In today’s culture, there is a certain pressure to find one’s “aesthetic niche.” Take a look at 2020, a year riddled with explosions of dark academia, light academia, cottagecore and e-girl imagery. Social media has made self-presentation a kind of performance, where one’s outfit, lighting and even coffee order has become an indication of identity. Fast forward to 2025, and we’ve traded flowy skirts and notebooks for pencil skirts and lip gloss — the office siren has arrived.
The office siren aesthetic, popularized by TikTok creators and fashion influencers, blends corporate power dressing with femme fatale energy. Think about silky blouses, sharp eyeliner and the aura of a woman who’s always a little too good for her 9-to-5 job. But behind the smoky eyes and monochrome outfits lies a deeper cultural question: Why are so many young women romanticizing the workspace, especially when the workplace itself has historically been hostile or inaccessible to them?
Of course, I, too, have fallen victim to the endless scrolls on Pinterest (one of my Halloween costumes this year was in fact an “office siren,” so let me not be a hypocrite). I would be lying if I said that I didn’t see the appeal of the aesthetic. It’s clean, it’s chic, it’s adult (or at least the version of adulthood that most of us imagined when we were 12 and pretending to type on our mom’s laptop). It promises control in a world where most young people feel like they have very little. And frankly, who doesn’t want to feel like the main character of their own workplace drama?
But that’s the irony. The office siren isn’t a celebration of actually being in the workforce, but a fantasy built at a time when many young people are terrified of entering it. Currently, it’s undeniable that job markets are unstable, wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, burnout is expected and the corporate ladder is a corporate treadmill. The aesthetic gives all the power, without requiring any of the lived experience that usually strips that power away.
In simple terms, it’s escapism dressed in a blazer.
Young women have always been asked to perform adulthood before actually arriving at it. In the ‘90s, it was the “girlboss” prototype: a woman with a latte conquering male-dominated spaces with confidence in a blowout. Later, it was “that girl,” whose life consisted entirely of green juice and 5 a.m. Pilates. The office siren is simply the next stage of this lineage as a version of femininity that claims empowerment while still being shaped by the male gaze.
There is also something deeply ironic about romanticizing the corporate world at a time when so many people are pushing for alternatives. While Generation Z has been known for rejecting traditional career culture, the generation is idolizing an aesthetic rooted in the very structures that we wish to escape. Rather than fully opposing the suffocating nature of corporate culture, this trend has rebranded it as stylish and aspirational, allowing our generation to engage with the corporate world without fully committing to its values. This contradiction reveals the following: young people crave both autonomy and stability.
And that is the crux of how and why the office siren aesthetic has taken hold. She is the version of adulthood that seems almost impossible to achieve right now. As for whether the aesthetic is harmless fun or something more insidious, we must realize that the answer is both.
On one hand, fashion has always been a way for women to reinvent themselves. If a smoky eye makes someone feel unstoppable walking to class, who am I to judge? But on the other hand, we must be cautious of any trend that glamorizes a space without acknowledging its consequences. The workplace is not inherently empowering just because we add a red lip. It becomes empowering when its structures are able to support the people inside it.
So yes, dress like an office siren if it makes you feel good. I certainly will. But we must not confuse fantasy with the truth. Power doesn’t necessarily come from a pencil skirt but from demanding a world where women don’t have to rely on aesthetics to feel strong.
Kaylee Nguyen is a sophomore from Pensacola, Fla. majoring in Medicine, Science and the Humanities and Writing Seminars. She is a News & Features Editor for The News-Letter.
