Now That Women Are Driving Headlines With Our 'Disposable' Cash, Can I Get Recognition For How Much I Spend On WWII Histories and Horror Novels?

A REMINDER! I am shifting these should-be-daily(ish) missives over to Medium, so please don’t forget to sign up here.

As I’ve written previously (I feel like I reference my “cool girl” email once a month at minimum,) I didn’t let myself like anything “girly” for so much of my life. Working in male-dominated tech in a role typically pursued by women (marketing/PR), I wanted to be “different than those other girls”, which meant learning to like things I otherwise wouldn’t alongside things I genuinely enjoyed doing.

When I first started The Morning Missive in 2015 (that’s right, 2015!!!), I had a specific section named “Lady Stuff” or something like that. At that point, as I was figuring out how to express myself in a newsletter format, I thought it was important to include a section for issues impacting folks like me, and figured I needed some kind of separation between those articles and the rest of the “real” news I wanted to share.

I look back now and realize how much internalized misogyny I carried in my brain in that small detail alone. In separating out articles dealing with “women’s issues” or featuring “women doing stuff”, I inadvertently implied that that said news wasn’t meant to be considered alongside other (serious) issues of the day. The section ensured that articles otherwise covering happenings in tech or business or bodily autonomy or human rights were siloed away with a bit of a wink, providing people I assumed wouldn’t want to read them a way to skim and skip over it — the Lady section even lived at the end of the email. That formatting fell away pretty quickly when I settled on the 5ish link template as a way to take pressure off of needing to be profound or scour the web for something for everyone.

But looking back, I cringe that I instinctively shuffled anything involving gender or abortion rights or equal pay or the dearth of women leaders into a bucket, that I inadvertently signaled that men shouldn’t care about gender or abortion rights or equal pay or the dearth of women leaders.

Over the last week, there have been plenty of articles about how the Barbie Movie, and the tours of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are “unleashing the spending power of women” (CNN). It drives me crazy how each article covering the economic impacts of these cultural phenomenons breathlessly recounts stories of women… spending money! On stuff they like! Gasp! Because I don’t know about you, but it’s not like women just this summer suddenly started to “control or influence over 80% of consumer spending”, as mentioned in the CNN article above. Yet we are still shocked (shocked!) when art made by women primarily for women is devoured by a hungry audience.

Seriously, don’t forget head on over to Medium here.

Because I feel like I am taking crazy pills as I am not at all surprised in the slightest that Barbie and Beyoncé and Taylor are filling theaters and stadiums, because it is DAMNED GOOD ENTERTAINMENT created by INCREDIBLY DISCIPLINED PEOPLE AT THE HEIGHT OF THEIR CREATIVE AND BUSINESS POWERS supported by MASSIVE PROMOTIONAL BUDGETS. Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig convinced a major multinational to go along with an overtly feminist movie that celebrated AND poked fun at said multinational’s crown jewel IP. Beyoncé’s show was described as “a sci-fi stadium-scale superclub, the greatest disco in the known universe”. And Taylor Swift is causing seismic events as her fans dance the night away at shows being breathlessly livestreamed by fans of all ages.

But these absolute feats of creative capitalism (and yes, let’s again acknowledge that lest we think we’re breathlessly ascribing solely pure motives behind how this all got made) are, in the media, being reduced to examples of the “she-economy” in think pieces across the web. I get why these stories are written, but it sucks that they erase the fact that these pieces of pop culture may seem created for one demographic but are in practice having universal, gender-agnostic impacts. Because men love these things! Non-binary people love these things! And I hate to tell you, but some women… HATE these things! And that’s ok!

Anecdotally, some of the best conversations I’ve had around the Barbie movie are with a male friend who excellently articulated how the movie demonstrates the dangers of toxic masculinity on MEN, not just women. And if you need a shot of unbridled joy, I encourage you to watch a few Tik Toks of dudes introducing TSwift to their “bros” — their reactions are a soul cleanse of pure enthusiasm. To smush all of this into “women be shopping” behavior negates both the impact on male participants AND how powerful these phenomenon are across the gender spectrum.

Can’t we just like the stuff we like, y’all? And get to the point where we don’t try and push women-created art into a box? So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to losing my shit over Taylor’s announcement of the 1989 re-records.

Anyhoo, that’s my rant for today. Drink some water, get outside, be kind to each other, won’t you?

xoxo Amy