The evolution of phony female empowerment trends || Motherhood In Progress

this video is kindly sponsored by ag1 the choke hold that hashtag girl boss had on us in the 2010s was unmatched it was the face of feminism all about increasing women representation in the workforce becoming Your Own Boss and just to stop apologizing all the time but since then the term girl boss has deteriorated to no more than an insult and as girl boss has faded away we've seen the rise of Trad wives who have shown us a new form of feminism that isn't so focused on capitalism man I feel like lied to lied to by the culture I fell for the boss the like I I could do everything by myself that hyper independent I'm in a place now in my life where I'm re-evaluating everything these traditional wives Believe In traditional gender roles which can vary in values but usually have the same look this Little House on the Prairie or 50s housewife woman rejects the traditional 9 to5 Workforce in favor of homeschooling their children homemaking and of course submitting to their husbands so let's dissect this and get into what killed the girl boss where the tradwives came from and what this means for the next generation of women entering [Music] adulthood first let's get into the origin story of the girl boss era the term girl boss was coined in 2014 by Sophie Amoroso the founder of nasty gal in her book # girl boss Sophia went from dumpster diving and shoplifting to fuel her nasty G eBay business to becoming one of the world's wealthiest business women in her own words she describes being a girl boss as someone who has big dreams and is willing to work hard for them so being a girl boss is really about being the boss of your own life you don't have to be the boss of anyone else to be a girl boss so it's about keeping personal responsibility for your future being comfortable taking risks and understanding that failure is the byproduct of of your own invention girl boss is a feeling of philosophy it's a way for women to reframe success for ourselves on our own terms for the first time in history at the same time the book lean in by Cheryl Sandberg the Facebook coo was gaining traction as it sold over 4 million copies in 5 years this book told women to embrace their Ambitions and to not be scared of the corporate Workforce because it's not made for women this girl boss movement took over the 2010s with the ideals of women women raising up creating their own path all while lifting other women up alongside of them it encouraged women to be self-made be their own boss or just take on leadership roles and I said well how hard can it be boys do it and then I said how hard going it be boys to it at this time there was still very little female representation in the world despite making so much progress in the feminist movement we wanted to see more female leaders in politics more women in stem more female leads in movies not just weak submissive Side [Music] characters where is Mama but the problem with this movement besides the really cringy boss babe merchandise was that the term girl boss was starting to be used in a very toxic way girl boss created this narrative that for women to succeed we needed to achieve power instead of changing the dynamic of the workplace that led to this inequality in the first place the thought was that with more girl bosses there would be more equality and that just wasn't the case just adding women to an already toxic work environment doesn't fix anything as we know women Executives can be just as exploitative as male Executives we even saw this recently in The Kite baby Scandal where the founder CEO let go one of their employees for requesting remote work because she was adopting a premature baby you think you could expect more from a company based on helping moms we wanted the girl boss to fix everything was wrong with our workplaces the competitiveness the workaholism the fraternity styled sexist collegiality the racism the girl boss was supposed to represent the change in the workplace but more than that she was supposed to bring the change to the workplace instead she was right at home there within all of the workaholic toxic patriarchal structures and we couldn't forgive her for it as well while we love seeing strong women raise the ranks and Lead businesses what about the women on lower levels still dealing with male-dominated sexist environments instead of adapting the workplace to women's skills and needs it was expected that women integrate into the man's world every way you're told to be a strong woman is to act like a man and take on their pre-existing power dynamics have broad shoulders take up space have a strong handshake don't have too high of a voice a perfect example of this is Elizabeth Holmes the biotechnology entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud with her blood testing company Theos she's known for her lowered voice but she does have other stereotypical male traits like strong hand motions rarely Crossing her legs and keeping a forward-leaning body all in the name of trying to be taken seriously in a male dominated field I believe the individual is the answer to the challenges of healthcare we're told that we need to take on these sometimes toxic male traits as if we have nothing to offer as women ourselves it's never questioned how men act in these power roles it's only that we're acting wrong as Chelsea from the financial diet said best instead of empowering young girls by telling them to stop apologizing why don't we start asking men to apologize and in the end all we did was include masculine women into the workplace instead of helping your average woman and over the years the meaning of girl boss shifted as well instead of being a representation of women empowerment it turned into an insult and this is because # girl boss began to represent a not so good group of people I don't trust her I don't think she's a good person but I had to love her to play her besides the toxic sheos we were also seeing girl boss adopted by the MLM groups these women with really ambiguous Instagram descriptions that never actually tell you what they do for business and how they how are they their own boss oh sorry Miss bomb I'm just conducting business did you know I'm My Own Boss you're literally dming girls you haven't talked to in 10 years you mean cultivating a community of boss baves it's a cult what are you wearing oh you like it's sustainable plastic that's a shopping bag I'm a businesswoman no risk no reward now I was never one of the lucky ones to get reached out in a Instagram or Facebook message of hey girly Do You Want To Be Your Own Boss and I do kind of feel left out for that but it's become a huge meme that the MLM girlies are the girl bosses now now I don't need to get into how problematic these mlms are there's plenty of videos on that but they used the girl boss movement to disguise what was taking advantage of women and exploiting them financially and there's more to be said about the girl boss because Jen Z entered the chat of course with an even bigger push back because for one jenz loves to hate on everything Millennial but also they saw through the guise of it being fake and demeaning can we just all collectively agree to just end the term girl boss just end it my friends and I were talking about this the other day we're just like something about it isn't sitting right with me I'm sorry even if you are like you know having the girl boss Tendencies qualities you know like I'm a business owner and you know I'm getting done I'm sorry I'm just not going to call myself a girl boss and it's Choy these women who claim to be girl bosses weren't bosses of anything at all and from the perspective of Jen Z the girl boss is effectively a millennial Karen only 10 years younger and with a better haircut instead of making a fuss with the man manager she's the manager herself exclusively looking out for her own interests by the time we reached 2020 girl boss just wasn't resonating with women anymore I don't have goals I don't have ambition I only want to be attractive I only want to look good I just want to be sexy everything else nothing else matters I just want to be pretty I don't care I don't care about on top of trying to hustle our way to success we were also dealing with the burdens that 2020 brought leading to burnout women were tired tired of dealing with the burdens from working from home dealing with schooling from home if they had children and just worrying about their overall health at this time we're in an interesting time where women are expected to do it all where it's like you can have a full-time career and be a mom and be this boss and I can do anything a man can do I love that we have the opportunity to do that I think that's so important but I also think that you shouldn't feel bad if you don't want to do all those things because just being a mom that that's the most important job in the world you're raising a human so if that's what you're doing don't feel shamed or embarrassed or less than to someone who's like starting their own business or having a career I think everyone's fulfilled by different things the pandemic gave us all the chance to reflect on our life and what we want from our careers and for a lot of women being a girl boss just wasn't it anymore women were against an always on culture stagnating wages and an eroded social safety net with a now worsening caregiving crisis in a society where women already shoulder the majority of unpaid domestic work staying home to focus on the household full-time might be preferable now before we move on to what happened after the girl boss we do need to take a second to thank our sponsor who is ag1 my husband and I have been taking ag1 for over a year now Josh started at first because he was dealing with gut issues and sleep issues and we decided we wanted to take a proactive approach to our health instead of responding when these things happen we want to be putting things in our bodies to set us up for success and the obvious choice for us was ag1 if you haven't heard of ag1 before it's a science-driven formulation of vitamins probiotics and Whole Food Source nutrients that Aid your brain gut and immune system it was made to fill nutrient gaps promote gut health and support whole body Vitality one scoop of ag1 mixed in with water delivers a powerful blend of Health Products working together to help you feel like your healthiest cell there's so many things I love about ag1 one of them is you're getting your multivitamin and one tasty drink you're also getting Prebiotic probiotic in here here and a bunch of superfoods that I normally would not be eating every day like shitake mushrooms Rishi mushrooms riola astralis spirulina broccoli powder spinach powder it's just really cool knowing that you're guaranteed to be taking these things in every day without having to plan for it I've noticed the Boost and energy ever since taking ag1 I usually get that afternoon slump especially if the kids got me up early and I love taking my ag1 around that time instead of a second cup of coffee which will lead to caffeine crash this gives me that boost of energy to get me through the dreaded afternoon with the kids I love the taste of this I look forward to it every day it can be intimidating by its color but it has kind of a tropical taste to it I also love adding lemon in it and using very cold water and it's so refreshing so if you guys would like to try out ag1 for yourself head to the link in the description with that link you can get a free one-year supply of their AG vitamin D3 plus K2 and you get five ag1 travel packs with your first purchase thank you so much to ag1 for being an ongoing sponsor I love these guys I love getting to share it with you now let's talk about the I don't dream of Labor [Music] ERA this trend started to pick up on 2021 on YouTube and Tik Tok while it's not a new idea that people don't desire to go to the 9 to5 every day it was a rebellion against the current mindset of rise and grind team no sleep and just hustle culture overall so tell us what's your your dream job darling I've told you several times before I have no dream job I do not dream of Labor jenzie being the outwardly honest and bold generation that they are had no fear in sharing their disdain for the 9 to-5 life and questioned the romanticized concept of a dream job they were confident enough to let the world know that they don't care for work and they weren't worried about being called lazy and this was big for Millennial SE her as well as we were told to just get good grades go to college you'll get a great salary job have two and a half kids get married um buy your beautiful little house with a picket fence and all will be cheery as we know that's not how it's gone for a lot of us and it was liberating to hear that Millennials weren't alone in the struggle instead this idea of hustle harder was replaced by mental health awareness and self-care I myself went through this corporate shock when I entered the workforce after graduating college you're told that once you get a stable salary career job you've made it and then you realize that corporate life sucks at least for myself don't get me wrong I know that my workplace was toxic but being reprimanded for not making your career your whole personality was not cool but a very common expectation in a lot of companies I had reviews where I was told I wasn't working hard enough because I didn't come in early and stay late like suei for only wanting to work during work [Music] hours and as the shift away from corporate goals was going on we also had a shift towards self-sufficient living the pandemic came with issues outside of health and safety like food scarcity and product shortages as we all saw the Panic buying of food and non-food products that led to empty shelves and grocery stores this opened a lot of people's eyes that maybe were not as secure in these First World countries as we thought we were and this led people to desire more simple living without leaning so much on government freid and this is also where we saw social trends shift which was previously all about minimalism now we were seeing much more maximalism come into play because it's scary if you don't have anything and you don't feel confident in the store supplying for you anymore there was also a big push for Homestead Hobbies like growing your own food and raising some chickens what better way to secure your food than growing it yourself especially when we had so much time on our hands Amy fuel the co-founder of homesteaders of America said that we saw hundreds of thousand thousands of new homesteaders come to this lifestyle during 2020 and the beginning of 2021 it was such a wholesome pursuit to want to be able to provide for yourself from your own land says Brown who herself aspires one day to own a small farm I think the pandemic just expedited a lot of people's interest in wanting to seek self-sufficiency and happiness on their own term and do as much as they can to provide for themselves and their family the first adaptation I saw of this in the influencer world was the cottage core aesthetic which was so different from the previously trending AE Aesthetics it focused on simpler slower living frolicking in flower Fields working in the garden caring for chickens and wearing lots of pastel colored dresses it fed into our desire for self-sufficiency with the gardening and the chicken coops while also giving us a beautiful escape from the scary world that was going on and even influencers who were living normal Urban lives were starting to pick up on these hobbies and interests as well I follow a lot of mom minimalist influencers and so many of them just picked up their lives to move to the countryside get a little hobby Farm going it was just a total 180 switch and that was when I was first like what is happening and why isn't anyone talking about this and then came the Trad wives if we look at the combination of the girl boss deterioration the I don't dream of Labor Trend and the rise in homesteading it's no wonder we've gotten to this point the tradwife movement was gaining momentum in around 2021 even before it had a name for itself but in July of 2022 it really took off when Estee Williams the so-called first face of tradwives started putting out her tradwife content Williams decided to give up her career as a meteorologist to become a homemaker after getting married she shares her life online as a part of the tradwife movement which inspires women to return to their traditional gender roles she cooks and cleans for her husband and always presents herself as the perfect wife for him since then many other women have jumped on the Trad wife train and are encouraging others to join them many women feel that the modern world with all its promises has failed them and this new life as a tradwife could bring them the happiness they've been looking for we live in a day and age where traditional homemaking has been forgotten about and even looked down on where women are fighting to be in the same positions as men indoctrinated to focus more on their careers and less on the home when God created men and women more than just biologically different our roles are meant to compliment each other not to compete our husbands are to be the bread winners as we are to be the bread makers somewhere along the line feminine has been replaced with feminism with the sole purpose of keeping woman out of the home which forces those to rely on the government to teach and raise our children marriage is falling apart because the God who created it is being left out of it the worst thing that women can do nowadays is to think that having a career and children are something you could do simultaneously the people that say that are often people that do not have children and then the people that do have children are often the people that have to hire nannies to take care of their own children so the solution is basically going back to traditional masculinity and feminis absolutely there's an undermining of the female role and the importance of motherhood and the complete and total exploitation of it undermining what it is that right there is how you make a society weak you undermine how damn important it is for a woman to just rock the cradle you want to be exhausted work your n to 5 job and then show up to children and then have to meet the needs of your husband you're going to either resent the thing that you show up to do from 9 to 5 or you're going to resent your children and your partner women who are being told with the I don't dream of Labor Trend that aspiring for a career is not the vibe we're looking for what their alternative is for many women who increasingly report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness and disillusionment with the girl boss lifestyle these influencers offer an idealic alternative to Urban Life they are Illuminating a deeper hunger among women the tradwife movement offers women the chance to reclaim their control of Happiness through focusing on Family Home and Faith being Reliant and submissive to your husband seems scary for obvious reasons but it's being portrayed as your man protecting and providing for you in a world that's trying to bring us down why would you want to worry about silly finances and politics and Wars going on when your husband can do that and you can just play with the kids and bake sourdough bread all day and after the pandemic women were eating this up because it felt good to see other women living peaceful lives during such scary times now the tradwife label does come with these negative connotations so I see a lot of influencers is living the lifestyle but not necessarily using the label the narrative is always of submission and living a simpler Life as a wife but the tradwives are selling you more than just a traditional lifestyle it's an aesthetic for the most part It's a combination of the 1950s housewife and Little House on the Prairie characters they all have long flowy $300 dresses what looks like vintage kitchen wear which is actually name brand and all their children are wearing matching brand outfits from small shops it wouldn't be the world of M implementing if they weren't selling us an idealic life just now in a different flavor now I won't get into the unrealistic lives that they're sharing with us because I already did that in another video but I do want to go over other aspects of this movement and what impacts it's going to be having on women there are a lot of women talking about how horrible the tradwife movement is and in some aspects I can agree but I definitely don't think it's all bad for me it just very much feels feels like a complicated issue and depends on which Trad wife you're talking about for example the work that women do taking care of their home and their children has been disregarded for so long especially during the girl boss era that it's very refreshing seeing people bring light to how much effort it takes to be a stay-at-home mom and just being fully present with your children and fully involved is a beautiful ideal that these women are carrying for Emily peria a stay-at-home mom in New Mexico the TR movement is a way to escape from a world that doesn't appreciate someone's staying home and raising children and to one that puts people on a pedestal for it people say that tried wives are not smart for fully combining your life with your husband and not having any of your own money and I just don't agree with that there are a lot of successful ways to have a marriage and combining everything is one of them my thought is if you're both in it to win it why wouldn't you combine everything again not that it's for everyone the problem people keep bringing up is if the wife wife doesn't have any way to support herself if something were to happen to her husband like a backup plan and I do want to tread lightly here because I don't think there's one right way for everyone to handle their marriages but I know there are a lot of women out there who fully financially rely on their husbands and they're doing just fine they made the calculated risk to give up their monetary potential for the benefits of raising their children full-time I think it's probably a good idea to have a means of making money to protect yourself but is it for everyone probably not I think that the real issue with these tradwife influencers is that they're not laying out the risks and giving some caution it's just go forth submit to your husbands and everything will be okay Stephanie coun the director of research for the counil on contemporary families says it's worrisome if people in the movement convince young women that depending on a male bread winner will solve their work related frustrations without considering the risks that a man might lose his job die early mistreat them or abandon them and while I can completely get behind that I don't think it's for everyone to always plan for failure we shouldn't just blanket statements say that everyone should always be financially prepared for any disaster when disaster may never come but I also do see women get locked into unhealthy marriages because they're being financially controlled over 50% of marriages in the US end a divorce and I can assure you that nobody's sitting on their wedding day and thinking oh we're planning to get divorced I chose to stitch this because this is exactly me when I was 26 or 27 I had two young kids I would remember walking into a thrift store of all places and I saw one of my mom's old friends and she was like oh how are you they're so cute what are you up to these days like what are you doing for a living and I was like this is what I'm doing for a living I'm staying home with the kids and she was like oh and like she had this cautionary like look on her face as she very judgy said to me well just be really careful you know you don't want to be in a situation where you're riant on someone make sure that you don't have any gaps in your resume May and you're you know you're keeping your skill set up well clearly I wasn't I had just said I was staying home with my kids so I am just offended I'm like um well that's not necessary I mean we have a really great relationship and we're really happily married we'll be married forever 5 years later I really had to eat my hat so to speak because I was miserably married like in a miserable situation where I could not get out of this marriage now I had given 15 years of my life to this man and I had poured all of my talent and all of my energy into his business building his business because I was hang home with the kids and this was the way we were making an income together what I wish that I could tell myself back then was shake shake shake listen to the lady who's a little bit older than you maybe she has some life experience that you don't know yet and that's why you see so many older women entering the workforce when their kids go off to college and their husband decides that they want to end the relationship now and and he's going off with the young secretary or whoever and now they are having to start their career career at square one because they've given their whole lives to stay at home and to propel his career so he's flying high has the great career making fantastic money and now she might be getting some money in child support or in alimony if she's lucky now I do want to address that I said in my previous video about tradwives that it's not a good idea for these young women being sold this fairy tale and being told not to go to college for example because what if they become a stay-at home mom realize they don't enjoy it and don't have another way to make money and some of you brought up a very valid point that it's not worth it to have a lifelong debt from going to college when there's a possibility that you'll be a stay-at-home mom because that's what you at the time want to do I thank you for bringing that up I totally understand that I think I was I know I was just coming from my own experience of being Canadian you can get a bachelor's degree anywhere from say $20,000 to $40,000 so while that is a lot of money it's not a lifelong debt so yeah don't get me wrong don't get hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt if you don't think you're going to use that education and um make that money back but I do want to clarify that going to college was just one example of a way to safeguard yourself monetarily and the main focus would just be to have any skill that could be monetized again this isn't for everyone but if a young girl appro approached me and asked what she should do while she waits to find a partner and have kids and stay home I would suggest growing a skill that you could maybe get paid for in the future the other main problem with these tradwives is that they're romanticizing and glamorizing life as a stay-at-home parent they make it look easy and carefree when in reality it is far from peaceful get ready with me while I tell you the cons of being a stay-at-home mom and that's everything now don't get me wrong some women are living their best lives as Homemakers and I don't want to discount them we just can't expect all women to thrive in this environment like we see on Instagram and Tik Tok and yet that is what's being pushed I remember when Jake and I got married about 2 years ago I did not have a deep desire for homemaking if anything I dreaded the chores I dread dreed the dishes I dreaded the laundry so I started praying about this and I asked the Lord to change my view on homemaking I asked him to change my attitude towards stewarding my home and he did he gave me a new perspective on it even though it's still hard work and sometimes I really don't enjoy well most of the time I really don't enjoy cleaning the toilet there's so much joy in stewarding your home well and I'm just so thankful for a place that I can call home not all but a lot of these TR WI influencers are Ultra conservative Christians and so they're selling their morals and ideas that staying home to raise the children work on the house and submit to your husband is what a woman was made to do and therefore all women should aspire to it that's the part I can't wrap my head around can you imagine telling men that you all have to get the exact same job and you'll all be good at it because it's what you were all meant to do as if we don't have our individual skills and preferences and personalities that make us better at different things some women are more maternal and have more homebased Hobbies which would lead them to be happier staying home with their children as opposed to other people like myself who are not very maternal and have hobbies outside of the home so while I love my children to death I can't really enjoy the things that I like to do when I'm caring for them and even though I said this again in my last TR away videos I do want to mention it one more time that these women who are selling you these traditional lives often aren't even living traditional lives themselves in the sense that they are making an income being influencers they're working making an income and probably getting fulfillment from their work otherwise why would they keep doing it ballerina Farm is not a mom ballerina Farm is a business it is a brand and Hannah's life is the commercial for the company just like Martha Stewart Oprah Taylor Swift Target The Cheesecake Factory Ace Hardware in Uber Hannah is not a homesteader who is already homesteading and decided to turn a camera on her life Hannah is a woman with a dream and that dream included building a platform embedding products that she could profit off of into every shot and hoping that she's able to make that lifestyle look so magical that you're willing to plunk down $280 for a ballerina Farms box we're not looking at vulnerability we're not looking at reality we're looking at a public facing marketing campaign disguised as a life in which even children are used as props tradwives are selling you their life they're not showing you lifestyle they're selling their brand they're making money by need eating their sourdough and reading to their homeschooled children and scrubbing their bathtub it's just unfair for these influencers to be selling the ideals of being fully dependent on husbands when they themselves are not dependent on their husbands or at least if they didn't have to be moving on some of these tradwives have said that they're living this lifestyle to oppose feminists but in actuality this is what the feminists have fought for feminist I can actually cook I'm a feminist I can cook but I'm not obligated to I cook when I'm in the mood you know who else can cook my husband but if neither of us have the energy or capacity one night then we're serving frozen pizza not a feminist I don't hate children I'm a feminist and a mom and much more I love my two children and I'm grateful to not be defined by them we just want women to be able to live out whatever path they choose whether that's being a CEO or a stay-at-home mom and this is the Trad wife I can definitely get behind you love staying home and working all day in the kitchen I love that for you carry on you're doing great work I'm not on pause from a career this is my career I'm not wasting my college education wasting my talent or wasting my time I don't long for a dream job or dream about the day I can go back to work this is my dream job this is the greatest work I will ever do and for that reason I do think this can be a very positive response to the decade of girl bossing that only led us to being overworked burnt out and having the lack of life fulfillment it's so wonderful when we do hear these women talk about how much work does go into maintaining their households and often these women are the bosses of their homes in the sense that they run the show they know the schedule they know the family needs they make the budget they run the finances it's not always just Meek women bowing down to their husbands and I guess this is a good point to end off while we're at it the girl bosses needed to go they were selling us a fake narrative that wasn't helping anyone but with a lot of extremes in the world the pendulum always swings in the furthest opposite direction and so here we are at tradwives I think it's totally valid for these women to choose homemaking over being burnt out at a job that they hate but since we ditched girl boss I feel like we should also ditch the Trad wife aesthetic label whatever you want to call it it's just two bad ends of the spectrum My Hope Is that we can relax back to a happy medium where we can support and encourage women whether they're working from a corner office or a kitchen stove just a reminder make sure you check out ag1 using the link in the description that will get you the free AG vitamin D3 plus K2 drops and the five ag1 travel packs with your first [Music] purchase

Channel: Ashley Embers

Views: 154,466

Keywords:

Id: 3dJrwUJ-LUo

Length: 32min 5sec (1925 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024