The Cost Of Being Strong

Why do we only worship women who are “killing it”?

- Kate Carraway

The contradictory dimension of our culture crystallised for me recently while I was listening to a podcast interview with the kind of stylish, successful, social-media-savvy CEO who gets called a “boss babe”, “girl boss” or, if kids are in the mix, “mumpreneur”. She was talking about – what else? – how she does it all. Her husband “does one thing”, she said, while she, like other women, has “45 jobs”, including her role as a founder and CEO and looking after “the house, the kids”. The co-host, after marvelling at how her own husband is able to enjoy his life “guilt-free”, didn’t challenge her guest when she said, “It works for us.” Like… what?

It demonstrably does not work, but I get why this kind of narrative – one in which a privileged and even idealised female life that involves carrying a disproportionate burden while smiling from underneath it all – is one that women are actively enduring and perpetuating. We handle everything because not being “strong” opposes what a woman is supposed to be, even now – or perhaps especially now. But it actually sucks to have 45 jobs, to be treated with indifference or contempt by men, to work harder for less money while also organising those fun after-work drinks. It sucks that to admit you’re suffering – that you’re “weak” – is to admit defeat and fail at both the feminine and the feminist, because weakness is pathologised and strength is lionised, neither of which serves women.