Well, This Is Exhausting

by Sophia Benoit

  But I was terrified of my boyfriend finding out that I knew about marriage and him concluding that I was a psycho. I’m not alone in this. My sister was with her boyfriend for seven years—they’d bought a house together and adopted a dog—and she said she still felt slightly embarrassed bringing up the idea of them getting married. My best friend had to get drunk before even admitting to her boyfriend that she wanted to get married someday (to which he was like, “Yeah… I assumed”). Another friend of mine called her boyfriend—they were both committed and exclusive—her “dude” for months and refused to say “I love you” in order to not look too attached. I mean, sorry, but if you’re spending the night at his place and posting Instagram pictures together and trying anal sex, you guys are attached!

  So if you aren’t allowed to want marriage, what are you supposed to build your life around? Your job. Careers have been sold to us as the solution, the substitute for the all-consuming satisfaction women were meant to get from their marriage and children in the ’50s. Careers are the dog bone everyone keeps throwing at women to keep them quiet. It’s not that women aren’t allowed to have life goals, it’s that those goals must be about work. This shift from homemaker to office worker ends up helping a whole lot of people.

  Firstly, it helps men. The one thing they were bringing to the table in past relationships was, frankly, financial stability. Of course, men still outearn women, and women are systematically kept out of the workplace and high-paying jobs. But now men don’t have to be the sole breadwinner anymore. The pressure is off. Any woman who is asking for or expecting that is generally thought of rather unkindly as either a suppressed-conservative housewife or a gold digger.

  The other people who benefit? Companies that women work for, and since the US government counts corporations as people, I’m doing the same for the sake of this paragraph. If you just keep telling women that the reason they aren’t getting ahead as quickly, the reason they aren’t making as much, the reason their title isn’t as prestigious, etc., is that they simply aren’t working hard enough, you can keep moving the goalposts. All you have to do is convince women that they could be a #GirlBoss if they just would #LeanIn. Corporate feminism in so many ways feeds into the idea that women ought to base their lives around their jobs and their career goals, and to do otherwise is anti-feminist. In this warped perversion of feminism, you become weak and unenlightened if you aren’t “hustling,” if you aren’t keeping up with the guys and trying to get the corner office. Meanwhile, that same company will gladly fire you for getting pregnant, give you insufficient maternity leave, or penalize you for not being available to stay late because you have to pick your kids up from school. Please keep in mind that you cannot be a #GirlBoss if you, say, run a daycare out of your home or care for your ailing parents. Being a successful career woman is all about making it in a specific, male-dominated corporate world. Men’s work is valid, women’s work is not. The goal always is to be more like men, because clearly they’re killing it.VI

  Meanwhile, most workplaces I’ve ever been in and the men in them have been extremely hostile toward women, but especially toward women who are in committed, serious relationships. Not only is it more likely that that’s the time when you’re going to have children, which might cost your company money (God forbid they lose your labor for a millisecond), but also women who aren’t single aren’t usually available to fuck. And men want to fuck their coworkers. They at least want to want to fuck their coworkers. They want the possibility to be available. I have worked at many male-dominated jobs—a hockey warehouse, on TV shows, doing stand-up. Technically, stand-up is not a job, you’re correct. Let’s move on. All of those jobs, in general, I’ve done better at when I was flirtatious and when I put in the effort to look good and be appealing to the men around me. Recently, I worked at a TV show where there was only one woman over thirty-five and only one who was overweight in the entire office. The number of men who were overweight and over thirty-five was… very high. There were also almost no women in senior positions; every woman was someone’s assistant. I mean, I like being around people I want to fuck, too. But I wouldn’t—or at least I hope I wouldn’t—create an entire workplace around that. And once you become a woman in any male-dominated space who for any reason isn’t going to fuck the guys there, you lose value. People don’t listen to you as much, even if it is subconsciously. Your choices in male-dominated workplaces are basically to be ignored or to be harassed, neither of which is a good option and both of which make having a successful career incredibly difficult.

  Of course, instead of addressing the behavior that is aimed at women—the ignoring and the harassing, the belittling, the overlooking, the creepiness—we decided to try to address women’s behavior in the workplace by telling them that they just needed to try harder. That if they focus even more on their careers, if they write thank-you cards after interviews, and bring brownies, and have more sales than anyone else, and ignore Creepy Ted in Accounting, they will eventually get ahead. At some point in mainstream feminism, there was an immense amount of pressure to refocus any energy, even—perhaps especially—caretaking energy, on the job. You don’t need to be a homemaker anymore; your life is now work. You answer emails on weekends, you get in before everyone else and leave after them, and you never say no. Of course, a lot of people feel that pressure, but men are so much more likely to have a spouse they lean on for support, for childcare, for family emergencies, for a healthy meal to come home to. Women aren’t supposed to expect that ever.

  Part of why I think this myth of the “badass career woman” who doesn’t need a man was glommed onto by so many people—men and women alike—is because it was a great way for men to abdicate any financial and emotional support (your job should fulfill you, or therapy should, or your friends should, but God, not a man!!!) while seemingly being about giving women more power. It also left women single and potentially free to fuck. If commitment is down, and being single is cool, men ostensibly have more casual sex partners. Being told to focus on our careers and to not ask for romantic entanglements—as if the two are in any way mutually exclusive—results in more single women out there to hook up with. Meanwhile, of course, someone shrewdly branded the entire idea of being career-oriented as being a tenet of feminism. Because of course we did! Having lower romantic expectations is empowering! Somehow! This isn’t to say that every woman wants commitment and that no man does. There are plenty of women who don’t care for long-term love and plenty of men who are looking to settle down. I’m just saying that the model we have right now gives preference to how men were taught to think and act; it says that you should be one of the guys, but that you shouldn’t get any actual support from a guy.

  Women receive so much messaging about how they have to be able to do it all, even with less money and less time than men, and do it mostly, if not entirely, alone. Women have to have our shit together if we want to get anywhere (unless you’re white and ultra-wealthy, in which case there are no rules). If we want a cleaner house, we have to do it; if we want to bring a gift to a kid’s birthday party that they actually like, we have to find it; if we want birth control, we have to pay for it. It’s up to us! The best you can hope for as a woman when it comes to help is other women helping you. I have never had a male friend offer to run an errand for me when I was sick, and I’ve never seen them do it for each other, either. When they need care, they turn to women too. This pressure to figure it out on your own doesn’t exist in the same way for men.

  They get help all the time! They get help every step of the way in ways they don’t even realize. Despite their belief to the contrary, almost no man I know is handling shit on his own. A fact that is beyond cliché, but true and therefore somewhat illustrative is that I have three sisters and one brother and guess which one is the only one who doesn’t know how to do his own laundry? Guess who needed help applying for colleges and remembering deadlines even though his three older sisters did it mostly on their own? Guess which of us kid
s had jobs during high school and which didn’t?

  It’s not like our parents wouldn’t have helped us, had we asked. Or that my brother isn’t smart enough to figure out laundry: he’s on his school’s robotics team; he’s brilliant. But, Lord, women have been so used to figuring shit out on our own and taking care of other people that I’m not sure it occurred to any of my sisters to ask our parents to step in and keep track of when applications were due or by what date we needed to sign up for AP tests. I’m not saying we were perfect, that we never procrastinated, that we never got help. I’m just saying the drive for my brother to be independent isn’t there. Not from him, and not from my parents. This isn’t just to roast my brother either. He’s a great person, hilarious, analytical, and kind. He can do all kinds of shit I can’t, like basic math, but he can also get away with a lot of shit I can’t, and most of my family doesn’t want to admit that. And my family is not alone in this. Starting from childhood, girls on average spend more time doing housework and helping with tasks like childcare and cooking, while boys in general average an extra hour a day of leisure time. It’s bigger than a tiny smudge of inequity in my childhood, though. I mean, God, if that were my main gripe, I’d be an ass. It’s that the pattern continues.

  Men in general are used to relying on others—specifically women—and that isn’t shameful for them. It’s not shameful for men to be reminded about a doctor’s appointment by their mother. It’s not shameful for their girlfriend to call in and ask about what a store’s return policy is when they bought the wrong size joggers at the mall and don’t know how to exchange them. It’s normal for them to emerge into adulthood unaware of how to clean a bathroom or hold a baby while supporting its neck. It’s expected that men’s emotional growth in their early twenties will be built on the backs of the women in their lives. And this frees up time in their schedules to be the fun uncle or the fun dad or fun friend, the person who doesn’t have to follow the rules or adhere to responsibility because guess what? Someone else is taking care of it. (And that someone is almost always female.) Men still get to abdicate work at home despite no longer being the sole financial providers, because someone else will always pick up the slack.VII

  Women don’t get the luxury of relying on someone else to step in and do unpaid labor. If we get a break it’s from someone we paid to give us one. We have to be competent in every sphere. We know about soothing teething infants and which day trash day is and how to stop mail service when we go out of town and also how to be an actuary and the rules of basketball and what a Roth IRA is. And we’re expected to actually take care of all that shit. And we’re not supposed to want, let alone need, a partner in any of this! We’re doing more than ever before and getting less help and being told to want less. Less romance, less intimacy, less connection.

  I still think of myself as pretty romantically independent. If, for some really depressing reason, Dave and I were no longer together, I think I would do well single (after a period of deep sadness that involved a lot of donuts and weird fashion choices on my part). Before Dave, I loved being single; I’m not saying I loved every single moment, but I like doing things on my own. However, I’m not entirely sure how much of that is really who I am, and how much of that I cultivated because I thought that was the cool, good, strong thing to do. I find myself shocked that I’m going on five years of dating the same person; I did not think that I would ever do this, and frankly, I never specifically wanted to date long-term or pick out shower curtains together. I didn’t see the benefit of commitment. No one showed me the good parts. Rom-coms cut off right after the wedding or the big declaration of love; movies about marriage are usually gritty or unhappy; songs about being happy in a relationship are usually cartoonish and over-the-top. There isn’t much art out there right now that is a celebration of good long-term partnership, the day in, day out boring sweet bits.VIII I didn’t really know what to expect when Dave and I started dating and then kept dating.

  I thought that the world would forget me when I wasn’t single. I thought I would become reliant on and consumed by my partnership. I thought I’d stop being creative, stop having strife, stop experiencing excitement. I thought it might be boring to only be wanted by one person.IX I expected to lose out on a lot of male attention and friendship, which did happen to some degree, but I expected to be gutted by that, and mostly it’s been relaxing.

  I worried I would become dependent. That all the parts of me that I liked and valued—being smart, being hardworking, and yes, being independent—would be or even could be erased by wanting to date someone seriously. I still find myself occasionally seeking out ways to prove that I’m not just a girlfriend and that my life doesn’t revolve around Dave. I try to travel alone when I can. I try to hang out with friends without him. I try to separate our lives enough that we still have things to say to one another. I still don’t bring up marriage much; I’m not convinced it will change anything for us other than maybe I’d get a ring, which would be tight, because rings are delightful. I try to not do too much PDA. I don’t care much for romantic gestures, which I find deeply embarrassing. I try to let other people see that we’re—that I’m—independent, that I don’t need him, that he doesn’t need me. I still try to assert that I am not weak or needy, as if those are the worst things a person could be.

  Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and all that: it’s completely normal to want someone to go through shit with. Or even if you’re like me, and you didn’t want that, to find out that you quite enjoy love, even if it is most often boring, as you suspected. Love is not flashy or thrilling most of the time. In the words of Samantha Irby: “Real love feels less like a throbbing, pulsing animal begging for its freedom and… more like, ‘Hey, that place you like had fish tacos today and I got you some while I was out.’ ” It’s totally natural and human and lovely to want to have someone bring you home fish tacos. It’s not weak. It’s not pathetic. It’s not unworthy of your time or desire or effort. I’m not saying that doing twelve vodka shots in a night and grinding on a stranger isn’t dazzling. It is! I’m not saying that dissecting every single social media post your crush has ever engaged with to figure out if they’re really a good fit for you despite being a Sagittarius isn’t a fun time. It is! I’m just saying it’s okay to want someone to send stupid tweets to, to laugh with when the dog falls off the couch, to ignore when they suggest that Love Actually isn’t a good movie. Love (actually)X is a worthwhile endeavor, and it doesn’t make you any less independent.

  Plus, who can afford to live in LA on their own?

  How Exactly to Be Likable

  Be mega-hot, but in an approachable way. A way that makes people think that you might one day be hot around them or even toward them. Think young Jennifer Garner, but obviously not exactly young Jennifer Garner, because some people don’t like her.

  Admit to no vanity, for the love of God. Remember, the reason you look this good is that you drink water and always wash off your makeup before bed. NOT Botox, La Mer, good genetics, and generational wealth that led you to always have enough money to see dentists and dermatologists.

  Spend your free time caring for the emotional needs of others, but don’t smother, okay? Check in the right amount. Keep it light, but be available to be emotionally dumped on at a moment’s notice.

  Make it clear that you do stuff for other people, but don’t showboat too much. Have a trusted friend leak good things about you. When doing stuff for others, be careful to take up causes that everyone agrees on; animal rescues and delivering food for old people are relatively low-risk. Obviously, there’s room to be disliked because you haven’t gone far enough in your activism, so do watch for that.

  Have a perfect ass. Your friends keep trying to explain what cellulite is, but you don’t really get what they’re talking about. You have compassion for them, of course! That must be rough!

  Stay fit, but don’t go wild. Never mention how you stay in shape unless fitness is a part of your persona
l brand. You can offhandedly mention specific trendy workout gear you use; however, you don’t want to seem too worried about material items. There are people dying. You can admit to enjoying a sunset on a hike, but do not mention that you’re hiking more lately because your body dysmorphia has gotten bad recently. Remember to always mention that you’re working out for your health or to feel better; never allude to the pressure to be thin.

  Decorate your house in a way that doesn’t cost you money, because spending money on interior design is gauche, but also have a home filled with priceless statement pieces. You can do flea markets; most people like flea-market finds. But also your entire place should have a cohesive feel that is modern but not trendy. We’re going for contemporary timeless here; what the fuck are you doing with shiplap? That’s sooo 2016 Joanna Gaines derivative.

  Be down for whatever!!!!!!!!!!!!! But be chill about it.

  Read, but don’t talk about it unless someone else brings up a specific book, because people who talk about loving to read are fake and annoying. Especially people who read in bars. Don’t ever read a book sitting alone in a bar unless you can guarantee that only men who find that hot and won’t think it’s an affectation will see you. In that case, reading in a bar alone is good and likable and an easy conversation starter. (For them. Not you.)

  When you eat with other people, eat whatever you want that isn’t so unhealthy as to be gross to others (who are somehow involved in what you’re putting in your body), but also not so healthy that you’re bullying others with your choices. Turkey burger can straddle the line, though of course there are questions as to the ethics of eating meat.