This essay was adapted from the newsletter Cartoons Hate Her. Subscribe here.
I’m going to admit something a bit embarrassing. A few years ago, I thought I had stumbled upon the ultimate based truth nuke: Women were lied to. Women like me were told to spend our lives toiling away for bosses who didn’t care if we lived or died, instead of lovingly serving husbands and children who cared about us. What absolute rubes, I thought to myself. I told myself that while women’s rights were a good thing (I was glad to be able to vote, for example), it was absurd that we were “forced” into corporate life when the alternative was hanging around at home snuggling babies.
I eventually realized this was dumb—and in case you aren’t sure why it is, I’ll get to that. But these days, I’m seeing waves of women of the next generation coming to the same supposedly “enlightened” conclusion. While I’m hardly the first one to notice the self-infantilization of some Gen Z women, I rang the alarm about misguided “anti-work” sentiment that was actually just anti-woman about a year ago, when I wrote a piece which was—ironically enough, given the reason for me writing this post you’re reading—called “Too Pretty to Work.”
Yes, there are many such T-shirts out there. Are people buying them as a joke? If they are, I detect a yearning at the heart of the humor. The crux of the issue is that, bluntly speaking, work sucks. Unless you do something you really love—something you’d do even if you won the lottery—most people would prefer to be independently wealthy rather than work. Most people would rather be sipping a tropical drink by a sunny private pool while getting a massage, as opposed to sitting through a 45-minute meeting with 10 participants that the calendar invite described as a “follow-up sync.” This is true of men, women, and all the other various genders that may exist out there.
But men’s work has never really been up for debate. So while plenty of men hate their jobs, or hate the fact that they have to work for a living, they generally don’t prance around talking about being just a sexy little boy who shouldn’t be forced to write Jira tickets (although some have fancied themselves oppressed working-class heroes, despite having, well, Jira-ticket jobs). Men certainly have their own anti-work sentiments—that’s why they love movies like Fight Club and Office Space—and plenty of men describe themselves as “anti-work,” but they don’t say things like “Men, biologically speaking, shouldn’t have to work.”
But if you spend any time online, especially among Gen Z women, you see women who “don’t understand” why women of previous generations fought to make spreadsheets for eight hours a day. They believe they were fed a “girlboss narrative” by some shadowy forces, and that narrative was a lie. Even women on the left might decry this “lie,” but blame it on capitalism instead of feminism. And it’s tempting to think this way—at one point, I did. One of my first big articles was about how often I got fired from my unfulfilling tech jobs, and how much I hated working. And I did hate it—but I wasn’t (as many other young women aren’t) comparing “working for a living” to the realistic alternative.
Back when I was working in tech, I often thought about how much happier I would be as a stay-at-home mom. When I was in my anti-work era, I was imagining one particular alternative to work: being a SAHM with my husband, someone who I had the privilege of selecting on my own terms—a guy I find extremely hot, funny, and interesting. I am a SAHM now, and yes, I’m happier—but this is because my husband remains his hot, funny, interesting self, and also, I write for a living, and do it on my own terms!
But that wasn’t the reality for everyone, pre-women’s-lib. What if I lived before second-wave feminism, and for whatever reason, I hadn’t met my husband or any man I really liked? I would have had to desperately take the first man who would be my meal ticket, or perhaps (especially if you go back a century or two) just live with my parents forever and become my family’s dowdy spinster aunt, taking care of elderly relatives for the rest of my life. Working for an income would be possible, but pretty limited and difficult. Because of the same movement that built this supposed “girlboss narrative lie,” women whose husbands cheat on them, abuse them, or abuse their children have legal recourse to leave. Not only that, but they have the ability to work for their own income so that they can support themselves in that scenario, instead of being destitute, getting into another relationship with another man they wouldn’t have chosen if they weren’t desperate, or living with a family member.
But the coquettish babies of Gen Z aren’t thinking about this reality—the reality of marrying someone they don’t really like, not having control over what they buy, and not having any way out if they’re abused or mistreated. They’re thinking of a dream alternative, which still exists today, in romance novels but also for a lucky few in real life: being “taken care of” by a hot rich guy. And, like, sister, get in line. Women today do still live like that, just as they always have. Just go to a Pilates studio at 1 p.m. on a weekday! Rich housewives are nothing new, and arguably, I’d rather be a rich housewife today than at any other point in history. Imagine being a rich housewife before the advent of Alo Yoga or Veja sneakers, back when a luxurious brunch was a Waldorf salad instead of a hamachi crudo.
If these young women really think the girlboss narrative was a lie, they are free to get “taken care of” by men with a decent income and not much else to offer. Trust me, there are plenty of unremarkable men with decent jobs who can’t seem to find a wife—San Francisco is full of software engineers pulling $200K or more who have never had a girlfriend. Go date them! They might be a bit old for you, you might not find them attractive or interesting, but you want to be taken care of, right? You want to go back to before women’s liberation, right? The opportunity is there!
While you’re at it, maybe sign a prenup that ensures you don’t get anything if you divorce (you don’t want to be a girlboss, do you?) even if the divorce stems from abuse or infidelity. Make sure to leave everything else up to him, too. If he’s a cheapskate who wants you to live off the bare minimum despite being rich, you as a submissive wife must bend to his will. Perhaps you won’t be able to get all those lymphatic drainage massages or balletcore athleisure sets, but that’s OK, right? At least you’re not buying into the girlboss narrative!
But if I can switch tones and be slightly more charitable, I do think that feminist messaging may have overcorrected a bit when it comes to balancing family and a career, and some of these women in the “Too Pretty for a Job” camp were in their formative years during that time. As a young woman in the 2010s, I saw plenty of messaging pushing the idea that your career and independence should always come first, that you shouldn’t need or even want a husband, and that kids always make women fat, tired, and miserable. It felt rebellious to say that being a wife and mother were the most important things to me. (You could say I’m imagining this, but people used to mistake me for a conservative for this reason, as recently as last year.)
The “narrative” wasn’t just that the right to work for your own income was a good thing, but rather that you had to prioritize your career and independence above a husband or children. The same people who claimed they wanted to reduce the stigma against SSRIs were mocking housewives of yesteryear for being on “pills,” an apparent indicator of their misery. This talk probably alienated a lot of young women—myself included. I knew how much happier my boyfriend (and later husband) made me compared to my bosses, one of whom screamed at me in public and made me cry. I didn’t believe for a second that it was impossible to be fulfilled or happy as a SAHM (and I still don’t believe that).
The feminist messaging around work, when I was coming up, just did a bad job. The right message is: Whether or not you, personally, feel you are “too pretty to work,” work, for women as a group, is important, because it gives us choices. I think I would have understood this. Instead, I heard that spreadsheets would make me happier than spending all day with children, that I would need “adult interaction” in the form of silly team-building office activities to stay sane, because the alternative was—gasp—being around my own kids. I was told that if I had a daughter, being a SAHM would be setting a bad example for her, because apparently there’s nothing worse for a little girl than wanting to be a mother someday, while it was apparently a great sign for a little boy to play with dolls to mimic his involved father. This was stupid. We’re allowed to say this was stupid without disowning the concept of women’s rights. Every overcorrection is followed by yet another overcorrection, and now we’re entering the era of young women jumping hair-bow-first into the oozing vat of their own oppression.
To them, I would say: Your enemy isn’t feminism, nor is it capitalism—your enemy is “not being rich.” Aristocratic women who can afford cooks and nannies and who spend all their time on leisure activities never disappeared. I met one just last summer (she was a lovely person, by the way). If it weren’t for the “girlboss narrative,” she never would have had her luxurious life. She worked in tech for 20 years, and made lots of money, only to meet her wealthy husband in her late 30s and have children with him. She became a SAHM after she had kids, and now gets to do whatever she wants. These women still exist, and you can still become one—if you’re lucky. But if you’re like everyone else, you’ll have to work in one way or another (either as a SAHM or in the traditional workplace, or some combination—but either way, it’s not a life of pure leisure and luxury). And while we might hate Jira tickets, they’re a lot better than working alongside your eight consumptive children in the textile factory and going home to your husband who beats you.
I know SAHMs aren’t all rich, and plenty of lower- or middle-class SAHMs exist, who do not make their own income on the side like I do. Some SAHMs have full-time nannies and spend all day at the spa; others are deep in the trenches with three kids under 5 and no hired help. But all modern SAHMs still benefit from the rights that previous women fought to earn. Even if they don’t have jobs, they have equal rights, and they have the ability to work for an income if something were to happen to their husband’s earnings. Being a SAHM is more of a financial risk than having a job, but there’s still a legal and cultural safety net, brought to you by … feminism.
I don’t know if there’s any hope of getting that through to Gen Z women without coming off as a dorky “wine mom” wearing a Party City Handmaid’s Tale costume. But I think the tide is already turning. Last November, I noticed a vibe shift away from aspirational tradwifery. People were finally calling the bluff of influencers who insisted they’d be happier subsistence farming—especially because, in Trump’s second administration, nobody is stopping them from doing that now. And this goes far beyond your normie-lib “I’m With Her” circles.
Helen Roy has written extensively about her experience as a conservative-leaning mom, fighting against misogynistic expectations and rules associated with the trad movement. I’ve seen some similar work by right-leaning writer Alex Kaschuta on the expectations and reality of motherhood. People—even on the right—have begun to notice that “anti-feminist” influencers often have jobs—as influencers—and make a lot of money, which they can use on their own terms.
I think this trend will continue. With the recent economic turmoil, people can talk all they want about the “fun being over” and women being forced back into the kitchen—but I was around in 2008. Women were serving recession-chic realness in Wet Seal bodycon dresses and dancing to the Black Eyed Peas at the club. The toothpaste can’t be put back in the tube, and I can only hope that today’s young women eventually come to the same conclusion that I did: It’s good to have the option to make your own money.
