The “good at the blue store” trend is making me sick. And marketing is enabling it.

I’m sure y’all have seen the trend.

You know, the one where women joke about being "good at the blue store" (hardware stores, electronics shops) so their boyfriends will reward them with something from "the pink store" (Sephora, Ulta, any beauty retailer.)

It's framed as cute relationship content. It's actually weaponised helplessness marketed as aspirational femininity. And it's part of a much bigger pattern of women infantilising themselves in the presence of partners to exaggerate traditional gender roles. The marketing implications are actually f*cked up. Y’all need to cut it out.

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The infantilisation is everywhere.

Stay-at-home girlfriends gloating about doing nothing but going to the gym while their partners are at their "big boy jobs."

Sarah De Leeuw went viral on X after posting about her boyfriend putting his credit card in a handmade magic wand and taking her on a shopping spree…while she wore a literal tiara…to celebrate her 26th birthday.

Becca Bloom laminated her husband's credit card inside a magic wand in January and hit Chanel, Neiman Marcus, calling it her "RichTok lifestyle."

This content markets dependence and self-infantilisation as aspirational. It presents financial reliance on men as the ultimate lifestyle goal. It reduces grown women to children who need to be rewarded for tolerating hardware stores with pretty purchases from beauty retailers. YOU ARE 26 YEARS OLD. PLEASE.

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This didn’t start on TikTok.

Hypergamy, or seeking provider partners with more wealth and status than you, has been building for years. Shera Seven, the "sprinkle sprinkle lady," has been telling women to laugh if a date suggests splitting the bill and cheat on broke men since 2023. Tradwives like Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman started blowing up in the early 2020s representing the idea that women should handle domestic labour while men bring home the bacon.

Look, I'm not entirely against every aspect of this. Women choosing to be stay-at-home partners? Fine. Sh*t, I’d love to. Women wanting partners who can financially contribute? Totally reasonable. Traditional division of labour working for some couples? Not my business, do what suits you, baby!

What I am against is marketing this as THE aspirational model for young women. Presenting financial dependence as cute. Framing weaponised incompetence as relationship goals. And making self-infantilisation seem like a viable f*cking life strategy.

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This content sets the tone for young women to aspire to complete financial dependence on partners.

And that dependence is an incredibly slippery slope to abuse and coercion. Trust me, I’VE BEEN THERE and experienced it firsthand. When you have no financial independence, you have no leverage to leave. When you've built your entire identity around being provided for, walking away means losing not just your partner but your entire lifestyle. When you've marketed yourself as helpless and dependent, where do you go when the relationship turns toxic?

The "good at blue store" framing specifically bothers me. Because it presents basic adult competence as something women don't naturally possess. You need a reward for existing in a hardware store? For tolerating electronics shopping?

The underlying message is that women are inherently incompetent at anything masculine-coded and should be compensated for the trauma of pretending otherwise.

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That's not empowerment, babe. That's regression masquerading as aesthetic content.

I'm starting to see brands quietly poke at this narrative and it makes me nauseous. Beauty brands amplifying "treat yourself" messaging that implies you need male financial support to access their products. Luxury retailers leaning into the "spoiled girlfriend" aesthetic. Finance apps softening language around financial dependence.

The RichTok influencers doing magic wand credit card content are creating an aspirational template that regular people can't achieve but will try to emulate anyway. Young women seeing this content absorb the message that financial dependence is glamorous. That infantilisation is cute. That competence is less desirable than performed helplessness.

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Generations of women fought for financial independence.

For the right to have credit cards in their own names and access to economic power that didn't depend on male approval. And now y’all want to voluntarily give that up for tiara birthday shopping sprees and aesthetic TikToks. Be sooooo for real.

The conservatism we're seeing across culture—quiet luxury, modest fashion, traditional gender roles—is bleeding into economic relationships too. And marketing is amplifying it. Because dependent consumers with wealthy partners spend differently than independent ones.

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But the human cost is real.

Financial abuse is real. Coercive control is real. The inability to leave toxic relationships because you have no independent resources is real.

The "good at blue store" trend, the magic wand credit cards, the stay-at-home-girlfriend content, all of it markets female dependence as aspirational lifestyle choices.

Please, before you go and post some bullshit like this, think about your responsibility as a human being; young women are absorbing these messages. They're internalising that financial dependence is cute. That weaponised helplessness is relationship goals. That performing incompetence gets rewarded with shopping sprees at Ulta for crying out loud.

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This is regressive. It's dangerous.

And if brands start actively marketing to this trend instead of just passively benefiting from it, we need to call it out loudly. Because we are literally setting women back decades. And that cost is higher than any tiara shopping spree could ever be worth.

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