The Great Care of Not Caring

A fashionable new cure is being prescribed in this article for the ancient ailment of womanhood; and like most fashionable cures, it mistakes the symptom for the disease. We are told that a woman gains some magnificent liberty by at last declaring that she does "not care" about a stray chin hair, a messy house, or the opinion of Jimmy Fallon. The portrait painted is that of a prisoner rattling the bars of her cage, a cage constructed of matching socks and shaved legs, and at last bursting forth into a glorious and untidy freedom.

But the fundamental flaw in this new creed is that it mistakes the nature of both caring and freedom. The authors of this "revolt" do not, in fact, stop caring. They simply begin to care, with a fiery and religious intensity, about not caring. A woman who genuinely does not care about her uncombed hair does not film a manifesto about it in her motorcar; she simply forgets her hair is uncombed and thinks about the price of eggs or the glory of God. This movement is not an exercise in indifference, but a highly self-conscious performance of it for a new audience. The tyranny of the "male gaze" has been thrown off only to be replaced by the much more demanding tyranny of the "We Do Not Care Club," which requires constant testimonials of one's own magnificent apathy.

…but what they are really being freed from is the beautiful and binding dance of humanity.

Furthermore, the entire premise rests on the bizarre assumption that the small duties and graces of life are nothing more than servile concessions to misogyny. Is it truly a patriarchal imposition for a wife to care what her family eats for dinner? Or is it, perhaps, the simple, earthy business of a home, an act of communion rather than subjugation? The traditional woman, who took a quiet pride in her appearance or her home, was not necessarily a slave to a man; she was often a master of her own domain, creating a small world of order and beauty. This new philosophy does not offer a woman a kingdom, but merely the "freedom" to live in a mess. It teaches her to find liberation not in building something, but in ceasing to build.

And what a desolate permission slip to hand to the young! We are told they are being freed from expectations, but what they are really being freed from is the beautiful and binding dance of humanity. The wish to be pleasing to another is not a weakness; it is the entire basis of courtesy, of romance, of friendship, and of society. This "revolt" does not teach a young woman to have her own standards, but to have no standards at all. It tells her that the way to answer the question, "Do you like me?" is not to answer "Yes" or "No," but to shout, "I don't care if you like me!"—which is, in human affairs, the most tragic answer of all. The great irony is this: in order to prove how little she cares what a man thinks, she must think about what a man thinks all day long.