This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
For Melani Sanders, a mother and wife, it started after a grocery run. She got in her car, pulled out her phone, and declared that she didn’t care—about shaving her legs, about wearing a “real bra,” or about keeping her house tidy. That first video rant turned into the We Do Not Care Club, a viral chorus of women finding freedom in saying no to expectations of how they should look and act, particularly when it comes to appeasing men. “Sanders’s digital rebellion speaks both to and for a silent majority of women who are tired of contorting themselves,” Anna Holmes writes.
Of course, caring less isn’t always easy. Humans are wired to worry about what others think—a holdover of our ancient survival instincts, Arthur C. Brooks notes. But, as he explains, most fears about judgment are overblown; our co-workers, our neighbors, even strangers online aren’t thinking about us nearly as much as we imagine. Letting go of that pressure can unlock a more honest life. Sometimes, our rejection of norms reshapes even the most intimate choices, such as who to marry and what kind of partner to be.
Not caring doesn’t mean apathy. It means deciding whose approval matters and whose doesn’t. In a world crowded with pressures about how to live, look, and love, indifference can be its own quiet act of defiance. Today’s newsletter explores societal expectations, and what it means not to care.
On Not Caring
What We Gain When We Stop Caring
By Anna Holmes
A series of viral videos has doubled as an ode to fed-up women and a repudiation of male expectations.
Read the article.
No One Cares!
By Arthur C. Brooks
Our fears about what other people think of us are overblown and rarely worth fretting over. (From 2021)
Read the article.
The New Marriage of Unequals
By Stephanie H. Murray
Women are now more likely to marry a less educated man than men are to marry a less educated woman.
Read the article.
Still Curious?
- American women are at a breaking point: In the United States, government support for families seems transgressive. It shouldn’t be, Elliot Haspel wrote last year.
- How about never? From Jane Austen to Rosa Parks, from Joan Didion to Stacey Abrams, saying no has been the key to female self-respect and political empowerment, Anna Holmes wrote in 2021.
Other Diversions
P.S.
Courtesy of Boriana C
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “There are many places in the world that stop you in your tracks. For our family this year was the Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park in New Brunswick, Canada, the place of the highest tides (16 metres or 53 feet),” Boriana C, 53, from Montreal, writes. “When you wander among these giant creatures which you know will disappear in a few hours only to reemerge back with all their might, you can only imagine what comes next and wonder.”
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Isabel
