Girl Dinner

Girl Dinner explores what it means to be a feminist today, particularly as social media plays an ever-larger role in shaping identity. Different characters in the novel define feminism in their own way. The main source of discord in the novel is between Alex’s “girl boss” feminism and Caroline’s back-to-tradition The Country Wife account, while Sloane must wrestle with whether or not she can truly “have it all.” Through these three characters, the author examines the changing shape of feminism in the social media age. 

When Sloane meets Alex, she is immediately impressed by how Alex embodies the idea of the “girl boss,” a woman who takes charge, makes her own decisions, and effortlessly balances her career with the demands of motherhood. Alex is a successful attorney, radiates beauty, and still finds the time to be a doting mother. Britt too, seems completely at ease in both her demanding career and at home. For Sloane, these women represent a kind of feminism that was not possible for her mother’s generation. They are able to work outside of the home, even in careers traditionally reserved for men. They speak to the “You can have it all!” motto that became the battle cry of second- and third-wave feminists who fiercely defended their right to pursue careers and motherhood.

Caroline’s The Country Wife VidStar account, by contrast, showcases her “trad wife” life and advocates for more traditional gender roles. She lives on a homestead and ostensibly devotes the entirety of her time to being a mother and wife—an image belied by the fact that, as a social media star, she actually does have a career as an influencer and even makes a considerable independent income by doing so. Sloane and Alex view Caroline as dangerously retrograde, with Alex arguing that Caroline’s account “is setting feminism back at least half a century” (128). Caroline, however, argues that it is not possible to “have it all,” stressing how difficult it is to balance a full-time job and motherhood: “Modern women could no longer achieve the divine feminine because they had been forced to seek some western capitalist sense of meaning, to take demeaning jobs and suffer” (144). Caroline’s arguments reveal both her own classism (i.e., how she labels some jobs “demeaning”) and expose the contradiction inherent in her monetization of her lifestyle, as there is nothing traditional about being an influencer or making her own income instead of relying on her husband’s money. Nevertheless, the traditional ideology she purports to represent speaks to how nostalgia for seemingly simpler gender roles challenges the view of womanhood many earlier feminists fought for. 

Finally, Sloane represents a woman caught somewhere in the middle of these currents. Sloane wrestles with Caroline’s brand of feminism in large part because of her own experience with “having it all.” She feels torn between her professional duties and her motherhood, noting with increasing dismay her own husband’s lack of interest in taking a greater role in the parenting and household management. She reflects: “Isn’t it unfair that we’re supposed to be independent and successful and do everything our mothers did?” (149). 

As much as Sloane admires the idea of being a “girl boss,” she admits to herself that Caroline’s assertions speak to her own frustrations and insecurities. Sloane’s dilemma thus speaks to how the social media age raises fresh questions around feminism and what it means to find fulfilment as a modern woman.