I’m no stranger to the old adage “opposites attract” – looking back on some of my past relationships leaves me wondering exactly how I ever managed to date someone so dissimilar from myself.  There’s a certain novelty to being in a relationship with someone who challenges your status quo, and sometimes, finding a yin to your yang really can balance you out.

While some differences can be worked through – religion, political beliefs, cultural norms – some are deal breakers, and in my experience, being in college can delay their appearance.  One that is all too easily masked until you’re in the real world is personal initiative (or self-motivation, if you like).

It may initially sound counter-intuitive, but college provides a series of already-defined tasks that don’t necessarily require a tremendous level of personal initiative to progress through.  But, what happens when that system is no longer in place, and you (and your partner) are left to your own devices to determine what comes next?  What happens when you’re dedicating yourself to preparing for a successful career and your partner decides to postpone the job hunt, and suddenly displays a completely indifferent attitude toward beginning the post-collegiate life?

Well, if you’re anything like me, you assume that should you lend some support and encouragement, your somewhat overdeveloped sense of personal initiative will be catching.

In all likelihood, you will be wrong…and one of two things will happen:

1.  You will smother and alienate your partner with unwanted information. Erika Lawrence, an associate professor of psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, recently conducted research regarding the support couples give one another.  She found that “too much informational support — usually in the form of unwanted advice-giving — is the most detrimental” to a relationship – more so than not providing enough support.  When you bombard your significant other with job postings or suggestions as to things he or she could do to “step up” an area of their life that is lacking in your opinion, you’re not doing anyone any favors…yourself included.

2.  You will enable your partner to become dependent on you as an external source of motivation…which is fine, until you decide to stop being a full-time cheerleader and to invest that energy elsewhere.  Psychology Today’s Jeremy Sherman recently pointed out that unlike humans, other mammals don’t require an external source of Vitamin C.  Apparently, we have the genes required to self-produce Vitamin C, but they’re “damaged beyond functionality.”   As our ancestors incorporated fruit into their diets (and in the process got Vitamin C), the dual sources of the vitamin resulted in what is coined “lazy gene theory.”  Once fruit was readily available, our Vitamin C genes “had no effect on survival” and “just accumulated errors until they didn’t work…And now we’re addicted to this external source of C. Our dependency on it constrains and shapes our behavior.”

If their personal initiative was never there to begin with, what happens when you stop bending over backward and accept that it’s not your responsibility?  If your over-involvement hasn’t already resulted in your partner’s resentment, you’ll begin to resent having to pony up motivation for two.

My (slightly embarrassing) case in point: I briefly dated a home-schooled, Frisbee-golfing waiter who worked at a Thai restaurant and was raised on a miniature donkey farm.  He had no desire to go to college and completely lacked a direction in life – something that didn’t bother him in the slightest (and drove me up a wall).   While it was thankfully a short-lived relationship, had I considered the fundamental difference in our ambitions and levels of self-motivation, I wouldn’t have given him the time of day.

Zero personal initiative combined with excessive personal initiative doesn’t “average out.”

While I was out to eat with some of my favorite people from SXSW, the conversation turned to the documentary “The September Issue” and the surprising differences between the two most powerful women of Vogue: Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington.

Anna Wintour and who?

Precisely.

For all her genius, Grace Coddington is hardly a household name.  She is the sole reason I continue to buy Vogue – had I not seen the documentary, I would have ceased to crack its cover after it ran a feature on a “plus-size super model” who wears a size 4. I don’t care about the designer dresses the trust fund twenty-something crowd wears to the token benefit galas they use to justify the $1600 expense, nor am I interested in Vogue’s “compelling” celebrity interviews.  What I am interested in is the latest gorgeous photo shoot dreamed up by Coddington, the magazine’s Creative Director.  Anna Wintour may be the face of Vogue, but Grace is the visionary who elevates fashion to an other-worldly, awe-inspiring art.

Coddington is a bit of a rogue within the Vogue offices.  At 69, she’s refused to have any work done (a decision that stems, in part, from the series of operations she had after a car accident).  When she’s not pleased with a decision Wintour has made, she’ll march through the corridors to her office in her standard attire: plain black dress, black shoes, flaming-red hair flying in all directions.  Wintour, on the other hand, always looks impeccable: hair perfectly coiffed, she embodies the lifestyle Vogue preaches to the masses.

Our conversation about the documentary made me question the role of appearance in our careers and the opportunities we have for recognition and success.  I wondered if Grace’s “appearances be damned” attitude was one of the reasons she hasn’t been popularized by the press, or focused on during the media-frenzy that surrounds fashion week.  Little is said about her, though she regularly sits next to Wintour during the shows.

Wintour (left) and Coddington (right)

In spite of her now-stark contrast to Wintour’s manically crafted image, it’s interesting to note that Coddington’s looks launched her career in the fashion industry – she won the Vogue Young Model competition in England, and later landed a job as a stylist with British Vogue.

As it turns out, our propensity to favor more stereotypically attractive people is something ingrained in our brain.  In a study conducted with 100 babies, none of whom were more than 3 days old, Dr. Alan Slater found that when the infants were shown pictures of average women and female models, they spent 60-65% of their time looking at the more attractive face.

Furthermore, favoritism toward attractive people begins at birth, reports Dr. Gordon Patzer of Roosevelt University. Patzer explains “in a nursery, before new-born babies are released from a hospital, those babies higher in physical attractiveness – at this level defined as more cute – are touched more, held more and spoken to more.”

In their study “Beauty, Productivity and Discrimination,” researchers Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle found that “Unattractive men earned 15% less than those deemed attractive, while ‘plain’ women earned 11% less than their more attractive counterparts. What’s more, the possibility of a male attorney attaining early partnership directly correlates with how handsome he is.”

If Coddington is a reminder that image doesn’t always trump talent, Wintour is the champion of the idea that “it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.”  In the documentary, she goes so far as to suggest that a cameraman who steps in to play a part in a photo shoot have his belly Photoshopped out.  Upon hearing this, Grace calls the art director and demands that he leave the camera man untouched.

She explains, “Not everything can be perfect in the world.”

I’m interested to hear your thoughts – how much of an impact do you think appearance has on one’s career opportunities, and do you have any experiences or stories to relate?

Since I’ve been living sans-roommate, I’ve become more cognizant of how the moods of those around me impact my own mood.  Not every day as Ellen is a beautiful-day-in-the-neighborhood kind of day, but by and large, I try my best to focus on the positive and roll with the punches.

I’m an ENFJ – and a self-professed care taker.  When I see others in situations that are making them unhappy, I feel obligated to do whatever I can to help…even when it has detrimental effects on my own well-being.  After making a conscious effort to be in the company of upbeat, funny, and generally happy people the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the true importance of the people I choose to spend my time with.

The moods of others (and their subsequent impact) can have lasting implications in our own lives.

In their book The How of Happiness, Ken Sheldon, David Schkade, and Sonja Lyubomirsky theorize that genetics determines roughly 50% of an individual’s happiness, while another 10% is attributable to our circumstances (e.g., wealth, health, marital status).  The remaining 40% is “within our power to change.”

UC San Diego professor James Fowler and Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School studied the power of our real-life social networks, and found that your friend’s friend’s friend (that’s 3 degrees of separation) can influence both your emotional and physical states.  The two researchers found that “each happy friend increases your own chance of being happy by 9 percent, whereas each unhappy friend decreases it by 7 percent.”  How many 7% decreases can we afford to have if less than half of our happiness is within our realm of control?

Of course, you could argue that by being exposed to your happiness, your friend’s mood is likely to improve – but there’s a difference between someone who is having a rough day and a friend who will, without fail, reject any suggestion you make that could lead to a change for the better because it’s easier to continue to wallow in self-pity.  Time will show that friends like these are emotional black holes – regardless of the effort and energy you expend trying to cheer them up, they’ll turn any semblance of positivity into gloom and doom.

Now, onto raincloud number 2: the frenemy.

You’re gearing up for a meeting, or drafting an important e-mail, and happen to check your Facebook stream for updates.  Much to your dismay, one of your less-than-kindred contacts has posted an update that, for one reason or another, gets under your skin.  It’s embarrassing to admit that such a small thing aggravates us, but it’s true – I’m regrettably familiar with hypertension-inducing wall posts.  In a nutshell, they’re irritating.

As Dan Ariely and Eduardo Andrade confirmed in their research, when we’re in an irritated, we’re more likely to make irrational decisions.  This finding may not come as much of a surprise….but when we’re faced with a similar situation in the future, our propensity to make the same irrational decision is heightened – even if we’re no longer in an irritated mood.  Our irrational decision becomes “part of the blueprint for… future decisions;” what our brain considers to be the “way to act.”

Ariely writes, “When we confront a situation, our mind looks for a precedent among past actions without regard to whether a decision was made in emotional or unemotional circumstances. Which means we end up repeating our mistakes, even after we’ve cooled off.”

Is it worth botching an important decision in not just this meeting, but the next, because you’ve voluntarily exposed yourself to someone who can so easily manipulate your mood (as they’ve proved to do time and time again)?  If a single status update can throw your whole day into a tailspin, your next course of action should be obvious:

Account > Privacy Settings > Block List

Voila!  Irritating acquaintances aren’t as easy to deal with in the real world, but if you routinely spend a lot of time with individuals who make you feel like pulling your hair out, you must enjoy pain on some level.

As for me…well, going into my 24th year, I’m resolving to try to do my best to represent one of those 15% bumps in the likelihood that my close friends are happy…even if that means distancing myself from others.

This past week has been full of firsts.

I just got back from my first SXSW, which, along with being the first career-related conference I’ve ever been to, was my first time traveling alone.  It was also the first time I fully realized that, like so many of my good friends and peers, I’m plagued by the Impostor Syndrome.

The Impostor Syndrome was first identified in the research of psychotherapists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978.  Their work showed that “many women with notable achievements also had high levels of self-doubt.  This deep lack of confidence – which couldn’t be equated with anxiety or other disorders – appeared to involve a deep sense of inauthenticity…these individuals often believe they are ‘fooling’ other people, ‘faking it’ or getting by because they have the right contacts or are just plain lucky.”

One of my dearest friends was just offered a great position with Amazon.com.  When she told me she was going to be interviewing out in Seattle, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she’d blow them away.  She launched her career by taking an opportunity at a fashion startup and making herself indispensible – she taught herself to code on the job and forged her own niche in the company.  In spite of her tremendous success, she felt undeserving of the position.

I never understood how such a beautiful and accomplished woman could be so hesitant to embrace and espouse her own talents – to own up to her successes and not minimize her accomplishments – until I realized I was doing the same thing.

According to public speaker and consultant Valerie Young, Impostor Syndrome can prevent sufferers “from fully enjoying their success and seizing opportunities, and can cause them to overwork to compensate for supposed deficiencies…Internalizing these beliefs, rather than discussing them can lead to other emotional issues, including depression and low self-esteem. Over time, harbored Impostor Syndrome can make it difficult to accept praise for any level of accomplishment.”

Young identifies three elements at the heart of Impostor Syndrome:

1. A complex view of success
2. A warped definition of competence
3. The way we respond to failure

At SXSW, it’s easy to feel unsuccessful when it seems as though everyone around you is working for an up-and-coming start-up or an agency that wields tremendous clout, and within a few hours of my arrival, the Impostor Syndrome had reared its ugly head. I began feeling like I had no right to be there, and that I had tricked myself into thinking I would “fit in” in the company of so many intelligent, motivated, and creative people.

After awhile, I realized that the vast majority of the attendees weren’t in their early 20s, and were there on behalf of their employer.  I was the exception to both of the rules, but in no way did that speak less of me.  It was easy for me to talk about nearly anything with them – and after successfully holding down my end of a conversation with Dan Ariely, I focused less on titles and agencies and more on the people themselves.

I also felt out of the loop (and thus inadequate) when my peers were name-dropping and discussing the merits of one tech blogger compared to another…which made it easy for me to fall into the second trap of the impostor syndrome: evaluating my competence and skills based something completely off-base; in this case, my name-dropping skills.  Paris Hilton can probably list off who’s who in the film industry, but that doesn’t mean she’s really an actress.  I reminded myself that competence isn’t contingent on one’s ability to keep up with casual industry banter, but rather, on successfully employing the skills and tools that drive the industry.

I went to SXSW because I’m passionate about what it is that I do; I wanted to seize the opportunity to learn from thought-leaders and connect with peers who have a similar inclination to be successful and stay on the cutting edge of an ever-evolving field.

Anyone who allows themselves to feel like an impostor in that situation is simply committing self-sabotage.

So, instead of damning myself to continue to feel discouraged, incompetent, or like a fraud, I readily admitted to not knowing Mark Cuban from Clay Shirky.  I owned the feeling that I was a bit overwhelmed, ridiculously excited, and completely out of my comfort zone.  And once I did so, I came into my own and had one of the best trips of my life.

Failing to acknowledge our own humanity — our insecurities as well as our talents and abilities — is the ultimate impostor act.

If you’ve tuned into the news lately, you’ve probably heard something about Greece and their looming deficit (estimated at about 13% of their GDP – four times the amount permitted by Euro Zone members).  Just last week, 20,000 Greek workers went on strike to protest some of the government’s proposed initiatives to curb the growing debt, and France and Germany are considering a financial bail-out to keep Greece from defaulting on debt payments due in the coming months.

Greece has been no stranger to unrest over the past few years; the police shooting of a 15-year old sparked youth riots across the nation in December 2008. One of the rioters, Michalis Sarantis, explains, “The murder…was the straw that broke the camel’s back, because we all face huge problems trying to survive on a daily basis. We can’t manage, and rage, anger and anxiety build up inside. And this totally illogical incident, the killing of a 15-year old by a policeman who should be protecting the public, it’s broken something inside us, it’s broken down our resistance.”

At 27, Sarantis is one of the members of Generation 700: Greece’s disenchanted 25-35 year olds, who, after graduating from college, can expect to make a monthly salary of 700 euros (around $930 USD).  67% of Greeks in this income bracket are between the ages of 18 and 34; two-thirds are women.  What’s more, Greece has the highest cost of living of any country in Europe -  66% higher than in Germany and Holland.

Only since the beginning of the U.S. recession have we been hearing titles like “the boomerang generation,” but the phenomenon is nothing new in Greece: around half of men and women under 30 still live with their parents.  Half of the country’s college graduates report finding work upon graduation, and nearly a quarter of those 29 and under are unemployed and rely on their parents’ financial assistance to make ends meet.  Rather than an education leading to greater job opportunities and a higher position on the economic ladder, degree-holders actually face fewer employment prospects than their less educated peers.

For those lucky enough to make €700 a month, their salary rarely comes from a full-time employer.  More and more young Greeks are free-lancing or taking short-term contract positions, which, if they’re lucky, provide some benefits.  Their meager wages have postponed adulthood against their will – as one engineer who is working 12 hours a week as a teacher put it, “How am I supposed to survive or establish a family on that?”

Greece has the highest graduate unemployment rate of any European nation, and while its industries clamor for business or technology graduates, the university system continues to focus on providing a liberal arts education.  Sociologist Stratos Georgoulas from the Aegean University on Lesbos explains that Greece’s political and economic systems are “tailored to the needs of established and older individuals…and young people are suffering from this.”  Young activists place little hope of change in the hands of the current goverment – Transparency International reported that 13% of Greeks gave bribes to “grease the wheels of the system” in 2008.  On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being very corrupt, the country’s political parties had an average score of 4.4.

Shortly after the riots, Guardian columnist Helena Smith wrote, “For many these are a lost generation, raised in an education system that is undeniably shambolic and hit by whopping levels of unemployment (70 percent among the 18-25s) in a country where joblessness this month jumped to 7.4 percent….Often polyglot PhD holders will be serving tourists at tables in resorts.”

My idyllic, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants-inspired perception of Greece went flying out the window after digging a bit deeper into the issues faced by our generation in Greece. The country’s pension system stands to collapse in 15 years (a likely precursor to what will happen with our own social security program), and the smaller G700 will be faced with the burden of providing for an aging population that far outnumbers them.  The G700 isn’t alone in their situation: Spain’s “mileuristas,” Germany’s Generation Praktikum and France’s Generation Stagiaire face similarly daunting wage & employment prospects. 

If you’ve traveled or lived abroad in Europe, what’s your perspective on the employment prospects for young workers?  Is there marked tension between the youth and the established work force?  Could you see a similar situation becoming true for the U.S. in years to come?

Unless the above question was coupled with a mandatory relocation to No-Mans-Land, Idaho, I can’t think of a single one of my peers who would say no to a promotion.  While I like to think I surround myself with a group of motivated and career-oriented friends, I truly believe that most Generation Y professionals bear little resemblance to the slackers in Office Space.  Though we may have seen the movie a thousand times (and dreamed of carrying out our own DIY cubicle improvements), when given the opportunity to advance in the workplace, we relish it.

Although I largely disagree with the majority of criticisms the rest of the world levels against the United States, one I do agree with is our relative ignorance of current events in other cultures.  In our writing, many Gen Y bloggers (myself included) often make sweeping generalizations about our entire generation.  While many of these hold true, this article in the Wall Street Journal was a wake-up call to me.  We are a global generation, more connected than ever before, yet how much do we really know about our fellow twenty-somethings in China? India? Japan?

The Japanese have built a reputation as being a nation of incredibly driven, high-achieving work-a-holics.  We hear stories of “salarymen” who work 20 hour days and see their families only on weekends, but that legacy could stand to change with Generation Y.  Salarymen, step aside: enter the hodo-hodo zoku, or “so-so folks.”  The WSJ’s Hiroko Tabuchi proclaims that Japan’s newest phenomenon is “many young workers…shunning choice promotions – even forgoing raises – in favor of humdrum jobs with minimal responsibilities.”

Boku, Otaryman

Twenty-somethings have so embraced the hodo-hodo mentality that Boku, Otaryman, one of the most popular mangas in Japan, chronicles the unhappyday-to-day existence of its author.  The title stems from a combination of “salaryman” and “otaku,” a word “often used to describe a socially inept young man obsessed with comics, computers, or anime.” Yoshitani,  the manga’s author and a systems engineer salaryman, began the comic on his webpage.   “There are more and more people who want to do things hodo-hodo,” he says. “I actually don’t know anyone who wants to be promoted.”

Thirty years ago, nearly 40% of the employees at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government took exams to advance to higher-level management positions.  The prestigious employer now reports that only 14% of eligible employees take the exam.  The lackadaisical work ethic of Japan’s 20 and 30-somethings has opened a window of opportunity for clerical workers – mostly women in their 40s – to step into management positions.

In conducting a global work force survey of 18 countries, consulting firm Towers Perrin found that only 3% of Japanese workers “were willing to do extra work to add value to their companies.”  The global average?  21%.  It’s estimated that 620,000 young men in Japan drift in and out of employment, and are often far more devoted to their personal interests and endeavors than those of their employer.  They’ve been given their own own classification as NEETs: Not in Education, Employment, or Training.

Chiaki Arai points to Japan’s decade long economic slump as the source of the hodo-hodo, saying “young Japanese saw the dreams of the older generations vaporize amid job cuts and corporate reorganizations.  They became skeptical about the value of hard work.”

Given our current economic climate, do you think America’s tweens will take a similar attitude when they enter the workforce in 10-15 years?  Have you ever turned down a promotion?

Over the next month, I’ll be writing a series of posts about Generation Y around the globe.  If you have any insights you’d like to share, I’ve love to hear from you!

This is the third of a four part series on fashion marketing and ethics.  You can read my previous posts here and here.

I’d really like to know who decided to rebrand Extra Gum as a “snack substitute and weight-loss tool.”  Or who gave the green light to publish the book authored by Bethenny Frankel (of The Real Housewives of New York fame) entitled Naturally Thin: Unleash Your Skinny Girl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting that reads as a guide for developing and rationalizing anorexia.   Frankel champions numerous eating disordered behaviors; ordering dessert and eating only one spoonful; eating half a bagel, but after removing the bulk of the bread so what remains is essentially the crust.  If you follow her recommended “diet,” you’ll end up eating fewer than 1,000 calories a day.

It’s been a long time since the media did much good for women’s body image, but when did they stop merely suggesting that women “slim down” and begin the point-blank recommendation of unhealthy behaviors that beget eating disorders?

The average woman sees 400-600 advertisements a day, and though only 9% contain messages directly pertaining to appearance, 50% of ads targeting women reference physical attractiveness.  As I previously pointed out, the average model weighs 23% less than the typical female, yet 69% of women claim that their perception of the ideal body is influenced by images of models.  We have been conditioned to idealize a body that is genetically infeasible for the overwhelming majority of us.

After the controversy caused by Ralph Lauren’s disturbing retouching of an already waif-like model, Newsweek created a photo-essay of the “decade’s biggest airbrushing scandals.” It’s interesting to see that the Hollywood beauties held in such high esteem by publications such as W and Vogue fail to meet the definition of beauty required to grace their pages.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that women’s perception of their own body was negatively affected after viewing just 30 minutes of television programming which presented an “idealized” body shape.  68% of women participating in a study at Stanford University reported feeling worse about themselves after looking through women’s magazines.  In fact, after looking at magazine ads, 49% of women “were influenced by magazine pictures to want to lose weight, while only 29% were actually overweight.”

90% of women overestimate their body size, and the same percentage report being dissatisfied with their body in some way.  How much of that dissatisfaction stems directly from our comparison to the increasingly unrealistic ideals propagated by mainstream media?

As easy as it is to acknowledge that such ideals are unhealthy and detrimental to our psyche, truly believing that statement (and not feeling inadequate while flipping through Elle) is a different animal.  When will we step back and say “enough is enough?” Or will we settle for reminding ourselves of the powers of photomanipulation, take such advertising “with a grain of salt,” and passively accept the damaging messages spoon-fed to us?

I’d never planned on staying in Madison after graduation.  After five years here, I was ready for a change; something more metropolitan, with better concerts, shopping and warmer weather.  With my closest friends in Kansas City and Des Moines, I didn’t have a lot holding me here.

While I struck out in my full-time job search, I was lucky enough to land a marketing internship at a firm in Madison, so in Madison I stayed.  As I’m not much for the bar scene, I didn’t have the easiest time connecting with other 20-somethings and meeting new people.  Or at least that’s the excuse I used.

It’s easy to feel isolated when your closest friends have moved away, and most people your age have well-established groups of friends.  But, starting the next chapter of your life in the same city isn’t as impossible as I’d thought.  If you put yourself out there, you’d be amazed to find that there are a lot of other young professionals in the same boat.

Start a book club. I love to read.  I also love to talk.  Unfortunately, when I searched for book clubs in the Madison area, all of them seemed to be “by invitation only,” or were just an excuse for soccer moms to get away from their kids and gossip under the pretense of discussing the latest Danielle Steele.  Not exactly my cup of tea.  In November, I logged onto Brazen Careerist and asked if anyone in the Madison Brazenite group would be interested in a book club.  I didn’t expect much of a response, but was pleasantly surprised.  We had our first meeting in November, and I sat nervously at Barriques, book in hand, feeling a bit like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail (sans the whole romantic bit).  Long story short, we’re going into our fourth meeting, and I feel really lucky to have met the people I have.

Host a board game night. Do more than just join a professional organization to expand your network – dive in and start something new.  Take a page from the techies in Silicon Valley – suggest hosting board game nights (and offer to head up the effort).  While any board game could do, I’d go for Settlers of Catan.  A recent article in the Wall Street Journal quotes Mark Pincus, CEO of the gaming start-up behind FarmVille, as saying “Settlers is definitely the new live networking for our crowd.”  The game “closely approximates entrepreneurial strategy…and the random rolls of the dice force people to revamp their strategies for winning.”  Sounds like a winner to me.

Get a dog. When my friend got Bauer, his Boston Terrier, his number of friends on Facebook seemed to increase exponentially.  When I asked him why, he replied with two words: “Dog Park.”  It made sense – dogs are a great way to break the ice and meet new people.  If you can’t have a dog at your apartment, or don’t want the responsibility of having one, think about volunteering at your local Humane Society.  Chances are they’re in need of dog walkers, and you get some of the perks of having a pet without the downsides.

Move. It’s tempting to stay in the campus area of your city – it’s familiar, the rent is cheap, and if it’s anything like Madison, the night life is centered there.  I moved to a new neighborhood just a mile away from campus, and it’s shown me a side of Madison I completely missed as an undergraduate.  As it turns out, there’s still a lot to discover in this city.