Generation Z doesn’t “dream of labor.” We emphasize the importance of taking time off and building a healthier work-life balance. 

Amid reimagining our relationships to labor and meritocracy, young women in particular fantasize about unrealistic, dynastic wealth.

Whether it be the glorification of the old money aesthetic, our obsession over Sofia Richie’s quietly luxurious wedding or the cultural obsession with nepo babies, it’s become evident that pop culture is having a love affair with the elites. 

Oftentimes, this obsession comes in the form of mimicry and aspiration. We indulge in tips on how to get the old money or quiet luxury look and post about how we could be the perfect nepo baby if we’d so happened to be born under the right circumstances. 

In all of this wishful thinking, there’s the illusory thought that we could also achieve any of it. We convince ourselves that by ironing lapels, or buying the right button-up blouse that we can be legitimized, or revered. 

We don’t valorize hard, back-breaking work as something to bring us up into the echelons of high society. While the underdog, rags-to-riches and bootstraps narratives still register, they aren’t what we envision as appealing or tenable paths. 

Meritocracy is losing its grip on us, and for good reason. 

The United States has comparably less class mobility than other developed nations, despite what the “American Dream” might have us think. The odds that one may achieve social mobility diminish with age, while the wealth gap grows wider. 

Because meritocracy feels like less of an appealing option, our generation is looking for opportunities to get rich quickly. This is not necessarily because the value of a hard day’s work is lost on us, but because it doesn’t always feel like a fair tradeoff. 

Jordyn Wald, a sociology PhD student at the University of Minnesota, said this flagrant and desperate aspiration for power reflects the erosion of our belief in meritocracy. 

“The appeal of old money increases, not as a belief in fairness, but as an acknowledgement of how power actually works,” Wald said.

A darker side to this rejection is the way social media convinces young women to abandon their autonomy in their aspiration to class mobility. This reinforces the antiquated idea that the only way for women to attain a better station in life is to subscribe to a life of dependency or exploit one’s privacy. 

Online influencers are promoting hypergamous dating, suggesting people, particularly women, should date “up” to secure their futures. As tradwife influencers promote their supposedly easy-breezy stay-at-home lifestyles, the housewife ideal, too, has made a resurgence. 

We’ve been tricked into lamenting our autonomy, as if women were ever just free agents who are now forced to earn a living. We’re forgetting our history. The cult of domesticity got its name for a reason. 

Wald said the idea of hypergamy serves as a fairytale narrative. The belief that a wealthy man will alleviate all problems feels comforting and certain. 

“It’s kind of this narrative that tells women that it is possible if you are the right woman and you catch the right man’s attention,” Wald said. “I think of TikTok and other platforms that also romanticize these gender dimensions.” 

It’s a reassuring, antiquated narrative that can seem stable in the precarity that our generation faces in the wake of economic pressures. 

However, we aren’t just trying to find our footing by looking to the past. The search for quick fixes for our meritocracy problem knows no bounds. 

Having descended from the 21st century idea of being famous for being famous, influencers are promoting influencer marketing as a lucrative, easy way to make money quickly. 

That’s the tame end of the continuum. Our generation’s rejection of meritocracy introduced new ways young women are encouraged to make themselves dependent on men in the name of financial security. 

Influencers’ promotions of platforms like OnlyFans and sugar daddy websites, for instance, are rooted in a new internet economy and supposedly more progressive views toward personal autonomy.

However, these lines of work can be incredibly exploitative and have negative effects, both internally and externally. 

Young women aren’t alone in the search for easy money. Young men fall into the traps of pyramid schemes, online courses and other scams promoting the same idea of effortless money-making. 

Young women are more vulnerable, though, and quite frankly have a lot more to lose. 

American women only gained the ability to hold credit cards in their own names in 1974. 

Many of our grandmothers and mothers fought and protested for their dream of true freedom and independence. It’s a tragedy that many feel the need to abandon the financial freedom generations before us fought for. 

This is a nuanced issue, and every career has its pros and cons. 

However, when lifestyles with high probabilities for exploitation, failure or loss of autonomy are being flattened to such a propagandistic degree, the risks must be addressed. 

There wasn’t always a better way. We shouldn’t take our freedom for granted.