Hypergamy – the practice of seeking a ‘provider’ partner with more wealth and status than you – has been a hot topic for years now. Controversial dating coach Shera Seven, known as the “sprinkle sprinkle lady”, has been telling women to laugh if a date suggests splitting the bill and cheat on “broke” men since 2023. Tradwives like Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman, who represent the idea that women should take care of domestic labour while men bring home the bacon, began blowing up on TikTok in the early 2020s. You’d think that the myth that it’s a smart idea to rely on a man for money would have run out of steam by now, but, like a stubborn weed, it’s unfortunately persistent.

Social media is still awash with content which markets dependence and self-infantilisation as aspirational. A new TikTok trend sees women joke about being “good at the blue store” (read: hardware stores or electronic stores) so their boyfriends will buy them something at “the pink store” (read: beauty stores). Stay-at-home-girlfriends on the app gloat about doing nothing but rotting in bed and going to the gym while their partners are at their “big boy jobs”. Most recently, influencer Sarah De Leeuw recently went viral on X after posting about her boyfriend putting his credit card in a handmade magic wand and taking her on a “shopping spree” – while she wore a tiara – to celebrate her 26th birthday.

In an era where ragebaiting viewers is a surefire way to drive engagement and subsequently earn money, it’s increasingly difficult to parse how much of this kind of content is serious, and how much is posted specifically to court controversy. Relatedly, many of these female creators – especially tradwife behemoths like Nara Smith – doubtless have their own (often sizeable) incomes. But no matter the motivations behind it, this content is reaching millions of young women who are engaging with it, and it reflects (and is shaping) a very real cultural shift towards traditional gender roles among young people: research published in March by Ipsos and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London found baby boomers have more liberal views than Gen Z on everything from whether a wife should always obey her husband to whether it’s ever OK for a woman to initiate sex.

We’ve been on this path for a while. Regressive, anti-feminist social media content aside, the fraying social contract has made achieving financial independence difficult if not outright impossible for many women. Living costs are rising. House prices are astronomical. At the same time, wages are stagnant and the gender pay gap remains stubbornly high. In this context, many young women have realised, correctly, that you can’t ‘girlboss’ your way to independence and security – and some have begun to believe that under the current system, it’s better to give up on jobs entirely and focus on securing a male provider. 

Relying on a male partner to fund your life is a slippery slope to abuse and coercion

But we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The last decade has shown that wearing a pink blazer, aspiring to become a ‘She-EO’, and climbing the corporate ladder – often trampling on other people in the process – is not a reliable path to freedom or happiness. It’s a good thing that more women are realising that some of third-wave feminism's more neoliberal elements sold them a lie: ‘having it all’ – that is, enjoying a high-flying, well-paid career and a traditional family life – is, in reality, more like ‘doing it all’, given that women still do a disproportionate amount of housework and childcare. But hoping that your male partner will provide for you indefinitely is not the way out of this bind. Not least because, for the vast majority of people, running a household on one income alone is no longer viable in the long-term, but also because it can do troubling things to your relationship dynamic.

No one is saying that it’s ‘toxic’ for your partner to spoil you on your birthday. No one is even objecting to a set-up where each partner contributes to a household’s living costs in a manner proportional to their own income – and, thanks to the gender pay gap, it’s likely the man in a straight relationship will end up forking out a bit more than the woman. What is dangerous, however, is the notion that women should just give up and lean in to being infantilised dependants who scribble away in colouring books while their partners do “big boy” work.

Work can be drudgerous, grim, and soul-destroying in innumerable ways, and I can sympathise with the urge to throw in the towel, but individual solutions to systemic issues seldom work. As feminists have warned for a very long time, relying on a male partner to fund your life is a slippery slope to abuse and coercion. Money, under the system in which we live, equals freedom. Real money, your own money – not the pittance your boyfriend doles out for you to get a Dior lip oil and the occasional iced vanilla matcha. You need enough money to know that whatever life throws at you, you can insulate yourself against disaster. You can buy your own groceries. You can pay your own rent. You can buy a train ticket out of there.

Financial dependence is how many women find themselves trapped in abusive relationships. Women in these situations, for whatever reason, are often unable to secure the kind of stable, well-paid jobs that would grant them the autonomy that money allows. Most would kill for that kind of freedom. This is why it’s so distasteful to see middle-class, able-bodied, educated women willingly put themselves in this situation and glamourising it on TikTok. Of course there are issues with neoliberal-leaning feminist arguments which suggest that it’s inherently empowering for women to go out and ‘hustle’ as hard as men. But while we still live under a system where money reigns supreme, any smart woman will make damn sure they’ve got their own cash stashed in the bank. Ignore this central tenet of feminism at your peril.