Edel Coffey: The imbalances at the heart of the 'stay at home girlfriend' trend on TikTok

Edel Coffey: "Being financially dependent on anyone is not an ideal to aspire to." Picture: Bríd O'Donovan

I was in Dublin recently when I spotted some street art painted on a corrugated shutter. It said in huge lettering: ‘DON’T WISH FOR IT, WORK FOR IT.’ What a positive message, I thought, and took a snap to motivate me when I needed it. So many of us spend so much of our time wishing for things when if we spent the same amount of time working for them we might actually achieve them.

The phrase came to mind again this week as I was reading about the social media trend of the stay-at-home girlfriend. The hashtag #stayathomegirlfriend has more than 200m views on TikTok. If you’re not aware of the trend, it’s exactly what you might imagine — young women promoting their lifestyle choices of being ‘kept’ women. The videos document their lives — domestic chores, making their boyfriend’s dinner, shopping, performing beauty procedures, and going to the gym — as paid for by their rich boyfriends.

This set-up is repellent to me personally but my general outlook on how other people live their lives is: if it works for you, go ahead and do you. The thing I do have a problem with however is that these influencers are selling this lifestyle to young women as an ideal to aspire to.

Being financially dependent on anyone is not an ideal to aspire to. But being financially dependent on a romantic partner in return for services is a huge power imbalance. Cinderella is a fairy-tale character and she clearly never read The House Of Mirth.

History has taught us again and again that when women rely exclusively on a romantic partner for their financial needs, they can find themselves at a disadvantage.

I can see the attraction, of course. If you’re a young woman, just out of college, starting your first job, not earning a lot of money, watching these women unbox €5,000 designer handbags might be appealing. In a world where paying your own way and owning your own home gets more and more difficult, swapping your independence for wealth might sound like a fair deal. But there’s a dangerous precedent involved in setting yourself up as a commodity. What do we do when a product we once paid for, owned and might even have loved gets worn out, old or past its sell-by-date? We throw it out and buy a new one.

I absolutely understand the decision to stay at home and rely on a partner’s income if you have children to look after or health issues or a plethora of other justifiable reasons, but staying at home and stepping into an archaic domestic role just because your partner’s rich? That’s harder for me to understand.

But there’s another problem with these influencers selling their lifestyles of subservience, a hypocrisy at the heart of it all. These influencers who have built their profiles on how great it is to be a stay at home girlfriend, are simply not walking the walk. They’re influencers, which means they’re businesswomen, they have jobs — the job of running their social media and they are earning money from it. They have podcasts, they sell merchandise, they unbox free gifts (not always from their rich boyfriends), they hustle, but crucially they earn their own money. I wonder why they do this when they claim that it’s better to live life as a kept woman. 

Maybe it’s because they know as well as we all do that it’s important to have your own money, your own financial independence so that if you do ever need to walk out that door, you won’t have to ask the question can you afford to walk out that door. Chances are if these influencers’ positions as professional girlfriends come up for review, they will be absolutely fine. But your options might not be as broad if you’re a 17-year-old girl who might be watching these videos and considering professional girlfriend as a viable alternative to a degree or a career.

As International Women’s Day approaches, I’d like to paraphrase Miley Cyrus and suggest that when it comes to financial independence maybe we can love ourselves better. Judging from the most popular posts on TikTok, the real appeal of these influencers is not making their boyfriend’s dinner or doing their laundry but accruing enough wealth to live luxury lifestyles that allow you to wear €1,000 slippers. If that’s what you want, what’s so wrong with earning the money yourself? Why not work for it instead of wishing for it? 

Having your own career and your own money on your own terms, as well as a relationship of equals, is so much more appealing than being in a transactional relationship where money is swapped for services. And one of the upsides of paying your own way is you get to make your own decisions, your own choices, and your own rules, all while buying yourself everything you need out of your own hard-earned cash. That kind of autonomy is worth more than a million designer handbags offered in exchange for having his slippers ready when he comes home. 

Oh yes, I think we can love ourselves better, baby.