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Archive for 2023
December 24, 2023
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Stay At Home Girlfriends Are Having A Moment.
The typical stay-at-home girlfriend video opens on a young woman in a pristine apartment. At 8 a.m., she makes the bed and cooks pancakes for her boyfriend before he goes to work. After a green juice, it’s time for self care: a private Pilates reformer session and a microcurrent facial. Then, she has lunch with a girlfriend at a local hot spot, goes for a long walk and listens to a podcast before it’s time to get ready for date night.
Clips like this abound on TikTok—smooth, hypnotic videos presenting an idealized vision of a traditional marriage, minus the wedding ring, plus a dose of the current wellness boom. Being a stay-at-home girlfriend (or SAHG for short) is all about supporting your boyfriend with tasks like cooking and housework, plus a rigorous self-care regimen to keep up appearances. The phenomenon reflects a Gen Z move away from mid-2000s “girlboss” hustle culture, and toward aspirations of a softer life.
“My life was very, very slow and peaceful,” said Kendel Kay, 26, who moved from Los Angeles to Puerto Rico to be a stay-at-home girlfriend to her then-boyfriend in 2022. She described an “extensive morning routine filled with skin care” and juice and breakfast prep.
Videos of young SAHGs from Nairobi to Miami show them puttering around modern high-rise apartments, pushing Dyson vacuums and spoiling small dogs. They wear workout sets all day; they talk slowly; they seem unbothered. . . .
Kay, who is newly single and now based in San Diego, spoke positively about her time as a SAHG in Puerto Rico. Before she met her ex-boyfriend, who ran his own company, she earned money modeling and making OnlyFans subscription-based content. When he started supporting her, she said, “I just felt like I didn’t have to experience as much stress, and I was really able to be my best self and do a lot of self-improvement.”
Aliyah Wan, 26, who grew up in Singapore and lives in Los Angeles with her generous boyfriend, said that a lot of women aspire to this lifestyle these days. “With big cities, the cost of living is just so high that having somebody to provide for you makes living a lot easier,” she said.
Judging by the illustrations, it helps to be really, really hot.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Loss of sleep increases risk for depression, anxiety.
ARNOLD KLING ON THE PERSISTENCE OF FASHIONABLE WRONGS: “We are in the process of becoming a society where fashion is more powerful than logic.”
IN THE MAIL: From Michael Savage, A Savage Republic: Inside the Plot to Destroy America. #CommissionEarned
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Reminder: Husbands, It’s Time To Start Christmas Shopping.
AS WELL THEY SHOULD: Harvard’s early admits reconsider amid concerns of campus anti-Semitism. “This is the first time and first application season where I’ve seen a student who got into Harvard early that I’ve worked with for almost three and a half, four years now, starting in ninth grade — we’re seeing them say, ‘You know what? I want to apply to other schools because what if I graduate and this stigma and this reputation of Harvard stays the same?’ That’s their true concern.”
YES: It’s time for universities to share the burden of student loan defaults. “By inducing their students to borrow from the government, higher education institutions collect vastly inflated tuition and fees, which they then spend without worrying about whether the loans will ever be repaid. This in turn incentivizes them to push the tuition and fees, and room and board, ever higher — by an average of 169 percent since 1980, according to a Georgetown University study. In short, in the current system the colleges get and spend billions in borrowed money and put all the loan risk on somebody else — including those student borrowers who responsibly pay off their own debt and those who never borrowed in the first place, not to mention taxpayers, whether they attended a college or not.”
I’ve been saying that for years.
ARNOLD KLING: “He seems to be saying that the powers that be in academia now understand what went wrong and will proceed to fix it. I find this remarkably optimistic.”
SUPPOSED TO BE SATIRE:
Parents Take Gen Z Kid Who Doesn’t Have Anxiety Or Depression To Therapist To Find Out What’s Wrong https://t.co/G99bgdukSS pic.twitter.com/XPLBmWwRhT
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 22, 2023
LIGHTNING DEAL: COOFANDY Men’s Oxford Shirt Long Sleeve. #CommissionEarned
IF YOU DON’T WANT PASSENGERS TO ACT LIKE ANIMALS, DON’T TREAT THEM LIKE ANIMALS: Throwing Punches and Opening Emergency Doors: Airline Passengers Are Still Losing It.
The Federal Aviation Administration has recorded nearly 2,000 reports of such incidents so far this year, up 71% from 2019’s full-year tally, though lower than 2021’s unprecedented peak of 5,973 incidents. . . .
Some attribute the increase in troublesome behavior to a higher prevalence of prescription medication that has mixed badly with the reintroduction of alcohol on flights. Others say passengers are still rusty and nervous after an extended break from flying, or overwhelmed by the stresses of full planes and delays.
When flying was more civilized so were passengers.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Study shows sex could be a better predictor of sports performance than gender identity.
BUT THEN AND NOW, HIS HAIR GEL WAS PERFECT: Gavin Newsom’s 10-year plan to end San Francisco homelessness marks 20-year anniversary.
They’ve failed the public on a lot of issues.
SOMETHING NOT POLITICS: Spectacular 2,300-year-old wall mosaic found in archaeological dig in Rome.
IT’S AN INVASION. START TREATING IT AS SUCH: 19,400 Illegal Migrants Apprehended Just this Week in Arizona’s Tucson Sector.
DIRTY WORK, BUT VERY NEEDED: IDF Eliminated Over 8,000 Gaza Terrorists Since October 7.
OR YOU COULD STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO AP: Bipartisan House Coalition Urges AP to Change Stylebook Rule Advising Against ‘Terrorist’ Term for Hamas.
WELL, IF NOT TO STEAL AS MUCH AS THEY WANTED, WHY WOULD THEY HAVE PERFORMED THEIR COLOR REVOLUTION? Sen. Rand Paul’s Annual Festivus Report on Government Waste Tops $900B for 2023.
THE TRAUMA IS PART OF THEIR STRATEGY: Freed teen hostage whose dad and sister were killed by Hamas feared rape, torture and death.
VERDICT FIRST, TRIAL AFTERWARD: IT’S TRADITION IN PROGRESSIVE CULTURE: Revealed: Harvard cleared Claudine Gay of plagiarism BEFORE investigating her — and its lawyers falsely claimed her work was ‘properly cited’.