Does a Lazy Girl Job Sound Good to You?
Let's Rethink Our Fascination with Effortless Income
Gen Z professional, Courtney Kalous, told me during the Great Resignation about a big moment in her career journey. She had long been a never-not-hustling professional, the kind who’s up at 5:30 AM, on the laptop by 6, and then at it till 10 PM. Then COVID hit, and, like a lot of people, she slowed down and started brain-looping “WhywuzIworkingsohard?” Some months later, a person came by her desk with a request, to which Courtney responded with a gentle but firm no. The coworker was taken aback.
What happened to the old you who always said yes to everything?
“She’s dead,” Courtney replied.
Courtney’s story came to mind recently while I was sorting through “the lazy girl job” phenomenon. (I’m going to call it LGJ, okay?) This trend traces to social media influencer Gabrielle Judge, who’s the designer of the Anti Work GirlBoss brand, which includes a Substack newsletter and some very smart reels. The trend encourages Gen Zs to seek a job that makes $60k-80k and makes space for nice things like sanity. Ms. Judges has achieved a kind of omnipresence on the internet; and everywhere she arrives, she’s saying a firm no to corporate hustle culture.
Not everybody loves the phenomenon. Even the Anti Work GirlBoss herself has warned against over-posting about your LGJ. (Um, your boss is on socials, too.)
But I admire the trend. For one thing, it has corporate workist types, especially on media outlets, worried. When I called up my fellow communication scholar, Dr. Bethany Keeley-Jonker, she noted that “aspirational laziness” is scary for corporate America. She also noted that the terms lazy and girl are sly turns of phrase. The LGJ phenomenon isn’t actually lazy, and it’s not just for girls. (Do you remember the last time that the term “girl” was gender neutral? The twelfth century.)
So, yes, I admire how LGJ undercuts the grind-till-you-get-there story that’s been circulating since before Working Girl came out in the 80s.
But there are some things to be uneasy about LGJ. Another friend of mine, a millennial marketer, noted, “I’m trying to figure out if I love this or hate this, which is very binary and western of me. I think it’s good and bad… like most things.” But in a way, Gabrielle Judge’s discourse compels binary thinking. “Lazy” is a deliberately provocative word, for example, and “girl” and “job” are also set over against oppositions. (The trend would not have taken off if it had been tagged #balancedhumanwork.) This quick-witted, super trim, and, yes, white influencer stokes our culture’s love of binaries, most of which I’m not—to put the matter gently—socially well-positioned to comment on. (Please see my profile photo, if you have questions on this point.)
But here’s a cold take. LGJ makes you wish for a job switch rather than a mode switch. I think we should flip that formula.
The Lazy Girl Job reminds me of the Big Rock Candy Mountain. You might remember that song from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou.
In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
There's a land that's fair and bright…
And the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings…
Although Americans do love us some hard work, in a pull-up-yer-own-damn-self sort of way, we also have a strain of utopianism. We hanker for a sudden, miraculous, radical overturning of sucky social arrangements. And while we’re at it, we’d like a new and much easier job.
Gabrielle Judge would probably respond that she’s just trying to help rising professionals survive an inequitable work environment. But what she hopes to replace the corporate rigamarole with—see, for example, this recommendation—sounds like more than survival. It sounds like salvation and the new creation.
“…quiet quitting allowed me to find another job that I could start a business on the side, then scale that business to the point I could leave. I also got a personality, new friends, a boyfriend, and better habits in the process! This is your time to get wildly curious about who you are, what you like, and how you truly want to make money.” - Gabrielle Judge
The LGJ trend strives to escape to a higher plane, where the entrepreneur and influencer and the passive-income maker exist radiantly in control. (If you’re curious, this has been attempted before. Americans are addicted to millenarianism.)
If you can’t find the Big Rock Candy Vocation, you can still make work better. The good news about LGJ is that it invites all of us into re-thinking what we need from our work. Here are two places to start:
Think through what your work means. Like Courtney, you might just need to put some space between your work and your identity. That old say-yes-to-everything worker self probably needs to be hospiced. To her credit, Gabrielle Judge would say the same. But even if you don’t fully channel the Lazy Girl, you can find ways to talk about with your manager about what you’re actually good at. Your job can probably mean more than it does. Not everything. But more.
Think through what your work gives. LGJ is right: you do need economic viability. But given the Great Resignation and the salary transparency movement and the growing strength of unions, I think you have some room to advocate from more of a place of strength than you might have even a few years ago. You might not need a different job. You might just need to do the hard work of persuasion in the job you have.
The psychotherapist Satya Doyle Byock says that rising professionals need both meaning and stability. In your job, you need work worth caring for, and you need a job that pays the bills, provides the meds, and feeds the pup. I’m with #lazygirljob to the degree that it helps you renegotiate meaning and stability. I’m certainly not against wanting something better in everyday work. But readers of this newsletter won’t be surprised to hear me say that what you need right now is likely a mode switch rather than a job switch.
-craig
Trying something new this week! Curated music for the day at work…
Thanks, Craig. What a compellingly thoughtful approach to the LGJ phenom.