I scroll across a carousel of images made by a woman showing pictures of a non-descript yet spotless modern home. Overlaid is white text. It narrates how she and her fiancé handle their bills… Namely, by giving her husband all her money and trusting him to handle all of the financials, leaving her to “just be a happy girl who doesn’t have to worry about anything but keeping my home happy”.
The words “happy girl” are bookended by yellow glitter emojis – a playful adornment to the phrase that makes you read it in a deliberately peppy tone. A divorce lawyer has quote tweeted this carousel and added, “I am just a former divorce attorney, sitting here literally begging people to stop making the dumbest financial decisions in relationships of all time. Please do not give one spouse unilateral responsibility or control over your finances. Please.”
“The reality is that none of the content promoting anti-feminism is authentic, none of it is radical, and absolutely none of it is helpful to women.”
Content boasting women relinquishing financial responsibility, promoting being a stay-at-home wife in their twenties or offering homemaking as a radical rebellion to feminism has grown in popularity over TikTok in the last few years, and the women posting it are being praised.
Recent online rhetoric about reclaiming girlhood, or ‘delulu as the solulu’ is a bit of fun – a tongue-in-cheek way to feel respite from both the inequality we live under and the relenting self-enquiry that’s critical if we are to make society more equal. Against the backdrop of a society that feels more chaotic, scary and personally demanding by the week, some women are finding joy in ‘lobotomy core’: content that promotes rejecting the frameworks that ask you to evaluate anything critically. Jokes about a cheeky respite from “doing the work” have set fertile ground for conservatives to weaponise girlie content and frame regression as empowerment, giving them cut-through online. The reality is that none of the content promoting anti-feminism is authentic, none of it is radical, and absolutely none of it is helpful to women.
What in the Freaky Friday is happening?
Roles that facilitate everyone else's lives but our own stunt our ability to self-actualise – the gender roles assigned to women that keep them in servitude were literally designed to force them out of political, social or economic power, historically. It is not a mistake that women were traditionally forced into wifeliness or tending to the household – and while choosing this isn’t automatically harmful, the culture that forces it to be a default, is. Being locked out of financial independence or responsibility and unable to handle leadership or stress are all misogynistic narratives that were used to literally legislate women’s rights away: you couldn’t own a house until your husband approved you, your emotions made you incapable of being leaders. And the list goes on.
“Framing homemaking, mothering or wifeliness as a rebellious response to feminism reveals a deep misunderstanding of feminism as a movement.”
Now? Well, now women are promoting handing over all their financial independence to their husbands or relying entirely on their husbands’ jobs for their lifestyle and security on TikTok – as if it’s Hashtag Rebellious. It’s not. Financial abuse is incredibly common, with 1 in 6 women being controlled by a current or former partner using money, and women in unhealthy or toxic relationships struggling to leave when financially dependent on their partner. If they do ask for a divorce – of which they are much more likely to than men – they lose out financially. In heterosexual marriages, women tend to earn much less than their husbands, and are much more likely to have given up work or reduced their hours to care for children. One in four women financially struggle post-divorce.
So, explain to me again, why would you want to give your husband complete financial control? Explain why traditional gender roles are empowering.
Framing homemaking, mothering or wifeliness as a rebellious response to feminism reveals a deep misunderstanding of feminism as a movement. Feminist organising never removed women’s ability to devote themselves to their homes or families, it challenged – alongside other liberation work – the patriarchal system making this their only option and the default. Many of the talking points of anti-feminist content claim it “rejects feminism’s rules”, being wilfully ignorant to the fact that feminism exists to remove limiting rules and barriers, aiming to give women and marginalised people of all backgrounds more social, economic and political choice.
Societies where women are doing well are also more peaceful, democratic, prosperous and better prepared to adapt to climate change.
My issues with this content don’t end with the inaccuracy of its understanding of feminism though – no, there’s so much bullsh*t to unpick! For me, the blatant deception is worrying; many of these creators are vocally rejecting the idea of ‘having it all’, which they see as a feminist narrative –pushing back on the perceived pressure that they should feel guilty for only devoting their life to their husband and home. But many of these creators have huge followings and post multiple times a week. They are planning, shooting, directing, editing, managing content creation and running social media brands. Which, correct me if I am wrong, is a job. Do they keep the money? If so, these women own independent businesses alongside being a wife and mother, and that sounds a lot like the messaging of second-wave feminism.
They are ‘having it all’ and bemoaning those who expect it of them at the same time. They are also benefiting from the movement of feminism in that they have the agency to own their own businesses while being able to choose homemaking and wifeliness. While patriarchy may be playing a role in their choices, they are living the thing they criticise, using imagery of domesticity to hoodwink untrained eyes and ears into thinking they’re rebelling against feminism whilst absolutely benefiting from it.
It also feels important to mention the obvious: this trend is made up of a very particular demographic of women; straight, cis, white, middle or upper-class, non-disabled women make the bulk of this content. They either have ‘Instagrammable’ homes or alternative off-the-grid living arrangements that scream financial privilege. It doesn’t need to be spelt out that you can’t choose to make content full-time in your five-bedroom suburban Americana house or travel the world having children in order to procure passports without financial and cultural privilege.
These women, too, have the aesthetics to create brands built around perfection. They are perfect, attractive and impossibly groomed, leaning into Eurocentric beauty standards in a way that reminds us of the nauseating Stepford wife – a standard that reflects a barely measurable slither of society. They are largely able to benefit from the narratives they push because they are the only ones able to construct them with relative comfort, and they often hold the power to insulate themselves from criticism. Would a poor woman on benefits living in social housing get the same reaction if she was making homemaker content about not working? Would a Black plus-sized woman make TikToks about relaxing all day and expecting her husband to pay for her wants and needs be receiving the same support online? The identity and social location of these women allow them to lean into gender roles and expectations of hyper-femininity, and then reframe conservative ideologies as if they’re radical self-expressions instead of what they are: regression.
This content relies heavily on evoking previous eras, such as the ‘50s or ’40s. An era where it was legal to rape your wife in the UK (until 1991, of course), Black women were enduring segregation in the US, and the lithium boom exploded across America as millions of women were forcibly prescribed lithium for the mental health issues that came along with being a housewife. It’s easy to recreate an era when you don’t actually have to exist within the inequality of it. For the creators, these eras may be a “better time”, but for who? And can someone tell them that an era is not simply made up of fashion, music, food and interiors?
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#LobotomyCore creators, of course, play dumb to the idea that their content feeds into a wider damaging culture. That a woman is only responsible for herself is the conservative bible, so that checks out. This content does damage progression, though. Not only because it is literally promoting the idea of women choosing financial insecurity and traditional gender roles which restrict them, but because this anti-thinking rhetoric has paved the way for a movement of further right-wing, conservative women touting anti-vaccine, anti-abortion politics and more – under the guise of just girlies doing what they want.
These dangerous content creators now have a fertile ground of normalisation to frame harmful political and religious ideologies as rebellious and empowering ideals. Recently, a group of young, attractive conservative women hoping to campaign for the Republican party began seeding out subtle reels encouraging women to reject feminism, inferring they “take back control” – all the while, they are totting up engagement ready to go hard for the GOP come election time. This content might appear laughable or toothless, but it’s part of a longer strategy to introduce right-wing political ideas to women, and it relies, in part, on us hate-sharing in order for it to rank in algorithms and gain reach.
Women being anti-feminist might feel shocking and new, but it’s not. Right-wing women acting as double agents for white supremacy and patriarchy is a centuries-old problem. They continue to have the space and resources to do it because of a concoction of feminist history that gave them the power to choose, and systems of power and oppression they uphold at the expense of others.
At its best, content promoting traditional gender roles as a response to feminism is embarrassing, but at its worst, it’s preserving a toxic culture that hurts all of us and benefits literally only the women making it.
Men are also twice as likely as women to say feminism has gone too far.
