A Whiter Shade of Pale

One of the things I love most about Friday (except of course the fact that it means the weekend is here and therefore I can finally indulge in my favourite activities like cleaning/washing/cooking), is Friday Dressing. Throughout the week, I am forced to dress dowdily and I eagerly wait for the end of the week which allows me to pull out my relatively cooler clothes, so that I can make a strong statement: I am a girl, I am young, I am cute and hence I am dumb.

So, while I have a limited stock of formals, my collection of jeans, skirts, floral tops and matching accessories can put a garage sale to shame. Every sale season, I go to a mall, determined to buy “sensible” clothes, but end up splurging on more of dresses and colourful sandals, consoling myself that it’s not a complete waste, since I NEED these for Fridays.

But no, my company simply can’t stand to see me happy and devises new ways to make my life even more stifled. The latest measure includes ‘extension of the business casual dress code on Fridays to adhere to global policies’, which when translated, means ‘you are not allowed to look cool anymore.’ Apparently, casual Fridays are more in line with the IT/BPO culture, and god forbid, lest we, the superior banker bandwagon, are put in the same league as other lowly species. So yes, we shall instead volunteer to dress like sophisticated robots, identical in white shirts, leaving no room for a dash of colour, creativity or personal touch, because we have a boring image to uphold.

Every time I imagine myself in trousers and a collared shirt on a Friday, I conjure up the picture of a smaller Bipasha Basu (before she started gymming rigorously and developed biceps) in the movie Corporate, and I so don’t want to be that. Women are always talking about being as successful, as aggressive and as ambitious as men, but I have no intentions of being a pseudo man, because I sincerely believe that while I may be different, that doesn’t necessarily make me inferior. As long as I can get my work done, it doesn’t matter if I am in a chiffon skirt or a three-piece suit.

With the last brush of colour wiped out off my palette, it’s an extremely clean slate indeed, waiting to be painted, hoping to be tinged with a new beginning and craving to be freed…