Kate Shellnutt | Vox

How progressive Christian blogger Rachel Held Evans changed everything

2019-05-07T11:09:00-04:00

Rachel Held Evans died on May 4, 2019, at age 37. | Wikimedia Commons

Rachel Held Evans ruled a corner of the Christian internet for the past decade, where she challenged the evangelical faith of her childhood, advocating for women and LGBTQ rights in the church and debating big questions around theology, gender, sexuality, and science. She wrote four best-selling books and amassed more than 160,000 followers on Twitter.

Evans died Saturday at age 37, following more than two weeks in a medically induced coma due to an infection. During that time, the tweets poured in — first a prayer chain tagged #PrayforRHE, which trended nationwide on Good Friday last month, and then a stream of condolences and tributes.

Her well-wishers ranged from conservative evangelical leaders who openly disagreed with her stances as well as ones so theologically liberal that they disagreed with the notion of prayer. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in American Christianity eliciting such a broad response.

This outpouring of support reflects the exceptional place Evans held as one of the most popular yet polarizing Christian figures in the internet era. Another hashtag, #BecauseofRHE, offers glimpses at her legacy — and how she shaped online discussion of faith, especially for women, and paved the way for a generation of fellow writers, speakers, and leaders to build a following online.

“An accidental feminist”

Evans hit it big in Christian circles during the blogging heyday that took off more than a decade ago. Between the rise of the mommy bloggers and the Instagram influencers taking over our feeds today, her eponymous site, RachelHeldEvans.com, launched in 2007, part of a genre of early evangelical women bloggers who gathered online for deeper discussions of their faith.

“I am an accidental feminist, for my liberation did not come from Simone de Beauvoir or Betty Friedan, but from Mary and Martha, Junia and Priscilla, Phoebe and Tabitha,” she wrote in 2012. “It came from the marvelous and radical recognition that if the gospel is good news for them, then maybe it is good news for me too … and that maybe that boy in my youth group was wrong.”

Evans and fellow Christian women engaged in rigorous theological debates once assumed reserved for male leaders with PhDs; they affirmed each other’s callings to teach, write, and lead; they posted confessions about struggling with depression or singleness or motherhood or doubt.

“When the Christian blogosphere was mostly pastors’ musings on one hand and women’s devotional ‘encouragement’ on the other, Rachel wrote confidently that her mind was made to know God,” wrote Katelyn Beaty, who co-founded a women’s blog at the evangelical magazine Christianity Today in 2009.

“Never fitting the ‘traditional Christian woman’ mold (thank goodness), Rachel labored to untangle Christianity from cultural norms that told women to be quiet and let men do the theological heavy lifting,” Beaty continued. “Rachel’s writing not only inspired other women across the theological spectrum to blog, teach, and write books; it inspired women to attend seminary and pursue preaching and lead churches.”

Evans remained relevant, even after readers shifted away from blogs in favor of social media posts

Nowadays, a single viral social media post can spur careers and book deals for Christian women — be it the record-breaking Facebook Live clip of a laughing “Chewbacca Mom” or the postpartum bikini pic posted by Rachel Hollis, who went on to become the author of the back-to-back best-sellers Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing. But fame was less instantaneous and less dependent on social media algorithms when Evans got her start; the blogosphere was all about networking and growing an audience.

Back when loyal readers bookmarked their favorites and comment sections were still a place for thoughtful debate, Evans credited her slow, steady growth in the first five years of her blog to “consistency and collaboration,” including regular guest posts fellow authors and leaders. One favorite series highlighted “women of valor,” or eshet chayil in Hebrew, a line taken from Proverbs 31, a Bible passage describing the strength of a woman of good character.

Evans not only worked her way up but also had staying power — she remained a relevant voice, even after readers shifted away from blogs in favor of social media posts, and, more significantly, when she left evangelicalism and became a member of the Episcopal Church in 2015.

Her first couple of books helped build her readership, playing into some of the publishing trends at the time. Her 2010 release was framed around living in the town made famous for fighting evolution during the Scopes Monkey Trial (Evolving in Monkey Town). Then came her reflections on Scripture after spending a year living according to the Bible’s commands for women — waking up before dawn, calling her husband “master,” growing out her hair — in A Year of Biblical Womanhood, which came out after a string of confessional books and magazine articles on similar experiments.

Online, Evans continued to push back against traditional evangelical positions, debating gender roles in the church and advocating for LGBTQ inclusion. At times, she was a friendly dialogue partner, and other times, a watchdog against the tradition she grew up in — earning the title “the most polarizing woman in evangelicalism” per the Washington Post, and being described as “saying the things pastors can’t” in the Christian magazine Sojourners.

One of her most-talked-about pieces was an essay on how making church “cool” wasn’t going to win back millennials. “When I left church at age 29, full of doubt and disillusionment, I wasn’t looking for a better-produced Christianity. I was looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity,” she wrote. “I had questions about science and faith, biblical interpretation and theology. I felt lonely in my doubts. And, contrary to popular belief, the fog machines and light shows at those slick evangelical conferences didn’t make things better for me. They made the whole endeavor feel shallow, forced and fake.” (Another was a piece defending her support as an anti-abortion Christian for Hillary Clinton, which ran at Vox.)

Evans’s legacy grew out of her “ex-vangelical” message, but also her transformative use of the blogging medium. Her trajectory modeled the blogger-to-author-to-conference-speaker path that many have gone on to follow.

“I know that there’s a lot of people who feel like, ‘Well who is she? She didn’t go to seminary, she hasn’t cut her teeth as a pastor,’” Evans told the Washington Post four years ago. “I think some people feel like it’s a little bit of a threat to authority, that somebody can just be a blogger, and people will listen to what they say.”

Recently, Evans and other popular names have found themselves at the center of a debate around authority and accountability for Christian bloggers. Online voices have become a go-to source of inspiration and Christian teaching, particularly for women who don’t have female leaders to look to in their own church communities.

Like Evans, these women have faced scrutiny. Once a female writer reaches a certain level of “Christian famous,” church leaders begin to look more closely at her beliefs and ask: Should this be the voice that millions of evangelical women listen to? If her teachings diverge from traditional evangelical positions, she too can expect to see her name in headlines calling out a “false gospel,” “blurry lines,” and even “heretical” teachings.

In 2016, Evans reached out to encourage Bible teacher Jen Hatmaker after she voiced support for same-sex marriage in an interview. The Texas mom was known for her hilarious slice-of-life blog entries and social media posts, and vocalizing her stance put her out of many conservative evangelicals’ good graces — off the shelves at LifeWay, the country’s largest Christian bookstore chain, and accused of sloppy theology by critics. “Thank you for blazing this trail when it was even harder to transverse,” Hatmaker replied. “Great will be your reward, sister.”

Popular blogger turned Oprah Book Club pick author Glennon Doyle inspired a wave of evangelical criticism a few years ago with her message of self-love and self-fulfillment as she divorced her husband and married US Women’s Soccer star Abby Wambach. Doyle has also shared Evans’s prayers for her during hard times.

Evans expressed support for other women, progressives and conservatives alike

These close friends, and her many followers, will no doubt continue Evans’s work carving out new spaces for progressive Christians in their writing and conferences. But Evans’s “atta-girls” did not just go out to like-minded writers. Even some of the most influential women in conservative evangelicalism, those whom Evans criticized and who publicly critiqued her books and views, recalled the messages they received from her over the years.

Trillia Newbell said though she would be considered “the other side” of Evans’s boundary-pushing conversation, the blogger had emailed her to compliment a piece she wrote for a conservative Christian outlet, the Gospel Coalition. “Many of us had private convos and mutual love for one another,” Newbell tweeted after Evans’s death. “Disagreed, but hoped the best.”

Despite their theological differences — these women shared the common experience being the subject of online ire. Another top Bible study author and ministry leader in the Southern Baptist Convention, Beth Moore, said, “Our tie was being the two most despised women in the Christian sector of social media and usually for opposite reasons. Talk about a peculiar bond. But it caused us to check on each other.”

Evans’s illness and death, coming on quickly and leaving behind two young children, has been a wake-up call for her followers — to grieve the sudden sting of death; to reconsider their interactions with their ideological opposites; to celebrate the good we see in others while they are still with us on earth. It’s also been a reminder of how far Christian women have come over the dozen years Evans spent writing online.

Today’s Christian women no longer have to work to prove their place; they are a vibrant and crucial force driving online discussions of faith. For those who have taken part in such conversations, Evans in some ways has offered us the “gift of going second.”

When it comes time to chronicle the history of the Christian internet, she will number among the early patron saints of the blogosophere and Twittersphere, a sharp and spunky voice that ignited progressive writers and sharpened conservative ones.

She was there from the beginning. I’m sad she won’t get to see how far Christian women go from here.

Kate Shellnutt is a journalist covering faith, women, and pop culture. She works as an editor at Christianity Today magazine. Find her on Twitter @kateshellnutt.

When I get a phone call, I assume someone died or is pregnant

2017-06-01T08:00:11-04:00

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I was going to meet up with her in just a couple of weeks. We had a Google Hangout with the rest of our friend group scheduled for the following Thursday. And yet, around 5:30 on a random weeknight, I looked down to see my college roommate calling out of the blue from five states away.

She must have news. She must be pregnant.

I thought it so fast that I felt guilty about it, as if a baby on the way were the only thing special enough to prompt an unplanned phone chat. But I was right: Early in the conversation — after our greetings and good-to-talk-to-yous — she disclosed her due date coming in the fall.

My friends and I keep updated on each other’s lives mostly by following each other social media and checking in over text. Yet when we need to talk over something significant — a new baby, a new job, a desperate prayer request, a personal victory — we skip the messaging apps and just call and hope the other person can answer.

I flashed to the impromptu calls that preceded this recent one, everyday scenes memorialized by surprise news: the Target aisle where I picked up to hear my childhood friend expecting her first, the lazy Saturday morning interrupted by a sorority sister announcing her baby. Then the harder ones: staring through my living room blinds as a friend shared about her miscarriage, sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor as my mom told me my granddad passed away. I know these phone conversations are exceptions in today’s text message culture.

I spend far more time typing than talking on my iPhone, as my strained thumbs can attest. And there are people who see this as a problem — a sign that technology is killing our social skills. But I think it’s making our communication better. Text and email puts me in contact with my friends, family, and colleagues more easily and more often. Staying connected with them digitally allows me to make the most of the conversation when we do talk voice to voice.

Just like the rest of our digital lives, we’ve slowly optimized the once-ordinary phone call, creating new expectations for how we keep in touch.

The texting takeover

Every day, more than 80 billion messages are tapped out and sent off over text, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. It’s a rapid-fire medium; digital marketers say 9 in 10 texts are read within three minutes of receiving them.

I’m not alone in my skewed texting-to-calling ratio. “Teens and young adults are prolific texters, and tend to reserve phone calls for important conversations and their closest relationships,” said Nicholas Brody, a communication studies professor at the University of Puget Sound in Washington state. “For many people, phone calls can even be considered impolite because they infringe on our time and personal space — you have to devote your full attention and focus to a call, whereas texting allows you to multitask.”

Just like we’ve gotten used to time-shifting our Netflix binges and DVR queues, texting lets us deal with messages on our own schedules. A poorly timed phone call can feel like an unwelcome interruption or cause for concern (my go-tos are that someone has died or someone is pregnant). “You can’t call anybody anymore,” declared comedian Aziz Ansari in his 2015 standup special. “If you call someone, they be like, ‘What? Are you on fire? Then quit wasting my time! Text me that shit!’”

Our relentless instinct to send a message instead of start a conversation concerns psychologists like Sherry Turkle, best known for her TED talks and books about the drawbacks of a society increasingly glued to their smartphone screens.

Our use of technology, Turkle argues, stunts character building and relationships. Text messages and social media posts do not require the self-reflection or build the sense of empathy we get from prolonged, face-to-face conversation; instead, they let us escape it. Anyone who has ever planned out a message relaying difficult news to skip out on an uncomfortable phone call — or, worse, looked down at our phones to avoid a tense conversation in person — knows she has a point.

“We are tempted to think that our little ‘sips’ of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t,” she wrote. “Connecting in sips may work for gathering discrete bits of information or for saying, ‘I am thinking about you.’ Or even for saying, ‘I love you.’ But connecting in sips doesn’t work as well when it comes to understanding and knowing one another.”

Connecting over conversation

But I don’t think the intimacy of conversation and the efficiency of messaging are competing factors. Making communication easier — and thereby more regular — actually helps me keep in touch better and deepens my relationships with my friends.

The calls and texts that Turkle sees as interruptions to real-life conversations have become my lifeline, especially with a network of friends scattered across states and time zones. About 60 percent of adults under 35 don’t live in their hometowns, and our iPhones let us see and hear from people more easily than previous technology ever could.

By relying on the strengths of each format — calling and texting — millennials like me have developed a hybrid communication model. We use long strings of message for quick updates and silly chatter, then the occasional phone date or immediate call for the really important stuff. It works out: The generation that uses text, email, and social media the most also places the most cellphone calls, according to polling by Gallup.

“Young adults supplement vocal interactions with textual ones — rather than replacing them out of some instinctive fear of interacting with a human being,” concluded a Nielsen Norman Group report.

When it comes time to catch up, my pals and I text to make plans to talk at length: a free weeknight, a long drive, or the baby’s nap time. During marathon chat sessions with faraway friends, we gab for 20 minutes to an hour.

Weeks of texts and social media updates give us plenty to talk about. Our calls go on for so long that by the time I hang up, my iPhone screen is cloudy with makeup that’s sweated off my cheek, or, if we’re video-chatting, the battery’s down to low power mode. It’s the highlight of my week.

A handful of sorority sisters and I used to get together to check in every Monday night in college. For years, we’ve recreated the gathering online every couple of months. Last time, we logged on from four states to catch up on home remodels, new baby milestones, and summer moves, while dreaming of a group vacation at the beach later this year.

Friendship experts say to keep texting in between scheduled phone calls, which have become the best way to reach people with busy schedules and family demands. Otherwise, “the friendship will drift apart, which can lead to one or both people feeling guilt for not calling more (and) hurt feelings for not feeling like a priority,” said Shasta Nelson, the author of Frientimacy and founder of a site about female friendship.

For special occasions

In the end, there’s a good reason we have embraced text messaging with open emoji arms: It makes life so much easier. I’m not surprised when my friends’ voicemail messages instruct callers to text instead. I regularly call people for work, only to have them request I send along the information in a text or email as well.

But no matter how popular messaging becomes, as long as people keep scheduling phone dates, calling us on our birthdays, and startling us with a ring out of the blue, we’ll know that phone conversations still have their place. The fact that we save our calls for special people and special occasions shows how much they still matter.

When I discussed my phone habits with Debra Fine, a networking consultant who specializes in face-to-face small talk, even she admitted “nobody has the time” for the kind of regular calls she used to have with her girlfriends. “Instantaneous technology has brought us so much. It’s not all negative,” she said.

Any sense of “phone phobia” or concern over inconveniencing the person on the other end shouldn’t keep us from reaching out. Remember, if our call is a burden, Fine said, “they have the option not to answer.”

And then we can send a text.

Kate Shellnutt is a journalist covering faith, women, and pop culture. She works as an editor at Christianity Today magazine. Find her on Twitter @kateshellnutt.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

The case for going to bed at 2:30 am

2017-03-01T10:02:30-05:00

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It was like a dream.

Last Wednesday, I hit every green light on the drive to Kroger. I made it through the aisles in 15 minutes and didn’t have to wait in line at checkout. Back home, I prepped meals and washed dishes without anyone interrupting or asking when dinner would be ready.

When I got online, the chatter on Facebook and Twitter hushed. I made it to inbox zero before receiving any more incoming messages, then finally broke through my writer’s block to finish my latest article for work.

The secret to my miraculous productivity? I started at midnight.

Night owls aren’t the lazy, distracted weirdos the early crowd makes us out to be. When the rest of the world winds down, we work, create, and tinker on our own schedules. Each evening, I watch the typical bedtimes pass by and wait for that jolt of energy and inspiration that comes well past twilight.

The daily pattern I share with many of the chronic night owls of the world is known as delayed sleep phase disorder. Essentially, our internal clocks end up set a few hours behind typical sleeping and waking hours.

For us, staying up late is the easy part. The real challenge comes when we wake up and face the early risers, who still see night owls as lazy, juvenile, and unhealthy. And today’s hyperawareness around the importance of sleep has only made our reputations worse.

My unusual sleep schedule comes with a heavy dose of guilt

I feel more energized and inspired after-hours than I do during the 9 to 5. I don’t suffer from restlessness or insomnia; I’ll get a good, deep slumber once I’m ready … it’s just a lot later than everybody else. I typically get to bed at 2:30 am, and my alarm goes off between 8:30 and 9. Most days, I’ll catch a nap in the afternoon or evening to make up for any sleepiness.

Both environmental and genetic factors have been linked to these offset circadian rhythms, so people with delayed sleep can’t fully control when their bodies get tired, or when they’re ready to get up.

This doesn’t stop articles, schedules, or well-intentioned friends from insisting we’d be better off if we just made ourselves go to bed “at a normal time.”

Night owls remain a misunderstood, maligned minority. We defy the conventional wisdom, missing out on the proverbial worm and whatever instincts make early risers “healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Researchers estimate that about one in 10 adolescents go through a period of delayed sleep, but just a fraction of 1 percent still have the condition into adulthood.

Because so many teens and college kids naturally stay up late and sleep in longer, people associate that pattern with immaturity and childishness. Staying up until the wee hours is something you’re expected to grow out of; adulting means you embrace your 6 am wakeup with joy. (For bonus grown-up points, you complain that you can’t make it to midnight, even on New Year’s Eve.)

Those of us still hours from our alarms when others have completed their morning routines know we’re getting the figurative side-eye for staying in bed. I sense a bit of rise-and-shine smugness from the friend who posts a list of the things she got done before 9 am or even the countless articles on how to become a morning person. We’re all expected to conform to the early bird schedule; Real Simple and Women’s Health aren’t doling out tips on how to stay up later.

At least once a month, I’m still up when my husband’s iPhone alarm goes off at 4:30 am. He wanders out of the bedroom in boxer shorts, squints at me typing away on my glowing laptop on the couch, and shakes his head. (I now feel a Pavlovian shame whenever I hear that guitar strum ringtone.)

I have to disclose my habits when staying the night at someone’s house or sharing a hotel room. Earlier sleepers tend to assume if you’re staying up late, you’re watching TV or playing video games, forgetting that people can run errands, work, and spend their time productively past midnight. Even normal tasks — bouncing away on the treadmill at 24 Hour Fitness or mailing a package at the always-open automated post office kiosk — seem covert when done so late.

My faith doused our cultural preference for early birds with biblical backing, too, making me feel even guiltier. Within American evangelicalism, many expect faithful Christians to dedicate the “first fruits” of each day to “quiet time” with the Lord (prayers, devotional reading, Bible study). Researchers even found people to be more “spiritually aware” early in the mornings.

Faced with these expectations, I really did question whether my habits were sinful: Was I being selfish by staying up late? Was I putting productivity over the natural patterns of work and rest?

The real problem for delayed sleepers: adhering to the 9-to-5 work schedule

But guilt pangs aren’t the worst of it: We suffer at work. Even as flexible schedules become more common, employers still favor the early birds and penalize those who take advantage of adjustable hours.

“In three separate studies, we found evidence of a natural morning bias at work,” said Kai Chi Yam, co-author of a University of Washington business school study. “Compared to people who choose to work earlier in the day, people who choose to work later in the day are implicitly assumed to be less conscientious and less effective in their jobs.

Even though I work from home in a job that allows me to shift my schedule, I still try to conceal when I’m up and when I sleep to avoid confusing people or having to defend my weird hours. I’ll write a batch of emails after 1 am and schedule an alarm to send them at 9. Before my first call of the day, whether it’s at 9, 10, or 11 am, I’ll practice talking to my dog so I don’t sound groggy when I get on the phone. (The worst is when someone decides to video-chat rather than call; I’ve had to pretend my camera wasn’t working to conceal frizzy hair and pajamas.)

But sometimes I let things slip. When an alert popped up on a work message board the other night, I replied without glancing at the time. “Oh my goodness. Did I wake you up?” my concerned colleague asked. He was working in Nairobi. It was 11 am there, and 3 am on the East Coast.

Fewer than 5 percent of American workers have a job where they’re on the clock between midnight and 4 in the morning, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most night owls are forced to work during normal times, despite any hopes or plans for a job that lets them work in the off hours.

A night owl wrote into Ask A Manager about how she went into the science field knowing labs often operate on their own schedules. She accepted a job where they assured her she could work late. But they still scheduled her experiments in the morning.

“I am experiencing a lot of anxiety about trying to become an early riser,” she said.

She added that she feels physically sick from getting up early and worrying that those who read her question, like her co-workers, might tell her to just suck it up. Luckily, the advice-giver was a fellow night owl and agreed: Not getting to sleep when you want can be a legitimate deal breaker.

I’ve tried — and failed — to adopt the early to bed, early to rise schedule

Most American adults fall asleep between 10 and midnight, and over the years, I’ve tried to join them. After all, the science seems to be on their side: Studies boast that early birds are more agreeable, more proactive, happier, and healthier.

I’ve made sincere attempts to reform, knowing it would be easier on me and my partner if we could just sleep at the same time. I’ve given up caffeine for a month, eliminated late-night screentime, played relaxing recordings, dabbed essential oils on my temples, charted sleep cycles, and even started a dose of melatonin — the hormone that cues our sleep patterns.

Nothing worked. Instead, I’d lie in bed for a few hours feeling panicked about still being awake hour after hour before dozing off around my usual time. Most nights, trying to fall asleep early felt as futile as forcing myself to grow 5 inches taller or changing the color of my hair through the power of concentration. It just wasn’t going to happen.

How I made peace with my predicament

A former roommate is now a psychologist specializing in sleep and mood disorders. She remembers me working and watching YouTube makeup tutorials (another strategy to get to sleep) until the wee hours back when we lived together in grad school seven years ago. I recently confessed to her how I’m still staying up late. When I described how it feels better for me to work a few hours later and sleep in a few hours more, she immediately responded with two words: delayed sleep.

Going to bed at 3, by choice, makes me more than just a “night person.” But there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, she assured me. Unless my delayed sleep phase starts to negatively impact my life, it’s fine for me to keep burning the midnight oil. If I start struggling to get enough sleep overall, feeling an emotional or physical toll as a result, or slacking at work, she said, I can take action then.

People have mixed results with treatment, but it takes a deliberate effort trick our internal clock to shifting a few hours earlier — bedtime adjustments night after night with melatonin or exposure to a light box in the morning.

Ultimately, learning about delayed sleep helped me sleep easier. My late-night writing inspiration, marathon sleep-in sessions on weekends, and Garfield-like distaste for mornings all had an explanation that went all the way down to the cellular level. I wasn’t resisting the world’s sleep schedule; I was conforming to my own. Deep down I always believed that staying up late wasn’t the result of some moral deficiency — now I felt like I had the proof.

For years, every time I discovered someone else who stayed up past midnight, I felt less like an anomaly and more like a part of a clandestine, late-night club. Some stayed up with medical issues, new babies, and looming deadlines, but others simply preferred to work after dark.

These are my people.

For all the knocks against night owls, we remain regarded as more creative, impulsive, and strategic thinkers. There’s something to the caricature of the artist, inventor, or writer staying up chasing their ideas. Josh Fox, the Oscar-nominated documentary director, said working late is part of his process: “I’m a night owl, and luckily my profession supports that. The best ideas come to me in the dead of night. My friends know I’m up, so they can call at three in the morning. Just don’t call me at, like, 8.”

I get it. I feel most clear-headed, productive, and energized in the evenings, free to work as long as I’d like. If you’ve ever gone to work in an empty office — on a weekend or holiday or a day when everybody else was on vacation — that’s what working after midnight feels like. There are no meetings, no places to be, no disruptions. It’s eerily quiet, just you and your thoughts.

The more we give night people the freedom to lean into their after-dark rhythms, I believe the more we’ll continue to see the benefits of flexible schedules, as employee satisfaction and efficiency thrive.

I understand the concerns around America’s messed-up sleep habits — so severe that the Centers for Disease Control declared insufficient sleep a public health problem last year. But we can’t conflate staying up late with not sleeping enough. Sleep delay, though it can be linked to other sleep issues, is not the primary culprit here.

Night owls and early birds and everyone in between, we’re all verging on burnout and could use healthier sleep habits. So let’s tuck our cell phones in and do whatever we can to get our uninterrupted six, seven, or eight hours of rest.

But if we want people who are up late to get in more zzz’s, we don’t have to demand they go to bed earlier; we can simply let them sleep in.

Kate Shellnutt is a journalist covering faith, women, and pop culture. She works as an editor at Christianity Today magazine. Find her on Twitter @kateshellnutt.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

Watch: Late sleeper? Blame your genes.

Why your Facebook feed is filled with women selling essential oils and press-on nails

2017-12-14T11:43:00-05:00

I had to draw the line at sex toys.

A Facebook invitation titled “Girls Night In!!” promised games, wine, and “an evening of fabulous fun” at a friend’s house. I read on for the rest: Would I be interested in tips and tricks to improve my relationship? And what about the chance to learn about a brand new line of products — no pressure! — from an exciting company called Pure Romance?

By then, I’d become accustomed to these kinds of parties, where friends who work for multilevel marketing companies try to sell me their wares. I’d watched cooking demos. I’d sniffed dozens of candles and essential oils. I’d flipped through before-and-after pictures of bellies tightened though health shakes, exercise videos, and body wraps. I’d listened and nodded when friends spouted sales pitches for their favorite products.

A few times I even ordered something. My little purchases — a $17 cutting board, a $30 necklace — barely represent a drop of the $7.5 billion spent at home parties each year, according to estimates from the Direct Selling Association.

I’ve come to recognize MLM as another outlet for female ambition, for “leaning in” and “having it all”

When the Pure Romance invite came, I imagined myself grazing on store-bought cookies and trying to make small talk while an acquaintance from church vied for her commission on lube and vibrators. The scenario seemed so absurd that it caused me to question the whole industry. Suddenly, the pitches filling my Facebook feed and the parties stealing away Saturdays didn’t feel like an annoyance to endure but a mystery to unpack: What’s really happening here?

Multilevel marketing (MLM), this model of friends selling to friends on behalf of a company, hadn’t just taken over my networks; it was everywhere. About one in seven US households include someone involved in direct sales, and participation skews female — 92 percent of in-home sales parties are thrown by women, the national association reports.

Thirty-One Gifts (personalized bags), Team Beachbody (fitness products), It Works! (weight loss wraps), and Scentsy (candles) all entered the industry within the past decade or so, and thanks to mostly female customers, each now brings in around a half-billion dollars a year. (Side note: A company whose name includes the words “it works” and an exclamation point? How reassuring.)

A Facebook callout for a nail-art MLM company. (Facebook)

MLM is not only growing financially but spreading geographically. Though traditionally more popular in the Midwest and South, home parties are turning up in Northeast cities, the New York Times noted last year, with sellers packing friends into small apartments to sell jewelry, beauty products, and, yes, sex toys.

It’s a complicated trend. It’s not always easy to parse the motivations of the sellers, who rely on their networks for income, or of the companies, which often stand to profit at their distributors’ expense. And as uncomfortable as it can make me, I’ve come to recognize MLM as another outlet for female ambition, for “leaning in” and “having it all.” Its surging popularity reflects, and attempts to address, our current social tensions over women and work.

Why women are drawn to multilevel marketing, as sellers and buyers

Women are primed for MLM as both buyers and sellers. After I got married and moved to suburban Tennessee in my mid-20s, I discovered that anywhere women gathered —yoga classes, PTA meetings, Bible studies, mom groups, Bunco leagues, book clubs — there was a party invite or sales pitch lurking.

Eager to make connections with people in a new place, I was content to at least hear them out. Psychologists would probably say that some of this impulse was due to my gender; women who want to protect relationships often avoid the disruption of saying no. “It’s risky because [MLM] promises women time with their friends, and downplays the sales aspect,” one sociologist told the New York Times. “But of course, ultimately the goal is to sell products.”

In my new community, at-home moms hosted parties as a way to start working again, and working women added MLM as a side hustle. Amped up by company training and fellow sellers, these women were motivated to do their thing€ — to work on their own schedule and scale, to establish their own goals and milestones. They were so passionate about their products and companies that they wanted to recruit me to sell too.

This approach has been popular since Brownie Wise invited fellow ’50s housewives to demonstrate Earl Tupper’s line of plastic containers at one of her “patio parties.” Just a few years later, in 1954, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance wrote that 20 million American women a year attended “sales parties in the home.”

Nearly that many sell MLM today. Their gatherings go by many names: ladies’ nights, parties, coffee dates, receptions, and brunches. The internet adds a dimension that Wise never had, nor our mothers who sold Mary Kay and Avon. Today’s MLM salespeople aren’t limited to the ladies they see around the neighborhood. Through online parties, they present their entire social network with their product testimony and the opportunity to buy.

A sorority sister looped me into a Facebook group for a lash-lengthening mascara by Younique, the first company built almost exclusively around these online parties. For two weeks, she shared before-and-after pictures of her eye makeup, her lashes shooting out like tiny black pipe cleaners, and reminded us that for $30 we could get the same results.

Only a tiny percentage of sellers make money from multilevel marketing

To get started, MLM sellers usually pay $100 to $250 upfront for a starter kit of products to display and demonstrate. Once customers place orders, they earn commission in money, free products, or both. When my best friend looked up a nail wrap company she discovered through a friend pitching on Facebook, she was shocked to realize, “She sells Jamberrys to earn more Jamberrys.” The bonuses her friend was working toward came in the form of retail credit; after selling dozens of nail wraps, she’d make enough to get six or seven sets for herself.

The big money comes from recruiting additional sellers and earning a percentage on their sales too. The more friends they can convince to join their sales teams, the more they can compound their own earnings … and company profit. But here’s the catch: The vast majority of the millions of women sending out Facebook invites and setting up party displays on coffee tables don’t develop the robust, sustained “downlines” necessary to make real profit.

A Facebook callout for the MLM company Thirty-One Gifts. (Facebook)

Financial disclosure statements reveal that across companies, women who make bank from MLM are the 1 percent … or the 0.1 percent. For example, a few dozen Thirty-One Gifts consultants do get paid six-figure sums. But it’s no get-rich-quick scheme — they have been building their businesses for five to 10 years before reaching the top tiers, where they have higher commissions, bigger bonuses, and more consultants under them to mentor.

Most MLM reps remain at the lowest level of the company. They may bring in a few hundred to a thousand dollars a year, if that. At Thirty-One, 92 percent of the 130,000 consultants make $500 a year on average. At Young Living, so many distributors sign up just for the personal discount on essential oils that nine out of 10 average just $12 a year.

Even a relatively small check each month can look and feel like income — €”enough to cover a few bonus purchases, a pedicure, or a weekend vacation. In reality, though, it rarely outweighs the time and costs of doing business. Promotional materials, training resources, party supplies, and taxes add up. Some companies, like Team Beachbody, require sellers to pay a monthly fee and continue to buy the products.

The awkward social dynamics of MLM

The social cost can be huge, too. When I began asking my friends directly about MLM, they were relieved to finally open up about something so pervasive yet rarely discussed. I heard stories from people who cut off relationships due to the sales pressure. Many admitted to blocking Facebook friends whose updates constantly centered on their company and the new sales levels they reached. Several stopped speaking to friends — even siblings — who continued to ask them to buy, or to get in on the “opportunity” to sell, even after they had declined.

Beyond the awkward social dynamics, I noticed a shift in identity among the sellers I knew. These smart, college-educated women began parroting the companies’ lofty promotional language of purpose, empowerment, and personal development. It Works! invites sellers to “live the dream” of paying off debt and spending more time with their family through becoming a “wrapreneur.” Scentsy wants you to “reach your goals” and “find joy in the journey.”

These women declared that their whole lives had changed thanks to MLM. They’d found their dream jobs as small-business owners and saleswomen. Not only that, they were happier, healthier, better versions of themselves, all because of whatever beloved product they were pitching.

To me, on the outside, it looked like overcompensation. It seemed like they were selling out and settling for a job that could potentially steal away time and money without much to show for it. I thought — perhaps narrow-mindedly — that they could do better than a kit and a sales pitch.

Financial disclosure statements reveal that across companies, women who make bank from MLM are the 1 percent … or the 0.1 percent

When I took a closer look, though, I realized there was something far more significant than products, parties, and profits going on. Multilevel marketing strikes certain women deeply. It gives them something they aren’t finding elsewhere: a sense of achievement, mentorship, community, or purpose.

Some women struggle to thrive in traditional office settings, and work-life and work-family tensions are obviously major reasons for that. When workplaces lack substantial maternity leave, child care options, or flexible schedules for working moms, women from the high-achieving lawyer to the hourly worker can burn out fast. (In case you forgot, the US remains the only developed country without mandated paid leave options for parents and where moms routinely face job and pay discrimination.)

I watched a former classmate return to her marketing job a few months after having her first baby. No less than two weeks later, she announced her plans to leave the business to stay home with her daughter … and sell skincare products from an MLM company called Rodan + Fields.

She called the switch an “exciting new journey,” even though she left behind a full-time salary and benefits for 10 percent commission on a few parties and online sales a month. The chance to work from home and set your own hours has that strong an appeal.

Certain subcultures present additional barriers for working women. I’m the exceptional Army wife who gets to work full time and has been able to keep my job as a remote-based editor as we get transferred from duty station to duty station.

Few military spouses get so lucky. I’ve met wives who intended to become teachers, researchers, realtors, and nurses but ended up as housewives or stay-at-home moms due to military moves. The parking lot for the commissary on post is dotted with car decals advertising sellers’ custom websites for Thirty-One Gifts and Scentsy.

These ventures have also taken off within religious communities. As I reported for the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, several major MLM companies — from historic Amway to Thirty-One Gifts — were founded by Christians, and they incorporate worship and Christian speakers into their corporate training.

Additionally, Jamberry, Younique, doTerra Essential Oils, and Young Living Essential Oils are all headquartered in a heavily Mormon area outside of Salt Lake City. They can provide a loophole for women whose faiths discourage them from working outside the home.

“As long as MLMs are regarded by conservative Christians as a more honorable option for women than a normal part-time or full-time job, these organizations will continue to attract women within the church at significant rates,” said Jen Wilkin, a Christian author and minister who leads a women’s Bible study in Dallas, in the Christianity Today article.

In the midst of military communities and church culture, I’m always navigating around MLM. We’ve since moved from Tennessee to Georgia, where I had to start making friends all over again. After a few weeks at a new church, a woman finally invited me to hang out. I thought I’d made a connection at last — only to end up sampling essential oils on her couch that night. I came home with a tiny bottle of cedarwood oil to rub on my feet to help me sleep.

For us friends turned clients, it’s hard not to be cynical or skeptical. But perhaps some of our questions are best directed at the surrounding society, rather than just the sellers themselves. The workplace norms that put women at a disadvantage — and other practical, theological, and cultural considerations — are ultimately what force many women into MLM. They may not see another way for fulfilling (and hopefully profitable) work.

The MLM industry can be a wake-up call to communities and companies. Women are so motivated to work that they’ll do it for next to nothing and will bring their friends, relatives, and neighbors into their businesses. Imagine how successful they’d be if they were given the adequate support, flexibility, and training to do it in your office.

Kate Shellnutt is a journalist covering faith, women, and pop culture. She works as an editor at Christianity Today magazine, where she wrote a cover story on the relationship between evangelicalism and multilevel marketing. Find her on Twitter @kateshellnutt.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

Ivanka Trump’s advice for working women: change yourselves, not the world

2016-09-01T16:30:37-04:00

Whose life could possibly resemble Ivanka Trump’s?

A millionaire heiress, former model, businesswoman, and aspiring first daughter, she wakes up most mornings in the penthouse of a building named for her family and slips on a dress with her name on the tag. She’s impossibly put-together — one of those rare celebrities who doesn’t even get caught in a ball cap and featured in the “just like us” section of Us Weekly.

Needless to say, I’ve never thought Ivanka Trump was like me at all. But Danae Branson has. The small-town Minnesota business owner and the celebrity executive are both moms of three, entrepreneurs, and hardworking women with positive attitudes and lots of ambition.

“I can’t say exactly when I noticed her, but being a woman around my age in a male-dominated field, she was an inspiration,” said Branson, who spent the first several years of her career trying to prove herself to her male colleagues in the early-2000s finance industry. “I felt drawn to follow her.”

The Iowa State University grad now runs a virtual assistants business out of her home, and — in addition to her subscription to Entrepreneur magazine and YouTube videos from her favorite motivational speaker Marie Forleo — follows career advice on IvankaTrump.com. Trump’s site is a fusion of a lifestyle blog and Lean In-style inspiration for millennial women.

Branson keeps up with the site’s work section each week, as well as Trump’s Women Who Work initiative, a collective of 50 entrepreneurial women — CEOs of companies like makeup subscription service Birchbox, STEM-friendly toy maker GoldieBlox, and financial planning firm LearnVest — who lend their expertise to the site. (This summer, Trump announced she’s also writing a Women Who Work book.)

A recent post on delegating tasks and giving constructive criticism resonated perfectly with Branson’s leadership philosophy for the 60 women working for her company, Elite Scheduling Services. “I love this!” she wrote in the article’s comments section. “I try to teach my clients to do these things to get the most success out of their relationship with their virtual assistant.”

More on women and work

Ivanka Trump’s fingerprints are all over Donald Trump’s new child care plan

Branson is one of hundreds of thousands of IvankaTrump.com readers who see Trump as a role model. Ivanka Trump has 2.1 million followers on Twitter, 1.5 million on Facebook, and 1.1 million on Instagram. Across platforms, that’s more than Sheryl Sandberg, Gloria Steinem, and #Girlboss author Sophia Amoruso combined. More remarkable than the numbers: Her fans include Donald Trump opponents and die-hard supporters, proud feminists and women like Branson who have never used that label.

I chatted with 20 of these loyal readers and half a dozen of Trump’s Women Who Work partners, in addition to perusing every post on her site from the past four months. IvankaTrump.com hits the major millennial touchstones: a page of inspirational quotes ready to be pinned and Instagrammed; pretty images paired with each daily post; and taglines that reference adulting, life hacks, and mompreneurs.

Unlike more focused feminist campaigns or snarkier women’s blogs, IvankaTrump.com offers a relentlessly positive feminism built around Trump’s gentle charisma. It’s like she wants to defy the bumper stickers and be the exceptional “well-behaved woman” who does make history.

Her advice implies that all of us have the potential for happier, healthier, better organized, and more fulfilling lives at work and at home. The obvious obstacles women face in the workplace — racism, privilege, and other disparities — do not fit with Trump’s inspirational tone. For women who want to change themselves and push themselves to do more, her message is empowering. For women who want to see the world around them change, it’s disappointing.

“We have content to help you be your best self”

When it comes to gender issues, Ivanka Trump is in a unique spot. At July’s Republican National Convention, Trump brought up how the wage gap is greatest for married mothers, who make 77 cents to a man’s dollar. She promised to fight alongside her dad for equal pay for equal work and affordable child care. “I know how hard it is to work while raising a family. And I also know that I’m far more fortunate than most. American families need relief,” she told the crowd.

Her stated positions are liberal enough to fit within the working women movement, but family-centered enough to appeal to women who might be wary of a “feminist” campaign. Her business background and faith (she’s a convert to Orthodox Judaism) also help her conservative cred.

Her site reflects that delicate balance. Ivanka Trump’s site pulses with her famous father’s influence, but not in the way you might expect. Donald Trump’s outlook was shaped by Norman Vincent Peale, his family’s pastor and the author of The Power of Positive Thinking, a famous 1950s self-help book that inspired a generation to “eliminate self-doubt” and “always picture success.”

His daughter carries on this positive legacy in her own way. On her site, you won’t find hot takes or angry critiques, no rants against patriarchy or commiserations over working motherhood. Everything is how-to and can-do. Each post is angled to be constructive, even if the topic seems miserable. According to IvankaTrump.com, you can make the most of those boring jobs and unpaid internships! Daunted at having to return to work after having a baby? There’s a list of tips for that too, including: Have the sitter text you pics during the day or start planning for your next vacation.

“Just this morning, I saw something on Ivanka’s site called ‘Five Ways to Deal with Passive-Aggressive People,’” Jessie Hatchette, a working mom who subscribes to Trump’s email newsletters and YouTube channel, told me. “I come across many people with this communication style, so this gave me practical guidance that I could take right from the screen to the street.”

Hatchette, who’s preparing to launch a government contracting company in the DC area, said Trump’s tips on communication and relationships have been particularly relevant since they apply in and out of the office. She’s a mother of three, getting ready to balance more schedules and demands once her kids go back to school

“IvankaTrump.com is designed to inspire and empower women to achieve on their own individual definition of success,” stated Abigail Klem, chief brand officer (and, according to her bio, bedtime storyteller, ever-improving cook, yogi, mother, sister, and aunt). “Regardless of where you’re at in your career, we have content to help you be your best self.”

Broad applicability is key; the advice on IvankaTrump.com is less about what you do and more about the attitude with which you do it.

“I find her ideas and way of thinking very fresh and evolved, and I love how she marries conservatism with progressiveness in her life,” said Hatchette, who defends equal rights for women in society and shared responsibilities in the home, where her husband steps in to cook when she’s busy. “She’s defining what (today’s) woman looks like, and that definition looks like a pillar of strength and softness.”

Some of Trump’s Women Who Work affiliates, many of them leading companies geared toward women and women’s empowerment, have continued to partner with her while supporting Hillary Clinton. Hitha Palepu, COO of the philanthropy startup Bridge2Act and a travel blogger, proudly tweets #ImWithHer, while posting her packing tips to IvankaTrump.com.

“The beauty of the #WomenWhoWork initiative is how it celebrates every role of a woman — including that of an engaged citizen,” said Palepu, who met Ivanka Trump at a holiday party last year. “While we support different presidential candidates, I respect Ivanka and how she chooses to participate in this presidential election. I continue to have a great working relationship with her and her team.”

“She really does celebrate and highlight the real day-to-day questions that a working mom would need”

Certain words come up again and again when I ask women to describe Trump: classy, poised, confident, measured, genuine. Her career trajectory — graduating from Wharton Business School and getting straight into the corporate world — meant that she could avoid the disdain hurled at fellow “rich girl” daughters like Paris Hilton, Ally Hilfiger, and Kim Kardashian. The more Trump speaks and writes, the more she convinces the world that she is more than the product of her father’s name and money.

Reader Miranda Puritz says she has no problem believing a trust fund kid can work as hard as the rest of us. From the moment she saw Ivanka Trump as a Trump vice president and an adviser on The Apprentice several years ago, she recognized her business savvy. Puritz started following IvankaTrump.com on Facebook last year.

“She’s well-versed in executive procedures and management,” said Puritz, an insurance agent in California, who uses the time management resources on IvankaTrump.com to help her schedule as a parent. “I think women can learn a lot from Ivanka’s determination. … She’s fierce and gets the job done.”

Jessica Lawrence checks Trump’s Facebook and Instagram feeds as she prepares to go back to work as a mortgage banker after taking two years off to raise her three young kids — two boys and a girl, just like Trump’s. “I admire Ivanka for her style, professionalism, and the real-life moments that she shares,” the California native said. Her latest favorite article shared tips for being gracious and clear with workplace communication.

The advice, from executive coach Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, sounds like Trump herself: “If you can grow your workplace communication to include, as a part of your personal brand, a reputation for being cool under pressure, generous with praise, and respectful to others, your workplace communication will become one of your greatest assets as you rise to the top of the corporate ladder.”

Whether on Celebrity Apprentice, TV news, or her own YouTube channel, Trump is consistently articulate. I could listen to her talk about anything, even the election (which we’ve all heard enough about already). Trump pauses before responding to questions, smiles throughout, and gives measured responses. I hadn’t noticed her deeper tone and lack of up-speak until I read the tip in another article (“9 ways to make yourself irresistible”). According to the psychiatrist who wrote it: Lowering your voice at the end of a sentence “inspires a gravitational pull.”

Behind the scenes, her friendly persona holds up. “She’s one of the sweetest people, and very attainable,” said Katya Libin of the site Heymama, a community for fellow entrepreneurial moms. “I’ve sent her email, and she’s responded herself. No crazy assistant loopholes. For someone like her, that’s something really refreshing.”

The youngest of the Woman Who Work partners, Rachael Bozsik, tells a similar story. While she was in business school, her fan letter to Ivanka Trump resulted in Trump responding to compliment Bozsik’s job-coaching site The Brand Girls and inviting the 23-year-old to collaborate.

Libin and her co-founder Amri Kibbler teamed up with Trump because both run sites designed around working women and “this new American dream of having it all, even for a few minutes of the day.”

“One of the things that makes her content special is that she really does celebrate and highlight the real day-to-day questions that a working mom would need,” from career guidance to recipes to fashion inspiration, said the Brooklyn mom, who’s part of Women Who Work.

IvankaTrump.com: “women’s empowerment with no teeth behind it”

Open about her mom fails and proud of her baby bumps, Trump positions herself as a modern mother striving for work-life balance, just like everyone else. “The balance question comes up all the time … but it’s also a question I hate,” she said in a video on her YouTube channel, part of a series where she answers questions from social media.

Trump explained it this way: “How I think about my life, and this is in terms of my professional life and my personal life, is through the filter of my priorities. I try to ask myself the question as much as I can, ‘Am I living a life consistent with what I value?’ I think that that’s a more useful litmus test. Have we architected a life based on our priorities?”

But her reframing skips over some bigger issues. To state the obvious: She has more freedom to live out her values than the many moms whose work-life balance depends on finances, health, or opportunity. I don’t expect her to get into structural inequality in a one-minute clip, but still I worry about an icon for working moms running a space where privilege, racism, educational disparities, and other hard topics don’t get mentioned at all. I’m not ready to “change the dialogue” about women and work to something so feel-good and optimistic when there are still so many hurdles we still need to confront.

Earlier this month, the news tried to force Trump into the conversation over sexual harassment — another topic that does not appear on her site. As accusations mounted against former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, a skeptical Donald Trump said he hoped if Ivanka were in that situation, she’d just quit. Her brother said she was a “strong, powerful woman” who “wouldn’t allow herself” to be harassed. She then asserted in an interview that harassment is unacceptable — though her site still does not offer any advice on how women can combat it, let alone any calls for tougher policies against harassment.

IvankaTrump.com has nothing to say about sexual harassment.

I know that a more proactive approach to addressing controversial topics would turn off certain readers, either because they disagree with the approach or simply want a more supportive haven for life advice. According to a recent Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 30 percent of American women say they are not feminists, and 35 percent do not believe that today’s feminist movement is focused on changes women want. To keep reaching those who are ambivalent about feminism, Trump has to keep positive.

According to Jennifer Owens, editorial director of Working Mother Media, this approach is effective: “The more people talking about it, the better it is for all of us,” said Owens,

Working Mother listed Trump among the 50 most powerful moms of 2016. For its 37-year history, the publication has rallied behind issues for white-collar working moms like flexible schedules, paid leave, equal pay, and affordable child care.

Still, some activists assert that celebrity and brand feminism is too happy-go-lucky for the cause. “Feminism is not fun,” wrote Bitch magazine’s Andi Zeisler, author of the new book We Were Feminists Once. “It’s not supposed to be fun. It’s complex and hard and it pisses people off … The root issues that feminism confronts — wage inequality, gendered divisions of labor, institutional racism and sexism, structural violence and, of course, bodily autonomy — are deeply unsexy.”

And while Trump’s positive message draws some women in, it turns others off. Becoming a woman “who works” is nothing new for women of color who historically have lacked the option to stay home, points out Anthonia Akitunde, founder of a site for working moms of color called Mater Mea.

IvankaTrump.com, she said, “is pushing the ‘lifting yourself by the bootstraps’ narrative that focuses solely on hard work without giving credence to the things that make it difficult for people of color specifically.”

Atikunde’s site shares some similarities with Trump’s (advice for negotiating at work, style tips, and inspirational profiles of successful women), but it also talks about microaggressions, mental health, imposter syndrome, and other tough topics.

IvankaTrump.com “is there to present this idea of women’s empowerment that’s so popular right now, but doesn’t have any teeth behind it” and instead resembles a “WikiHow for women,” said Akitunde.

We’re not going to fight sexism with inspirational sayings and how-to lists alone

I believe Ivanka Trump has worked hard and strategically for her success. The kind of advice shared on her site has helped her, and she hopes it will help other women as well. But I also recognize that Trump has gotten far on a personality and business style that fit in the narrow path already afforded to women in the workplace. With her assured-but-approachable tone, she sidesteps the common pitfalls for ambitious women — who are too often deemed inept, bossy, or bitchy for behavior otherwise accepted in men.

Trump either has some supernatural likeability that has perfectly positioned her to navigate workplace bias, or she intentionally avoids it, with a sharp outfit and smile. She works a system that already seems tilted in her favor.

Her site’s advice implies that, in Akitunde’s words, “Put your head down and you’ll be able to be an Ivanka or a Tory Burch or whoever else.” I can see how that’s an encouragement for many women, but I already know I’m no Ivanka. I don’t want a backdoor, covert feminism that turns me into an acceptable kind of powerful woman through polite conversation and good posture.

I’m going to talk fast, speak my mind, and complain sometimes. I don’t want to have to cloak my opinions in nonthreatening language to seem nicer. I’m not going to straighten my curly hair to look more professional. I plan to keep being me. I can only hope the expectations for working women shift as more of us assert ourselves and model new ways to lead and achieve. (I know that probably means while Ivanka Trump is kicking butt in a board room, I’ll be left firing off sassy emails from my couch.)

I’ve spent too much time with the unapologetic feminism of sites like The Toast, Bustle, and Jezebel to sign off on an approach so sweet that it avoids real talk and real issues — even if I did glean some good advice about organizing my to-do lists and giving up on my pursuit of inbox zero. We’re not going to fight sexism with inspirational sayings and how-to lists alone.

Still — I see a place for both going forward. As Lena Dunham says in one of the only mentions of feminist on Trump’s site: “A huge part of being a feminist is giving other woman the freedom to make choices you might not necessarily make yourself.”

Kate Shellnutt is a journalist covering faith, women, and pop culture. She works as an editor at Christianity Today magazine. Find her on Twitter @kateshellnutt.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

Why 30 is the decade friends disappear — and what to do about it

2016-07-11T11:32:14-04:00

Next month, I turn 30. There’s a good chance I’ll spend my birthday at home with my husband and dog, eating Betty Crocker chocolate cupcakes I made myself.

To plenty of people, that sounds like a perfect way to celebrate — a night in with family I love. Instead, I worry that it’s a glimpse into a lonelier future. Our 30s are the decade when friends disappear.

The ratio of times I hear, “We should hang out!” to actual hangouts is about 10 to 1. I can’t tell if I gravitate to people whose social calendars are already full, if they’re not as eager to get together as I am, or if it’s a combination of both. I somehow still feel like a newcomer in the place I’ve lived for almost two years.

I’ve moved five times across four states since graduating college, so I know the drill. First come acquaintances, people I can recognize and say hi to at yoga class, cookouts, church, that kind of thing. Then I start to connect with some casual friends, people I can do coffee dates and see movies with. Once we reach a point where we don’t have to make plans in advance — where we’re comfortable enough to do nothing together and I can just text that I’m on my way — that’s when I’ve made a close friend.

The ratio of times I hear, “We should hang out!” to actual hangouts is about 10 to 1

Last December, the only local friend I had ended up moving a few states over. I used to stop by while her boys were napping to catch up over Jason’s Deli salads or leftovers. I didn’t expect it, but I cried after she left. A military brat turned military wife, I had always been the one who moved away.

Once she joined my far-flung network of long-distance friends, I was on the lookout for new friends again. It gets harder every time.

Psychologists and sociologists position our peak friend-making period in our younger years, when we’re flush with time and opportunity. New research recently found that starting at age 25, we lose more friends than we make each year.

On the other side of the 30, we keep adding casual friends, but most of us won’t gain close friends like before; no more best friends. The 30s are a time for settling in to friendly acquaintances and hanging on to faraway friends over texts and Facebook.

“There’s a certain kind of poignancy in young adulthood, when we’ve come to develop a mature regard for friends at the very same time that somehow they’ve started slipping away,” said William Rawlins, an Ohio University professor who has been researching friendship for nearly 40 years. “It seems out of our control.”

Saying goodbye to the golden age of friendship

In college, we regularly interact with people in our age group and have formalized settings for friendships, like clubs and Greek life. After graduation, we continue to fill our social calendars. Our friends surround us during the exciting and hopeful time when we consider the direction of careers and relationships.

They’re the ones who knew us back when: the sorority sisters who taught me how to cook and live on my own, the grad school roommate who cheered on my first writing gigs, the pals from my early 20s who celebrated my engagement.

The lull that hits around our 30s stands in stark contrast to all the friend-making we do in our 20s — in part, because of it. “The irony is at the end of this period, and as a result of the decisions our friends have helped us make, there’s a lot less time for friends,” said Rawlins, the friendship researcher.

Once we become the boss, the spouse, the parent — life changes that often happen right around our late 20s and early 30s — it’s harder for us to do the role of friend justice. Husbands and wives may allow their partners to fill the role of best friend, letting other relationships fall by the wayside (something I’ve tried to actively resist).

Additionally, college-educated millennials are constantly on the move. “About a million cross state lines each year, and these so-called young and the restless don’t tend to settle down until their mid-30s,” the New York Times reported. Even though we still need companionship through this new batch of transitions, our shifting schedules and ongoing moves force friends to back away.

But we still tend to idolize our childhood and early adulthood buddies. Besides knowing us longer, they’re associated with special moments in our lives. This psychological phenomenon edges them to a place of significance in our minds and solidifies their position as best friends.

“We tend to remember things that were first, so we remember the people we were with at that time,” said Margarita Azmitia, psychology professor at the University of California Santa Cruz.

I’m as guilty of this as anyone. I’m obsessed with the friends I’ve made over the years, and whenever I’m around new people I’ll show them pictures of my BFF’s toddler or tell them a story about my sorority sister’s new job. (I can’t tell if this is endearing or annoying; I do it instinctually.) My close friends and I text and FaceTime nearly every week, and I dedicate most of my vacation days to trips from Georgia to Maryland, Virginia, and Texas to see them a couple of times a year.

Now that I’m at the edge of 30, I’m entering uncharted territory and feel like I need life advice, affirmation, and direction more than ever. Should I be saving more for retirement? Should I do the Paleo diet to lose these last 10 pounds? Can I keep putting off having kids? I know I can always turn my old friends, but I also need people who know me now — in my current place and context — to walk through it with me in day-to-day life.

Dating for new friends

For those of us who roll deep with long-distance besties, any potential new friend is up against a pretty high bar. It’s easy to convince ourselves it isn’t worth the effort to put ourselves out there.

“We can get stuck in a rut of maintaining old or long-distance friendships digitally, but at the end of the day you need friends to see in person,” said Olivia Poole, an entrepreneur in San Francisco.

Poole co-founded a startup that’s essentially Tinder for female friends. Hey VINA is a matchmaking app for all the ladies who have uttered the ubiquitous line, “It’s so hard to make friends after college” (or at least the ones in San Francisco and New York, where Hey VINA has initially launched).

I’m not surprised to see services like Poole’s popping up. If you thought your dating anxiety would be gone once you got married, just wait until you end up looking for friends. It took six months of living in a new city before I got a girl’s phone number. We hung out a few times at church events and had a lunch date at Panera. I was so giddy that I immediately texted my old friends to say I finally had some prospects.

“Basically it’s just like dating,” said Aminatou Sow on the podcast Call Your Girlfriend, which she hosts with her best friend Ann Friedman. “Put all your best qualities forward. What do you bring to the table? Don’t be your asshole self.”

Sow and Friedman dish out friendship-dating advice to grown-up lady listeners who know that when it comes to making friends after 30, as the saying goes, “the struggle is real.” They advocate a dual strategy of in-person hangouts and online follow-ups. After you meet someone you like, friend them on Facebook so you’re connected instantly, or send an email with links to things you talked about. There’s no time for pretending to be too cool to reach out.

New research recently found that starting at age 25, we lose more friends than we make each year

Lest you assume friend dating is a female phenomenon, This American Life dedicated a recent segment to a producer setting up two dudes he knows in Austin. Within the past year, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and all sorts of publications have explored the adult friendship dilemma.

(The advice from the Toast may be my favorite: “Straight up, say, ‘I’ve decided you are my new best friend, and you get no say in the matter.’ People respond to directness!”)

The lists about how to make friends as an adult have mostly fallen flat in my experience. It can be intimidating to start a new hobby solo. When I looked up local sports leagues and trivia nights, all of them expected you to organize your own team. I searched for meetups for me and my French bulldog — the only friend loyal enough to stick with me through the past three moves — but the closest one was an hour away.

It has become harder to make friends after each move and each passing year, and my expectations have shifted. I’m no longer waiting for someone who loves reality TV and Twitter as much as I do or has the same warm personality as one of my old friends. I’m down to the important things: someone who lives close enough, responds to my texts, and is willing to hang out.

This all-takers philosophy was mostly born out of the desperation when my Army husband deployed, leaving me in a place where I knew nobody. Even though I didn’t like kids, I began dropping by young moms’ houses after bedtime. I watched B-movies and listened to them talk about a life I knew nothing about.

People grow on you, but you have to put in the time. That’s something we struggle to do as we get older and busier. I kept thinking about how different these women were from me, in almost every way — until one day those thoughts stopped, and we were just friends. It took more than a year.

It’s crucial that we keep at it. Making new friends keeps us engaged in our own identity. We understand ourselves in relation to others: I befriend, therefore I am. Without getting to know other people, it’s harder for us to know ourselves. “Old friendships can limit who you can be based on who you’ve always been, but with new friendships, you can focus on who you are now and who you want to become,” Poole said.

Friendship is always difficult

I’m not sure who I’m destined to become in the years ahead. Turning 30 doesn’t signal what it used to. As psychologist Meg Jay notes in a popular TED talk, the traditional milestones have been pushed back: “Work happened later, marriage happened later, kids happened later, even death happened later.” It’s easy for this generation to assume that 30s are the new 20s and move on without giving the new decade a second thought.

As I near the big 3-0, I have resisted the typical getting-older fears. I trained myself to ignore the wrinkles creasing around my freckled temples. I don’t feel my biological clock ticking for babies. I’m not even that concerned about my career in the unpredictable journalism industry. But I am worried about making friends.

For all the things happening later in our lives, our close friendships are still happening earlier. As we age, we often overlook the drop-off in our social lives or accept it as inevitable. And yet we know more than ever about how our friends can help ease stress, lift our moods, endure trauma, give us a sense of purpose, and live longer.

I prodded the researchers and relationship experts for the key to avoiding the awkward struggle of adult friendship. Azmitia, who studies relationships in adolescence and childhood, told it to me straight: “It’s always difficult to make friends.”

She’s right. I flashed back to a long-ago birthday. At 5 years old, I’m grinning in front of a Minnie Mouse cake, next to a handful of kids. The picture seems like a happy memory. Then my mom explains that we’d only moved to town a couple days before, and she went door to door inviting strangers to come to my party so I didn’t have to celebrate alone. (It was rough to be a military brat with a summer birthday.)

We don’t grow out of our need for friends just because we’re out of school, or have moved away, or have a family of our own. I’m turning 30, and I still want people around to sing me “Happy Birthday.”

Rawlins, the communications professor, interviewed people from ages 14 to 100 about their friends. “At every moment in life, people had the same expectations of a close friend: somebody to talk to, somebody to depend on, and somebody to enjoy,” he said. “We need that across our lives.”

As I turn 30, no more self-sabotage. I’ve resolved to say shut up to the insecure inner voice, and hello to strangers.

Over the past couple of years, I talked myself out of making friends so many times. I stopped myself from chatting with the lady who waves at me when I’m on a walk. I looked up local concerts and comedy shows, only to wimp out when I couldn’t find someone to go with me. I composed and then deleted text messages to acquaintances, assuming it’s probably too late to follow up on one of those, “We should hang out!” remarks. I meet people and tell myself they probably wouldn’t like me anyway.

I am my own worst frenemy.

In the final years of my 20s, I learned how easy, and how lonely, it can be to keep to yourself. As I turn 30, no more self-sabotage. I’ve resolved to say shut up to the insecure inner voice, and hello to strangers.

I’m going to introduce myself to more people — even the ones whose names I should know by now. I hope to go to more events, text more invites, and trust myself more. These are habits I want to start now, before I resign myself to my own routines and consider the whole endeavor hopeless.

The same mantra applies to keeping up with my beloved out-of-state friends as to making new ones nearby. Friendship is always difficult, but it’s always worth it.

Kate Shellnutt is a journalist covering faith, women, and pop culture. She works as an editor at Christianity Today magazine. Find her on Twitter @kateshellnutt.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

Kate Shellnutt | Vox

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