Nevergirl's

I learned drama, Shakespeare, grammar, literary devices, and how to fall in love with the written and spoken word in high school. That sentence violates parallelism, by the way, but let’s leave it alone. We’ve far more important things to talk about, like the future of English classes.

In the future, students won’t be memorizing Brutus’ Defense or reading Shakespeare’s plays. Instead, they will be busy acquiring tools to make their tweets come to life with wit. They will learn how to craft Facebook status updates that ooze with dramatic absurdity and glibness. They will be taught how to make their tweets personal and honest:

Read more »

We all have creature comforts; here’s mine – I can’t live without a landline. And for some reason, a house doesn’t seem like a home to me without the sweet sound of a loud BRRRRINNNNGGG  echoing every now and then.

I know I’m attaching too much nostalgia to a REAL telephone but I can’t help myself. I can already see me sitting, phone tucked between shoulder and ear, howling in laughter at K’s recounting of her week, wiping the flour off my hands on a blue pintucked apron — okay, this part is purely imaginary and may have to stay that way because I can’t bake to save my life.
Read more »

There’s a new trend in the U.S’ layoff-beleaguered economy, and it’s one that’s keeping plastic surgeons happy.

In the old days, people had cosmetics surgery to improve their looks, correct physical defects, or steal someone else’s identity and go on a thieving or bombing spree somewhere in Lithuania. Today, they’ve added one more to this eclectic string of reasons.

The new argument for revisional rhinoplasty and other means of going under the knife? Career advancement. The staunchest prophet of this new gospel? Donald Trump.

His Hairness argues that the average worker ant has an innate desire not just to be near good-looking people but to please them as well. For this reason, they work harder to please beautiful bosses and jump at the opportunity to impress. This is why football teams with handsome quarterbacks generally have more success than those that don’t. This also explains why better-looking people command higher entry rates and tend to be promoted faster than their average-looking counterparts.

You would think that in this day and age, The Donald’s arguments would get laughed out of cubicles everywhere. But no, worker ants are sitting up and taking notes. One U.S News and World Report write-up notes that better-looking bosses are more persuasive and are generally perceived as more credible. In his article, Looks: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined, Gordon Patzer suggests several means for prolonging your workplace effectiveness: teeth whitening, eyelid surgery, hair transplant, Botox, and yes, revisional rhinoplasty.

Clearly, it’s not just the fashion industry that’s obsessed with beauty. The workplace is, too. And even though His Hairness ends his post with some conciliatory line about average-looking people also doing as good a job as ‘em good-looking ones, some people now look onto a nose job as the best way to fast-track their climb up the ladder.

Believe it or not, today, workplace go-getters buff up their appearance along with their resume. Ridiculous, is what it is, and you can bet your next paycheck we’re not putting “must be conventionally good-looking” on our hiring ads. Not this year, and not in this lifetime.