Birth of a Salesman

I've now been through Love, Sex, Life and Work with Norah Vincent, and the Work chapter (I'll be sure to get back to the others later on) made me think of both Günter Wallraff's dressing up to pass for an ad man/copywriter at his job interview at the German tabloid Bild, and Danish artist Jakob Boeskov's dressing up in order for him and his fictive weapon (the ID Sniper) to blend in with professionals at a weapon's fair in Beijing.

To make his way as a tabloid reporter Wallraff has been using a sunlamp (this is the 1970'es) to tan his face, and he puts on way too much Aqua Brava aftershave in the hope that people won't notice how much of a cold sweat he's in. Which apparently they don't. 'Believe me, I'm a terrible actor,' says Wallraff, but is amazed to discover that his new employer doesn't notice all the false notes in his self-presentation: 'Apparently he's no better actor than I am.' (Lead story, 1977). (Reporting is not simply a sales job, of course, but Wallraff-disguised-as-'Esser' and his new colleagues are certainly treating it as one.)

"My black suit is my armour," says Boeskov as he walks through the crowd at China Police 2002 with shattered nerves and stomach cramps. But Boeskov isn't found out either, and the bluffing is so easy that it scares him. ("My Doomsday Weapon", Black Box 2003).

Norah Vincent/'Ned' - 2006 - has just spent a few weeks in a secluded abbey among monks who were uncomfortable and eventually became hostile towards her, basically because they considered Ned to be a homosexual (man) with an inadequate sense of discretion. Now, however, (s)he's entering the job market of what by the sound of the job ads "appeared to be fast-track corporate environtments" that were looking for "steam-spewing go-getters who were "high-powered" and "hungry for success"".

Norah Vincent's experience is similar to that of Wallraff and Boeskov: Being undercover as a self-invented man is hard indeed, but a self-made business man, in her case a door-to-door salesman, is remarkably easy to pull off:

"No business casual," they said. "Wear a suit." Even better, I thought. ... I was walking taller in my dress clothes. I felt entitled to respect ... For the first time in my journey as Ned I felt male privilege descend on me like an insulating cape, and all the male behaviours I had until then been so consciously trying to produce for my role, came to me suddenly without effort. ... Nobody ever thought this Ned was gay.

So - business is a game. Formal dress codes and corporate lingo make you feel safer, and your uniform serves to guide yourself and the people around you. Business people are basically role players, and the whole idea of self-made men stems, of course, from competitive business attitudes like those tried on by Wallraff, Boeskov and Vincent. On different occasions and for different reasons, but all three of them seem basically appalled by the experience. It makes them confident in passing, but basically it fills them with self-loathing.

Consequently, it remains an immense challenge for these under cover reporters to communicate more than loathing of the people whose shoes they have decided to step into. They can't help celebrating their own status as independent reporters, writers, artists in the process.

Wallraff and Vincent do accomplish more than that, and they do display a level of solidarity with the people they're impersonating. The time factor seems to be decisive here. They stay on longer, they stay in the field beyond the smooth birth of their business man. Long enough to get a sense of what might happen in the actual life of one.