"The Effortless White Woman is successful both personally and professionally. The Effortless White Woman is married, usually to a white man. The Effortless White Woman is a mother — she is not too barren or too busy with work to fulfill her feminine obligations — yet her children seem to raise themselves, to self-maintain, like potted cactuses. The EWW does not raise children—she enjoys them, is fulfilled by them. The EWW ponders her children, with great regret, as she goes off to work. The Effortless White Woman makes a kajillion dollars at work, so she must not ponder her children that much, because, unlike most women, her earning potential has not been compromised by them. The Effortless White Woman also enjoys and is fulfilled by her career. In between the time spent maintaining her children and her marriage and her job — this amounts, somehow, to endless free time — the Effortless White Woman finds ways to enjoy and fulfill herself...
she remains stubbornly dominant, in part because she represents such a canny marriage of feminist principles with pre-feminist ideals. The EWW is still white, still wealthy, still straight and married and fertile and domestic and beautiful. But she is doing all this because she likes it. She is not trying to meet anyone else’s standards. She is doing what makes her happy, caring for herself, loving herself, except that doing so accidentally makes her beautiful and stylish in ways lesser women have to work to achieve...
Not every Effortless White Woman is equally guilty. There are important moral distinctions between serving as an apologist for the Trump regime and telling people to stick crystals up their vaginas. But the rejection of the EWW is an inevitable product of the populist moment."
FB: "This seemingly leaves women stuck in the familiar, dreary bind always created by internalized misogyny: hating ourselves, and hating other women because they remind us of how much we hate ourselves, with only a few callous opportunists getting out ahead. But the anger under the Effortless White Woman has, of late, been transforming into something potentially illuminating—not deferred self-loathing, but an actual recognition of injustice."
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