Deciphering Working Girl: Identity, Post-Feminism, and Power Dressing

Abstract

Self-help author John Molloy's popular 1977 workplace dress manual, The Woman's Dress for Success Book, contains specific directives for secretaries aiming to scale the corporate ladder. Advising against clothing that announces satisfaction with the secretarial position, such as cheap polyester pantsuits, cardigan sweaters, or dresses with large prints, Molloy recommends that secretaries dress for the jobs that they want, not the jobs that they have. 1 For Molloy, this means refusing fashion and its accompanying trend cycles and embracing the timeless skirted suit, which "announces that you think of yourself as a candidate for bigger and better things." 2 Molloy's self-help manual was part of the larger corporate discourse of power dressing, a mode of selfimprovement that promised corporate success to women who achieved the perfect balance of masculine and feminine influences in their workwear. 3 More than a decade after Molloy's manual was published, Mike Nichols's 1988 film Working Girl presented a cinematic realization of its guidelines. Over the course of the film, Staten Island secretary Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) trades her 1980s secretarial attire of polyester miniskirts, teased hair, chunky sweaters, and white Reebok sneakers for sober skirt suits. Tess's wardrobe transformation neatly correlates with an inner one. By the film's ending, she has unseated the enterprising, pushy woman for whom she previously worked and attained her own corporate title, Manhattan office, and high-powered boyfriend alongside a new wardrobe of conservative, "power dressing" staples.