It happens to the best of us: an Instagram acquaintance debuts her new boyfriend — a forgettable white man clad in a Patagonia vest over a pale blue dress shirt, or just a Rotman student dressing the part of a Wall Street executive. His Instagram feed is a hyper-minimalist flood of expensive watches, gym content, and painfully curated shots of skyscrapers in the financial district stabbing the sky like steel blades. He looks perfect, but in a simple, uninspiring way that clearly embodies the energy and style of having and loving money. 

We quickly scroll past, a little disappointed to see yet another angel lose her wings, falling into this common pattern of romantic partners. But, of course, it’s hard to fault our acquaintance for her choices. The finance bro is back in fashion, and honestly, we get the appeal.

The rise and return of the “finance bro” is both revelatory and reductive, emblematic of modern capitalism’s excesses and successes. Characters like Patrick Bateman of American Psycho (2000) and Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) have been canonized as near-mythical embodiments of power, privilege, and relentless ambition. These characters embody the finance bro persona as the white-collar symbol of status, thriving on a consumerist mindset that equates the pursuit of prestige with the expression of virtue. Beneath their polished exteriors lies a profound moral and emotional emptiness — but in their world, this is inconsequential, as wealth, excess, and comfort reign supreme. 

Besides these films, TV shows like HBO’s Succession and Industry similarly solidified the finance bro archetype in recent cultural memory, continuing through their characters the legacy markings of sharply tailored suits, torturous self-absorption, latent pathology, and chilling emotional detachment to bring this corporate persona vividly to life. 

This summer, it was fascinating to see this finance bro fantasy resurrected into the music zeitgeist as well, chiefly through David Guetta and Girl On Couch’s viral party anthem, in which a robotic woman’s voice intones, “I’m looking for a man in finance / Trust fund, 6’5, blue eyes.” In this shift, we observed the finance bro being elevated from an aesthetic archetype to an unabashed sex object. 

Guetta’s summer jam release in June coincided with two milestones: the second anniversary of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, empowering states to regulate or ban abortion, and Canada’s reopening after COVID-19 lockdowns, which spotlighted the economic divide as privileged tech and finance elites who easily adapted to remote and online work amassed wealth while low-income workers bore the pandemic’s hardships. The finance bro transformed into a corporate gladiator, embodying the Eurocentric ideal of a tall, white saviour who rescues the damsel in sexual and economic oppression. As a reflection of a colonial framework where wealth is tied to both power and desirability, this character has become aspirational, reinforcing historical tropes of white male dominance and saviourism.

The office siren

While the finance bro embodies the idealized corporate knight, his woman counterpart — the “office siren” — is even more fascinating. She is just as curated and calculated as the corporate man, with a far more subversive agenda. While the finance bro benefits from inherited privilege, the office siren uses the same systems to not only navigate but also sometimes subvert the corporate grind. If the finance bro is capitalism’s prince, the office siren is its subversive siren song: alluring, enigmatic, and far more dangerous than she seems. She promises success and power to her aspirants, and unlike the finance bro who dominates through overt displays of wealth and authority, the office siren navigates corporate structures with intellect and charm, turning exploitation into empowerment. 

Parallel to the rise of the finance bro, the office siren emerged as a new way to romanticize corporate hell as the object of the finance bro’s desire. Beginning in the ultra-chic corporate fashion runway shows of the 1990s and early 2000s, and popularized in this decade via TikTok, the office siren, much like the finance bro, is uniform in her execution. She’s typically a slim, attractive woman draped in neutral colours and oversized blazers, often with a button-up shirt half undone, squinty eyes, and Bayonetta-style glasses perched on her nose. The look is undeniably seductive à la Ralph Lauren Fall-Winter 2000, yet strangely lifeless — a hollow flame meant to attract finance executives and hedge fund managers, offering a one-dimensional take on women’s office attire that mirrors the void of the corporate environment it represents.

This particular kind of sirenic figure seems focused solely on seducing the finance bro as the sexy secretary or clumsy intern, and while we agree that clothing can serve as a form of resistance to the dehumanizing aspects of corporate life, the siren seemingly consciously embraces this dehumanization and objectification through her fashion choices, outwardly signalling an active surrender of subjectivity and personal agency.

And yet, we understand why people try to fit into the corporate aesthetic. If Patrick Bateman told me to wear a beige pencil skirt and address him as “my lord and saviour,” I’d probably do it. Financial stability has a hypnotic way of making you consider things you never thought you would.

Beyond the fantasy

We’d like to think there’s more to the office siren than the vapid “hot-girl-at-work” fantasy. Sirens, after all, are meant to be both beautiful and dangerous, drawing men in only to destroy them — sometimes literally. What if the office siren isn’t just a passive figure in this power dynamic, but an active player with an agenda: seeking control over her venture capitalist, financial analyst, or corporate lawyer love interest? 

In a world where women are often confined to the periphery of the corporate landscape, the challenge becomes subverting patriarchy to make it work for you. If your romantic interest is a wealth manager endlessly consumed by the corporate grind, it’s not entirely illogical to infiltrate his space to seduce him. Perhaps if the finance bro sees everything as transactional, the office siren is simply outsmarting him — playing the game better by using the very system he’s constructed to entrap others, and turning it against him.

Finance bros do offer a certain brand of romance — luxury, excess, and access to privilege most can only dream of. Picture a $500 dinner of tiny, unpronounceable dishes paired with tasteless jokes about the less fortunate. Imagine spirited debates over the perfect shade of eggshell or bone for business cards or the subtle art of matching a watch to cufflinks. All this, and more, could be yours for the price of sitting across from a man with a 12-step skincare routine who won’t ask you a single question about the mind beneath your pretty face. But in his orbit, the noise of public construction outside your decrepit two-bedroom apartment fades, and the crushing weight of paying rent in a city you can no longer afford melts away.

What makes the finance bro so enticing is the safety he offers, especially in a time of endless rising costs and economic instability. With a management consultant or corporate lawyer, we feel as though we know exactly what we’re getting into. We think they are all cut from the same cloth: alumni from top business schools, collectors of status symbols like rare, custom-designed sneakers, bespoke suits, and obscure high-end gadgets — things that no one really needs but everyone seems to want. 

Their lack of individuality, we think, is oddly comforting because it allows us to project whatever we want onto them. They’re blank slates, offering a life of stability in exchange for our personal autonomy — a seemingly fair trade within the world economy, where money is capital, and the sex economy, where women’s bodies are commodified. We figure that if we’re going to be unhappy, why not be unhappy and rich? There is comfort to be found in swiping your card without even glancing at the charge.

Of course, the catch is that the finance bro’s allure inevitably comes at an emotional price. While the financial perks and stability are undeniable, a relationship which feels transactional, built on appearances, wealth, and status, will hold little space for vulnerability or depth. If you’re willing to settle for that, the rewards may well be worth it. 

There also remains the possibility that we are still underestimating the finance bro. Beneath the polished exterior, what if there is a complicated soul we’ve been too quick to dismiss? This is what makes the finance bro truly unsettling — not his shallowness, but the possibility that he is earnestly and consciously calculated yet unknowable as the systems he thrives in. After all, didn’t Patrick Bateman have washboard abs, an enviable music collection, and — if you squint hard enough — a troubling kind of charm? The possibility that he actively submits to these structures intensifies the unease, suggesting he is not merely shaped by capitalism but fully embodies its cold, ruthless logic.

Like the office siren, what makes men like Patrick Bateman so undeniably magnetic might not be bad feminism, but something deeper: the uncomfortable allure of power combined with the mystery of what lies beneath it. It’s not just about wealth or luxury but the quiet danger of engaging with someone who is both irresistible and unknowable. In the end, this is what keeps us coming back for more.