Has The Backlash To Hustle Culture Gone Too Far?

Forbes

6 days ago

Burnout used to be a status symbol. Now the anti-hustle movement is railing against it.
There was a time, not too long ago, when burnout was a status symbol. The busier you were, the better. Success meant staying late, rising early, doing more, and doing it faster. Hustle culture was idolized.
For many women, the so-called "girlboss" era promised empowerment through overachievement. But after years of glorifying the grind, burnout hit hard. The backlash was inevitable, and a counter movement began to take shape.
'Quiet quitting,' 'lazy girl jobs' and the 'soft girl era' climbed to the top of TikTok's algorithm. The rise of the 'trad wife' aesthetic began to reframe passivity as empowerment.
As the recent New York Times article 'From Girlboss to No Boss' points out, the hustle era has quietly faded. This counter movement began as pushback against a toxic work culture that left little room for rest, balance, or authenticity.
But some wonder if the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. The anti-hustle movement was an overdue reminder that ambition shouldn't come at the cost of mental health. That work-life integration was possible, even if balance wasn't.
But as "softness" becomes more of a virtue and disengagement is rebranded as empowerment, it raises an important question for leaders, workers, and entrepreneurs alike.
In 2017, Amanda Goetz was living in New York City leading a marketing team at a public company. A normal workday among for her included 6 a.m. Soul Cycle classes, going into an office from 9-6, then happy hours and dinners with friends.
She says the problem wasn't necessarily the hustle itself, it was the hustle without rest or intention. "This binary of ambition versus contentment is leaving us all somewhere in the messy middle, holding everything and yet feeling like we are failing at it all."
That's what led her to write her forthcoming book, Toxic Grit, which draws on the principles of character theory to guide people toward finding a middle ground where they don't have to choose between ambition and disengagement.
Jo Piazza, host of the Under the Influence podcast, has studied influencer culture for decades. She believes the cultural shift we're going through stems from the realization that all the effort and ambition didn't give women what the Lean In movement promised them - equality in the workplace.
"It was born from burnout, from women realizing that no matter how hard we hustled, the system wasn't going to reward us with balance or sustainability," says Piazza. "Some women did what humans do when they hit a wall. They pivoted in the opposite direction. Enter 'soft girl,' 'tradwife,' and 'romanticize your life' culture."
Piazza's new novel, Everyone Is Lying to You, is a satire of the trad wife lifestyle. The story follows two college friends: a journalist and an internet-famous trad wife who reunite to solve a possible murder. Their contrasting perspectives reveal the darker side behind social media's domestic bliss aesthetic.
Have we reverted to the days of "The Donna Reed Show?"
"My goal is to puncture the fantasy that trad wives perpetuate, that life is easier, more beautiful and more fulfilling if women just drop out of the workforce and depend on a man," Piazza says. "Because the fact is those women are working as content creators, often making more money than their husbands and putting in a ton more labor."
Is trad wife culture really just hustle culture, with the pantsuit traded in for a raw milkmaid dress?
Piazza wants the anti-hustle movement to rally around meaningful structural change, like protecting mental health and demanding protections like universal childcare and paid leave.
'Instead of pushing for better systems, some corners of the movement are encouraging women to check out of the workforce entirely, to opt out and rely on a man instead,' she says.
Former HR executive Mita Mallick points out that, "This always on, hustle culture is killing us. Individuals are waking up to the realization that it's not normal."
Her book, The Devil Emails at Midnight, explores how toxic hustle culture traumatized a generation of leaders, and how the next wave must unlearn those habits.
Coach and founder Sofie Ragir sees the anti-hustle trend not as laziness, but as grief. "The hustle model doesn't work the way it promised. You can work your whole life and still not afford a home," she says. Her clients still want "big, bold lives," but they're no longer willing to sacrifice themselves to get there.
"It's not about rejecting ambition," Ragir says. "It's about rejecting the idea that our worth is measured by constant output."
But she warns against flattening this nuance with labels like "soft girl" or "tradwife."
'I don't think stillness or softness is inherently a problem,' says Ragir. 'For some, it's the beautiful ability to rest and recover. I don't think moralizing how people cope is helpful.'
Specifically, preying on the guilt of women feeling like they're not enough, be it not leaning in hard enough, not hustling enough, or not being 'soft' enough.
"If the current trend is to break glass ceilings yet you are in a season of cleanup and rest, you feel guilty,' she says. 'If you're pushing toward a big career goal, yet the current trend is about enjoying slowness, once again, you are left feeling guilty."
"The pendulum will continue to swing back and forth," says Goetz. "We have to embrace the nuance and personalization of life and stop letting macro trends create micro guilt."
Rachel Janfaza, founder of The Up and Up, a media and strategy firm focused on Gen Z research, says that despite the perception, this generation is not rejecting ambition.
"Many Gen Z women are building careers as self-starters and entrepreneurs while actively setting boundaries and protecting their wellbeing," she says. 'What's different now is that holding both, grinding and also appreciating grounding, is not only normalized, it's expected.'
But at its core, this moment seems to be about agency.
'Gen Z women know they have opportunities previous generations didn't,' says Janfaza. 'Many relish those opportunities. And yet, some are choosing a different path: not because they have to, but because they can. In rejecting the girlboss grind embraced by older millennials, they're reframing what empowerment looks like.'
The experts agree that what's missing from this conversation is nuance, agency and the recognition that women do, in fact, still have choices.
But when the loudest voices in our feeds scream, "Choose my way of life! It is the best way!" it can feel like that choice has already been made for us.
"I want us to move toward a world where women have actual choices, not just rebranded versions of oppression in pretty packaging,' says Piazza. 'You want to work in an office? Great. You want to stay home with your kids? Also amazing. But let's not pretend that either one is easy or free of labor. Caregiving is work. Influencing is work. None of it should be erased or glamorized into something effortless."
The real progress isn't in choosing hustle or softness, corporate work or domestic life. It's in protecting the agency to choose either, both, or something in between.