How To Land A Job...On The Set of "Pretty Woman"

YoPro: What Not To Wear by yoproblog


I attended a conference over the weekend with the usual panels, Q&A, networking session, and obligatory post-event happy hour. What was unusual was the choice of outfits among my fellow attendees that seemed to pass for business casual. Emphasis on the casual. 


Their attire struck me as unusual not because I could have babysat most of them and therefore am generationally sartorially out-of-touch, but because the school that I attend is very career-oriented. It encourages students to obtain internships and attend networking events within the first weekend on campus. Consequently, the undergraduates with whom I attend school are networkers on steroids. So it surprised me when I walked into the conference center and the first two women I saw were wearing blazers, but had decked out their lower halves with shorts and a mini skirt respectively. Granted they were wearing black tights, but when you see hemlines that high, they turn heads. 


Most of the young men women at the conference nailed it and looked every bit the yo-pro, but there were certain minor things that I felt compelled to tell my young friends are still not appropriate at a professional event. Things like "hooker heels"-- 5 inch heels representing every color of Tropical Skittles that sound so plastic everyone knows you bought them at Forever 21-- or shoulder-grazing earrings and ironic hairbows. I love me some early Madonna and fully believe that you should "Express Yourself," but there is a fine line between personal self-expression and just too personal. 


Bro-pros, you don't have much to worry about in this department because it's pretty hard to screw up your uniform (unless you have a thing for deep Vs or don't own an iron). So here are some of my biggest (female) offenders:

What's In a YoPro's Bag?

Recently I’ve been wondering why no young professionals have been advocating for mandatory chiropractic coverage in the universal health care debates. While common wisdom would cause one to think that our nation’s elderly would be most in need of chiropractic care, I beg to differ. As any YoPro knows, as a species, we carry our lives with us. Once we’re up, we don’t stop going until 8pm at the earliest and we need a survival kit to tackle the day’s adventures. This survival kit is damn heavy, and our shoulders and backs are paying for it dearly.

We carry these gigantic backpacks and messenger bags like we’re hiking the Appalachian Trail for the next six months. It takes five minutes for us to find anything because we “know it’s in here somewhere” and another five minutes to assemble everything in it just to put the thing on. Once we have it on, it’s too much work for us to take it off, so we just pretend like you’re the one in the way getting on the subway or passing through the lunch line rush.

Because I am secretly mortified that I’m taking out small children, dogs, and tall buildings when I pass, I try to use Fridays to prepare to carry less stuff with me. This is especially necessary on Fridays, because once you’ve tried to squeeze your gigantic bag into a crowded happy hour, you suddenly realize the asinine amount of crap you carry with you. I once tried to meet up with friends on the Frying Pan—a floating dive bar that is literally a boat at Pier 66 in New York City’s West Village—and carried a backpack, laptop case, and purse with me through one square foot of available space among 200+ YoPros. I’m lucky I didn’t get tossed overboard.

Let’s analyze the typical arsenal of essentials I carry with me on a daily basis: