You Go Girl!: The Swinging Pendulum between the Girlboss and the Modern Stay-At-Home Girlfriend
As I finish up my third-year of college and look to the future, I am frightened by the possibility of postgraduate life. While my brain is buzzing with possibilities, an underlying question bubbles to the surface: what if I rejected a career path and became a stay-at-home mom? Going to college to get an MRS degree (that is, a Mrs. degree) is far more attractive than applying to millions of jobs and hearing nothing back. It seems far more attractive than entering the workplace as a woman and having to work twice as hard as a man to be taken seriously. It seems easier in a time when our lives seem much harder.
Rest assured, I will still be trying to get a job, despite the horrible job market at the moment. But I mention this creeping thought of the Mrs. degree as an allusion to the larger trend in American popular culture termed the “stay-at-home girlfriend.” The stay-at-home girlfriend, or the SAHG for short, is a woman whose job consists of cleaning and cooking for the home and taking care of her partner while he provides financial support. The Wall Street Journal describes the average routine of a SAHG: after cooking an elaborate breakfast, doing her skincare routine, participating in a Pilates private lesson, and going for a walk, the SAHG returns home to get ready for date night.
The SAHG functions under the assumption that the boyfriend is the breadwinner, and her contribution to the relationship lies in her ability to take care of him and maintain her appearance for him. When said out loud, this does not sound very politically correct. Ten years ago, the SAHG would not have been met as kindly as it is now.
In a world following a global pandemic that caused many people to reevaluate their expectations for themselves and their lives, ideas of ease and comfort prevail. With a generation riddled with dormant fear of worldwide disruption, it is no surprise that people would rather have easy security than great risk.
It’s a window like this that creates the perfect avenue for the SAHG. TikTok glamorization has allowed for the prosperity of overconsumption. The lifestyle is decorated: stylized TikTok routine videos rooted in consumerism and “clean girl” culture have come to define the SAHG. The ability of Tik Tok videos to glamorize this lifestyle strikes a nerve among many women, especially young women who are on the precipice of the workforce. In a culture obsessed with self-care, it can seem nobler to pursue a path like the SAHG’s than running yourself ragged in the workplace (and dying financially while trying).
Additionally, the “stay-at-home girlfriend” archetype typically references heterosexual relationships. It is a return to the image of marriage from the 1950s, with men being the breadwinners and women being the homemakers. The nuances of SAHG exist in the fact that the couple is usually unmarried, thus vesting all financial independence into a partner, not a spouse.
The SAHG might seem like a new phenomenon, but in reality, the idea has existed under different names for decades. What is most interesting about the SAHG is that it follows the dominance of the “girlboss” in American culture. In 2014, Sophia Amoruso, founder of the fast-fashion brand Nasty Gal, popularized the term “girlboss” to reference self-made women running their own businesses. The seemingly on the nose term is meant to purposely use “girl” to fight against male-dominated industries and double standards for women.
Throughout American history, the role of women has been repackaged, redefined, and resold depending on the most pervasive trends of the time. The devoted housewife of the 50s, the emerging rudimentary job-holding women of the 60s and 70s, and the developed career woman– perhaps the original “girlboss” —of the 80s and 90s comprise not a fated trajectory but rather specific and intentional categorizations of women. The swinging pendulum between the career-oriented “girlboss” and the “stay-at-home-girlfriend” represents a need to define women’s roles while also prescribing their socially desired existences. These archetypes are not simply happenstance, but are intertwined with American policy, economy, and social reality.
In order to fully understand how women’s roles parallel American political and economic trends, we must examine the modern woman’s entry into the workforce. The “career woman” was a term used to describe a woman who valued her career more than she valued starting a family or maintaining the home. It is a term commonly associated with the hustle culture of the 80s workplace, but it was actually coined in the 1930s. It was meant to reference those who worked in low-level jobs outside of the home for pure economic need. The introduction of the career woman in the early 20th century existed in conjunction with the feminist movements taking place at the time. Women had just gotten the right to vote, and many were continually interested in not only economic freedom and independence but also political equality. According to K.G. Saur’s “Cookbooks and Law Books: The Hidden History of Career Women in Twentieth Century America,” feminism was the key motivator for many women pursuing their own careers.
When the term became repopularized in the 80s, it was due to an increase in opportunities for women. Women began earning college degrees, something they were unable to do just ten years prior (the University of Virginia did not officially permit women to enroll in classes until 1970). Positions with higher salaries began opening up for women, and by the end of the 1970s, more than half of women had careers outside of staying at home. While in college, women considered pursuing careers more than they had ever before, and the average age for marriage rose. With delays in marriage came opportunities for educational, personal, and financial development, giving women time to devote to finding a career and a personal identity.
The advancement of the “career woman” can also be credited to the media. The 1970s Mary Tyler Moore Show showcased a single woman in her 30s working at a news station. It aligned with the rise of second wave feminism and was coupled with a change in women’s style: pantyhose, blazers, and pencil skirts becoming major trends. It was The Mary Tyler Moore Show that spearheaded the creation of career women content. Then came movies like 9 to 5 (1980), Working Girl (1988), and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991), which inspired a generation of women to go after their dreams in the workplace.
So what changed? When Gen X had been set up for such success, and millennials seemed to be marked by “girlboss” culture, why has Gen Z opted for the stay-at-home girlfriend archetype? Much of it has to do with the Covid-19 pandemic. After March 2020, women’s unemployment rates were significantly higher than men’s. The leisure, hospitality, and retail industries suffered the most from the pandemic, which are composed of careers typically occupied by women. Compared to the 76 percent of fathers who had gotten a job after having quit or lost one during the pandemic, only 46 percent of mothers had returned to the workforce.
The difficulty of attaining and maintaining a stable career, the rise of the glorification of self-care and the romanticization of wealth on social media, and the normalization of staying at home has culminated in the aspiration of women to be a “stay-at-home girlfriend.” In a post-Covid world, women have turned more towards a domesticated life. This is not to say there aren’t career women, but more to point out that it has become more normalized than ever before to say you’d like to be a stay-at-home anything. Our society swung too far towards the “girlboss” archetype, so much so that the only fallback seems to be surrendering career aspirations. In order to escape the pressures of trying and failing, women are opting to not try at all.
“Not trying at all” can seem like an easier route. Finding a significant other with a job that pays significantly well can seem like the perfect solution to your problems. But the risks outweigh the benefits in a number of ways. Firstly, vesting all financial needs into one person in a relationship can build up resentment and power imbalances. These aspects leave room for the leveraging of certain freedoms and privacies, leading to an abusive dynamic. Next, there is the very real possibility of a breakup, leaving one partner with nothing, and the other with not only financial advantages but also the skills to create wealth in the future. Spending valuable time like your 20s and 30s being a stay-at-home girlfriend takes away from developing professional skills, personal identity, and one’s own sources of income.
The financial dependence of the stay-at-home girlfriend makes it a risky path to go down. The glitzy aesthetic of the matching workout sets, 12-step skincare routines, and seemingly perfect relationships are a great distraction from any obstacle the lifestyle actually presents. We must align these consumer aesthetic hallmarks with being a girlboss, rather than a SAHG.
Women are free to pursue whatever life path they believe suits their values and needs, but I argue that women should be wary of the stay-at-home girlfriend tendency. If you’re going to be a stay-at-home girlfriend, at least try to be a girlboss first!