An Office Where Funny Business Is Encouraged

Why workplace teams that share laughs do better and more profitable work. (Yup, office yuks have been studied!)

One morning around a dozen years ago, I walked into the bullpen of the magazine at which I worked, and sitting in my boss’s chair was a cheap, inflatable sex doll, one of those latex ladies in a garter and panties with a startled, round-mouth expression. We all knew who put it there: the office stinker, a truly hilarious and much-loved senior person. He was one of the few who dared to joke with my boss—a notoriously talented but formidable woman who could reduce junior editors to tears—let alone in such a blatantly inappropriate way. What was particularly funny about this was that she’d recently cut her hair, and the doll’s stylized, Betty Boop bob made her and the doll look like twins.

Everyone sat there, tittering nervously, waiting for her to walk in and splash her double nonfat latté all over her Prada pencil skirt and pointy pumps. My office was in the back, but I loitered nearby—there was no way I was going to miss this. The tension was thick as Jell-o. The culprit sat coolly at his desk near hers, typing away as if nothing was amiss.

Check out the whole story at SUCCESS.com

I am a Formerly Hot blonde..always the ‘pretty one’ in the family, never lacking for attention or dates. Fast forward…I’m now 42, mother of four blonde blessings, and yes….going through a totally-typical divorce. The funny thing is…during a fifteen-yr abusive marriage, I was brought so low that I had completely ‘let myself go’ (and I despise that saying!)   Now that I’m free, I’m finally strong enough to take the time and effort to take care of ME…haircuts, highlights, tanning, whitening my teeth…and eating healthfully and exercising, of course. I had become so accustomed to being virtually invisible during my thirties that the scant attention I now still receive from men just absolutely floors me! Ah, it’s good to find that girl again. Yes, the men paying attention are my age or older, but that’s as it should be, and fine with me!

Ladies, you’re still hot…just hot now to a different demographic. Embrace it: it’s not gone! 

I didn’t take the cruise’s towel origami workshop, but I thought this little guy was cute

I’m not a bikini person.

I’ve never had a flat belly in my life, and after my twins, my norm is a not-flat belly with loose, puckered skin that flops a little over whatever waistband I wear. Even at my thinnest (see: Divorce Diet) I have always felt that my abs are better suited for a one-piece or one of those tankinis with a flap of fabric hung like a little dog door  from a bikini top.

But I just went on my first-ever cruise (the silver lining from that horrible shipwreck in Italy is that prices dropped and everyone is extra careful now) and as I was packing, I threw my bikini in. Ef it, I thought. I can’t believe I will be the only one with a postpartum belly on board, and if I am, then let it be known what we women go through for our children, damn it!

I also threw in a tankini top, fully expecting to have lost my body image bravado when faced with actually exposing my midsection.

But I didn’t! It helped that there were all body sizes and shapes on board, many in bikinis, but I also had a distinct shift in mindset. The last time I tried to wear one, back in my 20s, my attitude was, “I don’t look as good as I should in this bikini.” Looking down at my belly now that I’m almost 45, my first thought was, “I don’t look as bad as I could in this bikini,” which morphed into, “In fact, I look downright fine, and who’s looking anyway?”

Best vacation I’ve ever had. More proof of what I apparently have to learn again and again over the years: That actual looks don’t matter nearly as much as how you feel about how you look. In my experience, changing how you feel about how you look is a lot harder than slapping on some makeup or even doing 700 crunches a day, if you were so inclined. Still, I think the latter is a better investment of emotional energy.

Thoughts?

The End of the Comparathon

Posted By Stephanie Dolgoff on March 18, 2012

Reason number 963 I’m officially glad I’m not young anymore: The comparathon is officially over.

Here’s what I mean. I had a major girl crush on a woman in college I barely knew. She seemed so at ease at the keg parties and protest meetings, emanating a cool aloofness that gave her a command of the room. When I saw her, I instantly felt like a big, cloying clown trying to make people like me through laughter. Her way seemed so much, well, better.

This obsession was but one example of the terrible habit I had when I was in my 20s—I constantly compared myself to other women, reflexively, like breathing.

The willowy woman at the next table, snarfing down a burger and fries? The mere fact of her whippet-thin body and lightening quick metabolism made me a big fat slug. That happy couple sitting across from me on the subway, gazing lovingly at each other—clearly they had a wonderful, enviable, perfect relationship, which only highlighted how mine were often hopelessly complicated. FULL ARTICLE HERE.

Posted By Stephanie Dolgoff on February 19, 2012

I’m going through a divorce, which is hideous, as anyone who has been through one knows. Not only are you mourning the death of the family you dreamed about and worked so hard to build, but if you speak or write about it in public, as I have, you deal with people who (believe it or not) truly think that you represent all that is wrong with society: a failure to live up to commitments.

I have no Earthly idea how, if all of us in marriages that make us feel terrible about ourselves were to stay put, the world would be a better place. In some magical way, there would be no nuclear threat, everyone would have enough to eat, cancer would be as rare as leprosy and cartoon sparrows and butterflies would flutter and chirp around us like Snow White pre-apple. Oh, and weight loss would be a breeze.

Yeah, no. With the possible exception of Kim Kardashian and her ilk, most people who divorce do so only after exhausting all other means of keeping the commitment alive, and after long and painful introspection about what it means to break a commitment. This process has taught me that some commitments—ones that interfere with other, more important ones you’ve made to yourself and to others—should be broken.

READ THE WHOLE POST HERE AT BESTLIFE.COM

But I appreciate her writing it. As I’ve posted about, I, too, have braced for the catcalls I, like most young women, used to endure, and instead heard sound of cartoon crickets chirping. Over time, and now that I am 44, that has become a relief, and I have certainly never missed feeling at the mercy of sweaty catcalling guys drinking 40s on milk crates in front of the corner bodega. When I was a teenager, I felt assaulted by the attention, that my body was not my own, that every stare or grope or subway masturbator took a piece of it with him, so there hardly anything left of me. I’m pretty sure the crappy body image and eating disorder I dealt with back then was a direct result of feeling like there were no boundaries to protect me. This is a young woman thing for sure–it has nothing to do with how “hot” you were.

(For those of you not from New York or Tokyo, there were guys who would surreptitiously masturbate at young women on the subway, at least when I was young. Like Bradley, I have not encountered them recently, which may be because I am no longer perv-worthy. It might also be that would-be creeps take one look at me with my mom-chic clog boots and time-furrowed brow and know I’d raise hell–something I didn’t do either as a young woman.)

My take: I agree with Bradley that not having to feel so exposed is a blessing of Formerlydom, and knowing you don’t have to suffer in silence if someone violates your boundaries is another. I’m not sure I agree that grey hair makes a woman look intimidating, though, or that it confers a Harry Potter-like cloak of invisibility that some would find welcome. I don’t endeavor to look intimidating so much as to keep my voice at the ready. That’s something I wish I had at my disposal back in the day.

Please comment!

In case you’ve not devoured People and US and every other tabloid in the last week or so, the near-50-year-old Moore is in some kind of rehab, supposedly because she’s not dealing well with the fact that her skank of a husband cheated on her so publicly. But many sources–which, granted, tend to repeat what the others say–seem to think she is age-obsessed and bugging out mainly because she is not 21 anymore. The video above pretty much sums it up.

Now, I came down on her a couple of years back for not owning her surgery, and thus making the rest of us feel like if we only exercised more and used the right $240 per ounce night cream we would look as good as she does. (My wee bloggy self coming down on anyone is like a light tap on the shoulder, but still). To me, not admitting the truth was just unkind to women who are already inclined to be hard on themselves.

But now I feel for her. Clearly, laughing at herself for her concerns about aging–which is the main way I like to keep perspective about it, along with Laura Mercier undereye concealer–either didn’t work or wasn’t available to her as an option. My hunch is that she never allowed herself to feel her way through the awkward transition from young to old(er) that we all inevitably experience. Instead, she tamped it down with surgery and procedures and lap dances and young husbands and tweeting snapshots of herself looking incredible in a bikini.

In my experience and opinion, the only way to get through something difficult is to go THROUGH, not around, no matter whether it’s divorce (my latest drama), disappointment or the passage of time.

Memo to Demi: It’s really fine and sometimes quite awesome over here on the other side of young. When you’re ready, I’ll be here, anyway, for a cup of coffee and a laugh.