Are you "just a girl" ... or are you a baby woman?
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Have you ever had a moment where you're like, OK, I'm being a baby woman and I need to grow up a little bit right now?
Oh, 110 percent. Like those memes that are like, oh, yeah, me at 28, you know, versus my parents at 28 having a mortgage and three kids. Meanwhile, it's just like, you know, doom scrolling, you know, on the phone. And yeah, I am guilty of it sometimes, but I try not to make it a lifestyle.
Oh, I like that. Trying to make a lifestyle. OK, what about you, Shannon?
Yeah.
I also can be very guilty of baby womanhood. To reference another meme, I often fear the one that's like, oh my God, you people can't do anything.
Mm-hmm.
I get like that, like clockwork every tax season. Cue the breakdown. Like, I'm just like, help me. I can't do it. But baby woman, it's a term coined in a piece for The Cut by one of our wonderful guests here, freelance writer Shannon Keating, to describe a particular kind of affect that some women have, at least some of the time. Shannon, in your own words, what is a baby woman? Like, how would you describe her?
I think of the baby woman as kind of like the evil twin of the girl boss. It's her wario. Yes, it is her wario. And I think baby womanhood is the complete opposite of the girl boss in that it's saying, I do not want any of these responsibilities. Just take them away. Someone else do it.
It's not just like a girlishness, but some abdication of adult responsibility. Yes. When I read Shannon's piece about it in the cut, I was like, yes, I have totally seen women who are like that in my life and also out in the world. And I wanted to get deeper into it because truly this way of being really boggles my mind. But I also wanted to know like what pushes women into baby womanhood and what exactly do baby women get out of being baby? To find out, I am joined of course by Shannon Keating. Welcome back, Shannon.
Thank you so much for having me, Brittany. I am so happy to be back.
Happy to have you. And I'm also joined by Ashley Reese, culture writer and critic and author of the Substack newsletter, Bad Brain. Welcome back to you too, Ashley. Hi, thanks for having me. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
Oh my gosh. Okay. So first of all, can we get some examples of baby womanhood? Like name names. Who are the baby women that people might know of?
One of the ones that Shannon referenced in her article that definitely comes up for a millennial of a certain age is definitely Lena Dunham's character from Girls.
Hannah Horvath. was extremely frightened of having all of these big adult responsibilities. I think that the girl boss and baby woman is just constantly fighting in both Lena, the real person, and in her character.
Another famous baby woman I have in mind, God bless her, I actually, I have to say, I'm a huge fan of her music.
I adore this woman. Oh, I know where this is going.
Ariana Grande is a baby woman. It is alleged that she has broken up several relationships in her dating life. Most notably, she began a public relationship with Ethan Slater, her co-star from The Wicked Films, which there's been a lot of speculation online about timeline, but they left their respective spouses during the filming of those movies and then publicly started dating each other. And then, you know, there's a lot of crying that she was doing during like the Wicked Press tour. When all of this sort of like other woman narrative was arising at the same time, then she's like speaking in a very high pitched voice and she's crying and she's wearing big sweaters. She's kind of even appearing to look more and more like a baby.
And again, I say this as like, she's one of my most listened to artists of all time. Like it pains me to say, but if you love, you have to call them in.
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