the inessential worker

OF WORKPLACE CULTURE DISAPPEAR. layout ADRIANA TORRES photographer KATIE PANGBORN stylist GIGI FEINGOLD & MADEE FELTNER hmua SARA TIN-U model DANAE RIVERS by ELIZA PILLSBURY THE INESSENTIAL WORKER SELF-PROMOTION, AND SELF-IMAGE BLUR EVEN FURTHER AS THE PREDICTABLE STANDARDS

APRIL 2, 2020, 8:52 A.M.: My skin looks so good after giving it a break from makeup during the six months of quarantine. I’ve also grown out my bangs and invested my stimulus check in a new wardrobe of luxury sweatsuits. Have you heard of the Chloe Ting Challenge? I completed it over the summer. Twice. I also lost a lot of weight from going on quarantine walks with my family. When I moved back home, we literally never argued. Our familial relationship is just so healthy. Like my skin. Have I mentioned my glowing, dewy skin? Iwish working from home looked like bedazzled barrettes, Zoom-calling from Cabo, and newly defined washboard abs framed by a silk pajama set. But failed productivity is not glamorous. Relaxation is a privilege. I’m grateful that my family and I emerged from quarantine mostly unscathed, though my posture and eyesight deteriorated after all the time spent in online summer school, bingeing Netflix, or doom-scrolling through Twitter just to feel something. But not everyone was so lucky.

I was far from the frontlines, among the inessential workers from home. We tried to make the best of it, or at least as best we could. Lacking substantive connections, either virtual or distanced, we obsessively turned inward: “Take advantage of the time, and bake enough homemade sourdough to forget.” We discovered which of our friends owned summer homes. The salons shuttered, so we dyed our hair over the bathtub past midnight. Questionable decisions were no longer questioned. Healthy coping mechanisms were a fever dream; we took our temperature twice a day.

May 25, 2020, 2:45 p.m.: I recently redecorated my workfrom-home setup. Turns out, I have a knack for interior design! And my mom and I taught ourselves how to garden! It’s actually so easy. Now I can make my own basil pesto to put on fresh, homemade pasta. A healthy lifestyle is the key to a healthy life. I’ve also started taking multivitamins with my collagen supplements. I’m supposed to go to a destination wedding next month, so I can’t afford to waste time off on sick days.

With no other outlet than social media, this summer’s stultified self-improvement was no longer for my own sake. If reinvention didn’t have some outward manifestation, it was hardly even worth it. Epiphanies became currency, exchanged for likes and virality — the kind that could land you on the “Today Show,” not the Intensive Care Unit. The distinctions between self-help, self-promotion, and self-image blurred into muddled nothingness.

I wanted to emerge from quarantine unrecognizable, shedding scaly skin, and a few dozen pounds. Instead, my stress acne was never worse, and I spent my days picking my face and snacking until it turned five o’clock somewhere. I read Coleridge and Austen to reclaim my time’s lost value: “Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink.” Among endless hours of boredom, somehow, there still was not a second to spare.

Valuable according to whom? The same Productivity Gods who decide whether an experience is wasted or not? Or rather myself, who subscribes to such arbitrary standards of work, work-life balance, work uniform? Well, those standards have gone out the same window that I now keep open to increase ventilation of potentially infectious aerosols.

In the ‘before times,’ I harbored a perhaps irrational hatred of makeup, but lately, I can’t escape the image of my face on a screen. I feel an unwelcome pressure to look presentable for my professor and peers. The pressure is self-inflicted; I’m already insecure, and I don’t want people who have never met me in-person to associate my participation in class with tragic undereye circles. Even if I don’t have time to brush my teeth before rolling out of bed, I never forget to fill in my brows. INSTANT MESSAGE

AUGUST 10, 2020, 11:14 P.M.: I’m in a committed relationship with my Google Calendar and the “Touch up my appearance” filter on Zoom. Eyelash extensions are my new addiction. Have you downloaded iOS 14 yet? I spent all of last night color-coordinating my homescreen widgets and my GCal aesthetic. My screen time is going to be disastrous this week! And there’s a fall sale at Free People that’s going to destroy my budget! What can I say? First, I am feminine. More importantly, I am productive. The two are inextricable.

INSTANT MESSAGE

OCTOBER 16, 4:59 P.M.: I’ve started working outside more than in my bed. It’s good for the skin and the soul! The pandemic has become a lame excuse more than a legitimate inhibiting factor. Deadlines come and go, the wind blows a cold front through the city. Do I have a cold, or is it finally COVID, come to get me? There’s no consensus, no sense of collective security, or lack thereof. My three month free trial of that guided meditation app is about to expire. But I heard there’s a vaccine coming soon! Maybe then we can go back to normal, or maybe there’s just no going back.

If I usually bought jeans and sneakers at the beginning of the school year, this time, I invested in sweatpants and comfortable tops and T-shirts. I stockpiled dry shampoo, a commodity more valuable to me than all the sold-out toilet paper in the world. The new uniform is professional on top, pajamas on the bottom. I never dress up to make myself feel more put together — rather, to fool others into thinking I am.

Despite these self-conscious compulsions, I’m ashamed to spend so much time on myself when the pandemic has left so many behind: “Kim, there’s people that are dying.” Working parents, teachers, students, and artists of all kinds, not to mention nearly 235,000 American casualties as of November. Unrealistic expectations, whether for reopening the economy or making quota at work, are not simply unsustainable but sometimes actively harmful. And I wonder, where we are supposed to go — to heal — from here? From my hometown bedroom to a viral hotspot? To a changing work environment, one that’s more compatible with a weary workforce? Probably not. ■