TikTok influencers need to stop being stay-at-home girlfriends. Courtesy | Plann
While the stay-at-home girlfriend trend on TikTok may appeal to a culture with lofty romantic ideals, this lifestyle falls short of objective reality. Today, young women who are choosing to quit their jobs and move in with their boyfriends have taken to the internet to showcase their glamorous lives of leisure and unemployment.
The more likes and comments the stay-at-home-girlfriend trend receives on TikTok, the less aware the younger generation will be of its many obvious problems.
Famous TikTok influencer Kendel Kay clarified the role of a stay-at-home girlfriend in one of her videos saying, “For those of you who don’t know what a stay-at-home girlfriend is, it’s a housewife in training.”
The real issue with this recent cultural phenomenon, however, has nothing to do with Kay’s decision to stay at home, and everything to do with the fact that she is a girlfriend who has taken on wifely responsibilities without any promise of marital commitment.
A day in the life of a stay-at-home girlfriend often looks like this: Draw the blinds and make the bed, journal, complete an extensive skincare routine, prepare breakfast and coffee for two, clean the house, run errands, go to a hot yoga class, online shop, cook dinner, and watch a movie before bed.
Despite receiving accusations of laziness and gold digging, Kay’s videos continue to rack up millions of views as her lifestyle appeals to an American audience dreaming of being
wealthy enough to stay at home. According to a recent Buzzfeed article, some have even mocked Kay’s morning routine for being shockingly similar to serial killer Patrick Batemen’s from “American Psycho.”
The majority of hateful comments that Kay receives come from fourth-wave feminists who view stay-at-home girlfriends as victims of toxic masculinity. They fear that by romanticizing a very anti-feminist life, Kay is normalizing more quiet forms of abuse and misogyny.
Kay’s mantra of “self care, slow living, and feminine energy” is just as offensive to feminists as it is to those who dream of doing nothing for a living.
Not only is the stay-at-home girlfriend fully reliant on her boyfriend to provide for her, but she has also put herself in a situation where he can leave her whenever he wants because he has not unified with her in marriage.
And yet, the boyfriend in this scenario is in an equally terrible predicament himself: he must work tirelessly to support a woman who has not committed to be his wife.
Both the stay-at-home girlfriend and the workaholic boyfriend have entered into a utilitarian relationship destined for heartbreak and dissolution.
Political commentator and Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh discussed this trend on his show, saying: “they are playing house with a lot more on the line.”
Walsh said couples that live this way are setting themselves up for a breakup that will feel and look like a divorce because of the martial importance of a shared bank account, home, bed, etc.
While Kay may have convinced herself and her viewers of the “benefits” of being a stay-at-home girlfriend, there is ultimately no alternative to marriage. No relationship can replace a life-long commitment that makes promises, signifies the maturity of mutual love, and solidifies the importance of marriage in the minds of the couple.
The temporary happiness that an unmarried couple might experience when they first move in together is incompatible with the joy of spouses who have devoted themselves to one another and exchanged vows of habitual self-giving love.
In his 1994 “Letter to Families,” Pope John Paul II defined the sacrificial nature of love and the ability of marriage to satisfy our earthly desire for intimacy.
“Only the one who is able to be demanding with himself in the name of love can also demand love from others. Love is demanding. It makes demands in all human situations,” he wrote. “Nowadays people need to rediscover this demanding love, for it is the truly firm foundation of the family, a foundation able to endure all things.”
As more couples settle for low-commitment relationships, they cheapen the value of their love and reduce one another to objects used for pleasure. Without an objective common good which they are both pursuing, they will mistake pleasure as the greatest good and use each other as means to securing their end goals of pleasure.
Pope John Paul II lays out his argument for spousal love in his book “Love and Responsibility:” “Love in human relationships is not something ready-made. It begins as a principle or idea which people must somehow live up to in their behavior.”
If stay-at-home girlfriend videos continue to trend on TikTok, it will result in a generation of girlfriends who aspire to stay at home and never commit to becoming wives and homemakers.
