December 29, 2018 • 47 mins
Are #blessed and #lucky just another way for women to downplay success -- or to humblebrag? In this classic episode, Cristen and Caroline dive into why so many ladies on social media seem to feel the need to portray themselves as effortlessly perfect.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told you. As draws to a close, I've been
looking back on this year that honestly feels like it's
been probably seventeen years. It has been one of a
(00:30):
lot of growth for me. I've worked on confidence, either
fake or real, being better about acknowledging both my strengths
and my weaknesses. And I've learned how to forgive, which
that has been a hard one for me. I'm a
very late bloomer when it comes to forgiveness. And as
of very recently, I've gotten better about asking for help
when I need it. I've learned to be accepting of
(00:52):
parts of myself. Um, I've rejected my entire life, but
I have a lot of growing up to do. I
still have a lot of growing to do. Since the
teen election, I have been behaving very destructively. I call
it self destructive Annie, And in some ways I think
I needed it, but it was really unhealthy. I slept
barely at all, and when I did, it was on
(01:14):
the floor or wherever I happened to be. I ordered
unhealthy food at all hours of the nights. I ran
way too much to work off all of the food
that I was eating. I drank too much. I haven't
made time for myself or my mental health. So I
hope in this new year, among other things, I can
let self destructive annie go. And I would love to
(01:36):
hear from you listeners, what you do well, what you
want to work on in your hopes for this new year.
In the meantime, here's an episode looking at why women
sometimes feel at pressure to downplay their successes. Goodbye, It's
been real. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you from
(01:59):
how Stop works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast
from Caroline and I'm Kristen, and so we're talking about
the the internet phenomenon that literally everyone should be familiar with,
which is basically hashtag humble brag, hashtag lucky girl, this
(02:21):
whole phenomenon of posting things on the Internet to make
yourself look great but not necessarily show off how much
effort went into it. And this really made me. I
had to have some some introspection, Kristen. I needed to
think back to figure out if I had done this,
and I think I was guilty of this, probably when
(02:43):
I was younger, like literally when Facebook first came out
and we were in college, because we're so old, I
feel like it was much more common. And I say
that as if it's like someone other than myself. And
I think that now I'm so turned off when other
people do it online that I, as a grown person,
(03:05):
try to avoid bragging on the internet. Bragging or humble bragging.
Oh well, the humble brag, you know, like showing my
glamorous podcast or lifestyle on the internet just to make
myself look better. So in what ways would you humble
bragg on Facebook back in yielden days, the old two
(03:27):
thousand four. I don't know. I can't come up with
like a specific example, but um, but everybody knows that
humble brag if if if you haven't done it, you've
seen it. It's the kind of thing where you know,
people are like, oh, you know, I had to get
up so early to go win that marathon race today
(03:48):
hashtag blast. I intentionally defriended an ext of mine years
ago now because I didn't want to yield to the
temptation to turn my Facebook into one big humble brag.
Oh yeah, you're like, look how fine I am. I'm
just so great. Yeah. I have a friend who will
(04:10):
remain un named, who recently went through a breakup. And
and Kristen she might she's doll a little bit of that. Yeah,
and and that's kind of what we're talking about, Like
we we we know the humble brag, we know the
outright bragging on social media, but it's this whole lucky
girl phenomenon of posting stuff on the Internet, whether it's
a picture on Instagram or a status on Facebook or Twitter. Um,
(04:33):
that looks great, you know, maybe your apple pick in
North Georgia or going through wine country in California. And
and it's beautiful, and you've got a wonderful picture, but
you don't indicate what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe
you did go through a breakup. Maybe you had to
take fifty pictures for one to turn out right, you know. Well,
(04:53):
and speaking of what's going on behind the scenes, did
you have to take fifty plus photos? This is very
reminiscent of what was happening earlier in November with social
media star as Sina O'Neill, who took herself off of
Instagram and all of her platforms because she fessed up
(05:16):
that it's all fake. Shocking. Yeah, yeah, she said she
was tired of the whole you know, sponsored post rigamarole
that she was tired of caring as a teenager. She's
really young. I think she's just eighteen now, she said,
you know, she was tired of being such a young
person whose entire life was dedicated to putting forth this front,
(05:37):
this hyper stylized, hyper fashioned, hyper dieted front, when really
none of that was giving her any happiness. That it
was portraying an amazing lifestyle. But then, of course there's
the whole question that we're going to get into as
well of actually owning our success and being comfortable in
(05:58):
our success and achievements and good things that happened. Because
while I think it's totally responsible as an Internet person
to have your humble brag radar on and do what
you can to control your output of it, there's the
line between that and then being completely averse to any
type of self promotion or sharing good things to happen
(06:21):
because you don't want to seem like you're being too boastful. Yeah. Well,
so the article that I saw that got my wheels
turning on this was in the Atlantic in September of
this year, and they were talking about this whole what
they call vi bating hashtag lucky Girl phenomenon um. And
(06:42):
like we said, this is basically just posting the fruits
of your sometimes very extensive labor or hardship without acknowledging
the hard work that went into making it. Whether this
is getting engaged, whether this is uh preparing a meal,
you know, like it could be anything. It could be small, large, significant,
or insignificant. But it's simply putting forth this image, like
(07:05):
we said that everything's hunky dory, when perhaps he really
had to work for it. Well, And that's why when
I got engaged and shared it with my Facebook friends,
I first uploaded just a photographic montage of all the
fights and tears that my fiancee and I had experienced
in the previous couple of years. And like it was
(07:25):
such a long walk down the Wall of China, you know,
that old wall of China. And how actually this is true.
How in the car ride do the Great Wall of
China where or podcasts vans who are not aware that's
where my proposal took place. That it was amazing, but
I didn't think it was going to happen because in
(07:48):
the van ride there he was rasing me the whole time.
I was like, well, he's being very unromantic today, so
Shirley's little bait and switch, little bit an affection bait
and switch. And don't think that academics haven't gotten in
(08:09):
on this because it is tied into so much gendered stuff.
You know, social media is so hot right now, you guys.
But they wrote that it reflects something deeper and perhaps
pernicious in contemporary culture, the pressure young women feel to
be effortlessly perfect. And they're citing a two thousand three
Duke University study that coined effortlessly perfect, although I'm sure
(08:31):
other people have said that phrase before. They write that
you have to have it all together, but don't let
them see you sweat. Doesn't this seem to tie into
the broader have it all goal for sure, just all
part of it um and Cosopaltian magazine is having none
of it either. They recently talked about this hashtag lucky girl,
(08:55):
which is super common on Instagram in particular, and they
described it as weirdly distancing and its annoying refusal to
take any credit, using the fictional example of a girl
who graduated and landed this amazing job without noting that, oh,
you know, I had all these summer internships and how
(09:17):
to do all this networking and email like two hundred
random people and finally got this job. But instead all
you see is hashtag lucky girl. Yeah. And that's not
to say that you know, you can't, for instance, post
a picture on the first day of that new job
and be super excited or whatever, but it's that whole
attributing everything to luck instead of and not that you
(09:38):
would necessarily say like hashtag I had to email two
people to get this job. But it's the it's the
combination of not owning your own success and hard work
and also um portraying your life for the event or
whatever it is in a way that's like, oh, yeah,
you know me, I'm just so good at this hashtag
(10:00):
us gosha. Well, and there is a gendered element to
this social media good fortune as well, and this is
one of the reasons why, of course we wanted to
talk about it on Stuff Mo'm Never Told You Because
analytics company Crimson Hexagon looked at the statistics over the
(10:20):
past year and found that women on Twitter are the
ones using lucky fifty six percent of the time, and
that she gets up to sixty seven percent when it's
specifically in the first person. So I'm so lucky, and
it seems to be most common in the romantic arena.
So proposals, romantic dates. I don't know what else, what's
(10:45):
what is romantic swiping? Right? I don't know what do
people post? A lot of people post on the Internet.
I don't know. Um, well, so why why is it gendered?
Why is does it seem to be more women? The
Atlantic Sites author Rachel Simmons, who wrote The Curse of
the Good Girl, who says that it's about women's reluctance
(11:05):
to take ownership of their accomplishments, which Kristen to me,
sounds really familiar. Since you and I did an episode
about the imposter syndrome, we talked about Lenin. We've talked
in general just a lot about professional women who maybe
don't speak up enough for themselves. And so as part
of that, we've talked about how ladies are already less
(11:27):
likely to self promote and ask for more money, ask
for a raise, negotiate for a higher salary, and hand
in hand with that, they are more likely to give
credit to others. And so, speaking of Lenin, Cheryl Sandberg writes,
ask a man to explain his success, and he will
typically credit his own innate qualities and skills. Ask a
woman the same question, and she'll likely attribute her success
(11:49):
to external factors, insisting she did well because quote, she
worked really hard, or got lucky, or had help from others.
So this sounds pretty related to what we're talking about, absolutely,
and it's not just Sandberg coming up with that. I mean,
there are so many studies in both academic and workplace
settings that corroborate this, and a lot of it seems
(12:09):
to route back to this likability factor where women are
often in this double bind, especially if they are ambitious
of wanting to succeed, but also wanting to remain likable
at the same time. And unfortunately, those two things don't
always go hand in hand thanks to gender issues in
work environments, and women especially for that reason, don't want
(12:33):
to appear to be bragging, if not only to protect
themselves from criticism, but also to protect other people's feelings.
They might not want to damage a friend or partners ego.
They might want to make other feel other people feel
comfortable around them, they want to stay relatable. Yeah, one
(12:54):
of the articles we were reading about this, I can't
remember if it was in Forbes, but they were interviewing
a woman who was very successful but also a very
hard worker. I mean, things weren't just handed to her.
She wasn't just hashtag lucky. She worked really hard. And
she said she felt like she couldn't publicly sort of
enjoy the fruits of her labor. Uh, you know, she
(13:14):
felt like she couldn't carry the fancy handbag out to
dinner or by you know, the very expensive meal off
the menu. She felt like she kind of had to,
I guess, do the financial equivalent of dumbing herself down.
But the thing is that ended up, she said, sparking
sort of a cycle of well, I don't want to
brag about my success, but I at least want to
(13:34):
talk about it with my friends. And the less I
talk about it or feel I have to hide it,
the worst I feel about myself. And so it creates
this whole cycle of if you're not self promoting, which
that tends to have a negative connotation anyway, But if
you're not self promoting, then other people won't know how
great you are. So, I mean, it is a fine line,
(13:56):
and it's especially fine for women who statistically tend to
be so much more nervous about coming off as bragging
or just coming off as you know, I'm better than
you somehow. And not only is there that issue of
our worries about other people's perceptions, but also our own
twisted perceptions of our own success. And this really gets
(14:16):
into imposter syndrome territory where we do genuinely believe that
we are lucky and nothing else because we feel like
we don't deserve the achievements and successes that we've had.
And this turns into this cycle where you kind of
(14:36):
can never self promote, which was something that software engineer
Natasha Muritia shared in Forbes. Yeah. She wrote that if
you believe that you've got a big promotion because of
luck rather than your hard work, you're probably not going
to feel right bragging about how much you deserve the
promotion and how awesome you are. Instead, she writes, you're
(14:57):
going to feel like a scam artist who got lucky,
and that you'd be lying if you said you deserved it.
So what is up with that? What's the deal? The deal?
Lucky Girls? Wait? Hold on? Caroline's Jerry Seinfeld in the studio.
He's always sneaking in here under the stable. It's really uncomfortable.
(15:18):
He like keeps asking us to get in his car.
I wish Elaine Bennee would sneak into the studio from
time to time, you and me, Both she and I
have similar dance moves. Oh my gosh, me too. We
just have a podcast studio dance party. We're I think
we are just clearly outright bragging that our dance skills
are as good as Elaine benees. They are as elbow
(15:38):
and knee heavy as all eb I know it. But seriously,
what's up with all that? And I'm not talking about
our dance skills, although perhaps we should, uh yeah. Writing
over at Forbes in July, Peggy Drexler wrote that societal
expectations for female behavior traditionally and enduringly value my honesty
(16:00):
and collaboration. And so even if you think, oh, we'll
screw everybody, we should feel confident in our abilities or
in our accomplishments or whatever. You would be foolish to
think that women don't internalize societal norms and expectations, especially
things that have been around forever. That women just need
to quietly enjoy baking at home, not that you can't
(16:22):
I like quietly baking at home, baking and then taking
endless photos of your perfect baking right right, and just
hashtag lucky the eggs are really good today. I didn't
even I barely had to stir um well. And it
doesn't help either that pop culture enjoys the trope of
(16:42):
the self deprecating heroine or the charming but Downdrawden woman,
as as Drexler points out. So what really struck me
in comparing and contrasting the whole like lucky girl humble
(17:04):
bragging social media thing with the professional accomplishments thing is
that all of those career articles that we just cited
Kristen seem to have a lot more to do with
having a chieved success through hard work, through effort, but
not wanting to seem like you're bragging about the success itself,
when really you have every reason to be pleased with
(17:24):
yourself and to be confident about the work you've done,
Whereas the social media lucky girl stuff, on the other hand,
seems like to me that it's putting the success on
display but then downplaying the effort so that everyone is
aware of when you're successful or when something awesome is
happening without being aware that behind the scenes you could
(17:46):
very well be struggling. Yeah, or that it just requires
a lot of work. Allah Sena O'Neill taking a bazillion
photos just to get one where her collar bone looks
especially perfect? Well, yeah, exactly, and I mean yes, of
course she is lucky in the literal traditional sense of
the word, because she's getting or was getting free stuff
(18:08):
from designers to wear on her blog. But on the
other hand, what we didn't see, uh is, yeah, like
Kristen said, all of the work that went into it,
that she had to make her sister take five pictures
of her in a single dress. Do we think that
that these are the same women doing both things at
various times where we might be curating, almost to keep
(18:32):
to keep up with this social media lingo that we're
kind of curating how we display our effort versus success
and maybe the audience where it's okay to show portray success,
whatever that might be, whether it's success in the sense
of being very beautiful or very adventurous or successum in
(18:53):
a more professional setting. I'm sure, I mean, I'm sure
in the Venn diagram of all of this stuff, is
absly overlaps. But I do think the motivations are pretty different.
I think that um not wanting to make your friends.
Maybe you're you don't want to make your unemployed friend
feel uncomfortable by talking about your incredible rays at work. UM,
(19:15):
so you kind of hide that, even though you should
be very proud of it. Whereas if you're posting all
of these vacation pictures from a tropical location and you're like, oh,
you know, I just just landed in Bali, so jet
lag hashtag blass, hashtag lucky. You know, it's like the motivations,
(19:35):
they're different. I got a hunch, I've got a stuff
mom never told you hunch. Why. That is why posting
your vacation photos and food photos and beauty picks, etcetera,
without showing the effort behind it is more acceptable because
that's more feminine gendered leisure time, cooking, being beautiful, curating
(20:00):
your image just are all things that we expect of
the traditional feminine role, whereas things like ambition, raises, leaning
in in the boardroom are still transgressive in some ways
to feminine gender roles. Yeah, so maybe it feels more dangerous.
(20:20):
Absolutely it could. You don't want to. You don't want
to be threatening to those around you, whether it's friends, partners,
or even you know, fellow coworkers or whatever. Um. And
then I mean as far as like the vacation pictures
and hashtag lucky like, yes, it could be that that's
a traditionally feminine thing. It could also be that some
of these people are jerks and they just want to
(20:41):
find They're going to find a way to brag about
what they're doing. It's just that bragging is such an
unfeminine thing to do traditionally and socially, and so they've
almost got to hide the brag, or seem to be
attempting to hide the brag behind, whether it's a humble
brag or whether it's just saying that you lucked out
(21:04):
instead of you know, no, you paid for that plane ticket,
you saved up for months, and then you flew to
Bolly by yourself. You're alone in Bolly. Gosh darn it,
you eat pray love, you're crying in that cocktail. But
what really fascinates me with all of this is how,
especially the hashtag lucky girl, is a product of this
(21:27):
very Lady mag promoted idea of effortlessness I mean, how
many fashion spreads have we seen in our favorite fashion
magazines have ways to look effortlessly attractive and on trend
this season. Now when I literally do the effortless thing,
(21:48):
so I literally put no effort into what I'm doing, Um,
it's terrifying. And people get this concerned look on their face, like,
oh God, have you just been evicted? You know, like
I am. I didn't do my hair yesterday at all,
like I might have run a brush through it, but
I basically woke up hashtag woke up like this and
(22:08):
my this is like frizzed hair out to hear, arms
super wide, you know, no makeup, dark circles under my eyes.
That is my effortless And as L magazine pointed out
and a really kind of funny and interesting spread they did,
it costs so much money to look quote unquote effortless,
(22:30):
not homeless, which is what I look like yesterday. It's
our Whole Athletisure podcast and how you have these high
end designers getting into athletisure where just so that we
can look as if we might be going to the gym. Oh,
I know, I gave this woman in Whole Foods the
side eyed today. Uh, not intentionally, but like literally just
trying not to look directly at her because I didn't
want to be creep. But she was totally in line
(22:52):
at Whole Foods, wearing the full like yoga uniform. But
and I don't mean to be a judge word, but
like full face of makeup, like heavy, heavy, full face
of makeup with lashes and everything. And I was like,
I bet she's doing the athletesure thing. You're going home
(23:12):
after this and you haven't been to the gym, or
maybe she's going to pure bar. Who knows you gotta
look good well, And speaking of makeup, it also reminds
me of the whole no makeup makeup trend, where the
whole thing is to spend a lot of time making
your face look as flawless as possible with a lot
of makeup, but not looking like you have much makeup on.
(23:34):
And ps, I have not mastered it yet. Yeah, I'm
just going with the no makeup. No literally, there's no makeup.
Look now I have to put on enough concealer to
not look like a broken out thirteen year old girl.
And then because I've put on so much concealer and
I'm already very pale, as my mother liked to remind
me all while I was growing up. I know I've
(23:56):
told you before that my mother always used to tell
me that I needed more blusher. So if I don't
want to look dead, I've forgotted them put blush on.
But then if I'm nothing but like a white sheet
with two red dots on my cheeks, well, now I've
kind of put on mascare so that you can at
least see that I have eyeball. You kind of get
(24:17):
that Marionette look excessive blusher. I mean, I do draw
the lines from my lips over the corner of my
mouth down to my chin, so I look like a puppet.
That's just that's natural. Well, and how in that l
magazine spread that you were just referencing, what do they do?
They added up all of the costs of these effortless
(24:38):
and quotes outfits like at leisurely outfits, all the drap
shirts and sneakers and vegan leather leggings and the cold
press juices and all the things, all the various things,
and uh rounded it up to it costing over what
(24:58):
like on thousand dollars a year to look effortless. Yeah,
that's if you want to do all of the stuff
that they've broken down, all the lotions and the potions
and the hair creams and the face creams and and
the clothes and on the watches and all that stuff.
But they I think they tallied up like just one
maybe one week's worth of outfits and stuff like that,
(25:19):
and it's still came to fifty grand. I mean, if
you've got the designer boyfriend jeans, the designer tunic, the
designer calftan over a designer calftan. But I'll know I've
made it, Captain. I long for it. Um. But yeah,
and so they make an interesting point though, they say
it's probably no coincidence that during this moment culturally of
(25:40):
unprecedented buzziness or at least perceived business, because I think
we've talked before, right about how we're just in this
age of like, I'm working so late. Everybody's bragging about
working all the time even when they're not. Uh. They say,
this new aspirational lifestyle is one marked by leisure and ease. Unfortunately,
looking effortless is not making us less busy or any
(26:02):
richer or less and secure. For that matter, our era
of sartorial and corporeal nonchalance rests on a myth that
looking natural and being low maintenance are one and the same.
But they write for most of us who weren't born
hashtag blessed, they are definitely not. And speaking of hashtag blessed,
it made me oh so happy when in uh the
(26:27):
New York Times published a trend piece on hashtag blessed
by friend of the podcast Jessica Bennett, who described it
as quote invoking holiness as a way to brag about
your life, and hashtag blessed is, you know, sort of
the evolution of the humble brag, where it's like, I'm
so aware of what I'm doing, and sometimes hashtag blessed
(26:48):
is your use in purely comedic forms, Um I have
I've done that before. Whether people have laughed at it,
I don't know. On Twitter, That's how I first became
familiar with hashed. The concept of hashtag bless is not
literally Christen Conger hashtagging blessed, but the idea of just
like what I know, just the idea of someone being like,
(27:09):
you know, I picked my sandwich up off the floor
and it was still edible. Hashtag blessed I wasn't. I
think I don't know if this gives away too much
about the type of people I follow on social media,
but I wasn't and I'm still not following anyone who
legitimately says that they are blessed, because those people are
out there, I think by this point, especially considering this
(27:31):
piece came out in which is like a bazillion years
ago and Twitter years, Um, if you are actually using
hashtag blessed and a non religious meaning, I think you
haven't caught onto the internet and how it speaks. Yeah,
(27:51):
I mean, so Bennet's writing about how in that period
that snapshot of time in everybody in a Twitter feed
on her Facebook wall, everybody's hashtag blessed about something anything
from being accepted to grad school, uh, to getting tickets
to Fashion Week to going on SPA weekends, you know,
And like, I get it. I get the sarcastic hashtag blessed.
(28:15):
And I'm cool with like the religious like actual Christian
grandmother saying she's blessed for one of the tweets hashtag blast.
I'm cool when the pope does it. But it's that
like middle ground of just just stop, just stop. I'm oh,
I'm so look at my manicure hashtag blessed well, and
it's so transparent. Um and Bennett talked to noted linguists
(28:42):
Deborah Tannin about it, who said that what makes these
examples humble brags isn't the blessed itself, but the context,
because what you're really doing is telling the world, for instance,
that maybe your fiance is the best, or you've been
invited to do something impressive, or you have this beautiful
long aided fingers. If you're saying hashtag blessed about your
(29:03):
manny petty, do you know I'm gonna admit something embarrassing.
It has little to do little to nothing to do
with humble brags and hashtag blessed. But so I am
ridiculously clumsy, especially when it comes to sharp objects. And
I've cut several fingers on my right hand and the
(29:25):
other day, uh, the only band aids in my direct
vicinity were red band aids with white high heels all
over them, and so I had my hands covered in
these like hilariously lady terrific band aids, and I thought,
like this is hysterical. I'm going to take a picture
and post this to Instagram like this is really funny,
and so I did, but I was like, my fingers
(29:46):
look fat. You deleted it well and I still have
the picture, but I didn't post it. I didn't post
it to Instagram listeners. I saw the band aids and
I loved them. Kristen was like, what did you do
to yourself? And where did you get those band aids?
I don't know. I think they were my Christmas stalking
(30:07):
or something. It looked like they would come well with
like Barbie. Oh my god. They came in one of
those tins, you know that's like Lady Emergency. Oh Lord.
But I was like, I kind of opened the tin.
I was like, I'm just I need bandaids. I'm covered
in cuts from like cooking dinner and trying to open
a box from Amazon. How about a hashtag? But so
(30:31):
back to linguist Deborah Tannin, Uh, she's right on the money.
Humble bragging is a million percent transparent and it just
makes you look like a jerk. According to science, it's
not just Christian and me, it's science. According to a
study in Psychological Science in May, humble braggers overestimate positive
(30:54):
responses and underestimate negative ones to their posts thanks to
an empathy gap. It sounds like buch a psychopath. Uh.
This is basically like not putting themselves in other shoes. So,
for instance, a humble bragger might see someone else online
humble bragging and being like, so tacky. I don't like
that at all. But when it comes to them humble
(31:14):
bragging about a vacation or a new car or whatever
it is, They're like, people are going to be so
happy for me, but I don't want to out and
out brag because I don't want to be a jerk.
So I'm just kind of kind of like humble brag,
you know that kind of thing. So they get a
vanity plate for their new car that's hashtag like l
K Y g R L Instagram that, oh god, you
know that exists. I'm sure it does because I own it,
(31:37):
because it's me, my dented hatchbag. That that is true.
I'm not even joking about the hatchbag part and the dents, right, No,
I would never leave out the dents. But speaking of
a dented hatchbag, is this a decent segue into the
hot mess? Humble brag totally? And how we see this
(31:58):
propped up in pop culture and Caroline, we were having stuff.
Mom never told you mental synchronicity somehow, because right before
you sent me this slate piece examining this whole hot
mess phenomenon that we see among our fave Hollywood starletts
and the women they portray on screen, a girlfriend of
mine sent me a similar piece over at Salon, basically
(32:21):
being like, what's up with this whole self deprecating hot
mess situation? Which I feel like was really exemplified by
Liz Lemon on thirty Rock originally because here we have
a super successful woman, is us like such a hot
mess in so many ways? But we see it more
off screen with a lot of stars today as well. Yeah,
(32:43):
just a lot of women who are it's it's it
goes back to that relatability thing that we mentioned earlier,
with the whole professional woman thing of of enjoying great
success and being you know, multi hyphen It's maybe these
celebrities are writers and actresses and producers and directors who
knows what they are, but still they aim for relatability
(33:04):
by talking about, Oh, I drank too much, you know,
I had bad sex the other night. I never exercise. Yeah, god,
I love pizza, you know, just like saying stars they're
just like us. But Eileen Giselle at Slate in August
was not having any of it, not having any of
it at all. She was talking about how bragging about
(33:25):
being a hot mess, because that's that's essentially kind of
what it is. It's another way of bragging about like
I'm so busy and I'm so accomplished. Basically, Giselle is arguing, like,
look how busy I am. Look how complicated and complex
my life is. Uh that I even have time to
sit here and talk to you. I haven't even brushed
my hair. Oh my god, Am I bragging about being
a hot mess conquer and I just talked about not
(33:47):
brushing my hair? Um. But she says that it's become
this badge of honor for virtually all successful Caucasian women
between twenty and forty um, And that was one of
her big bones to pick with the hot mess trend.
She's like basically saying that it's only these super privileged,
successful white women who have the luxury of complaining about
(34:10):
being a hot mess and drawing attention to their screw ups,
whether it's a fashion choice or a job choice. Or
a life choice, where she argues women of color uh
feel more compelled to not brag, but just emphasize their
success so that they are taken seriously. She writes, successful
women of color are painfully aware the public conceptions of
(34:33):
their race presume hot mess status, and she gives the
example of Lena Dunham interviewing Carrie Washington for I think
it was Murray Claire and how Carrie Washington was on
the cover and the headline was something like, oh, we
all want to be Carrie Washington. And meanwhile, Lena Dunham
herself is obviously very successful, a very hard worker, like
(34:56):
an over worker, overachiever. You know, she's got She's definitely
a multi high in it. And so Gizell writes that
hyper successful white women can brag about being clueless messes
all Elina Dunham, while black women all like Carry Washington
are turned into what she calls surrogate philosophics. So being
a hot mess is a byproduct of white privilege. That's
(35:18):
what Giazel is arguing. You should have read the comments
section under it. No, actually you shouldn't have. You tell
me about it. What were the comments like, um, well, no,
the comments were all over the place, as one might
expect for anything on the internet, but a lot of
people were coming to say, um, so we can't have
a bad day and just like complain about not having
time to brush our hair because we've got so much
(35:40):
work to do or something like that, and um, you know,
I don't know if Gizell does have an answer for
it or did at the time, but I kind of
came away from that article feeling the same way of like, yeah,
I totally can see that how culturally it tends to
be like young, hot white actresses who like the adorable
and very talented Anna Kendrick, who like loves to call
(36:03):
herself a hot mess, And I can see how that
is sort of a humble brag of like, Ana Kendrick,
you're so amazing and adorable and successful, and you're sitting
here like even telling your interviewer to refer to you
as a hot mess and interviews and so Gisella is saying, like,
this is such a young white woman thing. But meanwhile,
you've also got Tracy Ellis Ross, who's a woman of color,
(36:24):
obviously uh successful actress, amazing person who refers to herself
as a hot mess. Two in the media, and so
I kind of came away from that article being like,
I don't know, I think this is an equal opportunity
descriptor a self descriptor anyway. But I mean, I see
her point, you know. She also points out that it's
very gendered, the hot mess humble brag. You don't see
(36:46):
a lot of men going around being like, I'm such
a hot mess. Instead, she writes, you know, men own
their success. Yeah, I think that this is over analysis
to some degree of hot mess really means, because all
it really is is self deprecating humor, and self deprecating
(37:07):
humor is something that I've pondered myself in recent years.
I got to a point later in my twenties where
self deprecation had been my stick for laughs for a
really long time. And I kind of not that I'm
not self deprecating anymore, but I grew out of it
being such a crutch because it did start to feel
(37:27):
kind of inauthentic, partially because I was asking myself, well,
why can't I just also be me when I'm not
screwing up to other people? Can I be funny in
other ways as well? Um, So I think it's definitely
worth thinking about in terms of what success and likability
(37:48):
mean when you are a woman, because Amy Humor is
someone whose name comes up with these hot mess convos
as well, because obviously she's super successful, she's white, and
her comedic persona is a wild hot mess. But Jed
Apatow and other people and just like as you can
(38:10):
observe as a human um have noted she is one
of the hardest workers in show business, and her being
cited as I don't know, like self labeling is a
hot mess and that's that's not okay. I don't know
with those kinds of examples, I am skeptical because it's
(38:33):
her brand. Yeah, it is her brand, and I think
it's there. And there are plenty of, like I guess
equivalent male comedians who could potentially be called hot messes themselves.
I mean, I see what the writer was saying in
terms of, like, hey, if you're actually a really hard worker,
(38:54):
like an Amy Schumer, don't equate yourself with somehow being
out of con roll just by being you. Yeah. Yeah,
And this is also making me think of how Amy
Poehler is so the antithesis of the hot mess I mean,
partially because Leslie Nope obviously has a binder for everything.
(39:15):
But even in Amy Poehler's public presentation, as slapsticky as
she can be, sometimes she's still very authentic in how
she works and how work is meaningful to her and
things that she thinks about, like her family and relationships
beyond work. It well as well that might at times
(39:36):
feel like hot messes, but it's just all part of
being a busy, successful woman. And so rounding all of
this back to the lucky girl phenomenon social media, um
why women would seek to mask competence or seek to
mask effort. I mean, it's all part of sort of
(39:58):
shaping your identity online, which is something that more and
more of us are doing. There was the stat Pro
survey that found that a majority of people on social
media post online in a way that defines their identities.
And so it's no wonder we want to look good
in a way that we can control. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
(40:20):
and I think in some ways, to like hot mess
can be controlling your own narrative as well, because it
takes work to make a mess. Yeah, well, and and
also to be comfortable enough to be up on a
level where you're comfortable enough to publicly admit like I'm
a mess, Because if you genuinely were falling apart and
(40:41):
you felt like your life was in a shambles and
that you could you weren't accomplishing anything, like, would you
be as comfortable admitting that, like, oh, I'm a hot mess?
It's like, well, no, you really are, Like please let
me help you. Well, And is there a distinction between
just being a mess and being a hot mess. Yeah, yeah,
culturally I would think so, you know, but I do
like how Mindy Kaling like wants nothing to do with
(41:04):
the whole hot mess thing. She has straight up said
I work like a lot, a lot, and I appreciate
that as well, if someone who is very transparent about
all of the effort and you know, work that goes
into building her empire like that. Yeah, she talks about
how she completely over prepares and works so hard, and
(41:27):
we're used to hearing about women over preparing in terms
of the imposter syndrome, like I don't believe in myself,
so I have to overwork and be overprepared and then
I'm stressed out to death. Mindykalings take on it is
pretty refreshing and that she's saying, no, like, I work
really hard, I over prepare for anything, but that is
so that I can go kick ass everything that I do.
I want that that. Yeah, I like that idea that
(41:50):
that well. I mean, it's just it's confidence and and
owning how much work you actually do. And it's such
a contrast too to the type of oh over work
and over preparedness that we discussed in our Little Miss
perfect Perfectionism podcast, because that kind of overwork is a
(42:10):
sign that you're actually not doing things right because you're
only focused on failure. You're overworking because you are convinced
that you will fail otherwise, whereas someone like Mindy is
overworking because she's so focused on success. Yeah, and so
it's time everybody to ditch this whole luck discourse of
everything that you accomplish in your life, anything that happens
(42:32):
to you, anything that you experience talking it up to luck.
Enough with that. It's time to own your work effort
and your work ethic and and even the hardships that
come along with it and how much, even how much
success you've earned. I mean, there's no shame in owning
any of these things. And at least that could start
(42:53):
to help engender a little bit of confidence in yourself
when you're not telling yourself and others like I'm just lucky.
You're like, oh no, I didn't really do that much
to get the promotion to be like the CEO of
this company. So let's start the trending hashtag unlucky girl.
That's exactly That's exactly what I meant. Hashtag hard working girl.
(43:14):
Hashag I'm sweating as I type this. Oh, hashtag working girl.
And then, oh my god, then I could use so
many Melanie Griffith gifts done perfect. Well, I have a
feeling that this topic resonates with a lot of listeners
because social media, y'all, it's everywhere, and we're curious to
know your thoughts on it. Is it something that you've
(43:36):
noticed that you've caught yourself doing something that maybe grates
on your nerves? Hashtag shut up lucky girl. Mom Steff
at how stuff Works dot com is where you can
email us. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple
of messages to share with you right now. Well, I
(44:00):
have a letter here from Julie about our gendered chef episode.
She says, I've especially enjoyed listening to your sociological commentary
on women in stereotypically gendered professions. Me being a woman
who cares about other women read a feminist, I was
so excited to finally listen to your gendered Chef episode
this week. Male domination of certain professions is an issue
(44:22):
close to my heart. My younger sister is considered a
leader in the stem field. My older sister has a
PhD from m T and a career in academia. And
I left my position as a corporate attorney to become
a chef, a pastry chef, and she literally writes que
sad trombone music. Julia goes on to say, well, I
agree with every point you made regarding the sadly lacking
(44:45):
level of female representation and head chef and executive chef positions.
I do take issue with what I perceived as you
reinforcing the gendered nature of pastry and banking. It's true
that more women gravitate to this area of the culinary field. However,
I made a very risky career movement decided to go
into pastry making, not because I was intimidated by the
world of chefs de cuisine. But because pastry is something
(45:07):
that I am passionate about, I understand why you explain
the fact that pastry and baking has historically been feminized.
But I think you missed an opportunity to discuss the
fact that this type of cooking is not less than
nor less important or rewarding than other types of cooking.
I would counter that it's the act of feminizing dessert
making that is robbed of the prestige associated with the
(45:28):
male gendered chef de cuisine. There is no less skill artistry, intelligence, knowledge, creativity, danger, sweat, invention, precision, calculation,
or spontaneity involved in making pastries than there is a
preparing meat. Instead, what I heard on your podcast is
banter about how disappointing it is that most female chefs
are still in pastry as if it were a lesser profession.
(45:49):
This is all to say, well, I think it's important
work discussing the serious and upsetting gender gaps and many professions.
I would caution against rhetoric the demeans women in largely
female professions of some less than those enlarging mail ones.
Though it does take courage and tenacity to succeed in
male dominated fields. No argument here. It's a step backward
to identify historically female dominated fields is somehow less worthy
(46:11):
than male ones. She says, thanks again for your podcast,
keep up the good work and the good fight. And Julie,
I have to say I totally agree with you, and
I was hoping that we were sharing those tidbits about
women's baking history just as a way to enlighten listeners.
And I totally did not mean to indicate in any
way that being a pastry chef, or being involved in
(46:31):
pastry in any way, whether it's eating it or making it,
uh is less banned by virtue of being feminist. Well,
I gotta let her hear from Rosa about our podcast
on cooking shows, and she writes, while listening to your
show about celebrity chefts, you mentioned that Julia Child found
her passion and started her career later in her life.
(46:52):
I enjoyed how both of you commented on the fact
that there's nothing wrong with finding what you love to
do later in life. Our society really focus on becoming
highly successful before you reach the right bold age of thirty.
What's up with that? I'm a seasonal worker and haven't
found a full time job that I really enjoy yet,
but I'm going to keep on searching and we'll have
(47:13):
Julia in the back of my mind as my motivation.
So thanks Rosa, and thanks to everyone who's written in
to us. Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com
is our email address and for links to all of
our social media as well as all of our blogs, videos,
and podcasts, including this one with links to our sources.
So you can read more about hashtag lucky girls. Head
(47:34):
on over to stuff mom Never Told You dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics because
it how stuff works dot com.
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told you. As draws to a close, I've been
looking back on this year that honestly feels like it's
been probably seventeen years. It has been one of a
(00:30):
lot of growth for me. I've worked on confidence, either
fake or real, being better about acknowledging both my strengths
and my weaknesses. And I've learned how to forgive, which
that has been a hard one for me. I'm a
very late bloomer when it comes to forgiveness. And as
of very recently, I've gotten better about asking for help
when I need it. I've learned to be accepting of
(00:52):
parts of myself. Um, I've rejected my entire life, but
I have a lot of growing up to do. I
still have a lot of growing to do. Since the
teen election, I have been behaving very destructively. I call
it self destructive Annie, And in some ways I think
I needed it, but it was really unhealthy. I slept
barely at all, and when I did, it was on
(01:14):
the floor or wherever I happened to be. I ordered
unhealthy food at all hours of the nights. I ran
way too much to work off all of the food
that I was eating. I drank too much. I haven't
made time for myself or my mental health. So I
hope in this new year, among other things, I can
let self destructive annie go. And I would love to
(01:36):
hear from you listeners, what you do well, what you
want to work on in your hopes for this new year.
In the meantime, here's an episode looking at why women
sometimes feel at pressure to downplay their successes. Goodbye, It's
been real. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you from
(01:59):
how Stop works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast
from Caroline and I'm Kristen, and so we're talking about
the the internet phenomenon that literally everyone should be familiar with,
which is basically hashtag humble brag, hashtag lucky girl, this
(02:21):
whole phenomenon of posting things on the Internet to make
yourself look great but not necessarily show off how much
effort went into it. And this really made me. I
had to have some some introspection, Kristen. I needed to
think back to figure out if I had done this,
and I think I was guilty of this, probably when
(02:43):
I was younger, like literally when Facebook first came out
and we were in college, because we're so old, I
feel like it was much more common. And I say
that as if it's like someone other than myself. And
I think that now I'm so turned off when other
people do it online that I, as a grown person,
(03:05):
try to avoid bragging on the internet. Bragging or humble bragging.
Oh well, the humble brag, you know, like showing my
glamorous podcast or lifestyle on the internet just to make
myself look better. So in what ways would you humble
bragg on Facebook back in yielden days, the old two
(03:27):
thousand four. I don't know. I can't come up with
like a specific example, but um, but everybody knows that
humble brag if if if you haven't done it, you've
seen it. It's the kind of thing where you know,
people are like, oh, you know, I had to get
up so early to go win that marathon race today
(03:48):
hashtag blast. I intentionally defriended an ext of mine years
ago now because I didn't want to yield to the
temptation to turn my Facebook into one big humble brag.
Oh yeah, you're like, look how fine I am. I'm
just so great. Yeah. I have a friend who will
(04:10):
remain un named, who recently went through a breakup. And
and Kristen she might she's doll a little bit of that. Yeah,
and and that's kind of what we're talking about, Like
we we we know the humble brag, we know the
outright bragging on social media, but it's this whole lucky
girl phenomenon of posting stuff on the Internet, whether it's
a picture on Instagram or a status on Facebook or Twitter. Um,
(04:33):
that looks great, you know, maybe your apple pick in
North Georgia or going through wine country in California. And
and it's beautiful, and you've got a wonderful picture, but
you don't indicate what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe
you did go through a breakup. Maybe you had to
take fifty pictures for one to turn out right, you know. Well,
(04:53):
and speaking of what's going on behind the scenes, did
you have to take fifty plus photos? This is very
reminiscent of what was happening earlier in November with social
media star as Sina O'Neill, who took herself off of
Instagram and all of her platforms because she fessed up
(05:16):
that it's all fake. Shocking. Yeah, yeah, she said she
was tired of the whole you know, sponsored post rigamarole
that she was tired of caring as a teenager. She's
really young. I think she's just eighteen now, she said,
you know, she was tired of being such a young
person whose entire life was dedicated to putting forth this front,
(05:37):
this hyper stylized, hyper fashioned, hyper dieted front, when really
none of that was giving her any happiness. That it
was portraying an amazing lifestyle. But then, of course there's
the whole question that we're going to get into as
well of actually owning our success and being comfortable in
(05:58):
our success and achievements and good things that happened. Because
while I think it's totally responsible as an Internet person
to have your humble brag radar on and do what
you can to control your output of it, there's the
line between that and then being completely averse to any
type of self promotion or sharing good things to happen
(06:21):
because you don't want to seem like you're being too boastful. Yeah. Well,
so the article that I saw that got my wheels
turning on this was in the Atlantic in September of
this year, and they were talking about this whole what
they call vi bating hashtag lucky Girl phenomenon um. And
(06:42):
like we said, this is basically just posting the fruits
of your sometimes very extensive labor or hardship without acknowledging
the hard work that went into making it. Whether this
is getting engaged, whether this is uh preparing a meal,
you know, like it could be anything. It could be small, large, significant,
or insignificant. But it's simply putting forth this image, like
(07:05):
we said that everything's hunky dory, when perhaps he really
had to work for it. Well, And that's why when
I got engaged and shared it with my Facebook friends,
I first uploaded just a photographic montage of all the
fights and tears that my fiancee and I had experienced
in the previous couple of years. And like it was
(07:25):
such a long walk down the Wall of China, you know,
that old wall of China. And how actually this is true.
How in the car ride do the Great Wall of
China where or podcasts vans who are not aware that's
where my proposal took place. That it was amazing, but
I didn't think it was going to happen because in
(07:48):
the van ride there he was rasing me the whole time.
I was like, well, he's being very unromantic today, so
Shirley's little bait and switch, little bit an affection bait
and switch. And don't think that academics haven't gotten in
(08:09):
on this because it is tied into so much gendered stuff.
You know, social media is so hot right now, you guys.
But they wrote that it reflects something deeper and perhaps
pernicious in contemporary culture, the pressure young women feel to
be effortlessly perfect. And they're citing a two thousand three
Duke University study that coined effortlessly perfect, although I'm sure
(08:31):
other people have said that phrase before. They write that
you have to have it all together, but don't let
them see you sweat. Doesn't this seem to tie into
the broader have it all goal for sure, just all
part of it um and Cosopaltian magazine is having none
of it either. They recently talked about this hashtag lucky girl,
(08:55):
which is super common on Instagram in particular, and they
described it as weirdly distancing and its annoying refusal to
take any credit, using the fictional example of a girl
who graduated and landed this amazing job without noting that, oh,
you know, I had all these summer internships and how
(09:17):
to do all this networking and email like two hundred
random people and finally got this job. But instead all
you see is hashtag lucky girl. Yeah. And that's not
to say that you know, you can't, for instance, post
a picture on the first day of that new job
and be super excited or whatever, but it's that whole
attributing everything to luck instead of and not that you
(09:38):
would necessarily say like hashtag I had to email two
people to get this job. But it's the it's the
combination of not owning your own success and hard work
and also um portraying your life for the event or
whatever it is in a way that's like, oh, yeah,
you know me, I'm just so good at this hashtag
(10:00):
us gosha. Well, and there is a gendered element to
this social media good fortune as well, and this is
one of the reasons why, of course we wanted to
talk about it on Stuff Mo'm Never Told You Because
analytics company Crimson Hexagon looked at the statistics over the
(10:20):
past year and found that women on Twitter are the
ones using lucky fifty six percent of the time, and
that she gets up to sixty seven percent when it's
specifically in the first person. So I'm so lucky, and
it seems to be most common in the romantic arena.
So proposals, romantic dates. I don't know what else, what's
(10:45):
what is romantic swiping? Right? I don't know what do
people post? A lot of people post on the Internet.
I don't know. Um, well, so why why is it gendered?
Why is does it seem to be more women? The
Atlantic Sites author Rachel Simmons, who wrote The Curse of
the Good Girl, who says that it's about women's reluctance
(11:05):
to take ownership of their accomplishments, which Kristen to me,
sounds really familiar. Since you and I did an episode
about the imposter syndrome, we talked about Lenin. We've talked
in general just a lot about professional women who maybe
don't speak up enough for themselves. And so as part
of that, we've talked about how ladies are already less
(11:27):
likely to self promote and ask for more money, ask
for a raise, negotiate for a higher salary, and hand
in hand with that, they are more likely to give
credit to others. And so, speaking of Lenin, Cheryl Sandberg writes,
ask a man to explain his success, and he will
typically credit his own innate qualities and skills. Ask a
woman the same question, and she'll likely attribute her success
(11:49):
to external factors, insisting she did well because quote, she
worked really hard, or got lucky, or had help from others.
So this sounds pretty related to what we're talking about, absolutely,
and it's not just Sandberg coming up with that. I mean,
there are so many studies in both academic and workplace
settings that corroborate this, and a lot of it seems
(12:09):
to route back to this likability factor where women are
often in this double bind, especially if they are ambitious
of wanting to succeed, but also wanting to remain likable
at the same time. And unfortunately, those two things don't
always go hand in hand thanks to gender issues in
work environments, and women especially for that reason, don't want
(12:33):
to appear to be bragging, if not only to protect
themselves from criticism, but also to protect other people's feelings.
They might not want to damage a friend or partners ego.
They might want to make other feel other people feel
comfortable around them, they want to stay relatable. Yeah, one
(12:54):
of the articles we were reading about this, I can't
remember if it was in Forbes, but they were interviewing
a woman who was very successful but also a very
hard worker. I mean, things weren't just handed to her.
She wasn't just hashtag lucky. She worked really hard. And
she said she felt like she couldn't publicly sort of
enjoy the fruits of her labor. Uh, you know, she
(13:14):
felt like she couldn't carry the fancy handbag out to
dinner or by you know, the very expensive meal off
the menu. She felt like she kind of had to,
I guess, do the financial equivalent of dumbing herself down.
But the thing is that ended up, she said, sparking
sort of a cycle of well, I don't want to
brag about my success, but I at least want to
(13:34):
talk about it with my friends. And the less I
talk about it or feel I have to hide it,
the worst I feel about myself. And so it creates
this whole cycle of if you're not self promoting, which
that tends to have a negative connotation anyway, But if
you're not self promoting, then other people won't know how
great you are. So, I mean, it is a fine line,
(13:56):
and it's especially fine for women who statistically tend to
be so much more nervous about coming off as bragging
or just coming off as you know, I'm better than
you somehow. And not only is there that issue of
our worries about other people's perceptions, but also our own
twisted perceptions of our own success. And this really gets
(14:16):
into imposter syndrome territory where we do genuinely believe that
we are lucky and nothing else because we feel like
we don't deserve the achievements and successes that we've had.
And this turns into this cycle where you kind of
(14:36):
can never self promote, which was something that software engineer
Natasha Muritia shared in Forbes. Yeah. She wrote that if
you believe that you've got a big promotion because of
luck rather than your hard work, you're probably not going
to feel right bragging about how much you deserve the
promotion and how awesome you are. Instead, she writes, you're
(14:57):
going to feel like a scam artist who got lucky,
and that you'd be lying if you said you deserved it.
So what is up with that? What's the deal? The deal?
Lucky Girls? Wait? Hold on? Caroline's Jerry Seinfeld in the studio.
He's always sneaking in here under the stable. It's really uncomfortable.
(15:18):
He like keeps asking us to get in his car.
I wish Elaine Bennee would sneak into the studio from
time to time, you and me, Both she and I
have similar dance moves. Oh my gosh, me too. We
just have a podcast studio dance party. We're I think
we are just clearly outright bragging that our dance skills
are as good as Elaine benees. They are as elbow
(15:38):
and knee heavy as all eb I know it. But seriously,
what's up with all that? And I'm not talking about
our dance skills, although perhaps we should, uh yeah. Writing
over at Forbes in July, Peggy Drexler wrote that societal
expectations for female behavior traditionally and enduringly value my honesty
(16:00):
and collaboration. And so even if you think, oh, we'll
screw everybody, we should feel confident in our abilities or
in our accomplishments or whatever. You would be foolish to
think that women don't internalize societal norms and expectations, especially
things that have been around forever. That women just need
to quietly enjoy baking at home, not that you can't
(16:22):
I like quietly baking at home, baking and then taking
endless photos of your perfect baking right right, and just
hashtag lucky the eggs are really good today. I didn't
even I barely had to stir um well. And it
doesn't help either that pop culture enjoys the trope of
(16:42):
the self deprecating heroine or the charming but Downdrawden woman,
as as Drexler points out. So what really struck me
in comparing and contrasting the whole like lucky girl humble
(17:04):
bragging social media thing with the professional accomplishments thing is
that all of those career articles that we just cited
Kristen seem to have a lot more to do with
having a chieved success through hard work, through effort, but
not wanting to seem like you're bragging about the success itself,
when really you have every reason to be pleased with
(17:24):
yourself and to be confident about the work you've done,
Whereas the social media lucky girl stuff, on the other hand,
seems like to me that it's putting the success on
display but then downplaying the effort so that everyone is
aware of when you're successful or when something awesome is
happening without being aware that behind the scenes you could
(17:46):
very well be struggling. Yeah, or that it just requires
a lot of work. Allah Sena O'Neill taking a bazillion
photos just to get one where her collar bone looks
especially perfect? Well, yeah, exactly, and I mean yes, of
course she is lucky in the literal traditional sense of
the word, because she's getting or was getting free stuff
(18:08):
from designers to wear on her blog. But on the
other hand, what we didn't see, uh is, yeah, like
Kristen said, all of the work that went into it,
that she had to make her sister take five pictures
of her in a single dress. Do we think that
that these are the same women doing both things at
various times where we might be curating, almost to keep
(18:32):
to keep up with this social media lingo that we're
kind of curating how we display our effort versus success
and maybe the audience where it's okay to show portray success,
whatever that might be, whether it's success in the sense
of being very beautiful or very adventurous or successum in
(18:53):
a more professional setting. I'm sure, I mean, I'm sure
in the Venn diagram of all of this stuff, is
absly overlaps. But I do think the motivations are pretty different.
I think that um not wanting to make your friends.
Maybe you're you don't want to make your unemployed friend
feel uncomfortable by talking about your incredible rays at work. UM,
(19:15):
so you kind of hide that, even though you should
be very proud of it. Whereas if you're posting all
of these vacation pictures from a tropical location and you're like, oh,
you know, I just just landed in Bali, so jet
lag hashtag blass, hashtag lucky. You know, it's like the motivations,
(19:35):
they're different. I got a hunch, I've got a stuff
mom never told you hunch. Why. That is why posting
your vacation photos and food photos and beauty picks, etcetera,
without showing the effort behind it is more acceptable because
that's more feminine gendered leisure time, cooking, being beautiful, curating
(20:00):
your image just are all things that we expect of
the traditional feminine role, whereas things like ambition, raises, leaning
in in the boardroom are still transgressive in some ways
to feminine gender roles. Yeah, so maybe it feels more dangerous.
(20:20):
Absolutely it could. You don't want to. You don't want
to be threatening to those around you, whether it's friends, partners,
or even you know, fellow coworkers or whatever. Um. And
then I mean as far as like the vacation pictures
and hashtag lucky like, yes, it could be that that's
a traditionally feminine thing. It could also be that some
of these people are jerks and they just want to
(20:41):
find They're going to find a way to brag about
what they're doing. It's just that bragging is such an
unfeminine thing to do traditionally and socially, and so they've
almost got to hide the brag, or seem to be
attempting to hide the brag behind, whether it's a humble
brag or whether it's just saying that you lucked out
(21:04):
instead of you know, no, you paid for that plane ticket,
you saved up for months, and then you flew to
Bolly by yourself. You're alone in Bolly. Gosh darn it,
you eat pray love, you're crying in that cocktail. But
what really fascinates me with all of this is how,
especially the hashtag lucky girl, is a product of this
(21:27):
very Lady mag promoted idea of effortlessness I mean, how
many fashion spreads have we seen in our favorite fashion
magazines have ways to look effortlessly attractive and on trend
this season. Now when I literally do the effortless thing,
(21:48):
so I literally put no effort into what I'm doing, Um,
it's terrifying. And people get this concerned look on their face, like,
oh God, have you just been evicted? You know, like
I am. I didn't do my hair yesterday at all,
like I might have run a brush through it, but
I basically woke up hashtag woke up like this and
(22:08):
my this is like frizzed hair out to hear, arms
super wide, you know, no makeup, dark circles under my eyes.
That is my effortless And as L magazine pointed out
and a really kind of funny and interesting spread they did,
it costs so much money to look quote unquote effortless,
(22:30):
not homeless, which is what I look like yesterday. It's
our Whole Athletisure podcast and how you have these high
end designers getting into athletisure where just so that we
can look as if we might be going to the gym. Oh,
I know, I gave this woman in Whole Foods the
side eyed today. Uh, not intentionally, but like literally just
trying not to look directly at her because I didn't
want to be creep. But she was totally in line
(22:52):
at Whole Foods, wearing the full like yoga uniform. But
and I don't mean to be a judge word, but
like full face of makeup, like heavy, heavy, full face
of makeup with lashes and everything. And I was like,
I bet she's doing the athletesure thing. You're going home
(23:12):
after this and you haven't been to the gym, or
maybe she's going to pure bar. Who knows you gotta
look good well, And speaking of makeup, it also reminds
me of the whole no makeup makeup trend, where the
whole thing is to spend a lot of time making
your face look as flawless as possible with a lot
of makeup, but not looking like you have much makeup on.
(23:34):
And ps, I have not mastered it yet. Yeah, I'm
just going with the no makeup. No literally, there's no makeup.
Look now I have to put on enough concealer to
not look like a broken out thirteen year old girl.
And then because I've put on so much concealer and
I'm already very pale, as my mother liked to remind
me all while I was growing up. I know I've
(23:56):
told you before that my mother always used to tell
me that I needed more blusher. So if I don't
want to look dead, I've forgotted them put blush on.
But then if I'm nothing but like a white sheet
with two red dots on my cheeks, well, now I've
kind of put on mascare so that you can at
least see that I have eyeball. You kind of get
(24:17):
that Marionette look excessive blusher. I mean, I do draw
the lines from my lips over the corner of my
mouth down to my chin, so I look like a puppet.
That's just that's natural. Well, and how in that l
magazine spread that you were just referencing, what do they do?
They added up all of the costs of these effortless
(24:38):
and quotes outfits like at leisurely outfits, all the drap
shirts and sneakers and vegan leather leggings and the cold
press juices and all the things, all the various things,
and uh rounded it up to it costing over what
(24:58):
like on thousand dollars a year to look effortless. Yeah,
that's if you want to do all of the stuff
that they've broken down, all the lotions and the potions
and the hair creams and the face creams and and
the clothes and on the watches and all that stuff.
But they I think they tallied up like just one
maybe one week's worth of outfits and stuff like that,
(25:19):
and it's still came to fifty grand. I mean, if
you've got the designer boyfriend jeans, the designer tunic, the
designer calftan over a designer calftan. But I'll know I've
made it, Captain. I long for it. Um. But yeah,
and so they make an interesting point though, they say
it's probably no coincidence that during this moment culturally of
(25:40):
unprecedented buzziness or at least perceived business, because I think
we've talked before, right about how we're just in this
age of like, I'm working so late. Everybody's bragging about
working all the time even when they're not. Uh. They say,
this new aspirational lifestyle is one marked by leisure and ease. Unfortunately,
looking effortless is not making us less busy or any
(26:02):
richer or less and secure. For that matter, our era
of sartorial and corporeal nonchalance rests on a myth that
looking natural and being low maintenance are one and the same.
But they write for most of us who weren't born
hashtag blessed, they are definitely not. And speaking of hashtag blessed,
it made me oh so happy when in uh the
(26:27):
New York Times published a trend piece on hashtag blessed
by friend of the podcast Jessica Bennett, who described it
as quote invoking holiness as a way to brag about
your life, and hashtag blessed is, you know, sort of
the evolution of the humble brag, where it's like, I'm
so aware of what I'm doing, and sometimes hashtag blessed
(26:48):
is your use in purely comedic forms, Um I have
I've done that before. Whether people have laughed at it,
I don't know. On Twitter, That's how I first became
familiar with hashed. The concept of hashtag bless is not
literally Christen Conger hashtagging blessed, but the idea of just
like what I know, just the idea of someone being like,
(27:09):
you know, I picked my sandwich up off the floor
and it was still edible. Hashtag blessed I wasn't. I
think I don't know if this gives away too much
about the type of people I follow on social media,
but I wasn't and I'm still not following anyone who
legitimately says that they are blessed, because those people are
out there, I think by this point, especially considering this
(27:31):
piece came out in which is like a bazillion years
ago and Twitter years, Um, if you are actually using
hashtag blessed and a non religious meaning, I think you
haven't caught onto the internet and how it speaks. Yeah,
(27:51):
I mean, so Bennet's writing about how in that period
that snapshot of time in everybody in a Twitter feed
on her Facebook wall, everybody's hashtag blessed about something anything
from being accepted to grad school, uh, to getting tickets
to Fashion Week to going on SPA weekends, you know,
And like, I get it. I get the sarcastic hashtag blessed.
(28:15):
And I'm cool with like the religious like actual Christian
grandmother saying she's blessed for one of the tweets hashtag blast.
I'm cool when the pope does it. But it's that
like middle ground of just just stop, just stop. I'm oh,
I'm so look at my manicure hashtag blessed well, and
it's so transparent. Um and Bennett talked to noted linguists
(28:42):
Deborah Tannin about it, who said that what makes these
examples humble brags isn't the blessed itself, but the context,
because what you're really doing is telling the world, for instance,
that maybe your fiance is the best, or you've been
invited to do something impressive, or you have this beautiful
long aided fingers. If you're saying hashtag blessed about your
(29:03):
manny petty, do you know I'm gonna admit something embarrassing.
It has little to do little to nothing to do
with humble brags and hashtag blessed. But so I am
ridiculously clumsy, especially when it comes to sharp objects. And
I've cut several fingers on my right hand and the
(29:25):
other day, uh, the only band aids in my direct
vicinity were red band aids with white high heels all
over them, and so I had my hands covered in
these like hilariously lady terrific band aids, and I thought,
like this is hysterical. I'm going to take a picture
and post this to Instagram like this is really funny,
and so I did, but I was like, my fingers
(29:46):
look fat. You deleted it well and I still have
the picture, but I didn't post it. I didn't post
it to Instagram listeners. I saw the band aids and
I loved them. Kristen was like, what did you do
to yourself? And where did you get those band aids?
I don't know. I think they were my Christmas stalking
(30:07):
or something. It looked like they would come well with
like Barbie. Oh my god. They came in one of
those tins, you know that's like Lady Emergency. Oh Lord.
But I was like, I kind of opened the tin.
I was like, I'm just I need bandaids. I'm covered
in cuts from like cooking dinner and trying to open
a box from Amazon. How about a hashtag? But so
(30:31):
back to linguist Deborah Tannin, Uh, she's right on the money.
Humble bragging is a million percent transparent and it just
makes you look like a jerk. According to science, it's
not just Christian and me, it's science. According to a
study in Psychological Science in May, humble braggers overestimate positive
(30:54):
responses and underestimate negative ones to their posts thanks to
an empathy gap. It sounds like buch a psychopath. Uh.
This is basically like not putting themselves in other shoes. So,
for instance, a humble bragger might see someone else online
humble bragging and being like, so tacky. I don't like
that at all. But when it comes to them humble
(31:14):
bragging about a vacation or a new car or whatever
it is, They're like, people are going to be so
happy for me, but I don't want to out and
out brag because I don't want to be a jerk.
So I'm just kind of kind of like humble brag,
you know that kind of thing. So they get a
vanity plate for their new car that's hashtag like l
K Y g R L Instagram that, oh god, you
know that exists. I'm sure it does because I own it,
(31:37):
because it's me, my dented hatchbag. That that is true.
I'm not even joking about the hatchbag part and the dents, right, No,
I would never leave out the dents. But speaking of
a dented hatchbag, is this a decent segue into the
hot mess? Humble brag totally? And how we see this
(31:58):
propped up in pop culture and Caroline, we were having stuff.
Mom never told you mental synchronicity somehow, because right before
you sent me this slate piece examining this whole hot
mess phenomenon that we see among our fave Hollywood starletts
and the women they portray on screen, a girlfriend of
mine sent me a similar piece over at Salon, basically
(32:21):
being like, what's up with this whole self deprecating hot
mess situation? Which I feel like was really exemplified by
Liz Lemon on thirty Rock originally because here we have
a super successful woman, is us like such a hot
mess in so many ways? But we see it more
off screen with a lot of stars today as well. Yeah,
(32:43):
just a lot of women who are it's it's it
goes back to that relatability thing that we mentioned earlier,
with the whole professional woman thing of of enjoying great
success and being you know, multi hyphen It's maybe these
celebrities are writers and actresses and producers and directors who
knows what they are, but still they aim for relatability
(33:04):
by talking about, Oh, I drank too much, you know,
I had bad sex the other night. I never exercise. Yeah, god,
I love pizza, you know, just like saying stars they're
just like us. But Eileen Giselle at Slate in August
was not having any of it, not having any of
it at all. She was talking about how bragging about
(33:25):
being a hot mess, because that's that's essentially kind of
what it is. It's another way of bragging about like
I'm so busy and I'm so accomplished. Basically, Giselle is arguing, like,
look how busy I am. Look how complicated and complex
my life is. Uh that I even have time to
sit here and talk to you. I haven't even brushed
my hair. Oh my god, Am I bragging about being
a hot mess conquer and I just talked about not
(33:47):
brushing my hair? Um. But she says that it's become
this badge of honor for virtually all successful Caucasian women
between twenty and forty um, And that was one of
her big bones to pick with the hot mess trend.
She's like basically saying that it's only these super privileged,
successful white women who have the luxury of complaining about
(34:10):
being a hot mess and drawing attention to their screw ups,
whether it's a fashion choice or a job choice. Or
a life choice, where she argues women of color uh
feel more compelled to not brag, but just emphasize their
success so that they are taken seriously. She writes, successful
women of color are painfully aware the public conceptions of
(34:33):
their race presume hot mess status, and she gives the
example of Lena Dunham interviewing Carrie Washington for I think
it was Murray Claire and how Carrie Washington was on
the cover and the headline was something like, oh, we
all want to be Carrie Washington. And meanwhile, Lena Dunham
herself is obviously very successful, a very hard worker, like
(34:56):
an over worker, overachiever. You know, she's got She's definitely
a multi high in it. And so Gizell writes that
hyper successful white women can brag about being clueless messes
all Elina Dunham, while black women all like Carry Washington
are turned into what she calls surrogate philosophics. So being
a hot mess is a byproduct of white privilege. That's
(35:18):
what Giazel is arguing. You should have read the comments
section under it. No, actually you shouldn't have. You tell
me about it. What were the comments like, um, well, no,
the comments were all over the place, as one might
expect for anything on the internet, but a lot of
people were coming to say, um, so we can't have
a bad day and just like complain about not having
time to brush our hair because we've got so much
(35:40):
work to do or something like that, and um, you know,
I don't know if Gizell does have an answer for
it or did at the time, but I kind of
came away from that article feeling the same way of like, yeah,
I totally can see that how culturally it tends to
be like young, hot white actresses who like the adorable
and very talented Anna Kendrick, who like loves to call
(36:03):
herself a hot mess, And I can see how that
is sort of a humble brag of like, Ana Kendrick,
you're so amazing and adorable and successful, and you're sitting
here like even telling your interviewer to refer to you
as a hot mess and interviews and so Gisella is saying, like,
this is such a young white woman thing. But meanwhile,
you've also got Tracy Ellis Ross, who's a woman of color,
(36:24):
obviously uh successful actress, amazing person who refers to herself
as a hot mess. Two in the media, and so
I kind of came away from that article being like,
I don't know, I think this is an equal opportunity
descriptor a self descriptor anyway. But I mean, I see
her point, you know. She also points out that it's
very gendered, the hot mess humble brag. You don't see
(36:46):
a lot of men going around being like, I'm such
a hot mess. Instead, she writes, you know, men own
their success. Yeah, I think that this is over analysis
to some degree of hot mess really means, because all
it really is is self deprecating humor, and self deprecating
(37:07):
humor is something that I've pondered myself in recent years.
I got to a point later in my twenties where
self deprecation had been my stick for laughs for a
really long time. And I kind of not that I'm
not self deprecating anymore, but I grew out of it
being such a crutch because it did start to feel
(37:27):
kind of inauthentic, partially because I was asking myself, well,
why can't I just also be me when I'm not
screwing up to other people? Can I be funny in
other ways as well? Um, So I think it's definitely
worth thinking about in terms of what success and likability
(37:48):
mean when you are a woman, because Amy Humor is
someone whose name comes up with these hot mess convos
as well, because obviously she's super successful, she's white, and
her comedic persona is a wild hot mess. But Jed
Apatow and other people and just like as you can
(38:10):
observe as a human um have noted she is one
of the hardest workers in show business, and her being
cited as I don't know, like self labeling is a
hot mess and that's that's not okay. I don't know
with those kinds of examples, I am skeptical because it's
(38:33):
her brand. Yeah, it is her brand, and I think
it's there. And there are plenty of, like I guess
equivalent male comedians who could potentially be called hot messes themselves.
I mean, I see what the writer was saying in
terms of, like, hey, if you're actually a really hard worker,
(38:54):
like an Amy Schumer, don't equate yourself with somehow being
out of con roll just by being you. Yeah. Yeah,
And this is also making me think of how Amy
Poehler is so the antithesis of the hot mess I mean,
partially because Leslie Nope obviously has a binder for everything.
(39:15):
But even in Amy Poehler's public presentation, as slapsticky as
she can be, sometimes she's still very authentic in how
she works and how work is meaningful to her and
things that she thinks about, like her family and relationships
beyond work. It well as well that might at times
(39:36):
feel like hot messes, but it's just all part of
being a busy, successful woman. And so rounding all of
this back to the lucky girl phenomenon social media, um
why women would seek to mask competence or seek to
mask effort. I mean, it's all part of sort of
(39:58):
shaping your identity online, which is something that more and
more of us are doing. There was the stat Pro
survey that found that a majority of people on social
media post online in a way that defines their identities.
And so it's no wonder we want to look good
in a way that we can control. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
(40:20):
and I think in some ways, to like hot mess
can be controlling your own narrative as well, because it
takes work to make a mess. Yeah, well, and and
also to be comfortable enough to be up on a
level where you're comfortable enough to publicly admit like I'm
a mess, Because if you genuinely were falling apart and
(40:41):
you felt like your life was in a shambles and
that you could you weren't accomplishing anything, like, would you
be as comfortable admitting that, like, oh, I'm a hot mess?
It's like, well, no, you really are, Like please let
me help you. Well, And is there a distinction between
just being a mess and being a hot mess. Yeah, yeah,
culturally I would think so, you know, but I do
like how Mindy Kaling like wants nothing to do with
(41:04):
the whole hot mess thing. She has straight up said
I work like a lot, a lot, and I appreciate
that as well, if someone who is very transparent about
all of the effort and you know, work that goes
into building her empire like that. Yeah, she talks about
how she completely over prepares and works so hard, and
(41:27):
we're used to hearing about women over preparing in terms
of the imposter syndrome, like I don't believe in myself,
so I have to overwork and be overprepared and then
I'm stressed out to death. Mindykalings take on it is
pretty refreshing and that she's saying, no, like, I work
really hard, I over prepare for anything, but that is
so that I can go kick ass everything that I do.
I want that that. Yeah, I like that idea that
(41:50):
that well. I mean, it's just it's confidence and and
owning how much work you actually do. And it's such
a contrast too to the type of oh over work
and over preparedness that we discussed in our Little Miss
perfect Perfectionism podcast, because that kind of overwork is a
(42:10):
sign that you're actually not doing things right because you're
only focused on failure. You're overworking because you are convinced
that you will fail otherwise, whereas someone like Mindy is
overworking because she's so focused on success. Yeah, and so
it's time everybody to ditch this whole luck discourse of
everything that you accomplish in your life, anything that happens
(42:32):
to you, anything that you experience talking it up to luck.
Enough with that. It's time to own your work effort
and your work ethic and and even the hardships that
come along with it and how much, even how much
success you've earned. I mean, there's no shame in owning
any of these things. And at least that could start
(42:53):
to help engender a little bit of confidence in yourself
when you're not telling yourself and others like I'm just lucky.
You're like, oh no, I didn't really do that much
to get the promotion to be like the CEO of
this company. So let's start the trending hashtag unlucky girl.
That's exactly That's exactly what I meant. Hashtag hard working girl.
(43:14):
Hashag I'm sweating as I type this. Oh, hashtag working girl.
And then, oh my god, then I could use so
many Melanie Griffith gifts done perfect. Well, I have a
feeling that this topic resonates with a lot of listeners
because social media, y'all, it's everywhere, and we're curious to
know your thoughts on it. Is it something that you've
(43:36):
noticed that you've caught yourself doing something that maybe grates
on your nerves? Hashtag shut up lucky girl. Mom Steff
at how stuff Works dot com is where you can
email us. You can also tweet us at mom Stuff
podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple
of messages to share with you right now. Well, I
(44:00):
have a letter here from Julie about our gendered chef episode.
She says, I've especially enjoyed listening to your sociological commentary
on women in stereotypically gendered professions. Me being a woman
who cares about other women read a feminist, I was
so excited to finally listen to your gendered Chef episode
this week. Male domination of certain professions is an issue
(44:22):
close to my heart. My younger sister is considered a
leader in the stem field. My older sister has a
PhD from m T and a career in academia. And
I left my position as a corporate attorney to become
a chef, a pastry chef, and she literally writes que
sad trombone music. Julia goes on to say, well, I
agree with every point you made regarding the sadly lacking
(44:45):
level of female representation and head chef and executive chef positions.
I do take issue with what I perceived as you
reinforcing the gendered nature of pastry and banking. It's true
that more women gravitate to this area of the culinary field. However,
I made a very risky career movement decided to go
into pastry making, not because I was intimidated by the
world of chefs de cuisine. But because pastry is something
(45:07):
that I am passionate about, I understand why you explain
the fact that pastry and baking has historically been feminized.
But I think you missed an opportunity to discuss the
fact that this type of cooking is not less than
nor less important or rewarding than other types of cooking.
I would counter that it's the act of feminizing dessert
making that is robbed of the prestige associated with the
(45:28):
male gendered chef de cuisine. There is no less skill artistry, intelligence, knowledge, creativity, danger, sweat, invention, precision, calculation,
or spontaneity involved in making pastries than there is a
preparing meat. Instead, what I heard on your podcast is
banter about how disappointing it is that most female chefs
are still in pastry as if it were a lesser profession.
(45:49):
This is all to say, well, I think it's important
work discussing the serious and upsetting gender gaps and many professions.
I would caution against rhetoric the demeans women in largely
female professions of some less than those enlarging mail ones.
Though it does take courage and tenacity to succeed in
male dominated fields. No argument here. It's a step backward
to identify historically female dominated fields is somehow less worthy
(46:11):
than male ones. She says, thanks again for your podcast,
keep up the good work and the good fight. And Julie,
I have to say I totally agree with you, and
I was hoping that we were sharing those tidbits about
women's baking history just as a way to enlighten listeners.
And I totally did not mean to indicate in any
way that being a pastry chef, or being involved in
(46:31):
pastry in any way, whether it's eating it or making it,
uh is less banned by virtue of being feminist. Well,
I gotta let her hear from Rosa about our podcast
on cooking shows, and she writes, while listening to your
show about celebrity chefts, you mentioned that Julia Child found
her passion and started her career later in her life.
(46:52):
I enjoyed how both of you commented on the fact
that there's nothing wrong with finding what you love to
do later in life. Our society really focus on becoming
highly successful before you reach the right bold age of thirty.
What's up with that? I'm a seasonal worker and haven't
found a full time job that I really enjoy yet,
but I'm going to keep on searching and we'll have
(47:13):
Julia in the back of my mind as my motivation.
So thanks Rosa, and thanks to everyone who's written in
to us. Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com
is our email address and for links to all of
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and podcasts, including this one with links to our sources.
So you can read more about hashtag lucky girls. Head
(47:34):
on over to stuff mom Never Told You dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics because
it how stuff works dot com.
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