Alright, so ‘men posing.’ You hear that and you think, models, right? Or those awkward wedding photos. But lemme tell ya, it’s a much bigger deal than just how you stand for a picture. It’s a whole thing I’ve seen play out in real life, over and over.
I used to work at this place, a pretty standard office gig. And man, those weekly team meetings? They were something else. It was like watching a silent movie about ‘how to look important.’ You had Steve from Marketing, always with his super intense gaze, nodding like every word the manager said was pure gold, even when we all knew it was nonsense. Then there was Mike, one of the older guys, who’d do this real slow, deliberate way of speaking, like every syllable was super profound. Posing, all of ’em.
It wasn’t just meetings, either. It was the way they walked down the hallway, the way they answered the phone. This constant, low-level performance. Trying to project… I don’t know, confidence? Authority? Like they had it all figured out. But if you actually talked to them, like really talked, you’d find out they were just as stressed or clueless as the rest of us.
I remember trying to figure out my ‘pose’ when I first started there. Should I be the super keen, always-smiling guy? Or the quiet, thoughtful type who only speaks when it’s really, really important? It felt so fake. I’d go home feeling drained, not from the work, but from trying to be someone I wasn’t.
After a while, I just kinda gave up on it. I just did my job. Spoke when I had something to say, didn’t when I didn’t. Probably didn’t win me any ‘most dynamic employee’ awards, that’s for sure. I saw other guys, younger ones, come in and start doing the same dance, trying on different poses to see what would stick, what would get them noticed by the higher-ups.
It’s funny, ’cause you see it outside of work too. Guys at a bar, puffing their chests out. Guys online, carefully crafting their image. It’s like everyone’s auditioning for some role. I guess some people are good at it, or it comes naturally to them. Or maybe they just think it’s necessary.
For me, it just always felt like too much hard work. I’d rather people just see, well, me. Even if ‘me’ is sometimes a bit awkward or unsure. So yeah, ‘men posing.’ It’s more than just photos. It’s a whole way of navigating the world, and honestly, I’m kinda glad I opted out of trying to perfect my own.
