Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Soft Girls Don't Want Your Hustle with Steph McNeil

00:00:00.000 What do you think about when you hear the term soft girl?

00:00:11.900 I think about my squishy post baby belly that feels like a bowl of cookie batter when I poke it.

00:00:19.460 But that is not what soft girl is referring to on the social medias.

00:00:24.780 We're learning a new word today. Hashtag soft girl.

00:00:30.000 A soft girl on TikTok and Instagram is a young woman who no longer wants to hustle. 1.00

00:00:36.680 She doesn't want to be a girl boss. 1.00

00:00:38.720 In fact, a lot of them do not want to work for pay at all. 1.00

00:00:43.400 She just wants to perfect her skincare regime and do all the Pilates.

00:00:48.520 And as one story said, lay in the moss all day with her lover.

00:00:53.920 I just read a great, great piece on Glamour.

00:00:56.040 This one is by the author and reporter Stephanie McNeil, and it's all about soft girls and their

00:01:02.040 vibe. And frankly, it flip-turned my world upside down. Here is what this piece tells us

00:01:09.020 about the soft girls, a term that I had never heard before. But I do genuinely think that

00:01:17.000 these girls may be the gateway drug into the world of trad wives. Listen to this. 0.93

00:01:23.460 For many Gen Z women who have entered the workforce during the past few years, 0.88

00:01:29.080 their greatest dream is increasingly to have the chance to achieve nothing, 0.65

00:01:34.400 at least by traditional capitalist standards. 0.97

00:01:38.000 Welcome to the world of the soft girl, 0.95

00:01:41.020 the lifestyle choice that many young women are now holding up as an ideal. 1.00

00:01:45.400 The soft girl doesn't value the grind or getting ahead. 1.00

00:01:49.820 She prioritizes slow living. 0.98

00:01:52.140 Her days are filled with a nearly obsessive focus on self-care,

00:01:55.900 from making the perfect morning smoothie to cozy cardio.

00:02:00.060 Long-term, the soft girl dreams of making dinner for her husband,

00:02:04.080 and, if she's got them, staying home with her kids.

00:02:07.620 She's not interested in making partner or founding her own company.

00:02:10.880 She's in touch with her feminine energy, her menstrual cycle, and her moods. 1.00

00:02:16.320 Yeah, there are genuinely young women on social media who are striving to be trophy wives. 0.97

00:02:23.880 And here's the thing. I want to send a little wake-up call to them. 1.00

00:02:29.240 Girls, there are not that many rich dudes out there just dying to take care of you. 0.99

00:02:35.740 I'm all for slowing down the hustle culture. It fucked me over in a lot of ways. 0.99

00:02:39.860 I'm also for leaning out a little bit, for finding joy and bliss in your home and being a mom. 0.97

00:02:46.320 But I also really want these young women to realize that they have to be financially independent.

00:02:52.040 They have to make their own security and their own money, because ultimately the world is not

00:02:56.300 going to take care of you, and a man probably will not either. These rich men that you're looking for,

00:03:02.520 they're unicorns. I want to send a message to these young women. But, but, but, but, but, but,

00:03:07.940 there is always a but. There has to be a middle ground here. Because my generation, my lean-in

00:03:14.680 hustle culture generation, a lot of us did get screwed over by our jobs. A lot of us are burnt

00:03:19.980 out, and we are exhausted. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Is there a balance

00:03:26.280 between leaning in and leaning out? I worry about the soft girls, and frankly, I needed to know 0.55

00:03:33.520 everything about them. So, you know, I did what I always do, and I called up Steph McNeil. She's

00:03:39.640 the author of this piece, and she is also the author of the wonderful book, Swipe Up for More,

00:03:44.880 Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers.

00:03:53.640 Hey, how are you? I'm good. How you doing on this Friday afternoon, this fall Friday?

00:04:00.640 I'm good. I'm going to try and enjoy the weather before it rains for what my husband told me will

00:04:05.940 be the seventh weekend in a row. Well, going out and enjoying the weather is very soft girl of you.

00:04:12.780 That's true. That's true. Maybe I should just stop my workday and go out and lay in the grass

00:04:21.180 or something. I read your soft girl revolution piece yesterday, and there is one line in it

00:04:30.000 That for some women, they just want to, you know, roll in the roll in the moss with their lover. And my one comment on that is, girl, have you ever tried fucking in the grass? Because it is really scratchy. It is not as sexy as you think it's going to be. 0.99

00:04:48.720 Right. But for our listeners who have not read your great article yet on the soft girl revolution, how young women are rejecting girl boss culture for a life of leisure. Can you tell us what this is? What is what is a soft girl?

00:05:05.200 So kind of the hallmarks of wanting to be a soft girl are finding a radical revolution or freedom in saying, I know that I have the option to work really hard and climb the corporate ladder and do all of that as a woman.

00:05:29.300 But I am choosing to not do that and instead focus on myself and my own happiness. 0.94

00:05:36.700 So it's not exactly a return to women shouldn't be in the workplace or women can't be in the 0.96

00:05:43.760 workplace. 0.77

00:05:44.100 It's also it's almost like I'm too evolved to even want to be, you know, a CEO or, you

00:05:53.580 know, super hardcore worker out.

00:05:57.580 I graduated from college in 2011 and it was very much.

00:06:02.660 So you were 10 years after, about 10 years after me.

00:06:05.660 And then these girls are about 10 years after you.

00:06:08.620 Exactly.

00:06:09.740 And I guess when I started thinking about it, I started seeing the difference between that mindset and the mindset that, you know, I had, you know, when I was younger where it was very much the culture of lean in.

00:06:23.700 I think Lean In came out right around the time I graduated from college. 0.83

00:06:28.440 The girl boss culture, you know, it was, you know, the original girl boss, Sophia Amoroso,

00:06:35.120 was Emily Weiss, it was Ty Haney, it was, you know, Audrey Gelman and The Wing, you

00:06:40.940 know, everyone, like girls who had no business paying for wing memberships that I worked

00:06:45.720 with were paying for The Wing just to feel like, you know, they were a part of this girl

00:06:52.160 boss entity. You know, Hillary Clinton was running for president. It was very much this 0.99

00:06:58.980 women need to, you know, take our space in the workplace. We need to work really hard. We need 1.00

00:07:05.440 to be essentially working just as hard, quote unquote, as men do. And when I was looking through

00:07:13.220 the TikToks and the Instagram posts, I realized that that's really not what women are striving 1.00

00:07:18.820 for anymore. And then I started to think, okay, well, why is that? What happened? And then that's 0.99

00:07:26.560 basically what the piece is about, kind of explaining this new mindset and then trying to

00:07:31.800 think, okay, why did this happen? What is this a reaction to? And, you know, is this actually a

00:07:40.180 revolutionary way of being or is this just a kind of swing to the other side? And should we try to

00:07:47.840 find somewhere in the middle, which I think we should, obviously. Yes, yes. I think we need to

00:07:53.940 find somewhere in the middle. I do. Because I will tell you, I am very burnt out on the hustle,

00:08:03.580 hustle, hustle culture. That said, I am terrified that if I stop hustling, I will lose my income

00:08:10.500 and not be able to support my family. So one of my big questions is, how did these soft girls 0.95

00:08:16.380 plan to make money while doing Pilates and perfecting their skin and laying in a bed of 1.00

00:08:23.280 moss with their lovers and enjoying their existence. Did you talk to anyone about that?

00:08:28.940 Right. I mean, that's kind of the most obvious question here, right? Is, okay, so who's going

00:08:35.940 to pay for everything? And I think the answer to that is there's kind of levels of soft girl

00:08:42.600 lifestyle and it's also it's kind of hard to know you know if push comes to shove do these soft girls

00:08:49.420 really want to give up their financial autonomy maybe not um but i think that 1.00

00:08:57.860 there are women out there young women who genuinely are striving to be trophy wives 0.99

00:09:10.700 legitimately yeah um you know someone who has really become extremely popular in social media

00:09:17.320 in the past year or so is sofia richie and her life is kind of the pinnacle of imagined soft 0.99

00:09:26.520 girl success if you take it to you know kind of one extreme you know she's she comes from money

00:09:33.560 She, you know, grew up incredibly privileged. Now she has, I think she's 25, married a man who is also, you know, incredibly wealthy. He has his own business. He's kind of set up really well.

00:09:47.340 I don't know if you or anyone listening watched her Vogue video of her day in her life.

00:09:54.720 I did and I found it extremely fascinating because, you know, she has a Pilates studio in her house.

00:10:04.680 I used to live in Brentwood when I first graduated from college.

00:10:08.480 And I could tell exactly where she lived as she drove around.

00:10:12.880 And it's essentially one of the most desirable areas in Los Angeles, living in one of these mansions.

00:10:19.600 And she, you know, wakes up.

00:10:22.620 She does her Pilates.

00:10:24.220 She has a few business meetings.

00:10:25.960 But, you know, these are passion projects. 0.98

00:10:29.360 Clearly, they're not, you know, something that she needs to do to maintain her lifestyle.

00:10:34.220 She goes down and shops at, I think it's Doan. 0.54

00:10:38.940 Oh, Doan.

00:10:40.800 Yeah.

00:10:41.000 Yeah.

00:10:41.360 Yeah. She goes and picks out a few dresses. She comes home. And one of the big things is she has 1.00

00:10:47.880 a couple of friends over and they sit around and make salmon for her husband. And then her husband

00:10:51.960 comes home. She goes and sits on his lap. And, you know, her entire day is kind of focused on

00:10:59.700 wellness, her well-being. And, you know, yeah, it definitely seems awesome. Like when I was her age

00:11:08.660 and living in a 700 square foot studio with no kitchen in Brentwood, like, yeah, it was not the

00:11:18.460 same. But, you know, there's something that is a little icky for, I think, a lot of women, 1.00

00:11:28.520 especially women like you and I who are a little bit older to say, okay, you know, obviously that

00:11:34.760 seems great but you know we don't we don't need to be you know married to a rich man so you'll

00:11:42.740 be able to have a life that uh you know fulfills us yeah i have i have a lot of questions about

00:11:50.360 about that is and first off i think you just have to address the the elephant in the room

00:11:57.220 she's freaking rich like she's super super duper wealthy and this is a lot easier when you have 1.00

00:12:08.420 unlimited money at your disposal so whether or not you know that is coming from being married 1.00

00:12:16.720 to someone or generational wealth and i think that that all of these young women that are

00:12:24.700 following her she has more than five million followers like well you can't say yes of course 1.00

00:12:32.320 you too can do this because it costs those don't dresses are four hundred dollars a piece and

00:12:39.260 you simply cannot do this unless you are lionel richie's daughter right and you know there has

00:12:48.320 been this real um you know popularity and fetishization of you know stealth wealth 1.00

00:12:55.840 quiet luxury of you know kind of being in this upper class that i think a lot of women are

00:13:02.180 aspiring to um but like i said there's kind of there's kind of a spectrum soft there's a soft 1.00

00:13:10.020 girl spectrum. On the one hand, if you just take it to probably the lowest form of being a soft

00:13:18.160 girl, what they're advocating for, I believe, is really healthy and great because I think there 0.82

00:13:23.580 are a lot of downsides of obviously girl boss culture, hustle culture. Almost all of the girl 1.00

00:13:30.260 bosses I mentioned earlier have had, you know, scandal and have had, you know, feature stories

00:13:38.380 that led to their downfall.

00:13:40.140 It's really, really hard to be a woman in the workplace still. 1.00

00:13:43.020 And it's really, really hard to break these glass ceilings.

00:13:46.540 And that's not something that everyone can or wants to do.

00:13:50.900 And I think that, you know, there probably is a lot of benefit in listening to your body,

00:13:57.860 in trying to get enough sleep, in, you know, doing something like when you're on your period,

00:14:03.440 not feeling like you need to punish yourself at the gym, doing something a little more

00:14:07.500 soft and, you know, self-care-y. You know, some of the soft girl TikToks I see,

00:14:16.060 they're really just advocating, you know, not sharding all the time, you know, making sure

00:14:20.820 you're taking care of yourself, not feeling like you need to stretch yourself so thin.

00:14:24.880 And that's a message that I think, you know, me as a younger person and me even now could really

00:14:32.220 benefit from and, you know, take a lot of good things out of. But it's when you take it to these

00:14:41.680 extremes of or a little further down the spectrum where it's, oh, if only I could not work and be a

00:14:49.200 stay at home mom, if only I could be a Pilates princess, if only I, you know, had someone who

00:14:55.100 could just pay for everything and I could live like Sophia Ritchie. And then, you know, kind of

00:15:00.220 the extreme extreme end of the spectrum are you know basically trad wives which you know we don't

00:15:07.540 want anyone to fall into no no well and we're going to air this episode during what i'm calling

00:15:13.540 trad wife week on over and under the influence it is like shark week love it but with homeschooling

00:15:20.100 instead of hammerheads and we're on monday uh we talked to ann helen peterson and this episode is 0.60

00:15:29.160 airing on Wednesday great I do I do think that soft girl feels like a gateway drug to trad wife

00:15:36.600 in a way and like you I love the idea of finding balance right like I would just I don't know can

00:15:43.560 there just be an Instagram trend of just a balanced human who tries to be kinder to myself

00:15:50.820 but also has a job because I don't think that women should drop out of the workforce 0.67

00:15:57.600 I mean my biggest concern with soft girls and I actually know a lot of young women who follow 0.75

00:16:07.060 these accounts and they feel badly for themselves that they can't have that it sets these expectations 0.82

00:16:13.620 really high of but but I want this kind of life and I'm never going to have it because

00:16:18.720 I literally have to work eight hours a day to support myself and this is before they have kids

00:16:24.400 or anything, right? And yet, because they're seeing Sophia Ritchie do all of these things,

00:16:30.700 they want it. They want, want, want so bad for it, but it's not attainable for them.

00:16:37.400 Right. I mean, that's kind of the pitfall of Instagram in general. Obviously,

00:16:42.400 we wish that people could take a more nuanced view of everything like this, but

00:16:46.960 often it is taken to these extremes. And, you know, there's part of me that feels kind of sad

00:16:54.060 that that that we can't have balance in that way you know and I think a lot of that is that kind 0.98

00:17:03.940 of out of our control I think this is also kind of a backlash to the fact that a lot of women

00:17:09.680 you know do feel spread extremely thin especially when they have kids and it's really really

00:17:18.240 challenging. I don't know a lot of people who, you know, can only survive on one income once

00:17:25.480 they have children. And it's almost like that's become a goal to strive for again, because it is

00:17:34.080 so unattainable at this point. And it is hard what women have to do, you know, and I think,

00:17:40.600 you know i i have a almost 15 month old and you know so yeah at work or you know in other places 0.98

00:17:49.020 um i feel like when you just have a baby a lot of younger women usually will ask you things like

00:17:55.220 how is it really like i'm i and the thing i hear a lot is you know i really want to have kids but

00:18:02.060 i'm just so nervous about you know juggling everything and i think it's something that's

00:18:06.720 on a lot of women's minds. And it's really difficult in our, you know, American system

00:18:16.200 to do it. Yes. Yes. It's difficult. It feels impossible a lot of days. I get asked the same

00:18:23.520 thing all the time. I try to be very transparent, too, about money and how my life works. We could

00:18:33.600 not support our our lifestyle which and i think you choose your lifestyle too right like what do

00:18:39.860 you want what do you what what neighborhood do you want to live in like how often do you want

00:18:45.120 to go on vacation the lifestyle that we that we have that i want we cannot support it on 0.70

00:18:49.500 one income it requires me to work fucking ton uh it also i also need to have full-time child care 0.81

00:18:59.200 in order to be able to do that which is ridiculously expensive and we are getting it done 0.61

00:19:08.060 I'm exhausted a lot I also am happy a lot I love my life I love the way that I've set it up I try 0.95

00:19:13.860 to have a good time with my kids I say to young women all the time who are scared about having

00:19:18.780 kids you figure it out it will be hard but you will figure it out yeah but I just I do not think

00:19:27.660 we can leave the hustle behind especially you and I know as people in media I feel like we are

00:19:32.440 reinventing our jobs every six to nine months on this constant new cycle it's like oh yeah let's

00:19:38.660 try a podcast let's do a doc series let's do a sub stack and I don't want to raise and by raise I

00:19:45.920 mean the way that we impact women in their 20s to become adults because I don't think we're any of 0.79

00:19:52.600 us are adults until we reach our 30s I don't want to raise a generation of women that think hustling

00:19:57.080 is gross or wrong or bad. I think that hustling should be a part of your life. You don't have to

00:20:03.100 want to be the boss, but, you know, you should find work that's meaningful and fulfilling for

00:20:07.760 you. And and also be kind to yourself if you can do that. I just ah, ah, this this got me really

00:20:17.280 worked up. It got me. No, it's sad. It's sad because I, you know, it's not personal, obviously,

00:20:25.900 but part of me does wonder, are they looking at us and being like, well, you guys seem really

00:20:32.220 stressed. How could we do this differently? And unfortunately, it's not really that possible.

00:20:40.560 I say all the time to people in my life, I feel like I am so privileged in so many ways that I

00:20:50.260 have a job that I like, that I, you know, have certain skills that I've gotten to this stage

00:20:54.860 of my career that I, you know, live in a nice neighborhood and have a good salary that can

00:20:59.640 support me and have a baby and yada, yada, yada. But it's still really hard. And, you know, I don't

00:21:04.980 know how much time you spend in online mom groups, but some of the, yeah, I mean, some of the, you

00:21:12.480 know, I'm sure people know, but when you have a baby, you can join endless groups online if you

00:21:18.520 want with babies that were born in the same month or series of months that your child was born.

00:21:26.780 And when I read those, I just feel so incredibly privileged. You know, having a partner who pulls

00:21:34.480 their weight and helps is extremely rare, like depressingly rare. Pressingly rare. Yep. And,

00:21:43.080 you know, some of the people that I would read, like I remember I would be, you know,

00:21:47.980 I was really lucky. I got almost six months off after I had my daughter and I would be reading,

00:21:55.820 you know, Reddit when I was breastfeeding or whatever. And there were people whose babies,

00:22:01.960 you know, our babies were three weeks old and they already had to go back to work,

00:22:05.080 you know, things like that. And that's the majority of the world. Like that is like the

00:22:09.760 majority of the world has to has to work in some capacity when they have newborns. Yeah.

00:22:14.680 Right. And, you know, and I was doing my book edits when I was on mentality leave and I felt

00:22:21.980 like I was on the best vacation of my life compared to these people. So it's I do wonder

00:22:29.700 how much of it is a reaction to kind of these societal problems. And it's just kind of a

00:22:35.280 different way of trying to deal with the lack of support we have as American women, as American 0.96

00:22:41.480 mothers you know in the piece I mentioned uh Marissa Mayer who was the CEO of Yahoo at the

00:22:47.700 time and I always remember Yahoo during the time yeah I always remember how she had twins and like

00:22:54.380 or I think maybe it was her first baby I know when she had twins she was working in the hospital but

00:22:59.920 I think she had her first baby and she kind of came out and said I'm basically not taking any

00:23:04.040 maternity leave and I mean that wasn't treated like oh my gosh amazing at the time I think there

00:23:10.920 were women who were like, that's not a great example. But I think if she if something like 1.00

00:23:15.080 that happened now, the reaction would be a lot different. But that was kind of something to

00:23:21.060 strive to, you know, Sheryl Sandberg saying, you know, that women kind of take themselves out of

00:23:26.660 the workforce prematurely because they know they want to have children. And I don't know, I think

00:23:34.460 it hasn't maybe it hasn't worked out for a lot of people i too was doing my book edits while i

00:23:42.580 literally going into labor and then after labor because you know what my book was due

00:23:46.760 so i feel like i have also been injected with this toxic hustle culture but then also i grew

00:23:55.120 up in a very financially insecure household where both my parents worked but my dad just spent 0.98

00:24:00.940 stupid amounts of money on stupid things you know we like lived in this shitty apartment for a long 0.99

00:24:06.380 time and and yet he would go and spend like twenty thousand dollars on like a vacation 1.00

00:24:10.940 i didn't go on it but i'm sure it was really nice uh and you know my parents were always in credit

00:24:18.660 card debt and my mom but my mom like couldn't get it in her to control the finances so i'm

00:24:23.300 i have it ingrained in me i have this trauma ingrained in me of what i have to do

00:24:27.640 to support myself if things were ever to go sideways and that's my question for these soft

00:24:34.060 girls or not even the all of the soft girls but really the ones on social media who want to be a

00:24:40.940 pilates wife or a pilates princess what happens when the guy's gone yeah because you really think

00:24:48.740 he's sticking around they don't always stick around um especially maybe when you're not a

00:24:55.240 perfectly gorgeous 23-year-old Pilates princess anymore. And so that is what concerns me. Are

00:25:05.780 these Pilates princesses then going to turn up, you know, when they're 40 and a little actually 1.00

00:25:12.900 softer in the middle because that body does not maintain itself forever and be single and broke 1.00

00:25:20.940 and have no skills. Yeah, it's really scary. And it's kind of a damning

00:25:29.040 critique of capitalism to realize that here we are, you know, 100 years-ish after, you know,

00:25:40.780 the feminist revolution or whatever. And women are literally like, no, I want to go back because 1.00

00:25:45.460 this sucks. Yeah. But obviously, it is not great to be a trophy wife. It is not great to be 1.00

00:25:55.720 dependent on a man financially. And I think that was the question that I tried to ask in the piece

00:26:01.760 was, why do women feel like to take care of themselves, they need to give up their financial 1.00

00:26:08.040 autonomy? And like, I don't think that those things need to be mutually exclusive at all. 0.99

00:26:14.020 time for a quick break when we get back we are going to try to find the middle we are going to

00:26:19.880 try to find that soft jiggly place for us to all land where we have our own money our own 401ks and

00:26:27.420 we can love our husband but not be totally dependent on him sigh

00:26:44.020 and we're back we're back with more more soft girl talk when we left you we were asking is

00:26:52.760 there a middle ground is there a place in between checking out of hustle culture

00:26:56.480 and burning yourself out can you be a hot pilates mom and also a best-selling author

00:27:02.800 i'm asking for a friend just yeah it's not me

00:27:06.460 a lot of social media is kind of absurdist humor and over exaggerations

00:27:13.620 so I mean do I think that people who say I want to be a soft girl I want to be a Pilates mom

00:27:21.200 going on my hot mom walks do I think that they're actually practicing what they preach no

00:27:26.340 but I do think that kind of the fetishization of these roles probably isn't the most

00:27:35.640 great thing ever. Um, and it, you know, I think it does need to, I think that we do need to kind

00:27:45.180 of reframe work a little bit, um, as opposed to, you know, it being, I think that it just

00:27:53.560 demonstrates there's a lot of hopelessness in the workforce right now, I think, especially for

00:27:59.680 young people. And, you know, what can we do to make it so women don't feel the only way they're

00:28:07.580 going to be able to get the life they want is to find an older wealthy man, because that's just 0.61

00:28:12.320 really depressing. Is there a way to do it and to live a life that is balanced where you, you know,

00:28:18.900 do get to spend the time you want taking care of yourself, but also can find success at a certain

00:28:26.000 level that can sustain the life you want that's what we that's what we should all all strive for

00:28:33.000 we really we really should i i just i'm reading this one paragraph of of your piece about these

00:28:40.740 videos extolling the virtues of quote-unquote soft living with quote-unquote stroller moms in

00:28:47.140 her quote-unquote mom era going on quote-unquote hot mom walks and it also fetish it fetishizes

00:28:54.160 an idea of motherhood that I don't really believe exists. 0.96

00:28:59.340 Yeah.

00:29:00.320 Because I, look, I like being with my kids.

00:29:02.500 And in fact, after reading this piece and with everything terrible going on in the world,

00:29:08.400 I felt, I'm like, you know, I want to spend the afternoon doing something nice for my

00:29:12.680 kids, nice with my kids.

00:29:14.520 And so I surprised my son at school and biked him and his buddy over to the Philadelphia

00:29:20.760 Zoo.

00:29:21.260 And we went to the zoo for the afternoon.

00:29:22.800 That was lovely.

00:29:24.160 It was really nice, you know, and we had a great time.

00:29:29.240 Granted, I had a full time caregiver picking up my other child from school and watching my baby.

00:29:35.520 And then my husband at 430 took over from her to watch our toddler and our baby so that I could be at the zoo until it closed with the two boys until 530.

00:29:46.680 That that was the juggle. Right. And that costs money because that means my husband stops working at 430, which a lot of men.

00:29:54.160 with the kind of jobs that can support a family um cannot do and we're paying a caregiver for

00:30:00.400 those other hours to get our children so this there is also money spent to be able to do that

00:30:05.920 and i loved doing that but i don't like i don't necessarily find great joy in just walking with

00:30:14.360 my baby with the stroller i do it when i have her and i need to work out or i don't find joy in just

00:30:19.500 sitting on the bench at the playground i think that like i think there's a false narrative 0.87

00:30:23.060 about how joyful some of this stuff actually is maybe so maybe other women do maybe i'm the anomaly

00:30:28.620 no i uh it's funny you mentioned that because the original way that i wrote the piece was a lot

00:30:36.000 more first person um and you know my editor and i were like actually i interviewed enough people

00:30:42.740 i'm just gonna take myself out of this a little bit but um i did have a paragraph in there where

00:30:48.820 I talked about the fact that it's interesting watching something you do every single day be

00:30:56.180 so fetish, fetish size, fetish size. It's a hard word to say. Fetish size. I don't know. I don't

00:31:02.180 know. Um, on social media, cause I was watching, you know, video after video of, uh, hot mom walk

00:31:09.560 stroller mom, mom era. Um, I go on lots of hot mom walks. I'm definitely in my stroller era.

00:31:18.820 and I agree that part of me was like oh yeah they're right you know there is something really

00:31:29.820 fun and nice and I genuinely like going on walks with baby and you know doing all of that um but

00:31:38.240 it is a lot harder than they say I don't know I just think it's interesting to see something that

00:31:47.600 is at its core extremely mundane be propped up as this kind of amazing ideal um and I think that

00:31:59.500 I don't know ask I'm gonna tell me what you think about this because I also kind of wonder

00:32:04.940 if there's a little bit of a backlash I would say about 10 years or so ago when like kind of

00:32:10.880 digital media was really coming up there was this big online swell of discussion and articles about

00:32:20.320 motherhood that was basically meant to strip away the ideals and demonstrate how difficult it can be

00:32:27.580 um you know i'm thinking of things like scary mommy uh that kind of stuff you know there was

00:32:33.200 kind of this outpouring of uh personal essays and stuff like that from moms being like it's really

00:32:40.680 hard to be a mom yes and I think all of that is incredible and I have really resonated with a lot

00:32:51.160 of that media but part of me also wonders if some of the media around motherhood online has kind of

00:32:59.860 gone a little too far where they seem make motherhood seem terrible yes and I know when I

00:33:09.340 got pregnant I was really nervous because I think of the rhetoric that I had read that I just felt

00:33:16.180 like every time I was on the internet it would just tell me something horrible that was going

00:33:20.380 to happen to me when I was pregnant like breastfeeding it's going to be so terrible and

00:33:25.600 it's like it's hard for me to even kind of vocalize slash like think about how I want to say that

00:33:31.660 because on the one hand I think it's amazing that people are sharing these realities and there is so

00:33:38.040 much about being pregnant breastfeeding all of that kind of stuff that can be really really

00:33:42.000 challenging but i think there's also a lot of joy in it too um so part of me also kind of wonders 0.76

00:33:48.080 if this kind of crap of gen z slash younger millennial moms are also kind of flipping that

00:33:55.860 a little bit where they're kind of trying to you know make motherhood seem idyllic again i don't 0.92

00:34:04.500 No, that's just something I've been thinking about. And that's kind of another thing where I'm like, can we be real about the challenges of motherhood? And can we stand up for ourselves under this American system where mothers have so little support, but also make it so we can not scare people? I don't know. What do you think?

00:34:27.220 Yeah. I think that motherhood is wonderful, terrible, beautiful, awful. I think we do 0.97

00:34:32.940 deserve to have narratives about the hard parts, but we've maybe also made it seem so hard that

00:34:39.540 we're making younger women terrified of having kids. And I love my kids. I like motherhood so

00:34:46.340 much more than I expected, to be honest. I really genuinely like my life. And I like to say that

00:34:52.380 as often as possible because I think there's a place where you can be successful and enjoy your

00:34:58.320 career and there's a lot of privilege involved in that but uh also enjoy motherhood and enjoy

00:35:04.800 being a partner and a wife hopefully I mean I like my husband at least 50 percent of the time

00:35:08.960 which I think is is is saying a lot and that's that's what I want to promote to young women I

00:35:15.740 don't want to promote things like the quote that i see in your story on glamour i'm teaching my

00:35:23.420 daughter it's perfectly acceptable to depend on a man that's the thing that i do not that's what i

00:35:27.880 mean that's where i draw the line no it is not perfectly acceptable to depend on a man i women

00:35:33.880 women still if you don't want to be a ceo that's great but you need to be self-sufficient because

00:35:41.060 a man can and oftentimes does leave you. Absolutely. And I think the ironic thing as well 1.00

00:35:48.620 is the happiest parents I know are the ones who both parents are involved in the day-to-day

00:35:58.400 raising of the kids. So I think the most equitable marriages are the ones where parenthood to me

00:36:05.580 is the most enjoyable for both parties so but that's kind of and like that's not really what

00:36:14.620 soft girls are advocating for you know what i mean no like no they're not a trophy husband is 0.99

00:36:19.520 not going to take care of your kids like stereotypically maybe there's some guy out 0.99

00:36:24.420 there who's making 500k a year and is also getting up in the middle of the night but

00:36:29.640 that's not something that typically is the stereotype um but in reality the friends that

00:36:38.180 i have whose husbands are equal partners which i i kind of don't want to say equal because i also

00:36:45.840 think like there are some things that you know especially in the beginning men just can't do

00:36:50.700 and they can do other things but i think if you expect 100 equal partnership you're going to be

00:36:55.580 disappointed in the beginning. But yeah, those are the moms that I know that seem the most

00:37:03.680 relaxed and the most, I don't know, happy, balanced. And that's not really what is going

00:37:14.020 on. You know what I mean? I completely agree. And I also think that there is an overestimation

00:37:19.400 of the amount of men out there making $500,000, the amount of men who can support an entire

00:37:26.080 household on just their salary, because, you know, if your husband is even making six figures

00:37:34.080 right now, that's not necessarily enough to support an entire family. And that's frankly,

00:37:43.660 I mean, that's a really, really, really good job in this country. Again, we're not talking

00:37:48.560 nearly enough about, you know, wealth inequality here. There are not just an unlimited amount of

00:37:57.240 rich men who can easily support you. That's not the fact of life. So again, that seems like such

00:38:05.360 a fantasy that I am afraid that too many young women are buying into. So I mean, I think that 1.00

00:38:13.940 this conversation is a really good start for us trying to figure out how to fix it. I do. I do.

00:38:18.560 So we just want everyone to have balance and also your own 401k.

00:38:24.560 Absolutely.

00:38:25.500 And I think, you know, I think one of the interesting things about right now is there's a lot of upheaval in a lot of industries, but there's also a lot of opportunities.

00:38:37.400 And so I think that another thing that I kind of found interesting, and this kind of goes back to, you know, some of the reporting I've done in the past in my book, was like a lot of the people who are really all in on the soft girl lifestyle and really advocating for it, one of the reasons why they're able to do that from what I've observed is because they're making a ton of money being influencers.

00:39:04.080 so i don't really know what that says um but you know even the quote-unquote trad wife who

00:39:11.400 i interviewed in the piece she's hustling she might be a trad wife but she is making money on

00:39:17.480 her tiktok a hundred percent so um you're not you're not not working and i said this when i

00:39:25.280 when i talked to ann helen peterson about trad wives on monday they're content creators which

00:39:30.740 we well know is a full-time job so you're not so you're not actually dependent on your husband 0.53

00:39:37.700 and there is a hole in your logic if these young women can make money being a soft girl and support

00:39:46.140 themselves i'm all for it but you're lying when you say that i want a man to support me because

00:39:50.840 you are working it's and it's work absolutely and i don't know if i'd i'm not knocking them but i do

00:39:59.860 think it's a little disingenuous to have an entire platform dedicated to soft girl soft living that

00:40:09.300 you're making a ton of money off of and i know that you're hustling on you know in your own way

00:40:16.120 behind the scenes and then say well everyone should be like me and not work um because you're

00:40:23.500 working you're working yeah you're working so that's it also something i think to keep in mind

00:40:28.820 when you're looking at these accounts is, okay, but, you know, if you have 9,000 Instagram

00:40:34.120 followers, you know, that didn't happen to you overnight. So let's unpack that.

00:40:39.820 Let's unpack that. And also, do you look like that? That's the thing. Like, these women look

00:40:43.720 ridiculous. I don't even want to call them attractive anymore because they look attractive 1.00

00:40:48.160 in this way that is attractive on social media. And it's not. My husband looks at some of these

00:40:54.540 accounts when I force him to and he's like they look like fembots or like like they look like

00:40:59.320 robots to be honest so right the idea that just anyone can do this but when we know that content

00:41:06.820 creators you know tend to be successful when they do have these teeny tiny type bodies and a certain

00:41:14.280 kind of look and a certain kind of face and also a lot of money for a lot of Botox and plastic

00:41:19.020 surgery and all of those things and maybe I'm generalizing but those are my just gut feelings

00:41:23.880 when I look at a lot of these accounts yeah I mean the Instagram face she has you know yeah she

00:41:32.760 yeah she she really nailed it and it it exists in perpetuity it seems it exists in perpetuity

00:41:43.920 and I do and a lot of the young women I know in my life spend all of their disposable income to

00:41:50.000 look like that all of it yeah on makeup and eyelashes and fillers when they're in their 0.95

00:41:55.700 20s you don't need fillers in your 20s i need fillers because i'm old you don't need fillers

00:42:01.280 20 something girls uh and yeah we were actually talking in the office yesterday that apparently

00:42:07.720 among the i guess you could call them preteens but really children and i don't know i don't know

00:42:14.600 how old your kids are but they're babies they're six four they're six four and baby baby yeah so

00:42:19.660 they're a little too young but uh someone was saying that they know you know girls who are like

00:42:24.860 eight and ten and they want like skincare for christmas they want like drunk elephant and that's

00:42:32.140 and with that that's another episode stuff and we're gonna have we're gonna have to have you back

00:42:37.020 has skincare social media gone too far if my gosh if an eight-year-old wants some drunk elephant 1.00

00:42:44.240 for Christmas. Probably. Probably. That's all we got for today. And now I'm terrified that my

00:42:53.220 four-year-old is going to ask me for Drunk Elephant for Christmas. Shit. Shit. I am gonna 1.00

00:43:00.220 put my foot down at serums for four-year-olds. Or maybe I should start a new business. Toddler

00:43:08.040 tightening cream. Please, please, please order Steph's wonderful book, Swipe Up for More,

00:43:15.020 Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers. And as always, you are very welcome to pre-order

00:43:20.580 The Sicilian Inheritance, because apparently I have a lot of skincare products to buy for Christmas.

00:43:27.860 Go forth and be soft.

00:43:38.040 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - October 18, 2023

Soft Girls Don't Want Your Hustle with Steph McNeil

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