Kylie Minogue And Why Traditional Marriage Is Not A Male Fantasy
So why do they push it so hard on women?
If you haven’t heard of the pop culture podcast Sentimental Garbage, then you are missing out on a good thing, indeed! The latest episode of the show was one of the best. It discussed music legend Kylie Minogue.
Kylie has always been one of my favourite pop stars, ever since her comeback in the early 2000s. Even when I was a teenager, I remember hating the criticism of her outfits (those awesome gold hot pants…) and people calling her “too old” at the ripe old age of 35. This despite her being a total babe to anyone who had functioning eyes.
Gone was the 80s perm and the awful clothes; this was the beginning of Kylie’s prime.
Another discourse that surrounded Kylie's pop comeback was her perpetual unmarried state. Why, the tabloids would lament, does she want a pop comeback at her age? Why doesn’t she want to settle down and have babies like a normal woman? The podcast episode discusses this pernicious narrative at length.
I’ve always hated the constant marriage and family conversation surrounding her and, of course, other happily single female figures like Taylor Swift. Only with the rise of Tiktok feminism are women starting to realise how deliberate and malignant this discourse is.
I am one of the women who has always wanted the house with the white-picket fence. I have always wanted romance—the husband, several kids, all of it. Whilst dating, I have noticed that this is actually very rare. It is rarer among men than it is among women.
Women are bombarded by messaging from the online 'manosphere' and the reactionary right that being a homeschooling tradwife and having umpteen children is not only the best thing a woman can do; it’s the only way a woman can ever truly experience wholeness, meaning, and a satisfying life.
Yet, I have found very few men want or consciously seek out the corresponding role of traditional husband.
I have been seriously looking for a husband since I was twenty years old. I have looked in every dating space I can think of. Dating apps, singles’ meetups, and, in my mid-twenties, paying for an expensive matchmaker to introduce me to men who were serious about marriage.
The biggest obstacle to all my efforts has been finding someone who explicitly wants marriage. A family-oriented, traditional man who values marriage as an institution and who loves and wants many children.
Even on Christian dating sites, I have struggled to find men who really want marriage. These men like the idea of marriage and are hoping it happens to them eventually, but they don’t like it or want it enough to actively seek it out.
Despite the constant derision of single women, including Matt Walsh publicly shaming tiktoker Julia Mazur for daring to exist whilst unmarried and childless, and the endless threats of “dying alone with only cats for company,” is it really women who need to be shamed into marriage?
Even though women and feminism are the focus of reactionary contempt and ire, if you separate what men say they want from how they behave, one can only come to the conclusion that traditional marriage is not the prevailing male fantasy. In fact, men's disinterest in marriage and fatherhood is growing.
Why, then, does it seem that only contemporary women are pressured, shamed, and cajoled into settling?
In a world where Christian values have receded, the prevailing male fantasy has changed, or perhaps it has always been this way, but can now be articulated more freely and to a larger audience via social media.
That fantasy is that if a man gets rich enough, you can have as many good-looking young women as you want, no matter what your age, what you look like, or any deficiencies of charm and character.
Andrew Tate is the most high-profile example of someone who has exploited this fantasy. Tate's male victims were first sold the lie that all women are golddiggers who are only interested in rich men. He then sold them get-rich schemes as the solution to their loneliness and lack of luck with women.
Any mention of these men developing as people or growing in any other areas of their lives went unsaid. The fact that most of these men would be happier pursuing marriage with one woman becomes a long-forgotten moot point.
But what does any of this have to do with Kylie Minogue? Or Taylor Swift, for that matter?
Just like Matt Walsh’s unprovoked attack on Julia Mazur, the tabloid’s criticised Minogue’s unmarriedness and childlessness throughout her entire 2000's comeback. Only Minogue’s 2005–2006 battle with cancer slowed the incessant invasive questions about her plans for family life.
Even though the tabloid’s peak misogyny was in decline by the 00’s, I don’t ever remember reading the suggestion that maybe, just maybe, Minogue didn’t have kids because she didn’t want any, and actually, being a popstar is awesome and fun.
The implication that highly successful childless women must secretly be lonely, miserable, and pining for a husband and children is a deliberate and conscious tactic to shame and abuse women into being the partners men want them to be, regardless of what women want for their own lives.
The whole narrative surrounding Minogue’s lack of children is being repeated around Taylor Swift in an almost identical fashion. It’s uncanny.
Why are successful, single, childless women such a threat to men that they’re derided in the media despite seeming to have perfectly enjoyable lives?
Even though being a popstar is never something I’ve wanted, I can still see how much fun it would be to have that life. No one can convince me that Minogue or Swift aren’t having a fantastic time and don’t have great lives.
My theory is this: both the male fantasies of old and of new, of traditional marriage and of becoming rich enough to have as much p*ssy as you desire depend on women being accessories to men. It doesn’t matter what the women in either of those scenarios are like as human beings or who they are as people, so long as they’re serving their respective functions.
Kylie Minogue and Taylor Swift are so unapologetically main characters in their own lives, masters of their own brands, and on top of their respective games, it violates both male fantasies. They don’t have to serve any function in any man’s life if they don’t want to.
Women being the main characters in their own lives doesn’t hurt men in any way; it just decenters men. If other women become too empowered and begin to find meaning in living lives without men, men will never get their fantasy of free female physical, emotional, and sexual labour.
It’s interesting to see how little grace men show towards women who are now treating men the way men have always treated women. The decentering of men hurts their fantasy that women exist to serve them, have their babies, and act as supporting cast members in their own shows.
Women are beginning to recognise the cognitive dissonance between men demanding women are subservient to them whilst offering them little in return. The cognitive dissonance between men shaming even the most successful women for being single whilst making no effort to turn themselves into better husbands. The cognitive dissonance between men declaring that women need men as protectors and providers, but all too often being the very people women need protectors from.
If men really cared about traditional marriage, they would shame men for being lousy or unfaithful husbands and fathers as often as they shame women for choosing singledom and childlessness. The fact they don’t shows how deliberately manipulative and emotionally abusive this narrative is and how little they actually value marriage and children.
If men truly valued traditional marriage, someone like Leonardo DiCaprio would be shamed and ridiculed for his lifestyle by other men.
Despite all the evidence suggesting marriage benefits men more than women, there is very little societal pressure anymore for men to get married. Very little men’s media focuses on turning men into the good, faithful husbands women want or helps men cope with the challenges of being providers and fathers.
Freed from religiousity, men are more reluctant than ever to assume responsibility for women and their own children. Men want to pursue their careers, party, and stay single just as much as women do, but they still expect women to fulfill a role that isn’t even possible without having a provider in place first.
Men will shame women they don’t even know into living lives they don’t want, so their fantasy of female subservience can remain attainable.
I have nothing but respect for successful women like Kylie and Taylor Swift who refuse to kowtow to the prevailing media narrative surrounding their personal lives. If you’re an ambitious or successful woman, why would you settle for a man who wants you to be an extra in his own show when you are already the protagonist in your own? Why settle for anything or anyone less than a costar who respects your time and place in the spotlight?
Thank you for reading — I hope you found my thoughts interesting. You can find links to my other work here: https://linktr.ee/sayde.scarlett
