I think a lot of women are lying.

Are women really telling the truth about these “high standards” they yap off online? The performance of princess treatment left right center is it for the men or the women?

Everywhere online I have been watching a growing pattern online that’s hard to ignore and harder not to call out based on how contrasting it is in real life.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I think a lot of women are lying.

Not maliciously or with evil intent. But lying all the same and perhaps most dangerously, to themselves and multitudes of gullible women.

They come online, carefully curate their language, and construct aspirational narratives about relationships with the other gender.

“I won’t settle for less.”
“I need a man to provide 100%.”
“Bare minimum behavior is unacceptable.”
“They must spend over $10k for my bride price, or don’t even try.”

But when you dig even a little beneath the surface, the math doesn’t add up.

I have friends and to be honest my friends who are actually getting premium treatments do not talk much, they’re in their little peaceful bubble with their spouse on their private IG with their close friends only seeing the spoils of their relationships.

They have their bad times too but are willing to pay the price for their grass to be greener there.

The rest of the vast majority settled like mad and these Christian lovers podcasts where pastors come to embarrass them as being their least choice and still being picked.

If you scroll through influencer pages of women you will see them proudly declaring their “stay-at-home wife” status, and yet you’ll often find them racking up brand deals, attending industry events, and maintaining highly monetized online presences. That’s not “stay at home,” that’s working for your money. Many even out earn their husbands while steadily collecting abuse.

Even popular women are not left out of this embarrassment, Naomi Osaka, Cardi B, Skai Jackson, our mermaid princess, etc all of them collected their own share of the humiliation ritual and we all saw or are seeing how this plays out on the Obasanjo’s internet.

This is not a callout — it's what has happened and will still happen. And while there’s nothing wrong with working or earning, there is something deeply confusing about how we frame that reality to the public.

That woman selling you “femininity course” on how to be brainless so a man provides for you has like three businesses, she hustles like mad behind the scenes.

Because truthfully? A lot of what they call “standards” online has become less about values and more about performance, a brand strategy to signal high value to other women, not necessarily a reflection of how they are actually living behind closed doors.

It’s a type of social theater:

• Say you want a soft life.

• Demand a six-figure man.

• Decry the “ick” because he ordered a strawberry drink or used too many emojis.

• Frame acts of basic decency like kindness, attentiveness, emotional labor as “bare minimum,” even though they’re the building blocks of any healthy relationship.

And then behind the scenes?

Many of them are splitting rent.
Paying utilities.
Tapping into welfare support. Running on loans to run the house. Paying the school fees of their children. Taking care of 200% bills and still playing soft girl. Quietly shouldering bills while pretending the man is covering it all.

Even in traditional communities — yes, including core Muslim & Christian women who say they married provider men who foot all their bills — there’s often exaggeration. Some will speak about large bride prices, lifelong provision, and financial ease, but whisper in safe circles about how they’re actually contributing their own income. Their own savings. Their own security net. Low-key sponsoring their husbands lifestyle.

So what’s really happening?

We’ve made being “taken care of” the new currency of womanhood.
Not just emotionally — economically, socially, culturally.

And the cost of keeping up that image?
It’s dishonesty. It’s comparison and pressure.
It’s the slow erosion of real-life nuance in exchange for a digital brand.

Even when public figures fall short of their online ideals — like Liz, who is now being scrutinized for marrying someone “below her standards,” getting pregnant quickly, and supposedly ignoring red flags, now women are not responding with empathy. They say: “She faked it.” She is shamed for being human and living her life by making choices the 70% of women make behind closed doors. But maybe she didn’t fake it. Maybe the entire setup is a cycle that none of us can win in.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most women are contributing financially to their homes.
Most women aren’t dating millionaires and won’t ever. Many women are settling quietly. It's scary.
Most women are navigating complex relationships with give-and-take, negotiation, and compromise.

And most of the aspirational talk online is exactly that — aspiration. Not fact. Not reality.

This is why the traditional wife troupe and aesthetics always sell.

Be honest with yourselves. stop building an identity around impossible images. stop shaming people or others) for not achieving a fantasy.

It’s okay to desire ease.
It’s okay to want provision.
It’s okay to work.
It’s okay to rest.
It’s okay to be in the in-between.

But it’s not okay to build your life around a lie and call it empowerment. Let’s end the performance, not because you don’t deserve good things, but because you deserve real ones. Following these things should not make you miss a real one when you encounter them or just set your mind to work and have your money like Riri.

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Thank you for reading. 💞🎀