I’m sat here on my Hackney rug at quarter to one in the morning, legs crossed, bare feet with the bright blue polish starting to chip at the edges, cherry vape fog curling round the lamp like it’s got nowhere better to be. My laptop’s burning a hole in my thigh and I’ve got three unanswered voice notes from my mum asking why I haven’t replied to the family group chat about Sunday roast. Again.
The flat looks like a bomb went off, half-drunk oat-milk flat white on the coffee table, yesterday’s hoodie slung over the chair, and the washing basket doing that passive-aggressive “I’m not going to sort myself” stare from the corner. I’m supposed to be writing a thread for tomorrow. Instead I’m staring at the screen thinking: *this*. This right here is exactly what they mean when they slap that tired old label on us.
“Strong independent woman.”
Sounds empowering, doesn’t it? Like some glossy Instagram caption with a power pose and a motivational quote. But lately? It feels less like a compliment and more like a fucking life sentence. Code for “you’re on your own, love. Figure it out. Carry it all. And smile while you’re doing it or you’re not strong enough.”
I’m proper tired of it.
And I know I’m not the only one.
Let me take you back a bit. I grew up on a council estate in Basildon. Proper 90s Essex, single mums everywhere, dads who either fucked off or worked doubles and came home too knackered to do anything but watch the football. My own mum was the original strong independent woman before anyone called it that. Worked two jobs, raised me and my brother and sister mostly on her own, still found the energy to do Sunday roasts that could feed half the street.
She never called herself strong. She just got on with it.
But now? The phrase has been twisted. Co-opted. Turned into this shiny capitalist trap that tells women we should be grateful for the privilege of doing everything ourselves while the system quietly pockets the profits.
You see it everywhere.
That viral TikTok of the single mum who works full-time, runs the household, does the emotional labour for her kids, her ageing parents, her mates, ‘and’ somehow finds time to post her morning green juice and “boss babe” affirmations. Comments flooding in: “Queen! 💪” “So inspiring!” “Strong independent woman right here.”
Inspiring? Mate, she looks exhausted.
I messaged one of my mates from back home the other day — Sophie, 32, two kids, works in a care home, ex is “around when it suits him.” She sent me a voice note at 6:47 a.m. while she was ironing school uniforms before her shift. Voice cracking. “Em, they keep telling me I’m strong. I don’t feel strong. I feel like I’m one more missed parents’ evening away from a breakdown.”
That’s not strength. That’s survival.
And the patriarchy, plus late-stage capitalism, because they’re basically the same bastard in different outfits, has convinced us that surviving is the same as thriving. That doing it all alone is some kind of feminist achievement instead of a symptom of a system that’s designed to wring every last drop out of us.
Let’s be brutally honest about what “strong independent woman” actually means in 2026.
It means you’re expected to:
- Hold down a full-time job that pays less than a man doing the same thing because of the wage gap that still somehow exists.
- Come home and do the second shift, cooking, cleaning, mental load admin that never ends.
- Manage everyone else’s emotions while yours get shoved in a drawer.
- Raise kids (or support your mates who are) without proper state help because childcare costs more than some people’s mortgages.
- Look after ageing parents because the care system is a joke. Stay sexy and fuckable and “fun” for whatever man is in your life, even when you’re running on three hours’ sleep and two Red Bulls.
- Post about it all online with the right filter so it looks aspirational instead of desperate.And if you dare say you’re struggling? “But you’re so strong, Emma!”Fuck off.
I felt it hit me proper hard last month. I’d just finished a massive thread that got 180k likes, something about emotional labour, funnily enough. Comments pouring in. Women tagging their mates. Men telling me I was “overreacting.” And then my phone buzzed with a message from my editor asking for the next pitch by Monday while I was literally crying in the bath because the flat was a tip and I hadn’t eaten anything that wasn’t delivered in a plastic tub in three days.
Strong independent woman, innit?
I laughed so hard I nearly drowned. Then I cried some more. Then I got out, wrapped myself in my slouchy grey hoodie, and opened a bottle of wine I couldn’t really afford. Because that’s what we do. We keep going.
The worst part is how it’s sold to us.
Remember the 2010s? “Girlboss” era. Sheryl Sandberg telling us to lean in. All those Instagram accounts with the beige aesthetic and the “hustle harder” captions. They took feminism, proper, angry, collective feminism, and turned it into an individual branding exercise.
You don’t need better policies or men who actually pull their weight or a welfare state that doesn’t treat single mums like criminals. You just need to manifest harder, queen. Drink the green juice. Wake up at 5 a.m. Do the Peloton. Build the empire.
Meanwhile the real empire, the one run by billionaires and governments that keep cutting support, is laughing all the way to the bank.
Because exhausted women are profitable women.
We spend money on the self-care that never fixes the problem. We buy the planners, the apps, the “boundaries” courses. We pay for the therapy that helps us cope with a system that’s fundamentally broken. We scroll endless content telling us we’re queens for doing the bare minimum of not collapsing.
And the men? They get to coast.
I had this one ex, proper “ally,” went on all the marches, posted black squares and everything, who genuinely thought he was being supportive because he “let” me work late sometimes. Meanwhile I was the one remembering his mum’s birthday, booking his dentist appointments, making sure the fridge had his favourite oat milk because god forbid he drank normal milk and had a strop.
Strong independent woman supporting her strong independent man, apparently.
It hits working-class women hardest, obviously.
My nan still tells stories about the women on the estate in the 70s and 80s who “just got on with it.” No safety net. No sick pay. No one calling them queens for it. Just pure graft.
Now we’ve got fancy words for the same grind.
Single mums in Basildon I still talk to, they’re not posting motivational content. They’re working zero-hour contracts, claiming Universal Credit that barely covers rent, and somehow still making packed lunches and doing homework with the kids while their exes “find themselves” or whatever bollocks they’re on this month.
The phrase “strong independent woman” lets the system off the hook. It individualises a collective failure.
Instead of fixing childcare, housing, wages, mental health support, parental leave that actually means something, nah, just tell women they’re strong for managing the chaos we created.
It’s gaslighting on a societal scale.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying independence is bad.
I love living alone. I love not having to ask anyone’s permission to stay up till 3 a.m. rage-tweeting or eat cereal for dinner or rescue another spider because even they didn’t choose the patriarchy.
But independence shouldn’t mean isolation.
It shouldn’t mean carrying the entire mental, emotional, financial, and domestic load by yourself while pretending it’s empowering.
We were sold this dream that being “independent” meant freedom. What it actually means for most of us is freedom ‘from’ support. Freedom ‘from’ community. Freedom *from* anyone else having to step up.
I see it in The Coven group chat every single day. Women who are lawyers, teachers, nurses, journalists, all of us “strong independent”, admitting in voice notes at 2 a.m. that we’re one bad week away from quitting everything.
We’re not failing at being strong.
The system is failing us.
So what the fuck do we do about it?
I’m not here with some neat ten-step plan or a “self-care” tip that involves buying another candle.
This is structural.
We need men to actually do the work. Not “help.” Not “babysit their own kids.” Not “do the dishes when asked nicely.” But to notice the mental load and carry some of it without being handed a fucking spreadsheet.
We need proper policies. Universal basic services. Affordable childcare that doesn’t cost more than a mortgage. Wages that reflect the actual cost of living. Housing that isn’t a rip-off. Mental health support that doesn’t have a two-year waiting list.
We need to stop praising women for burning out. Stop calling exhaustion a personality trait. Stop acting like single mothers are superheroes instead of citizens who deserve a functioning society.
And we need to talk about it. Loudly. In the group chats. In the threads. In the bloody Substack comments. Until it becomes impossible to ignore.
Because here’s the truth, hun.
Being “strong” shouldn’t mean doing it all alone.
It should mean having the strength to demand better. To organise. To say “no, actually, I’m not carrying this by myself anymore.” To build communities where we share the load instead of competing over who can look the most put-together while falling apart.
I want a world where my mum doesn’t have to do Sunday roasts while still worrying about bills at 65. Where my mates with kids aren’t choosing between heating and food. Where I can write these rants without feeling like I’m one deadline away from a breakdown.
Where “independent” means free to thrive, not free to survive.
I’m not giving up the fight. None of us are.
But I’m done pretending that this version of “strong” is what we signed up for.
We deserve partners who pull their weight without being asked.
We deserve systems that don’t treat us like emotional support humans for the entire planet.
We deserve time that isn’t measured in productivity apps and guilt.
We deserve to be tired without it being turned into content.
We deserve better.
So next time someone calls you a strong independent woman, look them dead in the eye and say:
“Yeah. And I’m fucking exhausted. Now what are *you* going to do about it?”
The revolution isn’t going to be built by women doing it all alone while the rest of the world claps.
It’s going to be built when we finally refuse to keep paying the price for everyone else’s comfort.
Drop your own stories in the comments, babes. I read every single one. The ones that make me laugh, the ones that make me cry, the ones that make me want to set fire to the whole system.
Because we’re not alone in this.
Not really.
We’ve just been told we are for far too long.
Emma x
P.S. If this one hit you in the chest, share it with every woman in your life who’s been carrying too much for too long. And if you’re a bloke reading this and feeling a bit uncomfortable, good. Sit with it. Then go do the fucking dishes without being asked. The bar is in hell, mate. Time to raise it.
