July 4, 2025 • 33 mins
TikTok’s “Princess Treatment” trend has gone viral, and so has Bridget's response.
It started with creator Courtney Joelle, whose videos depict how she sits silently at restaurants while her husband orders for her, speaks for her, and calls it “being a princess.” Millions of views later, Bridget wonders: is this soft girl femininity… or something more dangerous?
Check out Bridget’s viral TikTok response, which got SO MANY MORE VIEWS than her other videos, even though those other videos take WAY longer to produce. It's clear what the algorithm wants! https://www.tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc/video/7520108357177330975
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridgett and there are
no girls on the Internet. So right off the bat,
this is not going to be a typical there are
no Girls on the Internet episode. I'm trying out something
a little bit new because honestly, I just wanted to
(00:27):
come on here and yap about something that I inadvertently
found myself mixed up in. Recently, we did an episode
this week about skinny Talk, this corner of TikTok that
really pushes and glorifies disordered eating and obsession with body
image and weight. And in this episode we talked about
how this is not really a new ideology, but the
(00:47):
way that it is taking off online for women pushes
this idea that in addition to being thin, women should
be making themselves as small as possible and as quiet
as possible. And the entire thing really seems like telling
women the best way to be a woman is to
be one that does not take up too much space
and does not speak too much. And while I was
(01:07):
editing this episode and putting it together, this TikTok creator
named Courtney Joel went mega viral for her advice about
how women to do exactly that, only she called her
version getting princess treatment from her husband. And the funny
thing is, is that to me, what we described in
that episode and what this TikTok creator Courtney Joel described
(01:29):
how she's treated by her husband sounded exactly identical. They
sounded like the same thing to me. So if you've
not listened to that episode yet, here is what journalist
Cat ten Barge had to say about how the obsession
with thinness is also related to this dynamic that tells women,
in addition to being thin, women should also be very
quiet to be prioritized.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Because the ultimate goal of these sort of conservative, very
misogynistic spaces is that they want women to be small.
They want women to take up less space, they want
them to be frail, unable to help themselves, and they
want them to be very preoccupied with their own appearance
because it becomes an obsession that distracts from you being
able to participate in democracy to the fullest extent. It's
(02:10):
a distraction that prevents women from being able to occupy
the same positions that men do. So this sort of
pro eating disorder content is part of this larger picture
of women's oppression, and it's just no coincidence that like
the influencers in the all right spaces and the influencers
in the skinny spaces are using the exact same types
of strategies.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
It got me thinking about what Kat describes as women
being kind of unable to help themselves and unable to
do things for themselves, and honestly, this sounded to me
as exactly what that TikTok creator por Ajoell described. Part
of her princess treatment is not having to do things
for herself and rather having her husband do things for her.
Here's how she describes the princess treatment that she gets
(02:53):
from her husband when she's out at a restaurant. And
we did edit this a bit for clarity.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Let's talk about princess treatment.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
If you're out a rent on how you interact with
the white staff and the hostess. If I am at
a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to
the hostess, I do not open many doors, and I
do not order my own food.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Having to talk to the hostess. Never the princess is
kept away from others.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
At all time.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You know, she describes this complicated rigmarole that her and
her husband will do to avoid her having to manage
anything directly with a staff member at a restaurant, like
her husband will drive her up to the restaurant, get
out of the car, go inside, talk to the staff,
come out, open the door, walk her into the restaurant,
and then he goes to park the car while she
(03:37):
waits inside.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
It comes back, al opens my car door, walks me
into the restaurant, opens the door, and I stand and wait.
I did not make eye contact with the hostess. I
did not talk to her. I waited until my husband
came back. He comes back, does the exchange with her,
and then we went and sat down. It's not in
any sense like you're better than the hostess. You're just
letting your husband lead and be bascular. He made the reservation,
(04:02):
he's taking you out, let him do the logistics. You're
just being a princess. It's not because you're being hoity toity.
You're just letting your husband lead and letting him take.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
Care of it.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
She says that while her husband is parking in the car,
she doesn't really make eye contact or speak with the staff.
While she's waiting in the restaurant because she's just waiting
for her husband to come back and do all the
talking and managing everything. You know, the princess does not
conduct business. The princess does not make decisions. The princess's
job is to be silent and pretty and basically just
do what she's told.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
An over need to like talk and feel space, like
you don't need to talk unless you are spoken to.
And then if you are spoken to and I asked,
you could say, oh, I'm just waiting for my husband,
and then he'll be able to give the reservation.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Or you say, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
My husband way back, and then you can ask him
if you can say it in a very soft and
feminine way. I know this is going to be ripped apart.
People will just take things seriously such the wrong way.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
But that's why I would handle it.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And then let's just go further into So if you're
sitting down your org in New York, for the most part,
that the waiter would come up.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
They would ask, you know whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
My husband would start to speak and then the waiter
would address them, and he would kind of the waiter
would get the hint, and only then interact with my
husband here, and so like they don't quite get it.
I think they think that I'm like being you know, oppressed,
or I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
They will they'll be like, what can I get you
to eat? And I will just look at my husband.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
If they address me first, I will just look at
my husband and let my husband order. He'll say, oh,
she's da da da da. And then if they have
a follow up question like oh, do you want to
like this? Sometimes I will answer let's say I think
maybe my husband doesn't know what I would want.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I will then address the waiter.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
But it's almost like they keep trying to like get
me to speak, and I'm like, no, I want him
to order for me. I like when he orders for me.
It's not that I'm not capable of ordering for myself.
It's just fun. It's just a fun princess treatment thing.
It makes me feel special. It makes me just feel
like over the top taking care of So if the
waiter addresses you first, I will simply just look at
my husband and then my husband will order again. You
(06:04):
don't need to overspeak over exert yourself.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
You can be feminine and soft and quiet.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Tell me, are these not the same things. So people
on TikTok basically started calling this creator princess treatment lady
because of how she makes these videos about how you know,
she gets this princess treatment when she goes out. She
doesn't speak when she goes to restaurants, she doesn't make
eye contact with the staff or the hostess, does not
verbally order because she waits for her husband to do that.
(06:33):
She has some other videos, which we'll get to in
a minute, but this one video about how she behaves
when she goes out to restaurants with her husband really
hit a nerve with me. But not for the reason
that you might be thinking, Yes, this video plays into
all the kinds of gendered tropes that we talk about
on their no Girls on the Internet, which will absolutely
(06:53):
get into in a moment. But the reason why I
was like essentially deeply triggered from this video is something
different because, probably, like a lot of y'all listening, my
career trajectory has involved a lot of working in the
service industry. You know, I was a hostess at a restaurant.
I worked as a cashier for multiple different retail establishments
(07:13):
in my life, jobs where you have to interact with
the public. Now, these jobs are not inherently bad on
their own. Some of them were like, actually quite good
for me. But the thing that can make these jobs
bad is that when you have to interact with people
who treat you badly. So it's not even like the
job itself is that bad. It's the customer sometimes who
(07:33):
make that job bad. And this is not totally unconnected
to some of the gender stuff that I do want
to talk about, at least in my opinion, because there
absolutely is something about being a young woman or a
young girl who is basically a sitting duck behind a
cash register or at a hostess booth, just sort of
waiting for any kind of interaction that anybody wants to
have with her. Really, like that is definitely a gendered situation. However,
(07:58):
my experiences personally were mostly fine, Like I don't really
have any over the top gross or horrible stories of
customers being horrible to me, luckily, but I have had
some weird ones, Like one time I was working as
a hostess for a fancy restaurant sort of in an
upscale shopping plaza, and a very fancy lady who had
(08:19):
been out shopping all day at the nearby stores came
into the restaurant, and she really expected me to come
outside from behind the hostess booth, go out to the
parking lot to her car, carry all of her shopping
bags from her car to the restaurant, and hold them
at the hostess stand, because she was very worried that
her car was going to get broken into and all
(08:39):
the bags that she had just bought were going to
get stolen while she was inside of our restaurant having lunch.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
With her girlfriends.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So that was funny, and I think that experience really
typifies the kind of weird experiences that I had when
I was working in the service industry. For me, mostly
it was really entitled or rude behavior from people who
didn't seem to clock the staff at they were eating
as like human beings there to do a job. So
when I saw this TikTok video taking off, I really
(09:07):
hated the idea that the advice that she was giving
to women on how to look classy and refined and
feminine in public was basically boiling down to be a weird,
rude dick to the wait staff at restaurants for no
clear reason, staff who is probably likely being treated badly
in some capacity already. So I hated that she was
saying that this behavior is what makes a woman seem
(09:30):
feminine and classy, when real class is showing respect for
the people who are there to provide you with a service.
It is looking them in the eye, it is acknowledging
them when they're speaking, and saying thank you when they
do their jobs, and listen. I don't even really hate
the idea of somebody else ordering. I actually love when
somebody else at the table kind of takes charge and
(09:51):
orders for me or orders for the table. But you
don't have to do this in such a weird, rude
way where you are refusing to make eye contact with
the staff. Like that is not classy. That is just rude,
and we need to not rebrand being rude as this
marker of status or class for women. Stop it.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So Princess Lady does not want to have to deal
with the staff, and she's out at her restaurant and
not having to do so is part of her princess treatment.
And I guess, like, do whatever you want. Do you
like if you want the entire front of house of
a restaurant to be in agreement that you're being weird
and rude. I guess that's fine. I guess that's your prerogative.
But what I absolutely do resent is getting on TikTok
(10:52):
and preaching to women and girls that this is what
makes you feminine and classy, because it's not, And so
I resent that she's bringing other women into it. TikTok
is an app that we know is pretty popular with
younger folks. Young women and girls, I think especially right now,
are getting a lot of information about how they are
meant to be in the world, like should they be feminists,
(11:14):
should they be conservative? What will make them the most happy?
What should they be a subpiring toward, what kind of
value do they have? And we know that a lot
of young women and girls are using social media to
help them understand all of that. So I really resent
it when a grown woman gets on an app like
TikTok that is so popular with young women and girls
and basically tells them that being a classy woman means
(11:35):
being kind of rude to people in service industry positions
at restaurants and not taking up too much space and
being really quiet all the time and Honestly, it does
not surprise me that this video struck a nerve with
so many people on TikTok, because TikTok had a ton
of opinions about it. I want to talk through the
sort of different buckets of opinions that I saw about
this video on TikTok. So the first one that people
(11:58):
really were sharing is that this was some sort of
sexual kink behavior between her and her husband, that her
husband has some sort of a sexual interest in making
her as his wife, live this very quiet in public life.
That it's like a sexual gratification kink. That when they
go out to restaurants, she's not permitted to speak to
(12:20):
other people, and that he does all the talking. I
cannot confirm or deny this is true. A lot of
people in my comments were like, oh, that's absolutely what
this is. Trust me, and I'll just say this. I
you know, here at Tangoti we're very kink positive and
very sex positive. However, if that actually is the case,
non consensually involving other people in this is like not
(12:43):
cool to me. Like if you're a hostess or a
server at a restaurant and you're really just trying to
do your job. I don't love the idea of somebody
non consensually engaging you in their you know, power kink
play while you're just trying to do your job. Again,
cannot confirm or deny that is the case, but that
was one of the big buckets of responses that this
video did elicit. Another is that she was just doing
(13:07):
the old school trad wife thing that her husband treats
her in this way that she maybe feels is demeaning
or disrespectful, and that how she is responding to it
is coming on to TikTok and trying to honestly convince
us as the viewer, but maybe even convince herself a
little bit that this kind of treatment isn't demeaning. It's
(13:27):
that it's good treatment, that it's princess treatment. That's that's
how he is showing that she is prized and valued
as a feminine woman. Again, I can't confirm or deny
that that is the case, but I thought that was
a really interesting response. Another sort of bucket of response.
I want to be careful on how I talk about
and it honestly did not feel appropriate to include in
(13:47):
the episode that we did about skinny talk, but I
did just want to share that a lot of people
in the eating Disorder of recovery space reached out to
me and said that her behavior could have something to
do with body image. You know, the creator presents as
very thin in the video. She has a very prominent collarbone,
and viewers even wondered if she was sort of flexing
her neck and shoulders while she spoke in this video
(14:09):
to make it more prominent to do what they call
body checking, which is essentially using social media to demonstrate
that you're thin or fit, or demonstrate a specific thing
about your body. Honestly, it is not surprising to me
that so many people felt this way. So obviously I
can't speak to whether or not this is explicitly a
body image thing, but it does seem to be connected
(14:31):
to the idea of like being small and that smallness
having virtue for women, like smallness being something to aspire
to for women. Another kind of bucket of response that
I saw was that she's sort of trying to cause
play a certain kind of old money wealth that whether
she actually is personally wealthy or not, but she definitely is,
(14:52):
I think, trying to demonstrate like this is how you
live an aspirational wealthy lifestyle. And I think that is
sort of another part of this that makes me kind
of sad in all this that the idea of connecting
behavior in restaurants and in public spaces that I think
is like pretty demeaning and pretty sad. Connecting that was
something to aspire to. That's like, oh, this is how
(15:14):
wealthy women behave. This is how you can signal to
people that you are wealthy and moneyed. I really don't
love that. So I want to talk about my first
instincts when I saw this video. Initially, I thought, this
woman is a conflict entrepreneur. If you don't know what
a conflict entrepreneur is. When I first learned about that concept,
it blew my mind, and I started seeing them everywhere online.
(15:35):
I started being able to use that conflict entrepreneur lens
to clock the kind of content that people were making
on social media. So, a conflict entrepreneur is somebody who profits,
whether it's financially, politically, or socially, from creating, fueling, or
sustaining conflict. The term usually is meant to call out
people who intentionally inflame division to gain power, attention, or influence,
(15:58):
or are trying to monitor ties, outrage or polarization, especially
on social media platforms, or exploit existing tensions for personal
or institutional gain. Conflict entrepreneurs are everywhere on social media,
They're everywhere in our political landscape right now. We kind
of cannot resist it. And I actually went back and
looked at some of this creator's earlier content, and honestly,
(16:20):
I don't even want to really make this conversation too
much about this one specific creator, because it's really not
about her. It's about a culture that she's stepping into.
But it did seem to me that initially she wanted
to be some sort of an influencer, like a fashion influencer,
and it perhaps did not really take off, and then
she sort of switched up her content to talking about
(16:40):
all this weird princess stuff, princess treatment stuff, and I
think it hit precisely because it is so off putting
and weird. So I have to say this, I'm kind
of calling myself out a little bit here. If indeed
this creator is kind of doing a low level conflict
in entrepreneur thing, then I am a little bit guilty
here because I did exactly what you should not do
(17:03):
when you encounter a conflict entrepreneur in the wild, which
is that I made a response to her on TikTok,
which is absolutely the wrong thing to do, because people
who are conflict entrepreneurs are intentionally trying to get a
lot of attention and get a lot of engagement from
what they're saying. So she is a concept entrepreneur. I
kind of fucked up. And I don't know, this is
a little bit embarrassing to admit, but in the last
(17:25):
few months, I've really been trying to step up my
own social media game. I kind of went dark on
all platforms for a while, and I'm just sort of
coming out of that, and so I'm like, oh, yeah,
I really need to start, you know, being a little
bit more visible on these platforms. And so I've been
intentionally trying to make content about the podcast on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube,
(17:46):
all of that. And what's so funny to me, and
I think really says a lot about our social media
climate right now, is that I make these videos where
I put so much time and effort into them. I'm
scripting them, I'm researching them, I'm recording them multiple times.
I don't have to let somebody tell you that making
videos on social media is easy, because it's absolutely not.
It's like why I'm a podcaster, it's because making videos
is actually hard as fuck. And all of those videos
(18:09):
that I made with so much care and intention and
research and framing and dah da da da, all of
them flopped, Like it is so hard to get anything
to go to do numbers on social media until I,
like three cocktails deep, just screwing around in my kitchen,
made this response to Princess Talk Lady. I'll link the
(18:32):
video that I made on TikTok in the comments, but
I just turned on my front facing camera and had
a little fun boom. It gets almost ten million views.
And again, the reason why I wanted to make this
video was because I just thought the whole thing was ridiculous,
like as somebody who worked in restaurants, It just seemed rude,
and I thought the conversation was about like the gendered
(18:54):
aspect of it, which I absolutely think is an important conversation,
but I just wanted to bring things back down and say, like,
this behavior is just rude and weird. If you saw
somebody doing this in real life, you would think they
were a weirdo. You wouldn't think they were refined or moneyed,
or cultured, or a princess or pampered, or any of
the things that she's trying to say that this behavior
is indicative of. You would actually think they were like
(19:15):
a maladjusted, weird person. And I think it's so easy
to log on to social media and essentially lied to
people and sell them really a false bill of goods
and say, oh, if you behave this way in public,
people are going to think all this great stuff about you,
when in reality, you are setting people up to look
weird as shit. And I just really wanted to bring
the conversation back down to that. Also, what's funny is
(19:37):
that once I woke up and saw that video had
almost ten million views, I was like, oh my god,
what happens next? You know, I am like, like, what
should I do? If you're angling to go viral on
social media? Let me tell you nothing happens next. That's it.
There's nothing. Nobody sends you a check, nobody does anything.
Everything is the same.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
So I wanted to get into my personal take on
this video, why she made it, what it says about
our culture. So I do think that this is about
womanhood and sort of being a prized version of a woman,
also meaning being small and quiet, and I really just
don't like it. It kind of became a visualization for
me of how regressive some of our conversation around gender
(20:37):
has become, because if you go to that video, a
lot of women in her comments were agreeing with her.
A lot of women in her comments were saying, this
is how my husband treats me. You know, I love
being pampered. I love being a princess. I love when
he lets me turn off my brain and handles everything.
I don't even know anything about where we are right now.
I want to be clear. Women should be themselves. Like,
(20:57):
if you are a quiet person or an anxious person,
or an introverted person, that's cool. If you want to
go to restaurants and not have to talk that much,
you should do you should do you like, do what
makes you feel comfortable. Do it makes you feel right
and safe. But I simply do not like the idea
that why a woman should be doing this is to
mold themselves into what they think will make men think
(21:19):
that they're moneyed or pampered or prized or you know,
the right type of woman, Like we should be doing
things because they feel right to us, not because we're
trying to signal to other people about what kind of
person we actually are. And I also think it's really
related to this trend that I honestly don't love, and
I've seen it on social media a lot about babying
and babifying grown women. You know, she has another video
(21:42):
where she talks about how her husband ties her shoes,
Like she doesn't even really tie her own shoes. She
has her husband do it for her.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
You just let him have control, You let him take
care of you. So that's baseline. I don't really tie
my shoes. He does that for me. Like if there's
any sort of like weather, a predicament, like it's like
he's gonna, you know, cover me and make sure I
get in the door.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
First, he's gonna pull.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Around so that I can hop into the building, and
then he's gonna go park the car. Like any kind
of like minor inconvenience he's gonna take care of. Like
he does certain chories around the house that I don't
want to do, he does those for me. Basically, you
can get as silly and ridiculous as you want. He
brings me lemon tea every single night. That's a part
of my princess treatment. He like tucks me in and
make sure that my blankets on the bed and that
(22:26):
I have all my like little thingies if I need anything.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
In the house. You know, say I'm sitting and watching
a show.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
And I want I want a cookie or a treat
or an orange, whatever it is, Like, can you peel
me an orange?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
She's gonna peel me in orange.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I think it's fun to be the princess when I'm
with him and turn my brain up, Like in the airport,
I turn my brain up more traveling. I turn my
brain up like I don't know where we are, I
don't know what time we have to be there. You're
taking care of that. I'm just here to be pretty.
And I said, I have another video, and people like
take it so literally, but you kind of have to
think of it as like fun and silly to get
yourself into that princess treatment mode because we've been so
(22:59):
trained to be like, no, I'm a girl boss, I
can do everything for myself.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
I can do everything for myself. But really, like remove
that and let him take care of it.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
And I know that you're probably thinking that sounds very extreme,
but if you are on TikTok or on social media,
you've probably seen less extreme offshoots of this that I
think are kind of the same thing. Right. I saw
a girl wearing a shirt on TikTok that said I'm
too hot to work, which I think is the same
kind of dynamic, or this idea of like, oh, I
don't dream of labor, which initially I really liked that
(23:30):
slogan because it kind of seemed like an anti capitalistic,
anti work slogan, and I liked it. But now I
think it's sort of being turned into a way to
not just glorify the idea of women not working, but
glorify the idea of like women not aspiring to live
adult lives where they are in control of their lives,
women saying things like I'm literally just a girl. You're
(23:52):
not a girl, You're a grown adult woman. And I
think there's not a coincidence that we're seeing this rebrand
of women not being in control of their finances or
their lives being rebranded as cool and fun and sexy
at a time where our rights are literally being rolled back.
I know that anti feminists love to say that feminism
scammed white women into thinking that working and paying taxes
(24:14):
and paying bills was liberation. I say white women because
non white women like me were really never included in this,
Like we had to work outside of the home. This
is a totally different conversation for us that we were
not really involved in. And like when anti feminists say this,
I get it. I truly really do get it, because
I feel like as women, we literally there is genuinely
(24:35):
so much on us that I can understand how saying
wouldn't it feel like liberation to not have all of
this stress, to not have all of these bills and
jobs to worry about, but just stay home and not work.
And staying at home if you are a parent, is
work and is stress. Ask anybody who stays at home
to parent their kids. It's not like they're living the high,
not stressful life, So that's not even really true. I
(24:57):
truly truly do get that. I also think that we
are not talking to our mothers, to our grandmothers, to
our aunties about what life truly looked like and felt
like when that was the norm for women, Like women
could only have our own bank accounts without a man
in nineteen seventy four, after the Equal Credit Opportunity Act
kicked in, right, And so imagine what that would have
(25:18):
been like to be so out of control of your
own finances that you would have to have your husband
be on your own bank account to have access to money.
And so I don't think this is something that we
should be normalizing or glorifying. I don't think we should
be normalizing or glorifying grown adult women bragging about how
they are not in control of their own lives. And
(25:38):
I say all this to say that her video, on
its face, is about how it's cool to and feminine
to like not tie your own shoes and not make
eye contact and order at a restaurant, and how it's
good for women to be quiet. I think it normalizes
women not being able to show up on their own
in public and civic life, which we know is connected
(25:59):
to women not being able to show up in democratic
or political life as well. I know it's very trite
to compare what we're seeing happening today with Handmaid's Tale,
especially since everything that happened in Handmaid's Tale, while it
may seem like a dystopian fiction for white women. A
lot of what happens to the women in Handmaid's Tale
actually happened to enslaved black women's. It's not like dystopian
(26:19):
faraway fiction for us. But if you've seen the Hulu
series The Handmaid's Tale, one of the first clues that
something is up is how women on their own are
treated in public, Like a man screams at these two
women who are jogging in athletic clothing and makes them
leave a cafe. Does a scene early on where all
Rad goes to the bank and she finds out that
her bank account has been closed and her assets has
(26:40):
been taken because she's on that account by herself and
not with her husband. Before everything goes straight to hell
in that universe, it first just becomes normal for women
not to be able to do any of the errands
or business in public life that they need to do
on their own without a man. So I think glamorizing
all of this and trying to all of this as
(27:01):
being good for women and a way to live that
is pampered and safe and protected, is very dangerous. We
are not children. We can work jobs. If you've got
to work jobs, We can certainly tie our own shoes,
we can talk to the staff, we can sort out
the bill. All of the things that adults have to
navigate to be part of society, we can do as women.
(27:22):
And it is not cute to me to act like
it's desirable to be treated otherwise. And so even if
this is a skit, or this is a character she's playing,
or she's trolling, or just a low level conflict entrepreneur,
I just don't think it's cool to get on an
app where there are so many young women and girls
who are very impressionable and facing a lot of different
conflicting information about how who they should be right now
(27:44):
and say that all of this is indicative of a
woman who has a good life. So, after this video
went super viral, the creator, Courtney Joelle, took her account
down for a little while. Everybody was like, oh, where'd
she go? Where she go? Then she popped back up
with a couple of thousand new followers. When I last check,
she was at like sitting at like thirty seven k
new followers, and she was pretty excited about all of this.
(28:06):
She continued to sort of lean into this. She made
a video about how to maintain what she calls princess feet.
I actually kind of weirdly like love that she is, like, Yeah,
I'm just gonna make the best of this. I'm gonna
lean into this. This is the kind of content I
make now. And I think it is a good reminder
that when one person becomes the internet's main character, as
they say, for something that is maybe a little bit suspect,
(28:29):
when we give them a ton of attention. Yes I
am fully including myself in this, it just allows them
to grow and like solidifies them as somebody with a
voice that people should be listening to. And so what
makes me sort of sad about this whole thing is
that she's really sort of pivoting into being this kind
of boring, bland lifestyle influencer. Like I watched the video
(28:49):
that she made after the Princess Treatment video that was
just her doing her Trader Joe's hall, and it was like,
literally the most boring thing, Like, Yeah, you go to
Trader Joe's just like everybody else. You be, you're shopping
for the week, just like everybody else. You buy kale
at Trader Joke, just like everybody else. Like it just
seemed very very boring. It was the kind of lifestyle
influencer content that is a dim ad dozen on social media.
But I want to be clear, there is nothing wrong
(29:11):
with wanting to be an influencer, But I don't know.
Women are so vast and interesting and complicated and challenging
that I was that little disappointed. I have to say
when I checked back in with her content and it
was just the same boring influencer stick that is all
over social media. There doesn't seem to be any joy
or passion or authenticity to it. It's just a sort
of muted, boring here's my trader Joe's hall. And it
(29:36):
reminded me of something else that she said in her
initial Princess Treatment restaurant video, which is that one of
the things that she avoids in public space to avoid
taking up too much space is laughing too loudly when
she goes out to eat at restaurants, Like she says,
I don't really laugh, I don't talk too loud. I
don't want to take up too much space, so I
(29:57):
don't laugh very loudly.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
The most elegant, lovely women are often soft spoken and
don't overspeak. They're not loud. Maybe let's also talk about that,
You're not going to be laughing loudly, speaking loudly, demanding
the attention of the room. When you're at a restaurant,
you're with your husband, your boyfriend, whoever fiance, you're speaking
to him, eye contact with him, the attention is kind.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Of on him.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
You're not laughing so loudly that everyone in the room
is looking at you, or speaking so loudly that everyone
in the room is looking towards you.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
And this is honestly the thing that just made me
very sad, because if she is indeed cashing in on
her viral moment to become a lifestyle influencer, which like
good for her, No shade I would do the same thing.
Being an influencer is about making your life look aspirational,
making you seem like someone that other people would want
to be themselves. Who would want to have a life
(30:49):
where they're not able to laugh loudly? Who would a
surpier to that kind of passionless, joyless existence, Because a
good deep, loud belly laugh over and plates at a
restaurant with all of your friends and family at the
table is truly truly one of life's pure joys, All
of my best memories of being out with my family
(31:10):
sound like that, Just like my mom sucking at a
bunch of air and giving us a big, deep, guttural
belly laugh. Who would deny themselves this in service of
wanting to seem classy or refined or feminine to others.
When I think about the kind of life that I
aspire to have, it is a full life. It is
a big life. It is a life where I take
(31:30):
up a lot of space. And you know what, if
there's one thing this life has in it, it is big, deep,
loud belly laughs in abundance. Anyway, I just wanted to
come on here and yap about this for a little bit.
Let me know what you think. If you're listening on Spotify,
you can tell me in the comments. I love reading
the Spotify comments. It's the best thing Spotify ever did
is turning on those episode comments because I love to
(31:51):
read them. Yeah, tell me what you think. Did you
see this video? Can check out my kind of cringe
embarrassing response to her in the show notes. And if
you all like this vibe of episode where I'm just
sort of getting on here and giving you a little
unstructured bridget takes and opinions about digital culture. Let me know,
because I have a lot of takes that I currently
(32:14):
shout at my friends and family, and if you'd rather
me shout them at you into this microphone, I'll be
happy to do that. If you're looking for ways to
support the show, check out our March store at tenggody
dot com slash store. Got a story about an interesting
thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You
can reach us at Hello at tenggody dot com. You
(32:35):
can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed
Creative edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.
Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada
is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If
you want to help us grow, rate and review us
(32:56):
on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out
the radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Mm hmm
There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridgett and there are
no girls on the Internet. So right off the bat,
this is not going to be a typical there are
no Girls on the Internet episode. I'm trying out something
a little bit new because honestly, I just wanted to
(00:27):
come on here and yap about something that I inadvertently
found myself mixed up in. Recently, we did an episode
this week about skinny Talk, this corner of TikTok that
really pushes and glorifies disordered eating and obsession with body
image and weight. And in this episode we talked about
how this is not really a new ideology, but the
(00:47):
way that it is taking off online for women pushes
this idea that in addition to being thin, women should
be making themselves as small as possible and as quiet
as possible. And the entire thing really seems like telling
women the best way to be a woman is to
be one that does not take up too much space
and does not speak too much. And while I was
(01:07):
editing this episode and putting it together, this TikTok creator
named Courtney Joel went mega viral for her advice about
how women to do exactly that, only she called her
version getting princess treatment from her husband. And the funny
thing is, is that to me, what we described in
that episode and what this TikTok creator Courtney Joel described
(01:29):
how she's treated by her husband sounded exactly identical. They
sounded like the same thing to me. So if you've
not listened to that episode yet, here is what journalist
Cat ten Barge had to say about how the obsession
with thinness is also related to this dynamic that tells women,
in addition to being thin, women should also be very
quiet to be prioritized.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Because the ultimate goal of these sort of conservative, very
misogynistic spaces is that they want women to be small.
They want women to take up less space, they want
them to be frail, unable to help themselves, and they
want them to be very preoccupied with their own appearance
because it becomes an obsession that distracts from you being
able to participate in democracy to the fullest extent. It's
(02:10):
a distraction that prevents women from being able to occupy
the same positions that men do. So this sort of
pro eating disorder content is part of this larger picture
of women's oppression, and it's just no coincidence that like
the influencers in the all right spaces and the influencers
in the skinny spaces are using the exact same types
of strategies.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
It got me thinking about what Kat describes as women
being kind of unable to help themselves and unable to
do things for themselves, and honestly, this sounded to me
as exactly what that TikTok creator por Ajoell described. Part
of her princess treatment is not having to do things
for herself and rather having her husband do things for her.
Here's how she describes the princess treatment that she gets
(02:53):
from her husband when she's out at a restaurant. And
we did edit this a bit for clarity.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Let's talk about princess treatment.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
If you're out a rent on how you interact with
the white staff and the hostess. If I am at
a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to
the hostess, I do not open many doors, and I
do not order my own food.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Having to talk to the hostess. Never the princess is
kept away from others.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
At all time.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You know, she describes this complicated rigmarole that her and
her husband will do to avoid her having to manage
anything directly with a staff member at a restaurant, like
her husband will drive her up to the restaurant, get
out of the car, go inside, talk to the staff,
come out, open the door, walk her into the restaurant,
and then he goes to park the car while she
(03:37):
waits inside.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
It comes back, al opens my car door, walks me
into the restaurant, opens the door, and I stand and wait.
I did not make eye contact with the hostess. I
did not talk to her. I waited until my husband
came back. He comes back, does the exchange with her,
and then we went and sat down. It's not in
any sense like you're better than the hostess. You're just
letting your husband lead and be bascular. He made the reservation,
(04:02):
he's taking you out, let him do the logistics. You're
just being a princess. It's not because you're being hoity toity.
You're just letting your husband lead and letting him take.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
Care of it.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
She says that while her husband is parking in the car,
she doesn't really make eye contact or speak with the staff.
While she's waiting in the restaurant because she's just waiting
for her husband to come back and do all the
talking and managing everything. You know, the princess does not
conduct business. The princess does not make decisions. The princess's
job is to be silent and pretty and basically just
do what she's told.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
An over need to like talk and feel space, like
you don't need to talk unless you are spoken to.
And then if you are spoken to and I asked,
you could say, oh, I'm just waiting for my husband,
and then he'll be able to give the reservation.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Or you say, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
My husband way back, and then you can ask him
if you can say it in a very soft and
feminine way. I know this is going to be ripped apart.
People will just take things seriously such the wrong way.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
But that's why I would handle it.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And then let's just go further into So if you're
sitting down your org in New York, for the most part,
that the waiter would come up.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
They would ask, you know whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
My husband would start to speak and then the waiter
would address them, and he would kind of the waiter
would get the hint, and only then interact with my
husband here, and so like they don't quite get it.
I think they think that I'm like being you know, oppressed,
or I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
They will they'll be like, what can I get you
to eat? And I will just look at my husband.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
If they address me first, I will just look at
my husband and let my husband order. He'll say, oh,
she's da da da da. And then if they have
a follow up question like oh, do you want to
like this? Sometimes I will answer let's say I think
maybe my husband doesn't know what I would want.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I will then address the waiter.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
But it's almost like they keep trying to like get
me to speak, and I'm like, no, I want him
to order for me. I like when he orders for me.
It's not that I'm not capable of ordering for myself.
It's just fun. It's just a fun princess treatment thing.
It makes me feel special. It makes me just feel
like over the top taking care of So if the
waiter addresses you first, I will simply just look at
my husband and then my husband will order again. You
(06:04):
don't need to overspeak over exert yourself.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
You can be feminine and soft and quiet.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Tell me, are these not the same things. So people
on TikTok basically started calling this creator princess treatment lady
because of how she makes these videos about how you know,
she gets this princess treatment when she goes out. She
doesn't speak when she goes to restaurants, she doesn't make
eye contact with the staff or the hostess, does not
verbally order because she waits for her husband to do that.
(06:33):
She has some other videos, which we'll get to in
a minute, but this one video about how she behaves
when she goes out to restaurants with her husband really
hit a nerve with me. But not for the reason
that you might be thinking, Yes, this video plays into
all the kinds of gendered tropes that we talk about
on their no Girls on the Internet, which will absolutely
(06:53):
get into in a moment. But the reason why I
was like essentially deeply triggered from this video is something
different because, probably, like a lot of y'all listening, my
career trajectory has involved a lot of working in the
service industry. You know, I was a hostess at a restaurant.
I worked as a cashier for multiple different retail establishments
(07:13):
in my life, jobs where you have to interact with
the public. Now, these jobs are not inherently bad on
their own. Some of them were like, actually quite good
for me. But the thing that can make these jobs
bad is that when you have to interact with people
who treat you badly. So it's not even like the
job itself is that bad. It's the customer sometimes who
(07:33):
make that job bad. And this is not totally unconnected
to some of the gender stuff that I do want
to talk about, at least in my opinion, because there
absolutely is something about being a young woman or a
young girl who is basically a sitting duck behind a
cash register or at a hostess booth, just sort of
waiting for any kind of interaction that anybody wants to
have with her. Really, like that is definitely a gendered situation. However,
(07:58):
my experiences personally were mostly fine, Like I don't really
have any over the top gross or horrible stories of
customers being horrible to me, luckily, but I have had
some weird ones, Like one time I was working as
a hostess for a fancy restaurant sort of in an
upscale shopping plaza, and a very fancy lady who had
(08:19):
been out shopping all day at the nearby stores came
into the restaurant, and she really expected me to come
outside from behind the hostess booth, go out to the
parking lot to her car, carry all of her shopping
bags from her car to the restaurant, and hold them
at the hostess stand, because she was very worried that
her car was going to get broken into and all
(08:39):
the bags that she had just bought were going to
get stolen while she was inside of our restaurant having lunch.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
With her girlfriends.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So that was funny, and I think that experience really
typifies the kind of weird experiences that I had when
I was working in the service industry. For me, mostly
it was really entitled or rude behavior from people who
didn't seem to clock the staff at they were eating
as like human beings there to do a job. So
when I saw this TikTok video taking off, I really
(09:07):
hated the idea that the advice that she was giving
to women on how to look classy and refined and
feminine in public was basically boiling down to be a weird,
rude dick to the wait staff at restaurants for no
clear reason, staff who is probably likely being treated badly
in some capacity already. So I hated that she was
saying that this behavior is what makes a woman seem
(09:30):
feminine and classy, when real class is showing respect for
the people who are there to provide you with a service.
It is looking them in the eye, it is acknowledging
them when they're speaking, and saying thank you when they
do their jobs, and listen. I don't even really hate
the idea of somebody else ordering. I actually love when
somebody else at the table kind of takes charge and
(09:51):
orders for me or orders for the table. But you
don't have to do this in such a weird, rude
way where you are refusing to make eye contact with
the staff. Like that is not classy. That is just rude,
and we need to not rebrand being rude as this
marker of status or class for women. Stop it.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So Princess Lady does not want to have to deal
with the staff, and she's out at her restaurant and
not having to do so is part of her princess treatment.
And I guess, like, do whatever you want. Do you
like if you want the entire front of house of
a restaurant to be in agreement that you're being weird
and rude. I guess that's fine. I guess that's your prerogative.
But what I absolutely do resent is getting on TikTok
(10:52):
and preaching to women and girls that this is what
makes you feminine and classy, because it's not, And so
I resent that she's bringing other women into it. TikTok
is an app that we know is pretty popular with
younger folks. Young women and girls, I think especially right now,
are getting a lot of information about how they are
meant to be in the world, like should they be feminists,
(11:14):
should they be conservative? What will make them the most happy?
What should they be a subpiring toward, what kind of
value do they have? And we know that a lot
of young women and girls are using social media to
help them understand all of that. So I really resent
it when a grown woman gets on an app like
TikTok that is so popular with young women and girls
and basically tells them that being a classy woman means
(11:35):
being kind of rude to people in service industry positions
at restaurants and not taking up too much space and
being really quiet all the time and Honestly, it does
not surprise me that this video struck a nerve with
so many people on TikTok, because TikTok had a ton
of opinions about it. I want to talk through the
sort of different buckets of opinions that I saw about
this video on TikTok. So the first one that people
(11:58):
really were sharing is that this was some sort of
sexual kink behavior between her and her husband, that her
husband has some sort of a sexual interest in making
her as his wife, live this very quiet in public life.
That it's like a sexual gratification kink. That when they
go out to restaurants, she's not permitted to speak to
(12:20):
other people, and that he does all the talking. I
cannot confirm or deny this is true. A lot of
people in my comments were like, oh, that's absolutely what
this is. Trust me, and I'll just say this. I
you know, here at Tangoti we're very kink positive and
very sex positive. However, if that actually is the case,
non consensually involving other people in this is like not
(12:43):
cool to me. Like if you're a hostess or a
server at a restaurant and you're really just trying to
do your job. I don't love the idea of somebody
non consensually engaging you in their you know, power kink
play while you're just trying to do your job. Again,
cannot confirm or deny that is the case, but that
was one of the big buckets of responses that this
video did elicit. Another is that she was just doing
(13:07):
the old school trad wife thing that her husband treats
her in this way that she maybe feels is demeaning
or disrespectful, and that how she is responding to it
is coming on to TikTok and trying to honestly convince
us as the viewer, but maybe even convince herself a
little bit that this kind of treatment isn't demeaning. It's
(13:27):
that it's good treatment, that it's princess treatment. That's that's
how he is showing that she is prized and valued
as a feminine woman. Again, I can't confirm or deny
that that is the case, but I thought that was
a really interesting response. Another sort of bucket of response.
I want to be careful on how I talk about
and it honestly did not feel appropriate to include in
(13:47):
the episode that we did about skinny talk, but I
did just want to share that a lot of people
in the eating Disorder of recovery space reached out to
me and said that her behavior could have something to
do with body image. You know, the creator presents as
very thin in the video. She has a very prominent collarbone,
and viewers even wondered if she was sort of flexing
her neck and shoulders while she spoke in this video
(14:09):
to make it more prominent to do what they call
body checking, which is essentially using social media to demonstrate
that you're thin or fit, or demonstrate a specific thing
about your body. Honestly, it is not surprising to me
that so many people felt this way. So obviously I
can't speak to whether or not this is explicitly a
body image thing, but it does seem to be connected
(14:31):
to the idea of like being small and that smallness
having virtue for women, like smallness being something to aspire
to for women. Another kind of bucket of response that
I saw was that she's sort of trying to cause
play a certain kind of old money wealth that whether
she actually is personally wealthy or not, but she definitely is,
(14:52):
I think, trying to demonstrate like this is how you
live an aspirational wealthy lifestyle. And I think that is
sort of another part of this that makes me kind
of sad in all this that the idea of connecting
behavior in restaurants and in public spaces that I think
is like pretty demeaning and pretty sad. Connecting that was
something to aspire to. That's like, oh, this is how
(15:14):
wealthy women behave. This is how you can signal to
people that you are wealthy and moneyed. I really don't
love that. So I want to talk about my first
instincts when I saw this video. Initially, I thought, this
woman is a conflict entrepreneur. If you don't know what
a conflict entrepreneur is. When I first learned about that concept,
it blew my mind, and I started seeing them everywhere online.
(15:35):
I started being able to use that conflict entrepreneur lens
to clock the kind of content that people were making
on social media. So, a conflict entrepreneur is somebody who profits,
whether it's financially, politically, or socially, from creating, fueling, or
sustaining conflict. The term usually is meant to call out
people who intentionally inflame division to gain power, attention, or influence,
(15:58):
or are trying to monitor ties, outrage or polarization, especially
on social media platforms, or exploit existing tensions for personal
or institutional gain. Conflict entrepreneurs are everywhere on social media,
They're everywhere in our political landscape right now. We kind
of cannot resist it. And I actually went back and
looked at some of this creator's earlier content, and honestly,
(16:20):
I don't even want to really make this conversation too
much about this one specific creator, because it's really not
about her. It's about a culture that she's stepping into.
But it did seem to me that initially she wanted
to be some sort of an influencer, like a fashion influencer,
and it perhaps did not really take off, and then
she sort of switched up her content to talking about
(16:40):
all this weird princess stuff, princess treatment stuff, and I
think it hit precisely because it is so off putting
and weird. So I have to say this, I'm kind
of calling myself out a little bit here. If indeed
this creator is kind of doing a low level conflict
in entrepreneur thing, then I am a little bit guilty
here because I did exactly what you should not do
(17:03):
when you encounter a conflict entrepreneur in the wild, which
is that I made a response to her on TikTok,
which is absolutely the wrong thing to do, because people
who are conflict entrepreneurs are intentionally trying to get a
lot of attention and get a lot of engagement from
what they're saying. So she is a concept entrepreneur. I
kind of fucked up. And I don't know, this is
a little bit embarrassing to admit, but in the last
(17:25):
few months, I've really been trying to step up my
own social media game. I kind of went dark on
all platforms for a while, and I'm just sort of
coming out of that, and so I'm like, oh, yeah,
I really need to start, you know, being a little
bit more visible on these platforms. And so I've been
intentionally trying to make content about the podcast on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube,
(17:46):
all of that. And what's so funny to me, and
I think really says a lot about our social media
climate right now, is that I make these videos where
I put so much time and effort into them. I'm
scripting them, I'm researching them, I'm recording them multiple times.
I don't have to let somebody tell you that making
videos on social media is easy, because it's absolutely not.
It's like why I'm a podcaster, it's because making videos
is actually hard as fuck. And all of those videos
(18:09):
that I made with so much care and intention and
research and framing and dah da da da, all of
them flopped, Like it is so hard to get anything
to go to do numbers on social media until I,
like three cocktails deep, just screwing around in my kitchen,
made this response to Princess Talk Lady. I'll link the
(18:32):
video that I made on TikTok in the comments, but
I just turned on my front facing camera and had
a little fun boom. It gets almost ten million views.
And again, the reason why I wanted to make this
video was because I just thought the whole thing was ridiculous,
like as somebody who worked in restaurants, It just seemed rude,
and I thought the conversation was about like the gendered
(18:54):
aspect of it, which I absolutely think is an important conversation,
but I just wanted to bring things back down and say, like,
this behavior is just rude and weird. If you saw
somebody doing this in real life, you would think they
were a weirdo. You wouldn't think they were refined or moneyed,
or cultured, or a princess or pampered, or any of
the things that she's trying to say that this behavior
is indicative of. You would actually think they were like
(19:15):
a maladjusted, weird person. And I think it's so easy
to log on to social media and essentially lied to
people and sell them really a false bill of goods
and say, oh, if you behave this way in public,
people are going to think all this great stuff about you,
when in reality, you are setting people up to look
weird as shit. And I just really wanted to bring
the conversation back down to that. Also, what's funny is
(19:37):
that once I woke up and saw that video had
almost ten million views, I was like, oh my god,
what happens next? You know, I am like, like, what
should I do? If you're angling to go viral on
social media? Let me tell you nothing happens next. That's it.
There's nothing. Nobody sends you a check, nobody does anything.
Everything is the same.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
So I wanted to get into my personal take on
this video, why she made it, what it says about
our culture. So I do think that this is about
womanhood and sort of being a prized version of a woman,
also meaning being small and quiet, and I really just
don't like it. It kind of became a visualization for
me of how regressive some of our conversation around gender
(20:37):
has become, because if you go to that video, a
lot of women in her comments were agreeing with her.
A lot of women in her comments were saying, this
is how my husband treats me. You know, I love
being pampered. I love being a princess. I love when
he lets me turn off my brain and handles everything.
I don't even know anything about where we are right now.
I want to be clear. Women should be themselves. Like,
(20:57):
if you are a quiet person or an anxious person,
or an introverted person, that's cool. If you want to
go to restaurants and not have to talk that much,
you should do you should do you like, do what
makes you feel comfortable. Do it makes you feel right
and safe. But I simply do not like the idea
that why a woman should be doing this is to
mold themselves into what they think will make men think
(21:19):
that they're moneyed or pampered or prized or you know,
the right type of woman, Like we should be doing
things because they feel right to us, not because we're
trying to signal to other people about what kind of
person we actually are. And I also think it's really
related to this trend that I honestly don't love, and
I've seen it on social media a lot about babying
and babifying grown women. You know, she has another video
(21:42):
where she talks about how her husband ties her shoes,
Like she doesn't even really tie her own shoes. She
has her husband do it for her.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
You just let him have control, You let him take
care of you. So that's baseline. I don't really tie
my shoes. He does that for me. Like if there's
any sort of like weather, a predicament, like it's like
he's gonna, you know, cover me and make sure I
get in the door.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
First, he's gonna pull.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Around so that I can hop into the building, and
then he's gonna go park the car. Like any kind
of like minor inconvenience he's gonna take care of. Like
he does certain chories around the house that I don't
want to do, he does those for me. Basically, you
can get as silly and ridiculous as you want. He
brings me lemon tea every single night. That's a part
of my princess treatment. He like tucks me in and
make sure that my blankets on the bed and that
(22:26):
I have all my like little thingies if I need anything.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
In the house. You know, say I'm sitting and watching
a show.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
And I want I want a cookie or a treat
or an orange, whatever it is, Like, can you peel
me an orange?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
She's gonna peel me in orange.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I think it's fun to be the princess when I'm
with him and turn my brain up, Like in the airport,
I turn my brain up more traveling. I turn my
brain up like I don't know where we are, I
don't know what time we have to be there. You're
taking care of that. I'm just here to be pretty.
And I said, I have another video, and people like
take it so literally, but you kind of have to
think of it as like fun and silly to get
yourself into that princess treatment mode because we've been so
(22:59):
trained to be like, no, I'm a girl boss, I
can do everything for myself.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
I can do everything for myself. But really, like remove
that and let him take care of it.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
And I know that you're probably thinking that sounds very extreme,
but if you are on TikTok or on social media,
you've probably seen less extreme offshoots of this that I
think are kind of the same thing. Right. I saw
a girl wearing a shirt on TikTok that said I'm
too hot to work, which I think is the same
kind of dynamic, or this idea of like, oh, I
don't dream of labor, which initially I really liked that
(23:30):
slogan because it kind of seemed like an anti capitalistic,
anti work slogan, and I liked it. But now I
think it's sort of being turned into a way to
not just glorify the idea of women not working, but
glorify the idea of like women not aspiring to live
adult lives where they are in control of their lives,
women saying things like I'm literally just a girl. You're
(23:52):
not a girl, You're a grown adult woman. And I
think there's not a coincidence that we're seeing this rebrand
of women not being in control of their finances or
their lives being rebranded as cool and fun and sexy
at a time where our rights are literally being rolled back.
I know that anti feminists love to say that feminism
scammed white women into thinking that working and paying taxes
(24:14):
and paying bills was liberation. I say white women because
non white women like me were really never included in this,
Like we had to work outside of the home. This
is a totally different conversation for us that we were
not really involved in. And like when anti feminists say this,
I get it. I truly really do get it, because
I feel like as women, we literally there is genuinely
(24:35):
so much on us that I can understand how saying
wouldn't it feel like liberation to not have all of
this stress, to not have all of these bills and
jobs to worry about, but just stay home and not work.
And staying at home if you are a parent, is
work and is stress. Ask anybody who stays at home
to parent their kids. It's not like they're living the high,
not stressful life, So that's not even really true. I
(24:57):
truly truly do get that. I also think that we
are not talking to our mothers, to our grandmothers, to
our aunties about what life truly looked like and felt
like when that was the norm for women, Like women
could only have our own bank accounts without a man
in nineteen seventy four, after the Equal Credit Opportunity Act
kicked in, right, And so imagine what that would have
(25:18):
been like to be so out of control of your
own finances that you would have to have your husband
be on your own bank account to have access to money.
And so I don't think this is something that we
should be normalizing or glorifying. I don't think we should
be normalizing or glorifying grown adult women bragging about how
they are not in control of their own lives. And
(25:38):
I say all this to say that her video, on
its face, is about how it's cool to and feminine
to like not tie your own shoes and not make
eye contact and order at a restaurant, and how it's
good for women to be quiet. I think it normalizes
women not being able to show up on their own
in public and civic life, which we know is connected
(25:59):
to women not being able to show up in democratic
or political life as well. I know it's very trite
to compare what we're seeing happening today with Handmaid's Tale,
especially since everything that happened in Handmaid's Tale, while it
may seem like a dystopian fiction for white women. A
lot of what happens to the women in Handmaid's Tale
actually happened to enslaved black women's. It's not like dystopian
(26:19):
faraway fiction for us. But if you've seen the Hulu
series The Handmaid's Tale, one of the first clues that
something is up is how women on their own are
treated in public, Like a man screams at these two
women who are jogging in athletic clothing and makes them
leave a cafe. Does a scene early on where all
Rad goes to the bank and she finds out that
her bank account has been closed and her assets has
(26:40):
been taken because she's on that account by herself and
not with her husband. Before everything goes straight to hell
in that universe, it first just becomes normal for women
not to be able to do any of the errands
or business in public life that they need to do
on their own without a man. So I think glamorizing
all of this and trying to all of this as
(27:01):
being good for women and a way to live that
is pampered and safe and protected, is very dangerous. We
are not children. We can work jobs. If you've got
to work jobs, We can certainly tie our own shoes,
we can talk to the staff, we can sort out
the bill. All of the things that adults have to
navigate to be part of society, we can do as women.
(27:22):
And it is not cute to me to act like
it's desirable to be treated otherwise. And so even if
this is a skit, or this is a character she's playing,
or she's trolling, or just a low level conflict entrepreneur,
I just don't think it's cool to get on an
app where there are so many young women and girls
who are very impressionable and facing a lot of different
conflicting information about how who they should be right now
(27:44):
and say that all of this is indicative of a
woman who has a good life. So, after this video
went super viral, the creator, Courtney Joelle, took her account
down for a little while. Everybody was like, oh, where'd
she go? Where she go? Then she popped back up
with a couple of thousand new followers. When I last check,
she was at like sitting at like thirty seven k
new followers, and she was pretty excited about all of this.
(28:06):
She continued to sort of lean into this. She made
a video about how to maintain what she calls princess feet.
I actually kind of weirdly like love that she is, like, Yeah,
I'm just gonna make the best of this. I'm gonna
lean into this. This is the kind of content I
make now. And I think it is a good reminder
that when one person becomes the internet's main character, as
they say, for something that is maybe a little bit suspect,
(28:29):
when we give them a ton of attention. Yes I
am fully including myself in this, it just allows them
to grow and like solidifies them as somebody with a
voice that people should be listening to. And so what
makes me sort of sad about this whole thing is
that she's really sort of pivoting into being this kind
of boring, bland lifestyle influencer. Like I watched the video
(28:49):
that she made after the Princess Treatment video that was
just her doing her Trader Joe's hall, and it was like,
literally the most boring thing, Like, Yeah, you go to
Trader Joe's just like everybody else. You be, you're shopping
for the week, just like everybody else. You buy kale
at Trader Joke, just like everybody else. Like it just
seemed very very boring. It was the kind of lifestyle
influencer content that is a dim ad dozen on social media.
But I want to be clear, there is nothing wrong
(29:11):
with wanting to be an influencer, But I don't know.
Women are so vast and interesting and complicated and challenging
that I was that little disappointed. I have to say
when I checked back in with her content and it
was just the same boring influencer stick that is all
over social media. There doesn't seem to be any joy
or passion or authenticity to it. It's just a sort
of muted, boring here's my trader Joe's hall. And it
(29:36):
reminded me of something else that she said in her
initial Princess Treatment restaurant video, which is that one of
the things that she avoids in public space to avoid
taking up too much space is laughing too loudly when
she goes out to eat at restaurants, Like she says,
I don't really laugh, I don't talk too loud. I
don't want to take up too much space, so I
(29:57):
don't laugh very loudly.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
The most elegant, lovely women are often soft spoken and
don't overspeak. They're not loud. Maybe let's also talk about that,
You're not going to be laughing loudly, speaking loudly, demanding
the attention of the room. When you're at a restaurant,
you're with your husband, your boyfriend, whoever fiance, you're speaking
to him, eye contact with him, the attention is kind.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Of on him.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
You're not laughing so loudly that everyone in the room
is looking at you, or speaking so loudly that everyone
in the room is looking towards you.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
And this is honestly the thing that just made me
very sad, because if she is indeed cashing in on
her viral moment to become a lifestyle influencer, which like
good for her, No shade I would do the same thing.
Being an influencer is about making your life look aspirational,
making you seem like someone that other people would want
to be themselves. Who would want to have a life
(30:49):
where they're not able to laugh loudly? Who would a
surpier to that kind of passionless, joyless existence, Because a
good deep, loud belly laugh over and plates at a
restaurant with all of your friends and family at the
table is truly truly one of life's pure joys, All
of my best memories of being out with my family
(31:10):
sound like that, Just like my mom sucking at a
bunch of air and giving us a big, deep, guttural
belly laugh. Who would deny themselves this in service of
wanting to seem classy or refined or feminine to others.
When I think about the kind of life that I
aspire to have, it is a full life. It is
a big life. It is a life where I take
(31:30):
up a lot of space. And you know what, if
there's one thing this life has in it, it is big, deep,
loud belly laughs in abundance. Anyway, I just wanted to
come on here and yap about this for a little bit.
Let me know what you think. If you're listening on Spotify,
you can tell me in the comments. I love reading
the Spotify comments. It's the best thing Spotify ever did
is turning on those episode comments because I love to
(31:51):
read them. Yeah, tell me what you think. Did you
see this video? Can check out my kind of cringe
embarrassing response to her in the show notes. And if
you all like this vibe of episode where I'm just
sort of getting on here and giving you a little
unstructured bridget takes and opinions about digital culture. Let me know,
because I have a lot of takes that I currently
(32:14):
shout at my friends and family, and if you'd rather
me shout them at you into this microphone, I'll be
happy to do that. If you're looking for ways to
support the show, check out our March store at tenggody
dot com slash store. Got a story about an interesting
thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You
can reach us at Hello at tenggody dot com. You
(32:35):
can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed
Creative edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.
Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada
is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If
you want to help us grow, rate and review us
(32:56):
on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out
the radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Mm hmm
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