Trying…not to be a soft girl
Sweden’s new soft girl trend - which celebrates often young women without kids quitting work - makes me feel queasy. Not just for the obvious reasons, of, you know, feminism, but because women haven’t come this far to come this far. And we deserve to live with all it entails; to rip the band-aid off and put ourselves out there.
According to some of the stay-at-home girlfriends getting allowances from their boyfriends - their lives are softer, less stressful and they are no longer struggling.
It sounds lovely, especially when it’s cold outside and we all feel like hibernating, but it’s a life defined by what they are not doing - so what do they do now? Apart from waiting for their allowance to drop into their bank account. Some travel, cookery and lunches apparently. Again - all lovely - if someone is picking up the bill and there aren’t kids to wrangle.
But putting aside these major issues and stumbling blocks to achieving a ‘soft’ life - women should want both. Hard and soft; struggle and peace; warm and cold. Life only works when there is balance. You don’t know what you don’t know if you are never putting yourselves out there.
And yes some will argue feminism is about choice - but this trend for opting out is particularly pernicious for women - who have been erased from the public square and life outside of the home for the whole of time until relatively recently.The trend for quiet quitting, where people do the bare minimum in their jobs, is appealing to both men and women because of the hustle doesn’t get you what is once did. It is totally understandable due to a cost of living crisis around the world and a crazy property market that only favours those who bought homes generations ago, that people are no longer willing to work to any cost.
But this shouldn’t mean a swing so far the other way, especially for women who still end up doing far more caring, household and emotional tasks. Seize your freedoms where you can and capitalise on them. And ideally having capital of your own is key to freely choosing those freedoms guilt-free.
Plus see this warning from Debbie Crosbie, the chief executive of Nationwide, who fears working from home, hailed as a great step forward for some women to finally have some flex in the system around caring duties, could harm female careers. She told my BBC colleague Sean Farrington: “My watch out, though, is that what we find, certainly at Nationwide, is that men are more likely to come into the office than women, and we just need to be really careful that we don’t prevent women from accessing the development-watching. I benefited enormously from watching some really excellent leaders and how they navigated challenging problems.”
Quite.
I accept that anything described as soft sounds tempting - especially on a freezing day. I get it, I am the person who is always cold and craving cocoon vibes. But resist total softness we must. It’s a cold metal trap trussed up in a sumptuous velvet glove.
So, on this day, the anniversary of my 40th year on this planet - aka my big 4-0 birthday, may I wish you fire, energy and vim.
It isn’t possible all of the time but let’s shoot for some of the time and build from there.
We haven’t come this far, to come this far. I want to see how far we can push it.
Let’s try to keep on trying. Even when it’s trying.
Loved this. I had a fabulous (female, American) boss who gave me a gorgeous piece of advice in my early 30s that I cherish 20 years later like a piece of fabulously expensive cashmere in these snuggly months (rather than opt for the cheap blanket). Beware the unintended consequences before you jump into something. You don’t know what you don’t know. Find out what you don’t know. Then decide.
They should call it “Nora living”. All I see is a self imposed “Dolls House” where women are actually choosing to put themselves in a gilded cage of subordination through dependency. It truly fills me with horror. In the words of Dorothy Parker “what fresh hell is this?”