so what do you do for fun?
🎀 on the concept of 'girl hobbies' 🎀
"So, what do you do for fun?” I asked a new friend a month or so ago in a cafe in Lisbon. We’d not known each other for very long, but we had very similar energies (in the way that anyone who spent their formative years on Tumblr does) and she looked at me over her Americano and said, “honestly, my main hobby is probably consuming media.”
I practically yelled ‘SAME’ and told her that when I realised that consuming media was one of my hobbies it changed my life. I always used to hate being asked about my interests, never feeling like they were ‘legitimate’ hobbies or a ‘good’ use of my time (spoiler, if you enjoy something, that’s a good enough use of your time) and as much as I hate to admit it, I probably only felt confident enough to classify content consumption (and creation I guess) as one of my hobbies when it became my job.
One of capitalism’s poisons is making us believe that all our hobbies should (or can) be monetised, but because I, one single 26-year-old person in the world, am not stronger than capitalism, my hobby didn’t feel legitimate until I’d made it ‘productive.’
I hate that we feel that way. These days I’m such an advocate for having stupid little interests (who remembers my Dungeons and Dragons era?) and we all know I’m FULLY team ‘let women enjoy things,’ but the other day I saw some discourse (ew) on TikTok (I know) about ‘girl hobbies’ that I wanted to pull up. The TikTok in question was:
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The user listed ‘girl hobbies’ as:
grabbing a little treat (coffee+pastry)
doing our skincare/makeup/hair
reorganising instead of sleeping
hot girl walk
social media investigative work
shopping (in store or online)
And it just made me feel a bit bleak about the state of things. It’s not that these things aren’t enjoyable (or that my friends and I don’t partake in them ourselves) - it’s not even that I don’t think they’re hobbies. It’s that list is SO rooted in consumption and soooo rooted in the stereotype that women should always be bettering ourselves or our homes in some way that I was taken aback a bit. I was kinda like… “wait, we’re still here???”
I know there’s a resurgence in reclaiming ‘girl’ and ‘girlhood’ but I don’t think it needs to come at the expense of us being seen as non-serious people who are only put on this earth to look good and buy things, and lists like this play right into the stereotypes I thought we were trying to shake.
I’ll be honest, I may not have felt as strongly about this if I hadn’t just read “Who Gets “Quality” Leisure?” by
where she talks about the fact that men’s hobbies (for example golf) take them away from the home, and typically take hours, while women’s hobbies (reading, knitting, cooking) are often bound to the home because we’re still expected to be looking after children or to be doing other general ‘private sphere’ things during our leisure time.“As modern civilization developed and expanded, women were (and largely remain) responsible for the private/domestic sphere, so they sought out leisure activities in the spaces to which they were tethered, and that allowed them to complete the infinite labor of the home.
Men were allowed and expected to circulate in the public sphere with other men; their leisure activities also developed in that sphere with other men. (Woodworking, metalworking, tinkering, etc. were less hobby and more trade — which took place in a discrete/separate area of the home or away from the home entirely).” - Anne Helen Petersen in Culture Study.
This realisation (though littered with generalisations, yes) punched me in the gut a bit. It’s not that I think we should give up the things we love, or be embarrassed to share that the highlight of our week is sometimes simply going and getting a little treat with one of our besties, I just think it’s worth interrogating whether claiming things that reinforce age-old stereotypes and minimise ourselves as ‘girl’ things, is actually doing what we think it’s doing.
If you’re interested in this topic, Bel and I recorded a Culture Vulture episode that touches on the concept of ‘girl hobbies’ (and the 12-year-olds at Sephora) which I think you’ll love:
And you should read Anne Helen Peterson’s full piece “Who Gets “Quality” Leisure?” here!!
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