Evie
I’m obsessed with Evie. For the uninitiated, it’s like a right-wing Cosmo. I know, I know, I didn’t realize Cosmo was left-wing either. But here we are.
A few selected highlights:
Quiz: Which Supermodel Are You? A fun little take on quizzes like “which Supreme Court justice are you?”
Woman Who Pretended To Be A Man Dies By Assisted Suicide Years After Realizing How Difficult It Was To Be One: A truly insane way to say “transgender man commits suicide.”
Why Are So Many Girls on SSRIs? This is about adult women.
10 Ways to Make Your Home Look Expensive: This one is actually helpful.
For Future Moms: Do You Really Need A Degree To Pursue Your Dreams? One of their many pieces of anti-college content.
Why Do Feminists Still Want Guys To Pay On The First Date? Because of Bidenomics. Duh.
People Who Like Kinky Sex Are Just Bad In Bed: Whoa, I just learned I like kinky sex.
How To Leave Your Job With Dignity: they also love to tell women to quit their jobs.
How To Survive Off One Income: The trick is to have a rich husband.
I Used To Be A Journalist At A Glossy Women's Magazine Until I Was Let Go For Posting A Photo Of Myself At A Pro-Life Party: This woman was a freelance editor, and six months after posting the photo, one of the places she freelanced for said they wouldn’t work with her anymore, but didn’t mention the photo.
How To Let Go Of The Shame From Your “Hoe Phase”: Also helpful.
I Paused My Career To Have Children And It Was The Best Decision I Ever Made: her oldest child is 8. No judgment, just questions about her definition of “pause.”
The Shamelessly Shallow Guide On How To Be A Trophy Wife: to be fair, The Cut published a very similar story, The Case for Marrying an Older Man. It’s actually just about marrying a rich man, which isn’t something anyone needs to make a case for. We all know the benefits. Do you ever see people run ads reminding you to masturbate? When something is good, word spreads.
No, Not Everyone Needs Therapy. finally, someone said it!
Why I’m No Longer a Feminist: perhaps because of this magazine?
So….yeah….not great. But I’m fascinated by Evie for the same reason I’m fascinated by tradwives. They ask the same question: are gender roles good for women?
On the one hand, no way! I’m a feminist. I’m horrified by the very thought. I have to be!
On the other hand… I can’t pretend Evie’s not promoting a desirable lifestyle. That’s sort of…the type of magazine it is.
Like Harrison Butker’s graduation speech (which was denounced even by the Benedictine Nuns – the ultimate proof of virality and also reprehensibility), Evie is targeted towards younger ladies. It’s more about prepping them to become stay-at-home moms than offering parenting advice. It’s for the woman her sees her main job as “Woman.” This might not be my dream, but neither is “consultant” or “account executive” or “Person Stuck at the Office Until 9.”
And like with Harrison Butker’s graduation speech, there are very obvious reasons to be critical of Evie. It’s right-wing propaganda, and to dismiss women who choose to have jobs outside the home as somehow failing at womanhood/motherhood is so plainly insidious that I don’t even feel the need to explain why. The idea of broadly prescribing a lifestyle to everyone is usually wrong; there’s no one path that will make everybody happy. I don’t even know how to make myself happy, so I can’t imagine telling all women what they should be doing with themselves.
At the same time, there’s a reason I read it. I do think, when I graduated college a tiny number of years ago (11), I believed a career would be more fulfilling than I’ve found mine to be. I’ve had a million jobs, but in my experience, having to go to work is a famously effective way to ruin my day.
Besides, it’s not that the type of woman Evie idealizes doesn’t work at all, it’s that she’s valuable outside the capitalist system. I’ve been subjected to quarterly reviews from my coworkers, I’ve been paid according to how many “views” my articles get, and I’ve lost money for getting sick. None of those things are unusual, but none have made me feel good, either.
I understand the appeal of gender roles for another, less obvious reason. Gender roles are still roles. Roles you what to do. Do you know how much time I waste trying to figure out what I should be doing with my life?
In a sense, Evie is its own to-do list. It’s a how-to guide for women looking to meet the feminine ideal. And the reason I’m so hooked on it is that truthfully, I’m learning a lot. Amidst all the anti-college, pro-life propaganda, there are a lot of helpful tips on how to stop your breasts from drooping. I, too, want to feel feminine and sexy. Of course I do. I just don’t want to admit how badly I want it.
Maybe what draws me to Evie, more than anything else, is a sense of humility. I’ve been in the workforce since I graduated college, and my first instinct is to believe I’m better for it. More fulfilled. More en route to ~figuring things out~ (the ~~ mean it’s BS, of course) than if I’d married at 23 and never worked outside the home. And that’s probably true (to be clear, no one asked me to marry them, the whole entire year I was 23, but still). But if that were the whole story, why is my favorite meeting a cancelled meeting? And why am I reading Evie? Why do I watch so many tradwife videos? The tradwives aren’t following my life for hours a day (I don’t think), so who’s the real winner?
It’s not that I regret my choices, it’s that I made a choice. I went in one direction and left other potential lives behind. And those other lives, the ones I didn’t live, are following me around the internet, telling me how the reason I’m on SSRIs is because I work too much. They’re Harrison Butker telling a group of 22-year-olds their most important role is “Mother.”
I’m 33 and getting married this year. We’re planning to have children but don’t have a firm timeline. I know why I made the choices I did, and I don’t regret them. And yet, sometimes, I’m jealous of women who had kids in their twenties. I have chronic back pain; I dread the physical pain of pregnancy. The road not taken is probably also full of trees and flowers, as well as litter and broken glass. I live in NYC; most roads are.
So yes, unfortunately, I still read Evie, because there’s a part of me that wonders what that other life would have been like. And yes, I feel conflicted about reading it, and I feel a guilt for even finding the idea mesmerising. Then again, we could all benefit from letting go of some of that hoe-shame.
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