office sirens and girls' girls

a Tik Tok-fueled rant about how neoliberal feminism is trending yet again

On a late-night Tik Tok scroll, I came across this thrift haul video from a girl who bought various shades of grey and black workwear—skirts, blazers, cardigans, the like. Firstly, I was taken aback by the fact that everything was shades of grey and black (like, I feel like you could wear more things to the office that don’t look like you work in District 13), but the next thing is that she introduced it as a haul of “office siren” wear.

Backtrack: “Office Siren” is the newest of these transient trend names used to describe styles of clothing. Its a recent phenomenon that focuses heavily on the vibes of the style rather than the clothes themselves. Yes, there are definitely certain hallmarks of “coastal cowgirl," “eclectic grandpa,” or “tomato girl” style, but most of the styles that they repackage have been around for a while. What the name intends to evoke is a certain lifestyle, a Martha’s Vineyard summer, the Italian Rivera, or a 2000s Renee Zellweger chic, almost like how a perfume commercial captures scent through branding. And it is all branding. It’s to the point where people on Depop list one shitty little Forever 21 pleated skirt and label it “sooo croquette (sp.)” It drives me nuts. These categories become ever narrower, ever more marketable, and ever so fleeting as trends.

“Office siren,” in particular, I hate with a burning passion of a bajillion suns. The reference for “office siren” is a kind of early-aughts Miu Miu workwear, Mia Goth in recent Prada all-grey, with the tiny little Ugly Betty Bayonetta oval glasses that every little Asian kid like me totally remembers wearing in elementary and middle school. It's feminized workwear that isn’t the Hillary Clinton pantsuit. And that would be fine if they just called it that! Call it late 90s-00s cubicle core, not-a-pantsuit women’s workwear, or whatever. But calling it “office siren” sounds like some sort of emergency protocol (quick! a fire! someone use the office siren!) and then like some sort of post-Me Too reactionary cheap trick to bring sexuality and seductiveness back into the workplace. The whole point of a “siren” is someone who is supernaturally seductive and bewitching. Oh, how can men ever resist a siren’s song? That’s why Brenda looked so hot in her little Mango tweed skirt and J Crew cardigan, and that’s why I’m now speaking to HR. The office siren is pretty anti-feminist.

Visual references for those unfamiliar. The creator cites Samantha Jones as an example of an “office siren,” and to that I say, take my wife’s name outta your mouth.

The creator of the trend in a Who What Wear article notes that it's supposed to be women embracing their femininity in a man's world type of women’s lib. We no longer have to assimilate, gals! The flaw in this is that, evidently, so much of this is drawn from a visual and clothing history of the 90s and the early aughts where the work culture was straight out of Mad Men. You go to work to be feminine and “sensual” and hot, but for who?? Who, pray tell, is the one feeding off of this fantasy?

Now, I’m not out here saying “don’t feel hot at work.” There is no sort of moratorium or limitation on being hot once you clock in. Dress how you want. But the branding of women’s “traditionally feminine” workwear as something fitting into this sexualized Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary mold, and then spitting it out into the primordial Tik Tok soup as a new microtrend and lifestyle that these clothes are meant to sell is regressive, male-gazey and just sooo not 2023. Can we try not sell the sexy secretary look back to a bunch of young women post-Me Too?

Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary. For the love of all that is holy, nobody show this movie to the “office siren” community.

Anyway. Back to the original rhetorical frame of this Substack rant. Scrolling through the comments on this Tik Tok, I was pleased to see that there were a number of people who picked up on what had given me pause and were basically calling out this girl for trying to jump on a trend bandwagon evocative of HR violations. What surprised me on the other end, however, was the similarly heated backlash against these people criticizing “office siren” for not being a “girls’ girl.”

Backtrack again: Now, I assume that many more of you are familiar with the concept of a girls’ girl. I would say it is, on the whole, something that is okay. You should be women supporting women, or be women doing things that are morally and ethically sound. You shouldn’t be here kissing your friend’s crush, that’s a mean thing to do. You shouldn’t be putting down other girls to get the attention of a man, that isn’t nice. You shouldn’t be shaming women for liking things that have been feminized and thus subjected to a pejorative status in today’s society, that’s both not nice and also turning yourself into a tool of the patriarchy.

What I cannot get behind, however, is the notion that being a “girls’ girl” means unquestionably supporting your female friends, or other women, in the pursuit of something that is damaging and not great. It’s not actually feminist to use the catchall of womanhood or female solidarity to allow your friends to do bad things, and to absolve them of it. “Oh, but she’s just a girl!” well, your girl’s also out here complicit in causing suffering. It’s a very insulated, privileged, neoliberal feminist thing to do to act like the automatic thing to make you a feminist (ergo in this discussion, right) is to be a woman. Gloria Steinem did not die on the cross to absolve you and other feminists of your sins. You still have to put in the work.

Anyway, so in this comments section, people were like really getting into it over these women who were calling out the anti-feminist nature of “office siren” wear, and then immediately being criticized by self-professed “girls’ girls” who insisted that the other commenters were being unnecessarily negative towards a girl who just wanted to have fun and show off her clothes. That not everything is a big deal, that it’s just a trend and she didn’t make up the name.

To that I say: one ounce of critical thinking could make you realize that the criticism is not directed at the girl herself, but as an extension of this trend gaining speed in the Tik Tok sphere. To boost your Tik Tok video by connecting it to something part of a larger trend is something many creators do, but to add it into this particular trend that has such a regressively sexual connotation makes it valid to criticize you for participating in something that is anti-feminist. To contribute free labor to reproduce repackaged messages of the patriarchy is something that people should be mindful of, and something that is also completely unrelated to this girl’s ultimate effort of having her fun and showing off her clothes.

And to not recognize “office siren” as something that repackages this male gaze and outdated sensuality at the office is both mildly ignorant and very damaging. Like Celine is fond of saying, “some words have meaning”—the meaning and lifestyle advertised by the “office siren” is not something we want to bring into 2024. Plus, nothing on that godforsaken site is really “just a trend.” Tik Tok seeps so deeply into our collective subconsciousnesses, and if we aren’t careful, we end up internalizing more than we think we do. So, it’s not a “girls’ girl” crime to call out women when they are doing things that promote these harmful ideas—if anything, it is another bludgeon of neoliberal feminism, at the right-hand to the patriarchy, that is used to shut down constructive discussions that question how women perpetuate the systems that bind us.

OFFICE SIREN is a NO from me!!!

Anyway. These were just things dwelling on my mind. I’ll get off my soapbox now. Let me know if anything struck a chord with you. Byeee ~ <3