Are you "just a girl" ... or are you a baby woman?

(upbeat music) - Have you ever had a moment where you're like, okay, I'm being a baby woman and I need to grow up a little bit right now. - Oh, 110%, like those memes that are like, oh yeah, me at 28, versus my parents at 28, having a mortgage in three kids, meanwhile, it's just like, you know, doom scrolling, you know, on the phone and so, yeah, I am guilty of it sometimes, but I'm trying out to make it a lifestyle. - Oh, I like that, trying to make a lifestyle. Okay, what do you say to it? - I also can be very guilty of a baby womanhood to reference another meme. I often fear the one that's like, oh my god, you people can't do anything. (laughing) - I get like that, like clockwork every text season. Cue the break down, like, I'm just like, help me, I can't do it. But baby woman, it's a term coined in a piece for the cut by one of our wonderful guests here, freelance writer Shannon Keating. To describe a particular kind of affect that some women have, at least some of the time, Shannon, in your own words, what is a baby woman? Like, how would you describe her? - I think of the baby woman as kind of like, the evil twin of the girl boss. - It's her wario. - Yes, it is her warrior. - It's her warrior. And I think baby womanhood is the complete opposite of the girl boss in that it's saying, I do not want any of these responsibilities, just taking away someone else to do it. - It's not just like a girlishness, but some abdication of adult responsibility. - Yes. - Whenever Shannon's piece about it in the cut, I was like, yes, I have totally seen women who are like that in my life and also out in the world. And I wanted to get deeper into it because truly, this way of being really buckles my mind, but I also wanted to know like, what plush is women into baby womanhood? And what exactly do baby women get out of being baby? To find out, I am joined of course by Shannon Keating. Welcome back, Shannon. - Thank you so much for having me, Brittany. I am so happy to be back. - Happy to have you. And I am also joined by Ashley Reese, Culture Writer and Critic, and author of the Substec Newsletter, "Bad Brain." Welcome back to you too, Ashley. - Hi. Thanks for having me. (clattering) Hello, hello, I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to it's been a minute from NPR. A show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. (upbeat music) Oh my gosh, okay, so first of all, can we get some examples of baby womanhood? Like, name names. Who are the baby women that people might know of? - One of the ones that Shannon reference in her article that definitely comes up for a millennial of a certain age is definitely Mita Dunn's character from girls. - Hannah Horvath. - Hannah. - The character just so perfectly encapsulates the double-sided coin of that like ambition, whether you call it like girl bossery or not, that Lina Dunnum, and in some ways, her character that she played, Hannah Horvath, dared to believe in her own ambition as a very young woman, you know, in her early 20s. But then on the flip side was extremely frightened of having all of these big adult responsibilities. I think that the girl boss and baby woman is just constantly fighting in both Lina, the real person and in her character. - Another famous baby woman I have in mind, God bless her. I actually, I have to say I'm a huge fan of her music. - I adore this woman. - I know where this is going. - Ariana Grande is a baby woman. Like she is, it is alleged that she has broken up several relationships in her dating life. Most notably, she began a public relationship with Ethan Slater, her co-star from The Wicked Films, which there's been a lot of speculation online about timeline, but they left their respective spouses during the filming of those movies, and then publicly started dating each other. And then, you know, there's a lot of crying, she was doing during the Wicked Press tour. When all of this sort of like other woman narrative was arising at the same time, then she's like speaking in a very high pitched voice, and she's crying, and she's wearing big sweaters. She's kind of even appearing to look more and more like a baby. And again, I say this is like, she's one of my most listened to artists of all time. Like it pains me to say, but if you love, you have to call them in. Her public persona became more and more baby-like as all of these narratives were popping up around her being something of a quote unquote home record. Not exactly what I would say, but that narrative was definitely out there. - That's a great example. The home record is of it all reminds me of one of the other subjects I touched upon in my story, which is Amanda from Summer House. - Ah, yes. - Who just caused a gigantic Bravo scandal by sleeping with one of her close friends, most complicated and emotionally fraught X's, and like starting a relationship with him. And in the like Summer House finale, she just really was not taking responsibility for making the decision to be with this man. I think that's very much a baby womanhood kind of thing where it's just like, it just happened to me. - It happened, yeah. - And you still did it, you chose to do it. You can't do it. - Sometimes you're hiding it from who you like and who you are attracted to. That was-- - You actually can't help it. - It takes two to tango. - It takes two grownups to tango. - It does take up the tango. - And I think it's a very young and naive and self-infantilizing perspective to be like, well, I had no choice in the matter. - I think you kind of get away with that up to a certain age, you know? When you are like 30, you've been a public figure for a long time. Like when you're really grown grown, when you're like dealing with either the feelings of a close friend or someone's marriage, then like sometimes you just got to own up to it. You know what I'm saying? I don't think that you deserve to be stone or like publicly shunned. But sometimes you just gotta face the music. And face the music I feel like is like the opposite of what a baby one wants to do. I wonder, where else do you see baby womanhood and culture? Ashley, you were saying earlier that like, it's something that you see kind of pop up randomly online. - Oh yeah, and I've seen this idea that like, everything that you express emotionally or like think that being fearful or something whatever should not be challenged at all. The thing that I saw that was the most alarming for me is a few weeks ago there was this big dust up on Twitter about or X, if you wanna call it that, about women getting pap smears. The whole controversy was this idea of like, well, if this is scary to me, and if I find the process like deeply alarming and potentially painful, it's okay to be scared of getting pap smears so don't get them. And because I often step into it, I said something to the effect of like, "Oh no, I understand that it's scary, but we gotta grow up to talk to your doctor about how if something is painful, if you can have a different size speculum, if you can have a plastic instead of metal." Like I don't think that it's actually good grow power or good womanhood or good feminism to just accept somewhat like, "Oh, if a woman's scared of something, that's valid, we shouldn't question it." - The main reason why we're getting them is like for health reasons, cancer prevention, it's not comfortable and like not exactly what you'd wanna do like on your birthday, but that doesn't mean that just because uncomfortable or unpleasant that you should be somehow excused from it without like having to deal with any sort of consequences. - And from judgment. - And it's kind of this idea of like sometimes one of the most annoying parts of growing up and living in a world that's just not going to always be accommodating to our feelings or to our emotions or even to some of our other things about it. Like I have ADHD, I have to deal with the accommodations and lack of accommodations with that all the time. And it doesn't mean that because of that, I just can't pay my bills or that I just can't go to the doctor or just doing that makes me uncomfortable. And I think that also kind of ties into the baby woman thing of like this idea of constant comfort. - I'm glad you wrote that up, Ashley, 'cause I also have ADHD. - Me too. - I think that like the neurodivergence of it all is a very interesting and very kind of complicated layer to baby womanhood and to like adult immaturity in general, especially when you see that online, I think it's a huge part of how people tend to abdicate responsibility as Brittany said earlier for so many things in their lives. And I've been totally guilty of it as well. The times in my life where I have been the biggest baby which had negative consequences for myself and everyone around me was because I was really indulging the fact where it's like, oh, but I'm depressed, I'm anxious. I, you know, the world isn't built for me in my particular like brain, in my particular emotional state. Why shouldn't I just be able to just like opt out and like not deal with having to be a part of the adult universe? It's tricky 'cause it's like also like, yes, we deserve accommodations. - We all do, yeah. - And grace from each other. But at what point does your mental illness and your own agency to take care of your own life begin? It's a very hard and tricky balance. I think I've found in my own life. - Agreed. - We're gonna take a quick break, but first, if you're a longtime listener or brand new to it's been a minute, be sure to come back every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday for brand new episodes. And did you know you can make it even easier to get new episodes by hitting the follow or subscribe. button on your favorite podcast app, whether you're a new friend or a loyal bestie, join the team by subscribing today. Coming up after the break, we expect it from men. The bar is so low for men and in that way I can see why for so many women it is the fantasy to be cared for because it's not necessarily the expectation. Stick around. I feel like another piece of this that we can't not talk about is just like the very viral, some shockingly to me, very viral phrase. I'm just a girl or like people saying this is girlhood. I see it about everything. They're like when you go out to dinner with your friend and you have martinis and you laugh together, this is girlhood and I'm like well no I wasn't actually having martinis and laugh together with my friends. At seven, that's not girlhood for me necessarily actually. I see people I age and I'm almost 40 years old and I see people my age and older sometimes I'm like this is girlhood and I'm like snap out of it. We have sex in the city when I was in middle school for us to grow up and have these beautiful sort of like adult moments of connection with other women and then like want to look at that through like sort of a girlish lens. But also I don't know. To me, there's also something kind of like weird and sick and like gender essentialist going on at the heart of that too. Yeah. What's wrong with being a woman? Like being a grown woman? I don't know. I think it really speaks to a very dark and misogynist time that we're living in where girlhood is fetishized and that women are supposed to only have value when we're young, I mean, even like pre-pimicent. Like my original draft of my story got like quite dark and you know, I was getting into like the Epstein of it all and my editor was like, okay, I think we can like pull it back a little bit. But culturally that is a specter in the back of a lot of our minds right now. Yeah, yes. I've even bristleed at the term like girls girl, which I've, you know, heard pop up with so much of last few years. I'm just like, what are we talking about here? But sometimes I have like a little bit of empathy for it in some context. God like, cost of living is awful. So many people are older and living at home still because that is more financially stable than like trying to go out in their own like get an apartment and stuff like that. There is a level of like things are just not stable the way they were, you know, a couple generations ago for a certain type of woman. But at the same time, it is kind of like a, okay, so now what do we do? Do we just revel in this kind of situation where the economy is the way it is? Yeah. Is there the other or do we just try to get a sense of agency on it? Because we're grown women and we can do that. Yeah. Like Ashley was saying, like, we've really been to be dramatic. It kind of like robbed of a lot of traditional markers of adulthood, you know, buying house and a lot like a lot of us feel like we can't afford to have children of our own. Baby woman hood can maybe come in part where it's like, well, if I'm not having the baby, like, can I be the baby? The complications of navigating that can invite baby woman hood in that things can be so difficult. You just kind of want to like be like, alright, I'm done. You do see all these girls online who are like glamorizing. I don't have to work. Like, I am married to a man or say "homegirlfriends." "homegirlfriends" or like. Which woof. Yeah. "Slippery slope sister." Yeah. Yeah. When I was researching my story, I'm like looking for just a girl stuff, like on TikTok, so much of it would be like, oh, I'm just a girl. I like, you know, crash my car. Or like, like, oops, like, or like people having like their dads or their boyfriend's driving them around, doing everything for them. I don't know. We're very much living in a time where the stuff that we've thought so hard for as independent women is now being painted in a, you know, very negative light. Women working and making money for ourselves. It's like, oh, there's this temptation where it's like, what if I didn't have to? And someone else could make all the money. And then, of course, you know, not showing the side where, what if the guy leaves you and then you have nothing? So, when I looked at the Instagram comments for this story on "From the Cut" that you did shinnon, a lot of the commentary was like, this was like, yeah, you can do that if you're like a white woman, you can do this. I do think it's a fair critique of people to be like, this is more something that white women, especially white women who have a certain kind of income level or like, safety not can get away with. But I also think that the fantasy of this is not bound to white women of a certain economic category. Whether you can play it out is different. But the fantasy of it, I've seen from every demographic you can think of. But that makes me wonder, I like, what benefits might baby women get out of being baby women? I think there's a few things. Like, it means not having to worry about certain responsibilities, you know, not having to hustle necessarily. And of course, this is all contingent on when you do have the support of another adult. So, the thing is that if you do abdicate responsibility, someone might walk away. That's the thing. But when you do have it, like, Amanda in summer house, like, there's this clip from the last season where she's like, I don't worry about the money. Like, Kyle worries about the money. Like, I'm just the artist. Like, I just do the art. Like, I get to draw. Yeah, I mean, like, basically, if you act like a baby because you, you know, need help or you feel that you need help, you might genuinely get other people to do things for you. I think that my closest kind of feeling to baby woman or whatever was when I wanted to completely check out after my husband got sick and died. I wanted to check out so much that it was kind of easy to fall into these kind of patterns that can be kind of associated with like, I'm just a baby. I'm just a girl. Like, almost like a safety blanket. Yeah. It's like a security thing after so much stress. So, it doesn't even regress into also, I think. There's an aspect of it where like, I did need people to like, kind of help me do mundane things around the house. Like, even like, I, I mail piled up grief was able to kind of like, put me into this kind of feeling of like, I don't know what to do. Like, someone please help me. Someone please be the adult here for me after I was the, like, the grown up for so long. Yeah. There can be something comforting about that to just kind of like, have that assistance. But the idea of kind of living in that constant state terrifies me. You know how many things I've had to do with my car since my husband died? He was from Western New York. He knew what to do when like, it's snowed and he can like, get all the snow out of the car. I'm from California living in New York. And now I have to like, figure out how to like get the snow off like that. Like, I stopped my car. Like, I just had to do it. I had to step up. I couldn't just be like, I don't know what to do guys. Like, I couldn't just have my dad fly out from California to help me with the car. I had to learn these things on my, oh, and I had to step up. When I see some of this and other people, I'm just like, come on you guys. We can like support other women by like admitting that there are certain things that are like not accommodating to us or that things that are scary. But I don't think it's, I'm not even going to talk about girlhood. We're talking about women. Womenhood and like, good womanhood to me is not enabling other people's fears and like, lack of action. Go tell your doctor if that pap smear hurts. Go do that thing you have to do with the car. I don't think that just enabling people me like, oh, it's okay, girl. We all feel like that. It's like, that's not good feminism to me either. It's like, what are we doing? Something I want to touch on. We haven't thought we haven't really tried too much about men here. I mean, men can also act like babies. Men can also abdicate a lot of responsibility and receive social support and doing so. It's kind of an expectation. But we might call that kind of learned helplessness, right? Do you think baby men different from baby women? I think you said it exactly. We expect it from men. The bar is so low for men. As Ashley said, it was beautifully pointing out about how sometimes we do need care from each other. The answer is not necessarily that we're all going to be completely independent ice women. But I think the way a lot of straight women experience in their relationships is that men often don't step up. You know, you hear that the bar is still on the floor for like, fathers. Like, how do I mop the floor? How do I change my baby's diaper? It's like, it's been around since I was in elementary school. We'd never figured that out. Yeah. And in that way, I can see why for so many women, it is the fantasy to be cared for because it's not necessarily the expectation for a lot of men to step up and to do a lot of that work that's kind of more like invisible or, you know, like the domestic labor. Yeah, men's immaturity, I think is just the default is expected. I think there are some things that we do expect men to have a handle on and start to like, fetch like finances and things like that. Not to be like, not to defend the men. I do think there are things that are expected of them. But then you'll see something like a woman being like, look at how my husband loaded the dishwasher. And I'm just kind of like, who raised it? Like was he raising a bar? And like, I don't think either gender is exempt from a displaying what I often like to refer to just as arrested development. But I do think that we see more humor in it. Some people can see more humor in it from men or we're societally supposed to see more humor in it when a man is incompetent. It's a tricky balance. I understand the urge to want to check out that life is hard when it becomes like a part of your personality and your persona to be like an incompetent adult. Yeah. I think that's when it's like we got to be like we got to be real but like that's not actually very charming. What do you think of the prolonged effects of baby womaning? Like both for the individual and also like at a cultural level? I think that it's ultimately just kind of corrosive to your sense of freedom as a human being and I think it can be destructive to yourself but to other people around you. I think in my biggest throes of baby womanhood like I was not a very good partner you know it's my wife like I wasn't a very good friend like I think it's a very um individualistic response to the world it's I'm just gonna you know crawl up into my own little ball and protect myself you're denying yourself the thing that actually taking responsibility for yourself and for other people caring for yourself and for other people I mean I think that that's literally like the stuff of life like I think that's kind of what it's all what it's all about and you're you're missing out on that. When you kind of decide that you just don't have it any to do one thing it's really easy to slip yourself into like well this is also hard but I think that there's nothing scarier than being so convinced that there's no even point of having agency or that you have no agency that you just don't do anything about it or even try to put things in your favor or you know try to make something feel more equitable or try to make something you know go your way it's this learn helplessness that I got it's not just men it's also women it's also baby women it's also you know it's so I'm just like that's the consequence you have life go by you yeah I think there's something about taking life by you know the horn is that we need to all embrace even when it's hard what do they say like stopping a tree and leave or whatever you're not planted in someplace oh my gosh Shannon Ashley thank you so much thank you for having us yes thank you great talk for any thanks that was freelance writer Shannon Keating and Ashley Reese culture writer critic and author of the sub-stech newsletter bad brain this episode of it's been a minute was produced by Liam McBain this episode was edited by Nina Patuck engineering support came from Simon Laslow Janssen our supervising producer is Sheriff Vincent our executive producer is Barton Gurdwood our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini all right that's all for this episode of it's been a minute from NPR I'm Brittany loose talk soon