30-01-2008

They certainly change the business climate. SYF’s are prodigious shoppers. They also spend historical sums on their skin and hair. Since they are busy with their careers, most of them use restaurants, café’s and bars on an almost daily basis for sustenance – and for socializing. Go to any mid size or large city in any part of the developed world, locate a Sephora, H&M, Zara, Starbucks, or sushi bar, and you’ll find SYFs – and they’ll be spending money.
SYF’s also fuel service industries. They love spas, for instance. In my neighbourhood in Brooklyn, like upscale neighbourhoods in other big cities in the United States, nail salons are sprouting up on every block. Most of these salons are run and staffed by Korean immigrants; these salons’ most reliable customers are SYF’s. The rise of the SYF, who tend to be educated office workers or professionals, is intertwined with the growth of the immigrant service economy.

How do cities (their leaders/local governments) respond to the SYF trend? Or how do you think they should respond?

Mostly by getting out of the way of the SYF market. SYF’s often work long hours, but they also want the pleasures that sophisticated cities now offer. Stores need to have flexible hours to cater to them. And business people need to have the flexibility to respond to the new lifestyle, which may unfold in unpredictable ways. SYF’s have already helped to unleash unimaginable new businesses and leisure activities – 15 years ago who would have thought that weekly visits to a nail salon would be a fact of life for so many middle income American women? Or speed dating? Or so many spa destinations?
Local policy makers also need to understand how much cities are now night time playgrounds for young people in their twenties. Women in particular want those playgrounds to be fun, but also accessible and safe. If crime goes up or the trains are dirty, women will either stop going out, or leave and take their designer pocketbooks with them.

There are three main demographic trends that have created the New Girl Order, but you say global media, commerce and growing disposable incomes also play a role. In how far do you think this new Order is a smart marketing trick?

Sure, there’s a lot of smart marketing. The creators of “Sex and the City” didn’t simply give us witty and gorgeous female characters; they invented an identity, a self-image that grabbed the imagination of women all over the world. Women love the vision of themselves as smart, sexy, fun-loving, and adventurous. The fashion industry immediately saw an opening and introduced a new look to fit the image - frilly, flirty, and assertively sexual. Some people would say that shoe designers were the most cynical of all these marketers; after all, they pushed the idea of four inch stiletto heels.
Still, young women – and men, for that matter – are not stupid. Marketers are responding to a basic biological reality: SYF’s are in their prime mating years. Even if Carrie Bradshaw had never come to the airwaves, young women would still spend their disposable income on making themselves desirable. Four inch heels are really uncomfortable, but they make your legs look great.

There’s plenty to criticize. The New Girl Order promotes extreme materialism and self-involvement. SYF’s don’t spend much time tutoring poor kids or reading books that might challenge their thinking. It would be sad to think that the SYF’s major contribution to society is that they have given new life to the dress industry.
Most troubling to the women themselves is their relationship with men. Feminism may have bequeathed them the gift of self-confidence and workplace success, but it also taught some dubious lessons about sex. I can only speak knowledgeably about the United States, but many high achieving young women here, particularly those in their late teens and early twenties, see hard drinking and promiscuity as a point of pride. To have “sex like a man,” as it is sometimes put, is a demonstration of female independence and freedom. All of this corrodes young people’s deeper desires for strong attachments and thoughtful self-reflection. At any rate, the SYF’s sexual adventures often don’t turn out very well, not least because they give permission to young men to remain uncommitted and irresponsible. There’s an awful lot of bitterness towards men out there in Sex and the City land, particularly among women in their later twenties.

Human nature will not change and women will continue to want to bear and raise children. But there are powerful economic and cultural reasons for women to limit themselves to one or two offspring; barring some catastrophe, those reasons won’t disappear. That means a demographic disequilibrium – too few workers to support too many elderly retirees - for at least a generation. It’s possible that innovations will lead to levels of productivity that will forestall some of the ill effects of this disequilibrium. But it’s hard to imagine a scenario that doesn’t involve pretty dramatic reductions in social welfare expenditures in many countries.
So the New Girl Order is likely to continue into the future. The question is whether men in more traditional societies will adjust to higher expectations from women for companionable marriages and whether women find a better balance between their desire for achievement and strong attachments to men. In other words, will we find a truce in this new battle between the youthful sexes?