Unpopular opinion about The Valley
The men of The Valley have been getting a lot of hate recently - and rightly so. This post is in no way meant to defend them. Shitty, low-effort men are a tale as old as time. I want to talk about another aspect of the discourse that has been bothering me.
While the men are being villainized, the women are being elevated to saint-hood. I don’t know if it’s bandwagon mentality or a fear of losing subscribers (I’m talking about podcasts like Watch What Crappens and other content creators.) The discourse has been reduced to: men - evil! Boo, hiss, grab the pitchforks. But the poor mothers (Nia and Kristen) can do no wrong.
Here is where my unpopular opinion comes in. Elevating these women to saint-hood and absolving them of any blame is sort of insulting and infantilizing. It implies that the women are just helpless victims of these terrible men. But in reality, Nia and Kristen are by far the smarter ones in their relationships- and they are getting exactly what they ordered.
I know lots of women like them. Nia is the type of girl who couldn’t wait to get married and have kids because they wanted to live out a kind of fairy tale - and get lots of content along the way! The wedding itself is more exciting than the marriage. The Instagram image is more important than reality. Keep in mind this is her fourth child with Danny. She likely knew he was not a helpful/involved parent after the first child. And she chose to have another kid (and another, and another) anyway.
Kristen is like so many women who waited a to have a baby, and the biological clock got to ticking - so she made it her goal to get pregnant. Even if the relationship wasn’t exactly perfect, she was willing to fit the square-peg into a round hole in order to have her “miracle baby”. She got exactly what she wanted.
So let’s stop looking at these women as helpless victims. And let’s stop acting like they are saving the world or something by being parents. They’re just doing what so many others have done. Most importantly - they are getting exactly what they ordered! They knew who these men were and decided to procreate with them. They made their respective beds, and now they are lying in them. 🤷♀️