As we approach “cuffing season” (when people seek out companionship to avoid loneliness during the winter), folks in the dating world are preparing to cut down their dating rosters and select that special someone to spend the colder months with. Theoretically, cuffing season starts October 1 and ends just before the middle of Spring, providing ample time to find a date for Thanksgiving dinner or the office’s Christmas party. Traditionally, women are ecstatic for this time of year — however, there hasn’t been much hype around the talk of locking down a cuddle buddy this season. If you’re wondering why, it’s because women are “decentering” men from their dating experience — and liking it.
In the past two decades, women have grown increasingly independent. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, women were only about 20% of all persons in the workforce in 1920. As of 2024, women make up at least 47% of labor in the U.S. Today’s twenty to thirty-something-year-old women are spearheading corporations, becoming leaders in the tech industry, and even innovating science. These same women also have more access to resources that can be used to benefit their lives physically, emotionally, and financially. Time is progressing rather quickly, and so is the millennial woman’s desire to become the best version of herself for herself, and not for the approval of the male gaze.
The outdated “programming” and idealization of women in the Western world being reduced to the roles of homemaker, caretaker, wife, mother, and all other titles deemed synonymous with womanhood, are surely disappearing. In our patriarchal society, this programming has been successful through the mediums of economics, education, religion, politics, traditions, and much more, creating an illusion that women are not autonomous human beings with interests, passions, desires, and goals in life if it is not related to the validation of a man. With these norms, it is not uncommon for some women to center their most important life decisions around the opposite sex — whether it’s how they dress, where to live, or even how to raise children. This exact ideology is now on the precipice of becoming less important to the millennial woman, and rightfully so.
Recently, social media has been set ablaze with the “soft girl era” movement, supporting the practice of millennial women leaning into their femininity as they create a lifestyle that consists of an immense amount of self-care and minimal hard labor — without the aid of a man. With the soft girl era come the acts of prioritizing mental and physical health, placing sisterhood and community at the forefront of their lives, maximizing their financial status, completing career goals, and all other forms of self-improvement. These practices are inadvertently creating confidence in women — so much so that they are now unapologetically themselves. This new-found confidence within self is giving the millennial woman a voice in opinion and option that she never believed she had.
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Because women are taking the initiative to discover themselves, they become more aware of their habits and even notice their dating patterns. Millennial women are enjoying their dating experiences more than ever now that they are not afraid to advocate for their desires. Without operating under the preconceived notion that they should be aesthetically pleasing and palatable for men, women are pursuing exactly what it is and who it is that they want. It has served great purpose for women to be vocal about their desired man; what type of career he has, his looks — even down to the family in which he was raised. This change in womanhood is creating a holistic environment for self-efficacy while introducing the opportunity for women to have an oppositional gaze on dating where they get to experience dating for themselves and not at the expense of men.
Prioritizing your happiness as a woman exudes a confidence that makes you most attractive to not only men — but to yourself.”
As women embrace this mentality, they will not only continue to have a more positive experience with dating but so will the men who choose to pursue them. Women must continue to talk about their experiences with decentering men, not only for themselves but for each other. Doing so will empower women to continue turning inward while simultaneously rejecting male spectatorship and the invisible rules that have been constructed around their womanhood.
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