Every time January rolls around, I brace myself for a deluge of what I like to call “self-improvement” culture. I prepare myself for everyone I encounter to ask what resolutions I’m setting (even though I’ve never been a resolutions girl). I anticipate marketing content about weight loss, or meditation, or gym goals to fill my feeds. I fully expect chatter, both online and in real life, to center around the “new year, new me” mindset that’s been around for as long as I can remember.
Except… this year feels different. It doesn’t feel like everyone around me is pledging to lose 10 pounds or hit the gym every day, or take up meditation, or watch less TV. Instead, I’m seeing people—especially women—leaning into “2024 ins and outs” in place of old-school resolutions. And you know what? I’m going to call that a feminist act.
When we think about what New Year’s resolutions have historically been about, it’s self-improvement rather than life-improvement. Sure, you could vow to cut out added sugar, and sure, that may make you lose weight—but would it actually make your life better? And yeah, you can pledge to wake up at 5 a.m. every day, and okay, that may make you more productive… but is that actually a net positive in your life if it leaves you perpetually exhausted?
Of course, no one is immune to the message that they just need to get a “better” body, wake up earlier, or hustle harder if they want to improve themselves. But for women, these messages have been particularly loaded. Ideas about the importance of self-improvement for women have always felt inescapable. They’re baked into societal conversations, in media messages, in corporate culture, and dating culture, and parenting culture and… well, you get the picture. At the beginning of a new year, the pressure of self-improvement always feels heaviest. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see so many women, the people who have been most heavily affected by ideas on self-improvement, let go of those ideas and replace them with ins and outs.
Unlike resolutions, ins and outs don’t rest on those tropes about all the things we need to change about ourselves. Instead, they’re about embracing the things we want to embrace while letting go of the things we don’t. We see people pledging to say “yes” to things like therapy, positive self-talk, and daily mental health walks while saying no to doom scrolling, diet culture, or excessive multitasking. These are things that can actually simplify your life as opposed to giving you a goal you have to scramble to achieve or one that leaves you feeling like a failure if you don’t.
At the beginning of a new year, the pressure of self-improvement always feels heaviest. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see so many women, the people who have been most heavily affected by ideas on self-improvement, let go of those ideas and replace them with ins and outs.
If you didn’t set resolutions this year (or if you’ve already set aside some of the goals your highly ambitious self set on January 1), you’re not alone. Based on social media and in-person conversations, I feel pretty confident in saying that many women, myself included, are putting resolutions (especially the ones that feel tangled up in toxic diet culture and hustle culture) on their “out” list for 2024. Women did that. And while we may be wondering what changed in our culture to allow for this new approach, the answer, in my opinion, is everywhere. Because if there’s one thing 2023 taught us, it’s that women have all the power where shaping cultural trends is concerned.
2023 was, after all, the year women held up both the zeitgeist and the economy. The Barbie movie, for example, didn’t just dominate the box office—it also brought back the lost art of movie-going and propelled the iconic doll back to the forefront of pop culture. It even forced us to reconsider all our long-held beliefs about Barbie’s legacy and what she represents in our world. And then there’s that iconic monologue, which reflected on the impossibilities of being a woman in today’s world. It made us realize that if we’re all feeling this way and if we all find the standards and expectations placed on women so incredibly untenable, why are we even trying to meet them? Why aren’t we harnessing our collective power and putting a new standard in place?
…if there’s one thing 2023 taught us, it’s that women have all the power where shaping cultural trends is concerned.
Even things like “girl dinner” and “girl math,” which became major social media trends in 2023, are signs of the full range of female impact. The former is about women simplifying their lives; it’s not necessarily about “healthy” or “clean” eating, it’s about doing what makes your life easier. If that’s letting go of the societal pressure to cook a whole meal and instead assemble a plate of little things, so be it. The latter shows us taking a common stereotype of women—the one that says we are financially illiterate and indulgent—and reclaiming it. “Girl math” may seem like a slippery slope into deep consumerism, but it also gives us permission to just buy the coffee or make the inconsequential purchase without the guilt attached to it. Ultimately, we’re telling the world that it just needs to trust women to make decisions for their own lives and trust that we’re smart enough to know what’ll ultimately serve us well.
And then there’s Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. They didn’t just make major (like, major) money moves with their respective tours. They also brought back large-scale gatherings, drove massive commerce trends, and revived local economies. Both women resisted the many comparisons and narratives pitting them against one another and opted instead to support each other. They flipped the script just like I’m doing right now as I reject old-school New Year’s narratives.
We can embrace new sets of ins and outs year after year because we can acknowledge that not everything has to be permanent in order for it to be good.
Swift was, quite literally, 2023’s Person of the Year, at least according to TIME. Throughout her career, Swift’s authenticity has been questioned at every turn. People have criticized her for her ever-changing artistic identity: She’s been a country darling, a commercial pop star, and even a folksy artist. She’s embraced publicity at certain turns, shunned it completely at others, and boomeranged back into the public sphere, leaving people questioning who she really is and what she really stands for. But last year, Swift took what is arguably her most common criticism, looked her critics dead in the eyes, and effectively said, “Yeah, I’ve reinvented myself many times over. And now I’m going to make a celebration of that constant reinvention my biggest power move.”
Under Swift’s influence, we’re able to stop thinking about life as a constant quest for improvement. Instead, we can view it as a journey of moving in and out of various eras. We can embrace new sets of ins and outs year after year because we can acknowledge that not everything has to be permanent in order for it to be good. We can see that living our best lives isn’t a linear progression but a fluid, unpredictable trying of new things. And as a result, we can allow ourselves to leave relationships or jobs or hobbies or ideas or anything that doesn’t serve us—and instead of thinking of it as losing or failing or giving up, we can think of it simply as stepping into a new era. In a world that constantly boxes women in, this is incredibly liberating.
That’s the value of replacing resolutions with ins and outs—it gives us the power to define and continually redefine what we want. It allows us to construct the concept from scratch. Unlike New Year’s resolutions, which have been around for ages and have their preexisting connotations, ins and outs are ours to shape from the onset. And on the heels of a year where we showed the world the impact of our voices, opinions, tastes, and trends, that feels so fitting.
