Could this influencer’s take on work-life balance help cure your burnout?
Have you heard of the “lazy girl job”?
The term entered the zeitgeist earlier this year thanks to Gabrielle Judge, a reformed corporate drone turned full-time content creator, who began talking about work-life balance on TikTok after burning out at her tech job. The 20-something coined the phrase that’s set off a national conversation about working women’s ambition and Gen Z’s work ethic. But what does it really mean? Judge says it’s not at all about promoting laziness — nor is it only for the ladies.
“It’s about decentering your 9-to-5 from your identity,” she tells us — rejecting hustle culture and building a relationship with work that doesn’t grind you down. We spoke to Judge about the concept, the backlash it’s created, and why it’s appealed to so many young workers.
Katie Couric Media: How would you define a “lazy girl job”?
Gabrielle Judge: It’s more of a mindset; it’s about lowering the emotional toll of labor. As employees, we don’t have a ton of control over, say, our company’s performance or whether they’ll have room in their budgets for bonuses. When your 9-to-5 is core to your identity, not getting that raise or promotion can be psychologically very stressful. So I’m encouraging people to change their mindsets, maybe take their foot off the gas pedal a bit, stop buying into hustle culture, and start finding other sources of validation and happiness.
Why do you think this idea has gained so much attention?
Gen Z is very aware of the challenges millennials have faced when it comes to trying to carve out their own traditional career paths like the ones their parents may have had. They’ve had to deal with recessions and inflation, compensation that’s not keeping pace with the rise in cost of living, all while searching for work that provides stability and rewards loyalty with things like pensions, which are a thing of the past. I think that’s why people have become so interested in alternative approaches to work.
Why the “lazy girl job” and not just a “lazy job”? Is there something about the way women are impacted by work culture that led you to coin this?
It makes more sense in the TikTok zeitgeist. There are different trends on the platform like lazy girl makeup routines, lazy girl dinners, things like that. So I was really seizing on that meme to talk about a bigger issue.
So the lazy girl job is for guys, too?
Oh yeah. On Instagram, I think about 30 percent of my followers are men. They’re out there, they’re engaged, and they’re interested in transforming their work lives, too.
It seems like there are some misconceptions about what lazy girl jobs are. Can you talk about that and some of the backlash you’ve seen?
I’ve gotten some criticism from people saying it’s a misogynistic term, because they’re really looking at the “lazy” aspect. I’ve said many times that it’s more of a commentary on hustle culture — it’s a tongue-in-cheek rejection of that.
Another thing I’ve heard is that it’s about young people not wanting to work. We heard that discourse when millennials joined the workforce. It’s not that Gen Z doesn’t want to work, there’s just a lot of frustration that’s built up over the past few years.
In their annual Women in the Workplace report, Lean In and McKinsey found that female employees are just as ambitious as ever. But with the rise of the lazy girl job, do you think that’s really the case?
This mindset shift is kind of like a bandage, covering up a much bigger situation when it comes to how employers are treating their employees: According to a recent poll, 85 percent of employees say they’re disengaged with work. I still believe that most people opting into the lazy girl job situation are very career-focused, but in the short term they feel disempowered because of all these different things, and they’ve resorted to this ideology as a way to cope.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
