Okay so I need to confess something that’s been weighing on me for like three years now. Every morning I wake up in my Brooklyn apartment, shuffle to the bathroom still half-asleep, brush my teeth, and then face the most important decision of my day: which parts of my body actually need to look professional today?
I’ve basically developed what I call corporate split personality disorder. Business blazer on top, crusty sweatpants on bottom. It’s like a mullet but for remote work – professional in the front, complete disaster in the back. And honestly? I think this whole thing has broken my brain in ways I’m only starting to understand.
Before 2020, I was still in college but doing internships at design agencies, and I actually cared about looking put-together. Had this whole collection of “professional” outfits that I’d rotate through, even bought these uncomfortable but stylish boots that made me feel like I knew what I was doing. God, that feels like a different lifetime now.
Then everything went remote right as I was graduating, which meant my introduction to “real” professional life happened entirely through a laptop screen. Lucky me, right? Got to skip the part where you learn how to exist in an actual office with actual humans wearing actual pants.
My first big client video call was… well, it was a nightmare. I’d thrown on this blazer I borrowed from my roommate Jess but was wearing these ridiculous fuzzy pajama pants with tacos all over them because, you know, nobody was gonna see them. Except then I had to grab some sketches from my printer mid-meeting and basically flashed my taco pants to this entire marketing team. The silence was deafening. I wanted to disappear into my laptop screen.
But here’s the thing – after the initial mortification wore off, I realized something kind of liberating about the whole situation. Like, why should I be uncomfortable in my own apartment just to perform professionalism for a bunch of people who are probably also wearing ridiculous pants? So I leaned into it.
Now I have this whole system worked out. Nice shirt, decent lighting, hair that doesn’t look like I stuck my finger in an electrical socket, and then complete chaos from the waist down. My bottom drawer has become what I call the “invisible wardrobe” – sweatpants, pajama bottoms, these absolutely ancient gym shorts that have holes in places shorts should not have holes.
Marcus thinks it’s hilarious. He caught me once getting ready for a presentation wearing this crisp white button-down tucked into SpongeBob pajama pants, and he just lost it. “You look like you’re cosplaying as a professional person,” he said, which was annoyingly accurate. But like, it works? I nailed that presentation while wearing cartoon characters on my legs.
The psychological aspect of this is actually kind of fascinating though. There’s something weirdly powerful about knowing that half of you is playing by society’s rules while the other half is completely rebelling. It’s like a physical representation of how most of us actually feel about work – part engaged, part just wanting to be in bed.
And it’s not just about comfort. This whole thing has made me realize how much of professional life is just performance anyway. We’ve always been acting at work, but now it’s literally theater. We’re all just heads floating in digital rectangles, pretending to be fully dressed while sitting in our underwear. It’s absurd when you think about it.
I started noticing the signs in other people too. The way someone’s shoulders tense up when they reach for something off-camera. The muffled sound of fuzzy slippers shuffling across hardwood floors. The look of panic when someone almost stands up during a meeting. We’re all complicit in this weird charade.
My favorite incident happened during a pitch to this potential client last year. I’m in the middle of explaining some brand identity concepts, wearing my most professional-looking top, when my neighbor’s cat (who somehow always ends up in my apartment) jumps onto my lap. Not only did this expose my rainbow tie-dye leggings to everyone on the call, but the cat also decided that moment was perfect to start grooming itself. Very thoroughly. Right in front of the camera.
Instead of being mortified, the client – this super buttoned-up creative director – started laughing. “Oh my god, my dog did the exact same thing yesterday except I was in boxers and a blazer,” she said. We ended up bonding over our shared experience of being professional disasters, and I got the project.
Sometimes the mask slips in other ways too. During that brutal heat wave last summer, I took a call from my fire escape because my apartment doesn’t have AC and I was literally melting. Professional top, earbuds, and these tiny shorts that were definitely not meant for public consumption. A kid from the apartment across the courtyard threw a paper airplane that hit my laptop, and when I instinctively jumped up to catch it, my entire team got to see my very unprofessional lower half. Our Slack exploded with crying-laughing emojis.
What’s weird is how this fake-professional setup has become more honest than actual professional dress ever was. Like, we’ve all acknowledged that we’re working from our personal spaces now, so why pretend we’re not? The Zoom mullet is basically a silent agreement that we’re all just trying to get through this while maintaining some level of human comfort.
My pre-pandemic self would be so confused by this. Imagine explaining to someone in 2019 that in a few years, career advancement would involve sitting in your bedroom wearing half an outfit, talking to a collection of floating heads about quarterly projections. It sounds like a fever dream, but here we are.
Not everyone’s on board though. I have this one freelancer friend who still gets fully dressed for every single video call. Full outfit, shoes, the works. “It puts me in the right mindset,” she says. Which like, I respect the commitment, but also… who are you trying to impress? Your houseplants?
Even now that things have “gone back to normal” (whatever that means), the Zoom mullet mentality has stuck around. I still have to make these calculations about whether a meeting requires full pants or if I can get away with my professional-on-top uniform. It’s become part of my daily decision-making process, which feels both ridiculous and completely logical.
The whole thing has messed with my sense of authenticity too. Is prioritizing comfort more honest than maintaining the full professional costume? After three years of this split existence, I honestly don’t know anymore. Maybe we’re all just finding new ways to be fake, or maybe we’re discovering what parts of professional performance actually matter.
I had to go to an actual office for a meeting last month, and putting on real pants felt genuinely weird. Like, why are these so restrictive? Why do I need to perform professionalism with my entire body when everyone knows I’m the same person whether I’m wearing slacks or pajama pants? The cognitive dissonance was real.
But there was also something nice about being physically present with people. No lag, no “can you hear me now,” no cats interrupting important moments. Just humans in a room, all wearing complete outfits like civilized adults. Although I did spend half the meeting wondering if anyone would notice if I took off my shoes under the table.
The Zoom mullet isn’t just a clothing choice – it’s become a whole mindset about how we relate to work. We’re simultaneously engaged and disengaged, professional and casual, present and absent. We’re literally giving half of ourselves to our jobs, and somehow that feels more honest than whatever we were doing before.
So here I am, getting dressed for another day of video calls, picking out a shirt that looks good on camera while my legs remain blissfully free in these absolutely ancient sweatpants that have seen better decades. It’s not professional, it’s not entirely authentic, but it’s real in a way that feels right for this weird moment we’re all living through.
The business-on-top, pajamas-on-bottom dress code isn’t going anywhere. The Zoom mullet is here to stay, and honestly? I’m okay with that.
Rachel’s a Brooklyn designer who grew up online and now questions everything about it. She writes with dry wit about social media burnout, digital identity, and the weirdness of being dependent on platforms she doesn’t trust. She’s fluent in irony and Adobe Creative Suite.
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