Gwyneth, Ivanka, and the End of the Effortless White Woman

Women are increasingly rejecting the idea that they can follow their bliss into having it all

Jude Ellison S. Doyle
GEN
Published in
8 min readJul 31, 2018

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Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

I used to have an image of the woman I wanted to be. It was one perfect, still moment in time: I would be out on a deck (I would have enough money for a deck — also, presumably, a house to attach it to) in the early morning (I would get up early), drinking green tea (coffee being too harsh for my by-then serene personality).

This got very detailed. I’d be wearing yoga clothes — I would do yoga — and my hair would be messy yet perfectly untangled and gleaming. I was not wearing makeup, signifying that I was confident and low-maintenance, but I also had clear and glowing skin, the (high) maintenance of which I paid for with the same money I’d used to build the deck. I don’t know where I got the money. This imaginary me seems much too relaxed to have a job. I do know that she meditates, which must be a nice way to fill all the time she spends not working.

This image seems to have just popped into my head, inexplicably. But deep in my grease-encrusted, black-coffee-pounding heart, I know its origin. It floated into my mind in the late 2000s, along with a recommendation for hibiscus-infused salts, and never floated back out. The woman in my…

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Jude Ellison S. Doyle
Jude Ellison S. Doyle

Written by Jude Ellison S. Doyle

Author of “Trainwreck” (Melville House, ‘16) and “Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers” (Melville House, ‘19). Columns published far and wide across the Internet.

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