Shoulder-to-Shoulder

Thirteen heard Seven laugh before she saw her, and she couldn't help but feel a spike of jealousy when she turned and saw her giggling with Nineteen. Seven and Nineteen weren't a couple, not in the way that Two and Three were, certainly. But there was an intimacy there that had Thirteen feeling left out. The two girls were still fully dressed -- Nineteen in a full-on grey suit with matching blazer and skirt, Seven in a dark, work-appropriate chambray sheath dress -- and enjoying a quick conversation by Mistress Zero's desk. As she noticed Thirteen, and caught her eye, Seven smiled and waved hello, and Thirteen nearly melted.

Thirteen could have sworn she'd met Seven before starting at USF. Shoulder-length blonde hair, sharp chin, prominent-but-still-attractive nose defining her face, and a smile that stretched from ear-to-ear. Of course they hadn't, as Seven had been a mailgirl a week longer than Thirteen, and had been in USF's legal department before that. But there'd been something familiar about her, something that bothered Thirteen until she'd been able to put her finger on it. And it hadn't been until ESPN had been turned on above the bar, one Friday night when the girls were all out for their weekly "Bitch Session," that Thirteen had placed her -- Seven could have been a doppelganger for one of the anchors, a Lindsey Something-or-Other. Thirteen had never been big into sports, but she'd nonetheless been subjected to the daily routine of SportsCenter by a boyfriend early in graduate school, and being able to finally identify why Seven seemed so familiar had been a breakthrough.

Thirteen was closer with Seven than she was with any of the other mailgirls, but she couldn't say that the relationship was exactly reciprocal. It was the inherent problem in Thirteen's summer study that she was "among" the mailgirls, but not entirely "of" them. She did the same job that they did, and suffered the same indignities, embarassments, and punishments as they did. But she was here only for three months, and she was here to study them and the culture that rose up among them and around them. She was a participant, but also an observer, and it meant that the camaraderie and commiseration only went so far.

Some of the girls had been outright hostile to Thirteen's presence when she first started, and that hostility had lent support to her faculty advisor's suggestion that she not make her study public. Thirteen hadn't wanted to keep anything from the other girls, though, and after weathering some initial wariness and skepticism, she felt she'd made the right decision. The mailgirls had accepted her as an equal, and began opening up to her slowly. Some hoped that her short stint would allow her to blow the whistle on just how many abuses they were suffering at the hands of their corporate masters. Others were hoping that she could help explain some of their conflicting emotions, as if she were a psychoanalyst and not an anthropologist.

There'd never been any hesitation from Seven, though. She was open and friendly right from the get-go, and embraced Thirteen right away. She wasn't the prettiest mailgirl, or the fastest, or the most obedient, or the most willing to accept new punishments -- all of which meant that, outside the mailgirls locker room, she was neither popular nor unpopular. Inside the locker room, however, Seven was easily the most well liked, able to get along with and be accepted by everyone in a way that seemed unlikely in a group full of women. For the most part, the girls all shared a bond, and supported one another, albeit with some cattiness and cliquishness along the way. But the first two classes of mailgirls even remarked that things had seemed to get better when Seven started, when Seven had turned the occasional "drinks night" into the regular, standing Friday-night Bitch Sessions that they were. She'd share a showerhead with a girl who'd had a particularly tough day, and she'd give new girls advice on whom they could trust in the building and whom they should avoid whenever possible. She was a big sister, a coach, and a confidante, more so than any of the girls who'd joined in the first or second cohorts; Mistress Zero kept the girls motivated, but it was Seven who kept them from being out-and-out miserable on a daily basis.

But Seven was still fully clothed and still engaged with Nineteen, so Thirteen passed the pair by, and headed to the sinks on her end of the locker room to do her hair, brush her teeth, and put on make-up.

Again, there were only eight sinks for twenty-four girls, but they made it work. Lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, with a row of naked and exposed tits from left to right and right to left, the girls squeezed in and got ready for their day.

They shared hairbrushes and hair dryers, lipstick and eyeliner, and even -- god help them -- toothbrushes and deodorant. They talked and gossiped as they did so, in subdued tones that gave away how much they all still dreaded the day ahead, even if they'd been a mailgirl for months upon months at that point. Few of them had much of a life outside of USF now, as run-down and beaten up as they were at the end of each day, so the conversations often revolved around the world inside the building. And, increasingly, the girls' favorite topic of conversation was a catty dissection of what other women were wearing to work.

"I swear to god," Twenty-One was laughing to Seventeen. "Stocking tops!"

Seventeen, a redhead, laughed out loud as she brushed her hair. "Like, visible? Like, that was her intention?"

"So, full picture," Twenty-One began again, making eye contact with Thirteen to make sure she was included. "Skin-tight white blouse with a black bra underneath -- "

"See-through?" Thirteen asked playfully, happy to be included.

"Completely visible," Twenty-One answered. Gesturing with her hands, she started at her waist and dropped one to high on her thigh. "Miniskirt. Two or three inches of leg. Stocking top."

Seventeen let out a goofy wolf-whistle, and Thirteen responded with a fake gasp. It was Thirteen's turn to join in, offering, "...and heels, of course."

Twenty-One laughed. "Of course. Stilettos."

That the mailgirls had the nerve to ridicule anyone's outfit was ridiculous. But while they were all technically volunteers, almost none of the girls would ever have confessed to volunteering freely; in their own minds, and to hear any of them recount how they'd landed in their current predicament, each of them had been tricked, misled, and coerced. For some of them, Thirteen knew this to be true, as she'd had access to their HR files early in her own tenure as a mailgirl. Number Four was here because she'd suffered three consecutive "poor" performance reviews, and would have been let go otherwise. Number Six had worked in the Capital Markets group, and had badly botched a trade that had cost USF close to $500K. Number Fourteen had been caught having an affair with the husband of a more senior executive in the building. For others, though, Thirteen suspected that this was a revisionist attempt to protect their own egos -- they'd been tempted by the money, or by promises of future career advancement, and had signed on not fully understanding just how bad the program could be.

Still, this victimhood freed them up to pass judgment on their former colleagues elsewhere in the building. After all, these other women were free to dress as they chose. And, despite this freedom, USF's female employees had been dressing increasingly provocatively and risqué since the mailgirl program first began.

Given what Thirteen had been wearing even just to-and-from work lately, she knew full well that she was in no position to mock others. But, she laughed along with Twenty-One and Seventeen. What she wore on her commute wasn't held to the same scrutiny among her peers; she was a mailgirl.

And, of course this woman had been wearing stilettos. Of course. The height of the footwear, as much as the inappropriateness ("Knee-high boots!" "Five-inch heels!"), was a favorite topic of derision among the mailgirls.

"Secretary? Receptionist?" Thirteen asked, knowing full well that it hadn't been. The stories were funnier and less mean-spirited when they weren't picking on one of the support staff.

"Marketing executive," Twenty-One laughed.

The trend was not unique to USF, and fairly common among companies who'd rolled out mailgirl programs of their own, regardless of nationality or culture. In fact, a good portion of Thirteen's research that summer had centered not on the mailgirls themselves, but on USF's non-mailgirl female employees. Whether it was a conscious decision or not, the launch of a mailgirl initiative always, always set off competitive behavior in other women in the workplace. From an anthropological, mate-selection standpoint, Thirteen supposed this made sense; in a world in which young, attractive co-workers were bounding about the building with tits and ass on display, the fact that an arms race had kicked off between the mailgirls and non-mailgirls was perhaps unsurprising. It didn't seem to matter if these non-mailgirls were married or not, were in a relationship or not, or even if they were consciously aware of the change in their wardrobe or not -- the end result, regardless, was that hemlines had gotten shorter, necklines had gotten lower, and heels had gotten higher. It wasn't each and every woman within USF, certainly -- but, on average, the female population of USF, even excluding the mailgirls -- was dressing sexier and more risqué as the program went on. Thirteen had even pulled security footage of the building's lobby as far back as February and March, and had begun rating women on a scale from 1-10 of how much skin they were showing when they arrived at work. She needed to do more vigorous analysis, needed to adjust for seasonality, and she supposed she could even try to measure hems and necklines caught on tape with the right resources -- but the data, as qualitative as it was, backed up her expectations.

On the security tapes, Thirteen had watched her own transformation. In June, she'd dressed down, and entered the building looking meek, timid, and terrified. By August, she was regularly hitting a "7" or an "8" on her own admittedly less-than-scientific "skin scale," and even her gait seemed different -- more confidence, more swagger, more presence. It was all for show -- maybe Thirteen dreaded undressing a little less each day she did so, but she still dreaded it all the same. She wondered to herself what she had looked like on the security footage today, though -- had there been a skip in her step? Had she seemed happier? Had her pace been quicker than usual? The sooner she undressed, the sooner she could get about her day, and the sooner she could put this entire ordeal behind her.