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You might say that my original premise wasn’t all that original.
You might also say that I blew my cover, compromised my story, and hurt a lot of people along the way.
You’d be right on all counts.
And since we’re all friends here, I have another confession: somewhere between the first time I glued on that sweet Tom Selleck mustache and the last time I stuffed my drawers with that less-sweet tube sock, I accidentally fell in love with the boss.
I don’t mean the red-hot, heart-skipping, schoolgirl-crush-on-steroids kind of love, either—though there was certainly a lot of red-hot crushing going on. I mean the kind of love that makes you trulybelievefor the first time in your life—not just in love, or fairytales, or great golden possibilities.
The kind of love that makes you believe inyourself. In your strength. In your gifts and your specialness as a human being seeking a meaningful connection with another human being, despite all the obstacles, misunderstandings, and human flaws.
When you consider everything working against us, the odds of finding your one capital-P Person feel downright impossible, don’t they? I mean, I went into this experiment assuming that most men were incapable of—or, at the very least, highly resistant to—growing emotionally, showing vulnerability, or admitting their mistakes. And my assumptions about women weren’t any better. Women, I believed, were too afraid of our own power to actually do anything to take it back.
I was arrogant and stubborn and plain-old wrong in almost every possible way (except the falling in love part, but we’ll get back to that).
The truth is, we’re all a bunch of walking paradoxes. We are sensitive and brash, emotional and guarded, cowardly and courageous, horribly stubborn and yet capable of profound change.
It’s society that tries to shove us into pink and blue boxes, to make us question the way we look, the clothes we wear, the way we speak, the way we walk, the kinds of things we’re interested in. According to some fancy-pants sociologists, even the way we chew our food is a marker for gender identity!
This social compartmentalization is unnatural at the most primal, basic level, and it hurts every last one of us. At home, at work, in our families, in our friendships, in our marriages and partnerships. It hurts our children. It hurts our future. We’re taught from childhood to fear what makes us different rather than embrace it, and the lingering effects of that fear are staggering. During my brief time on Wall Street, I saw up close and personal all the ways in which we allow those differences to become dividers, those dividers to become justifications, those justifications to become weapons.
It doesn’t have to be this way. I believe that each of us has the power to break out of our confining boxes and refuse to be shoved back inside. And most importantly, to stop forcing our fellow humans to conform to narrow definitions that do nothing but starve all of us of light, love, connection, and collective greatness.
Wiser people than I have said that real change comes slowly, if at all. Perhaps this is true. But it’s not a reason to give up. I know, I trust, and Ibelievethat change is possible.
Despite all my fumbling, stumbling, and bumbling—tube sock between the legs, remember—I still managed to expose some of the core discriminatory issues at the investment firm. With guidance and support from the firm’s incredible—wait, scratch that—from the firm’sbadassfemale staff, the leadership team has already begun implementing changes to make the company an equal, challenging, and rewarding place forallof its team members.
And despite all my fumbling, I still managed to experience real human connection, friendship, and yes, love.
Allow me to close with a few precious nuggets of hard-earned wisdom:
1.Assumptions might make an ass out of you and me, but if you have the opportunity to challenge them, take it. And if you don’t have the opportunity, make one! This might mean an elaborate disguise, but it could also mean something as simple as talking to a new person, reading a book, wandering into a different neighborhood, or simply asking yourself if there’s any room for your opinions to change. (Spoiler alert: there’s always room for change).
2.A tube sock between the legs, while fun at parties and an excellent conversation starter, does not a real man make. Which is to say you can never trulybecomeanother person, but empathy and compassion begin with putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. If each of us committed to practicing that on even the smallest level—at work, or within our own group of family and friends—just think what we might accomplish together! Most importantly…
3.When you find your capital-P Person, the one who sees through your disguise and deep down to your soft, squishy, longing-for-connection heart, don’t be Ellie. Don’t screw it up. I know it’s scary, but find your bravery. Own it. Open up your heart and let love in. And don’t let that person get away.
One fateful afternoon,I put on a pair of men’s shoes and started walking my mile in hopes of changing the workplace environment for a group of women swimming against the current in a sea of inequity.
But in the end, the thing that changed most profoundly was myself.
And that, my friends, is when the real journey begins.
—Eleanor Seyfried
P.S. Dearest J,on the chance that you’re reading this, and on the chance that it isn’tcompletelyobvious… Even without my mustache and tube sock, I’m still madly in love with you.
Half an hour later,I’ve read it more times than I can count. My head is spinning. I’m so proud of my girl, so happy to see her hard work come to fruition, even if it wasn’t how either of us had planned. The story went live two hours ago, and the damn thing has already gone viral.
The question on everyone’s mind—and comment thread, and Facebook and Twitter feeds—is this:
#WWDJD?
What will “Dearest J” do?
Well, as a man who makes his living wooing wealthy clients and convincing them to part with oodles of hard-earned cash, I’m nothing if not a goddamnexpertin customer satisfaction.
Before the closing bell, the People of the Internet will have their answer.
