From Industry and Severance to Babygirl, pop culture seems to be fixating on messy sexual dynamics in the workplace. But what’s driving this obsession?
The workplace has never been a stranger to fantasy. In the wake of the global financial crash and recession of the 2000s, romcoms like The Devil Wears Prada, The Proposal and 13 Going on 30 used workplace romance to explore the office as a zone for romance. Today, it’s a more potent romantic reference point than ever, with Babygirl, Severance, Fair Play, and Industry exploring the complex intersection of sex and power in these environments.
The office fetish seeped into our clothes a while ago. Prada’s AW24 menswear collection featured patent leather derbys and banker shirts on an office-inspired runway, while writer Emily Sundberg coined corporate fetish after Kim Kardashian’s nipple bra ad. Most notably, there’s the chokehold of the “office siren” trend, defined by grey palettes and Bayonetta-style glasses – which, judging from Julia Fox’s recent Criterion Closet appearance, we’re still yet to be released from.
Much like the 00s, the current cultural obsession with office relationships is undeniably tied to bleak economic realities. With soaring rent prices and shrinking disposable income, workers are finding themselves increasingly tethered to their jobs – not out of passion, but out of necessity. What’s more, the last year has already seen large New York and London-based employers cracking down on work-from-home set-ups. With work increasingly dominating our lives, it’s no surprise corporate aesthetics have bled into culture too.
But the centralisation of work hasn’t killed desire – it’s just relocated it to the office. Anna*, a 26-year-old corporate employee, finds this shift playing out in her own life. “When I finish for the day I want to chill, have down time and go to the gym. On the weekends I don’t want to have those awkward dates, I want to use my time to see my friends. I’ve found that you get to know people so quickly at work and have that closeness, which then makes me think: ‘oh wait, are they an option?’” In many ways, it comes down to ease and time. “If there was an average guy in my office right now, I definitely would pursue [him]. It’s so easy, you have so much in common, you can go for work drinks or grab lunch. Then, all of a sudden you’re doing all these things that you might otherwise be doing with a partner.”
22-year-old Rachel* similarly found that the work culture of going for drinks facilitated a romantic connection, but in Rachel’s case it was a toxic affair with a much older manager. “I think part of the appeal was that it was taboo. Firstly, because he was in a relationship, and secondly because nobody at work knew. The lines between personal and professional got so blurred because he would always be so hot and cold with me. Because we started to make plans outside of work, I became isolated from my friends and my life revolved around him.” Rachel is now out of the relationship and said that she deliberately establishes firmer boundaries at work, but believes the culture around dating colleagues isn’t going anywhere. “So much time is spent at work, building relationships is unavoidable. We are all human at the end of the day and we all seek connection.”
So much time is spent at work, building relationships is unavoidable. We are all human at the end of the day and we all seek connection
According to Kate Daly, relationship expert and co-founder of online divorce services company amicable, it’s no coincidence that you can develop feelings for people you work with – it’s a phenomenon known as the exposure effect. “Spending significant time with colleagues creates familiarity and comfort, which can then lead to romantic feelings,” Daly says that intimacy and emotional connection often build due to regular conversations, something facilitated by the nine-to-five. “As more people return to a physical office either by choice or by ‘order of the management’, the exposure effect is fuelling office romances in a way we haven’t seen since before 2019. As the pendulum swings away from the treadmill and expense of dating apps, IRL encounters in the workplace become an attractive alternative where you can take the ‘blindness’ out of a date and get to know someone before having to spend money on drinks and dinner.”
In a world where connecting beyond the 9-to-5 feels impossible, is it any wonder that our wildest fantasies – both on and off screen – are staged amid the clatter of keyboards, hum of fluorescent lighting, and lingering scent of reheated lunches? Perhaps it’s because the workplace has become not just a setting for our professional lives, but one of the last places where we‘re guaranteed human interaction on a limited wage, however awkward or charged. Sure, the fetishisation of the grind may be a symptom of a broken social contract, but at least it’s given us Nicole Kidman in an erotic thriller, eyebrow-raising fashion moments, and crushes to distract us from the endless monotony of office life… right? Maybe the real fantasy for 2025 isn’t a Babygirl-style fling, but a job that lets you clock out with enough money to actually have a romantic life after 5pm.