look at our women dawg we’re never making it out the patriarchy😂
yes i'm allowed to think you're boring and yes that's okay
A few weeks ago, I left a comment under a TikTok. I was being half-serious, mostly trolling.
It was a joke about the dozens of women in the comments performing verbal gymnastics to justify the fact that they got married young — as if anyone personally cares what Nicole from Utah is doing at 22.
What surprised me wasn’t the disagreement. It was the ferocity.
Dozens of women, teeth bared, ready to call me everything but my name — over a man. Over their marriage. As if I had attended the wedding. As if I knew them. As if I cared.
I did not realize implying that marriage is not a personality trait would be taken as a personal attack.
Instead of defending myself to teenagers on the internet, I’ll offer some big-sister advice. It won’t be gentle. It might be rude. But it’s honest.
Some women should be wives and mothers. Truly. Cook the dinners. Make the beds. Chase the kids. Do it at 18, 20, or 22 — I genuinely do not give a shit.
Get married. Go in the house. Live your life.
But the second you log onto the internet and start foaming at the mouth because other women chose differently, you’ve already told on yourself.
Don’t hate-share. Don’t send it to the “mommies!! <3” group chat with a prayer emoji and a passive-aggressive sigh. Don’t convince yourself that curiosity is bitterness or that independence is a threat.
Accept your choice as a choice — not a crown.
Because the moment you need strangers to validate it, you’ve admitted it wasn’t enough on its own.
I am exhausted by the internet’s fake “sisterhood of the traveling pants” bullshit. Women are not especially kind to one another. We are competitive, defensive, and deeply unserious about our own insecurity — especially when we feel locked into a life we can’t revise.
Any time someone so much as raises an eyebrow at your decisions, suddenly they’re “single and bitter.”
Who said I was single?
And what exactly am I bitter about?
If your life is so fulfilling, why does a stranger’s throwaway comment unsettle you this much?
Getting married at 22 doesn’t make you superior. It doesn’t make you wiser. It doesn’t make you evolved.
It makes you married.
And if that sentence alone makes you angry, maybe I’m not the problem.
I try not to sound like a misogynist. Or an ice-cold judgmental bitch. I’m not above criticism — trust me, I have my own issues. I avoid conflict. I’m lazy about dating. My self-esteem is a work in progress. I am not a finished product pretending to lecture the masses.
What I do dislike — strongly — are women who pedestalize their roles as wives and mothers and then use them as moral leverage over other women.
Do you know what I actually see when I look at these women?
I don’t see women I envy. I see women who traded curiosity for certainty too early. Women whose friendships quietly evaporated. Whose ambitions got folded into “someday.” Women who haven’t been asked what they want in so long that the question itself feels insulting.
I see lives that shrink instead of expand.
And yes — that terrifies them.
When your entire identity is “someone’s wife” or “someone’s mom,” every other woman becomes a threat. Of course you assume everyone wants what you have. Of course you interpret difference as judgment. An understimulated mind will invent competition just to feel alive.
I’m not saying love is stupid. I’m not saying partnership is pointless.
I’m daring the modern woman to interrogate her relationship with herself.
Because it can’t always be about Todd.
Who the fuck is Todd?
Who are you?
What do you like when no one is watching? What do you want that isn’t socially approved? What brings you joy? What scares you? What did you give up without realizing it?
Women are socialized to stop being curious about their interior lives the moment they are chosen. And that is devastating.
I don’t care that much about teenagers being mad that I said marrying your boyfriend young is boring.
I care that women would rather dismiss uncomfortable ideas than sit with the possibility that they built their entire identity around a role instead of a self.
Women don’t fail because they choose marriage or motherhood.
We fail when we confuse a role with a personality — and then attack anyone who reminds us there could have been more.
Gone are the days when making a fuck ton of money was the goal for women. I grew up wanting to be a journalist or a lawyer in New York City. I figured I would live in Tribeca and be decked out in designer. Very CBK, if you will.
I remember when it was all about being “fabulous,” and it was chic that you couldn’t keep a man. Now teenagers are hootin and hollerin about getting married young. Good lord, conservatism is back, y’all.