"The girlboss era is decidedly over," Vanity Fair declared last year. And this reported demise has coincided with a growing trend of young women ditching their careers for more leisurely pursuits.
Videos of so-called stay-at-home girlfriends (SAHGs) "narrating their day while twinkly music plays in the background" are gaining millions of views on social media, said Cosmopolitan. But "the life of a SAHG is risky, to say the least".Â
The good TikTok shows SAHGs "puttering around modern high-rise apartments, pushing Dyson vacuums and spoiling small dogs", in a conscious rejection of the "mid-2000s 'girlboss' hustle culture", said Rory Satran in The Wall Street Journal.
These women's days are packed with "elaborate skin, fitness and food routines", said The Washington Post's Monica Heese, and not just for their own pleasure but also that of their boyfriends, "who are, after all, funding the whole shebang".
At the centre of it all is "the concept that liberation is overrated". Today, "women are allowed to have successful careers", but when domestic responsibilities still disproportionately falls on women, "who wouldn't dream of feminine leisure".
The bad The "seemingly harmless" charms of soft girl living "blend a little too easily into old-fashioned manifestations of gender", wrote psychologist Vanessa Scaringi for Time. SAHGs "are pretending they have agency over their choices", author and campaigner Eve Rodsky told the news site, but they are "taking huge economic risks".Â
While stay-at-home spouses generally get financial support if a relationship ends in divorce, SAHGs don't, financial expert Farnoosh Torabi told Cosmopolitan – so "what happens when you go from being a stay-at-home-girlfriend to just a stay-at-home girl"?Â
The reality Even if a lot of SAHGs say that they are living the good life, these "tales of fulfilment, relaxation and empowerment" must be balanced against "stories of breakups, professional struggles, boredom and insecurity", said Satran.Â
In reality, "life isn't effortless", Scaringi told Time, "and if we want to be fulfilled, it can't be". It's true that "whenever we are too invested in our careers, we lose out on so much life". But "the extreme pendulum swing in the direction of 'soft girl' also lands us in troubling waters". |