Philadelphia Weekly

Share this Story:

If you're lucky, they'll turn your life into a movie!

It's a tough job market, that's for sure. Industries we previously thought provided lifelong careers are now as flimsy as your excuse for getting back with your ex (again). So why not take aspirational inspiration--career counseling, if you will--from great works of literature? I mean, we heed the words of Austen, Bront�, Shakespeare and their ilk when it comes to matters of love and manners and melancholy. So why not on matters of work, the obvious yin to that homelife yang?

Maybe "noblewoman," "unmarried eldest daughter" and "orphaned English governess" are not the most realistic or relevant ambitions in the wake of the industrial revolution, but that's why we've got to, well, shift our timeframe and standards a bit, and let ourselves be inspired by the distinguished muse that is contemporary chick lit.

Meander for a moment with me, and let's explore some professions available to anyone with some wily womanly ways and the printed page as a guide.

Nanny: You have a degree from a top university, probably even a masters in some useless humanities discipline, and you've no record of child abuse. You also have breasts and therefore are naturally talented with children (it's this innate skill we women all share, of course). Congratulations. You are the perfect candidate to sign on as a nanny. Use those talents you've accrued through internships, upper level coursework and that short-lived stint in your failing professional field to become the best possible diaper-changing, story-reading, bottle-giving, homework-checking, laundry-doing, husband-shtupping nanny you can possibly be! It's hard to work placating parents and keeping kids alive. Good thing you spent all those years studying Baudrillard's concept of simulacrum and postcolonialism in the production, circulation and consumption of electronic musics. Phew. Now, like the heroine of Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus's The Nanny Diaries, you are ready for the challenges of maintaining your dignity amongst honing bedtime enforcement tactics and heading passive aggressive notes from your boundary-breaking employer, who just happens to sleep down the hall from your closet-sized alcove, adjacent--of-course--to the kids' suite.

Prostitute: Prostitute. Call girl. Hooker. Whore. All different names for the same job--kind of like barrister, attorney, solicitor and lawyer. When all else fails, as a woman you always have the option fall back on your body to make ends meet. And it's oh-so-glamorous to do so! There's Diablo Cody-style exotic dancing, of course, but if you're looking for the big bucks, just become a high-class trick-turner and you'll find yourself commanding $400 an hour, which is way more than you'd ever make if you actually used that nursing degree or elementary education certification. Let a slew of similarly named memoirs act as your mentor--Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl by Tracy Quan, Belle de Jour: Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl by Anonymous and Callgirl: Confessions of an Ivy League Lady of Pleasure by Jeannette Angell. Sure there's rampant drug use, STDs and that pesky little problem of legality, but as any girl who's ever watched Pretty Woman knows, sex work is the gateway to the fairy tale ending we all deserve.

Princess: If sex work isn't for you, you could just get the fairy tale ending the traditional way--being born into royalty. It worked for Mia Thermopolis from Meg Cagot's The Princess Diaries series. If your family tree is totally devoid of nobility (let me try not to scoff at your undesirable situation), there's always the option of marrying into the tiara, which is a fulltime job unto itself. Just imagine the time that'd go into tracking down, stalking, seducing, snagging and keeping a balding inbred! It's well worth the effort, though, for the premiere invites and the knowledge that your career wear is a crystal-beaded chiffon Marchesa gown rather than a Anne Taylor Loft poly-rayon pantsuit.