A new TikTok trend sees young women eschewing hustle culture to focus on life outside of work. Perhaps they are beating capitalism at its own game
In the mid-2010s, I worked in a cafe in a south London art gallery. Every day I’d make a few coffees, gossip idly with customers and then take home my little sack full of generous tips. It smelled nice in there, too: like baked bread, and salty anchovies fresh from the tin. And though I’ve had jobs more suited to my genuine interests since, that cafe job was one of my favourites, mainly because of the pure leisure of it. I got paid more or less the same as I did later, as an editor at a major media publication. But I was relaxed, all of the time, and never checked my emails.
Young women have taken to calling these sorts of jobs – as in, jobs that are undemanding but well enough paid, with little personal passion involved – “lazy girl jobs”. Mostly the term refers to menial office jobs as opposed to the service industry: people on computers, sending a few emails and taking home a comfortable salary. On TikTok, the #lazygirljob hashtag currently has about 14m views, and the mood is overwhelmingly aspirational. “I love my lazy girl job,” reads one post. “I don’t have to talk to people, only come to the office twice a week.” “Me at my lazy girl job that lets me do whatever the heck I want as long as I answer emails and keep everything clean,” reads another. The posters appear to be unanimously women – I’ve seen no evidence of a “lazy boy jobs” hashtag. Perhaps the concept of men being paid more to do less isn’t quite as novel or interesting. (Similarly, there’s no male equivalent of the “girlboss” phenomenon.)
Daisy Jones is a writer, editor and author of All The Things She Said
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