. Clean slate. Bold lip. Not for seduction but for stamina. Not for attention but for ammunition.
WOW! How fast they rewrote me. They didn’t see a new joinee. They saw a challenge to gendered professionalism. They saw a statement. And the second a woman becomes a statement, she stops being a person.
Competence? Not enough. They needed a story and they wrote one.
“She’s just a pretty face.”
“Is she trying to sleep her way up?”
“Watch out — she’s ambitious.”
“Be careful — she’s cunning.”
The truth was I was never there to compete. I was there to learn, to build. To figure out what leadership even looks like from the inside. I was never there for the long haul. Just a short visit. But what I learned was the hidden math.
How emotional labor becomes a silent tax on women who dare to dream louder than a whisper.
Every move I made was either Doubted, Debated or Diluted. I wasn’t doing the job anymore. I was performing. Because in that theatre of insecurities, every opportunity was a barter.
• Attention in exchange for Access.
• Reputation in exchange for Safety.
• Visibility in exchange for Chances.
People there test you like they’re hoping you’d fail. And when you ace it? They drop a line like,“I wasn’t expecting that from you. Good job”. Guess what? It isn’t praise.
Because those wins came bookmarked with backhanded praise, like success had wandered into the wrong body. But you know, the worst part? The so called, Allies. Who basically let you vent then twist your words into punchlines. Gossips disguised as concern. Support disguised as surveillance.
“If this hit you in the gut. Tell me your stories. Join the Chic Geek list — style, sharpness, and no sugar-coating.”
BDW, women in corporate are shockers. I found out…those silent judgments, side-eyes and whispers were never a result of a few unlikable traits. They were projections.
“Who’s she trying to impress?”,“Why’s she so dressed up? Is there a shoot today?”,“Look at her, clearly trying to get ahead”,“She was all buddy-buddy with that guy last month. Now it’s someone else”.
OMG! What happened to, “We need to stick together, ladies!!!”.
Truth is, a woman with a backbone, a brain and a good outfit is either a threat, a flirt or a fake. But never a peer. I mean… where did these people even study?
Sure there are a few good ones. People who are kind. But there is no safe space in corporate and people make it seem normal. I mean, come on people. Do you even know what normal is? It’s paranoia.
Still I kept showing up. Cleaner than the rumors. Sharper than the doubt. Refusing to shrink. Refusing to be rewritten. So next came redirection.
Resilience in rejection. Reinvention in red lipstick. And excellence—with or without their permission.
Someone once said corporate doesn’t always give you friends. And honestly? They were right. If you’re lucky, you’d find them. But if you’re me? Better luck next Monday, babe.
Somewhere between the second whispered rumor and the third unsolicited comment about my lipstick. I realized something. No matter what I say, wear or do. I’ll always be too much for the room. Too loud. Too quiet. Too friendly. Too reserved. Too confident. Too… breathing? Like, can we just exist without a Google Form review on our vibe?
So I decided I should just stop trying to be the right amount of anything. BE TOO MUCH. Get strategic. Cloak in. Do the work. Cloak out.
Headphones? On. Eye contact? Optional. Coffee breaks? Solo. Unless I spot someone who gets it, someone who’s also one slack message away from quitting. And my mind said, what about the drama? Cause that’ll find you faster than HR finds the word ‘toxic’. Wispers always follow.
“She doesn’t say HI anymore”
“She walks like she owns the place.”
“She probably thinks she’s all that.”
“No, actually! I was just praying my eyeliner wouldn’t betray me before the day did”.
Yes, I became distant. Not to disappear, but to protect the little sanity I had left. Because when you’re too seen to be safe and too real to be palatable, you stop craving comfort and start building quiet bunkers under your outfit. If you’ve ever been the last one in the bathroom stall, dodging small talk like it’s a landmine. You’ll know what I mean.
You can only walk into rooms full of “heyyy bestie!” and “we should totally catch up sometime” so many times before you stop trying to warm yourself on fake fires.
Turns out, the loudest rebellion was silence especially when your style defies appearance bias in the workplace. Because in this open-floor-plan of The Hunger Games, professionalism is just code for Please don’t make us uncomfortable by being your full self.
However, this isn’t the end. This was the inhale before the wildfire.
This was just the observation. When the smoke cleared she was still standing in spite of the system. What she did with it is another story. Because the second she stopped playing the game, she saw it: the people who thought they were playing with her!! They were playing checkers in a game of chess…
Just props in her origin story. Cause she had Too much to Do, Too much to Give, and Too much to Become.
If this resonated, you belong in the Chic Geek Circle, and I’ll send you more whispers, more truths, no sugar-coating. Stay in the loop, stay in the light.
EMOTIONS
