WHAT’S SEXIER THAN INTEGRITY?

on plagiarism, good jeans, being an Everything Girl

Yeah, I suppose I should talk about it. Two things have been on my mind this week.

Right at the core of every woman’s ambition sits her need to be validated for everything she is. This is not shameful nor sexist to admit — for what it is and isn’t worth, it’s the most human state we can slip into, the prison that keeps us all captive together, at Sephora, on Instagram, or on the career ladder. It’s the approach to an escapade that makes or breaks it, as well as the level of sacrifice you’re willing to bet on to get your way. The road to success is not a self-driving car to be fueled with whatever gets you from point A to point B faster — it’s a garden you grow and nourish with what you know and choose to be right. Which involves some form of a moral framework. At least I’d like to hope it does?

It’s been crucial for my personal journey to separate my need to get attention and validation from my well-functioning moral compass, because first, I know the two won’t always go hand in hand, and second, I tend to get hostile and cruel when I let my narcissistic hunger for approval take the lead. Ideally, success should mean nothing if it doesn’t come from a deep place of self-trust and direction, which includes operating with certain fixed values that won’t change or bend regardless of how far I come or which circles I infiltrate. One could argue that not everyone cares about integrity, but I’d say it’s best that we do for our own sake. Do you want to get ahead? Sure you do. Get in line. Do you also want to sleep soundly at night, knowing you practice what you preach? A question for both the beginning and end of times, perhaps, but I won’t go all Dostoevsky on you. Not in this one.

In a society that puts status and achievement —things defined and dissected under the microscope by numbers or accolades— over less quantifiable metrics with an increasing turnover velocity, doing things with grace and self-respect might feel like a waste of time. Convenience. Speed. Ease. Why write something yourself when you can ask ChatGPT to draft up a mediocre essay for you? Why fact check if ragebait gets more likes? Why create when theft is barely traceable or verifiable in the digital age? The dilemma is everywhere, both in interpersonal relationships and in creative strides: do I pursue a less conventional, slower, but more fulfilling writing approach in the name of being in alignment with my true talent, or do I put out something digestible every week and win myself a larger chunk of clicks? Do I make a conscious choice to improve and nurture my current relationships, or continuously seek out new ones for the thrill of it? Do I treat people right and tenderly, sometimes at the expense of my personal comfort? We get high on cutting corners — searching for things disposably simple and conveniently served. But every new shortcut is just another bullet wound in the spirit. Let’s not pretend it’s anything but that.

Sure, none of us are in morally superior positions free and able to shake our heads at others’ wrongdoings — I don’t want to point fingers. But, also, let’s be fair and honest, most of us have never plagiarized an essay word-for-word, or starred in a thinly veiled eugenics-coded campaign for a pair of jeans by a brand that should’ve died together with mall culture descent. So maybe we’re actually allowed to point fingers here. I’m aware that critiquing women in 2025 comes with a certain amount of pushback under the pretense of being a girl’s girl, but I think it’s important to continue pushing forward the uncomfortable questions where our judgment is informed by action, not clouded by identity politics. I’ll take your bad feminist badge if I have to. And when you notice other women’s silly —even when effective— attempts to stomp on others to get their validation itch scratched, it’s okay to call it out. Neutrality means nothing if it fears confrontation.

I think, in both cases, there’s something to be said about a woman’s ability to do morally questionable things under the guise of doing it For The Girls – which, really, just goes against the purpose of doing anything for women at all. I swear, you couldn’t sum up the state of the zeitgeist better than “This woman is writing social commentary for women… but, like, she occasionally steals content from other women to prove her point…” if you tried.

The hypocrisy of the #1 New Bestseller author taking slightly more than inspiration from fellow, smaller creatives is the perfect landscape shot of how our incessant need to be perceived as an Everything Girl leads us astray and bleeds into even the best of intentions. What’s an everything girl? Well, as we know, being simply hot or smart or anything singular and aligned in 2025 is not enough — the internet first provides a playing field of versatility, then demands it back at all costs, requiring a blueprint portfolio of all the contradictory things you are. Posting hot selfies? We’ve seen that before, next. Posting hot selfies AND you’ve got a PhD? Now I’m looking. Eventually, following this I-can-be-everything dichotomy and the need for constant reinvention to stay top of mind across as many audiences as you can capture cuts oxygen to the brain, and now you’re just desperately seeking out new facades of yourself to spotlight. Not a good look, rather silly.

Under the Everything Girl system, everything feels out of character: Sydney Sweeney oscillates between fixing cars on her Instagram and talking about the importance of getting a business degree as a young female actor to clandestine Jeff Bezos yacht hangouts, bathwater soap, and, well, starring in the ad we all hopefully hate to see. The woman writing sharp cultural commentary steals from fellow women for fresh content’s sake. These aren’t out of character moments or rapid behavioral changes — this is a deliberate strategy; a pattern that dissolves from under the cost of trying to be everything for everyone in all the wrong ways. The woman who declares her multidimensional complexity badge of honor is the same one that goes against the basic principles of her moral compass, and she genuinely sits assured in knowing you won’t call it out. Because she’s a girl’s girl. How dare you attack women?

Where is this all getting us exactly? Are you an everything girl, or are you just a tired woman clawing your way to occupy more space than possible or needed because the world told you singularity wasn’t cutting it? Do women actually enjoy performative intellectualism or outraging the internet for cash? I doubt it. At least, I struggle to locate how they repeatedly justify it to themselves. Not all is fair in war and content. The means to an end matters. The path towards your goal is just as big of a story as the achievement of said goal — this is why using AI is never as satisfying as sitting down and creating something humanly imperfect. This is why not all money-making ventures are created equal. You become the person you want to be by doing the hard thing and sticking to your truth. And if I sound like an old man crying out what ever happened to having values, so be it.

As for my own moral compass? It’s a learning curve, let me get off my high horse. Recently, as some of you may know, I joined a beauty company — which essentially means swimming in a female-dominated environment day in, day out. There’s many new dynamics to navigate, some of which clash against my naive convictions: that women can be both crueler and kinder than men. That having one’s back is rarely informed by gender. That all the politics bubbling underneath is just a tiny fraction of a big, messy picture that sits well in duality but doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. All I know is that I’m trying to stick to what feels good: honesty, transparency, integrity. On a good day, I have all three.

I would like for us to be a little firmer when it comes to decency — careless decisions facilitate careless consequences. There are ways to get to fame and fortune without selling your soul to the content machine or Bezos. Slower, more uncomfortable, more patience-demanding, but they exist. First, we would need to detach from wanting to be everybody’s darling when no one can truly fulfill that role. A friend to all is a friend to none. A woman of all trades is a woman that weaponizes her interior. Wouldn’t we rather a peaceful life than tainted victory? Let’s take the long route to what feels good.

At the end of the day, slipping on a pair of good genes/jeans or hitting post on an article you didn’t write, a sense of fulfillment should come from looking in the mirror and knowing you’re embodying your truth in ways that aren’t always brilliantly curated but are always in line with what you believe in. There’s a certain inner glow, the self-respect no injections can mimic and no climbing to the top can replicate. We live our entire lives in our head — the least we can do is make sure it’s an honest place to be, the kind that awaits you at the end of a tiresome day and doesn’t leave you with a bad case of insomnia or getting rightfully cancelled on the internet.

I apologize if my wording is a bit off, I’ve been head over heels lately and it’s harder to write when your brain is a smoothie. Cheers.