Every Unhinged Thing I Had to Do to Be Taken Seriously at Work

Last week, I told you about how I lied about my age to get the job I wanted. I was nineteen, pretending to be twenty-seven. The part I didn’t get into was how I pulled that off. A lot of you asked me that, and honestly, it wasn’t one thing. It was everything. I smelled like an old lady. My perfume wasn’t fruity, flirty, or playful; it was powdery, mature, the kind of smell that clings to velvet drapes and pearls. And I wore pearls, always. My shoes were closed-toe stilettos; I never wore sandals, never peep-toes, always sharp and pointed. My coats were fur, real, the coat was a statement, and there was only one statement I wanted to make: you are not dealing with a child. My wardrobe was built around old-school business dresses and tailored suits, the kind of thing you picture in faded photographs from the seventies when offices were still full of cigarette smoke.

Even my makeup played a role. Bronzer has always aged me, in a strange way I don’t fully understand. So I piled it on, letting the warmth shade me toward an older version of myself. My speech matched the look. I was clipped, declarative, never too eager, never bubbly. I understood that when all the senses line up, when you look older, smell older, sound older, people stop questioning you. They take you as the person you are presenting, because every detail points in the same direction. That was my secret; it was a performance in flesh.

But that story is just part of the beginning. Pretending to be older was only one of my unhinged career hacks I’ve learned and carried with me. Over the years, I’ve collected a whole arsenal of them, tricks born out of necessity, survival skills for navigating rooms that weren’t built for women like me. They are not always glamorous, and they are not always fair. You may not like all of them, but here they are.

One of the biggest is creating a uniform. And I don’t mean wearing the exact same outfit every day as a cartoon character or Steve Jobs. I mean building a silhouette, a formula, a look that becomes your visual brand. Margaret Qualley did this in Honey Don’t; every outfit was basically a high-waisted pair of trousers and a button-up shirt, with small feminine touches like a belt or boots. That’s the genius of it: you can create endless variations while still presenting a consistent, unmistakable shape. I’ve built my own version of that, and you can too.

It’s not just about branding, though that part matters. It’s about sanity. If you’re like me, someone who obsesses, someone who wants perfection every time, then choosing outfits can become a spiral that eats away at your energy before you even step out the door. By sticking to a thumbnail uniform, I free myself from that mental tax. The creative juice I would have wasted deciding between a thousand different skirt options is now used to build stronger pitches, sharper ideas, and more profitable companies. My uniform doesn’t just save me time; it redirects my energy toward the things that actually matter.

And sometimes it’s tactical. In male-dominated industries, especially in the hospitality industry, I only wear pants. Always. It’s not that I don’t love skirts or dresses—Believe me, I do—but to certain eyes, no matter how professional or modest the skirt is, it will still be reduced to “a little skirt on a little girl.” Wearing pants takes that weapon out of their hands before they can swing it. Some battles are fought with silence, others with fabric.

Another unhinged hack I learned very early: cite your sources. When I was first starting out, I was always the youngest in the room, always the only woman, always the only one under the age of fifty. And whenever I spoke, people demanded evidence. My title wasn’t enough. My place at the table wasn’t enough. If I made a point, I was asked to back it up with three reasons, three facts, three data points. So I built the habit of speaking in triplets: outcome, mechanism, proof. I became evidently bulletproof. Once the field was level, once people started listening to me as though my words had weight, I could drop the act and go back to normal conversation. But in those early years, that armor of evidence was what kept me standing.

Not every trick is steel and sharpness; some are about amping up your stereotypical female traits for the greater good. Sometimes, it’s called pulling the “mom card.” Sometimes, in new offices, I’d run into the man who seemed to box me quickly into a stereotype, who dismissed everything I had to say. So I stopped trying to fight him outright. I’d let him run his experiment, let him argue, let him do it his way, so long as it wasn’t catastrophic. Then, when it failed, he’d come back to me. And I would meet him the way my mother used to meet me: patient, empathetic, calm. I’d show him the right way, walk him through it, and guide him into the path that actually worked. And suddenly, that man would become one of my strongest allies, a better employee, a better listener, even a better leader. All it took was picking my battles, letting him fail a little bit, and waiting it out.

I’ve even experimented with optics when it came time to negotiate for a raise or promotion. This one might sound manipulative, but I’ll be honest: it worked. I would dress just a touch richer, subtle changes in jewelry, in shoes, in hair, and in nails. Nothing obvious, nothing gaudy, just enough to spark a thought in my boss’s head: she looks too expensive for what we’re paying her. Visual branding, baby. Sometimes it’s louder than words.

And then there’s the sales lesson. One of the quickest instincts I’ve had to hone is knowing whether a man wants to do business with me or just wants to see me again. It’s not always obvious at first when you are just beginning in your career, but you learn the difference: does he care about the contract, or the next time you’re stopping by? Do they want the company I represent, or my company? It’s a survival skill, especially when you’re young and female in environments where those lines are blurred far too often.

There’s also a truth I can’t ignore: the safety rules aren’t the same for everyone. A man might finish a project and grab drinks with his boss without a second thought, but as a young woman, I’ve always had to pause and calculate what’s safe, what’s smart, what’s actually business, and what might not be. Those quiet calculations become second nature. They turn into another piece of the unhinged toolkit, not glamorous, not something I wish were necessary, but survival all the same.

To straighten any arrows, I would love more than anything to tell you that you can always show up exactly as you are, in any outfit, in any tone, without ever needing to strategize. But the truth is, not every room is sound-minded, and not every set of eyes will see you without bias. That’s why I’ve learned to collect these unhinged hacks over time, because sometimes it takes bronzer, or a uniform, or a carefully pulled “mom card,” or even a sharpened sales instinct to navigate a room that wasn’t built for us. Pretending those dynamics don’t exist doesn’t make them go away. What you can do is decide when to lean in, when to deter, when to let patience work for you, and when to let the fabric, or the silence, speak on your behalf.

At the end of the day, none of this is about disguising yourself. It’s about claiming space in places that were never designed for me, or women like me, and refusing to let anyone mistake confidence for invitation. If there’s one lesson in all of it, it’s this: don’t wait for the world to give you permission. Wear the fur coat at nineteen. Build the uniform. Pull the mom card.

xo,
Sheridan Guerrette
WhatSheridanSaid.com
Life Behind the Artist: Wed at 9/8C