Actress Olivia Munn is complaining that a male co-star objected to a scene in which her character saves his, leading to a dispute on set. 
The 45-year-old ranted about the unnamed colleague during a recent appearance on “The Drew Barrymore Show.” 
“There have been a few times where I’ve been filming something, and my character was either like CIA, or a cop, or something, and there’s been scenes where my character has been the one to save the other character,” Munn told the talk show host, noting that the scene involved her and the co-star fighting side by side in a bunker. 
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“If you read the script, it was that he was guarding his side, I was guarding my side, then we switch sides and then there’s a guy that was coming for him who was gonna shoot him in the back, so I shoot him,” she went on. “And then we’re about to shoot and, somehow, I guess he didn’t read the script, and in that moment, he realized, ‘Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. She can’t save me. No, no. She can’t save me.’”
Munn claimed that her colleague was “combative with the director” and held up production for close to an hour. The actress lamented that he had “no insecurity about being obnoxious and everyone hearing this and being like, ‘She can’t save me! We’re not doing this.’”
“Finally, after like 45 minutes of just stopping down, I said, ‘OK, how about instead of my character saving you, it’s just that we switch because it’s time for us to switch and so this is my guy to get,’” she told Barrymore. “And he was like, ‘OK.’”
Online commenters called out Munn for her complaints, criticizing what they view as a double standard in Hollywood.
“So it’s totally cool for a woman to feel like she doesn’t need to be saved by a man, but it’s bad if a man thinks he doesn’t need to be saved by a woman? Did I get that right?” one popular reaction <a href="https://x.com/Variety/status/2042056151936987227">said</a>.
“And if Olivia Munn refused to be ‘damseled’ in a scene, you bet your bippy it would be a tale of female empowerment,” another <a href="https://x.com/Scribe_Light/status/2042056424440918201">agreed</a>.
Many commenters called Munn out for not naming names, leading them to question the story entirely.
Calling out colleagues without naming them has become a bit of a pattern for the “X-Men: Apocalypse” star. Last summer, she <a href="https://variety.com/2025/film/news/olivia-munn-male-director-ruin-career-1236445139/">complained about</a> a director she worked with on HBO’s “The Newsroom” who she claimed tried to sabotage her.
“I was on the one-yard line for the movie, and my manager calls me and says, ‘Hey, you’re gonna get the role. But first, I guess there’s another director who they know and he says that on “The Newsroom” you were late all the time and really combative,’” Munn said at the time. 
“I lived seven minutes from there. I was never late. I was like, ‘I know who this is.’ He just was trying to bash me. And I told my reps, ‘Please tell the directors this.’ And then I still got the role. But I will always remember that just because of our conflicts of how we approached a role, he wanted to ruin my chances of getting anything else.”

Olivia Munn

Olivia Munn Calls Out Male Co-Star Who Refused To Be Rescued By A Woman

Entertainment

Feminism

Hollywood

Movies

California Governor Gavin Newsom Interview On The Circuit

How Gavin Newsom’s Entire Political Career Is About To Be Destroyed — By His Wife

How Gavin Newsom's Entire Political Career Is About To Be Destroyed — By His Wife

2028 presidential election

California

Gavin Newsom

governor

Harvey Weinstein

Opinion

Tradwives

Woke Culture

Women

The party that put biological men on women’s podiums, erased the word “woman” from federal guidance, and whose Supreme Court Justice couldn’t define the word “woman” — is now outraged that Donald Trump fired two underperforming cabinet secretaries. Who happened to be women.
The moment President Donald Trump removed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi from their posts, progressive media conveniently remembered what a woman is and erupted with righteous fury. These are the same commentators who mocked these women for wearing crosses and appearing on television. They spent years calling them racist, unqualified MAGA props. And the same movement that cannot define what a woman is now claims to be their defender, finally discovering their inner feminist. And who is the mascot of this movement but none other than Jennifer Seibel Newsom, who, unsurprisingly, preaches that Trump has launched a “War on Women.”
This narrative doesn’t survive contact with reality.
Seibel’s narrative doesn’t abide the fact that a group of men was the first out the door. Matt Gaetz was forced out eight days before he ever took office. Mike Waltz, the first Senate-confirmed appointee actually fired, exited in May 2025 after the Signal chat scandal. (He was subsequently reassigned as UN Ambassador.) Just this week, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ousted Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George — a four-star general with over 35 years of service — in the middle of an active conflict with Iran. Dan Bongino served as FBI Deputy Director, delivered results including cracking a four-year-old cold case on the January 6th pipe bombs, and departed on his own terms. These are not the headlines of an administration waging war on women. These are the headlines of an administration that holds everyone accountable.
Look at who is still in the room. Susie Wiles — the first female White House Chief of Staff in American history — is running the operation while battling breast cancer. Karoline Leavitt, the youngest Press Secretary ever, is nine months pregnant and still at the podium. Brooke Rollins, Linda McMahon, and Tulsi Gabbard are all still delivering. Trump built a cabinet with eight women in top-tier roles at the outset — roughly one-third of his team, more than most Republican presidents before him. These women aren’t relinquishing power. They hold some of the most consequential jobs in the federal government because they earned them.
What exactly are Noem and Bondi guilty of? Noem’s tenure included congressional testimony blowups and a $220 million self-promotional ad campaign that looked more like a reelection vehicle than a border enforcement effort. Bondi frustrated the White House with slow progress on the Epstein files and pursuing cases against Trump’s political opponents — the core of her mandate. This administration declared war on DEI from day one and fired Biden holdovers because they undeniably obstructed the agenda. Noem and Bondi were held to that same standard.
Now consider the source of the outrage. Jennifer Seibel Newsom’s monologue lamenting the “devaluation of women” fell on deaf ears — after all, she spent two years slamming these same women. The media now mourning Noem and Bondi called them unqualified MAGA Barbie bigots throughout their entire tenures. Where was the feminist solidarity then?
Compare that to Biden’s record: a vice president famously “unburdened by what has been” — because she’d accomplished virtually nothing. A health secretary who insisted men could become women. A diversity agenda that counted biological males as women. They padded the numbers while magically erasing the category entirely.
What the Left is really angry about isn’t that two women were fired. It’s that this White House refuses to play Identity Politics. That refusal exposes the  hollowness of their so-called “empowerment.” Real power isn’t handed out by quota. It’s earned. Susie Wiles didn’t become the first female Chief of Staff because of a diversity mandate. She got there because she’s the best in the room.
Jennifer Seibel Newsom can lecture us about the patriarchy. But she might start by explaining why the movement she represents spent two years trying to destroy the very women she’s now defending.

2024 California Conference For Women

Feminism Is Never Having To Say You Support Women — Or Not

Identity Politics

Jennifer Newsom

Trump Administration

“Supergirl” star Milly Alcock is already facing pushback after preemptively blaming potential criticism of the film on misogyny. 
The remarks have drawn comparisons to Rachel Zegler&#8217;s pre-release comments ahead of Disney&#8217;s &#8220;Snow White,&#8221; which sparked similar backlash.
Fans are calling out Alcock for her recycled feminist arguments after her recent <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/milly-alcock-vanities">interview</a> with Vanity Fair. 
“It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on,” the 25-year-old actress said when asked about the “inevitable backlash” she’d face. 
“We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies. I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself,” Alcock added.
Alcock assumed people wouldn’t like the movie because she’s a woman, but her description of the plot points to a different criticism fans have raised. She said her character, Kara Zor-El/Supergirl, is “given this incredible responsibility and doesn’t know how to deal with it.” 
“She’s not trying to save the world—she’s just trying to save her own,” Alcock told Vanity Fair. “This film is an excellent reminder that the world can be crumbling around you, but you can be the hero of your own story.”
The interview inspired many negative reactions on social media, with critics calling out Alcock for complaining about backlash that hadn’t even happened yet.
“These movies are so bad that they have to start attacking the fans before the movie even comes out,” one person <a href="https://x.com/newspolitics/status/2039035489760460880?s=43">observed</a>.
“Actors really need to go back to just promoting the movie and staying away from anything else, because this type of discourse does nothing but harm its chances,” another person <a href="https://x.com/reviewsdino2/status/2039357302365446654">agreed</a>.
“I suspect she&#8217;ll face backlash about ‘simply existing’ in a movie that doesn&#8217;t look interesting and which is part of a cinematic universe that&#8217;s already struggling with the disinterest of general audiences following a lackluster Superman and various TV shows that few people even noticed happened… but saying it&#8217;s ‘simply existing as a woman’ certainly works better for generating some sort of buzz,” a third commenter <a href="https://x.com/HarfangDneiges/status/2039323848621916611">wrote</a>. 
Another comment <a href="https://x.com/RecruitBoss/status/2039048717525762381">noted</a>, “This is called pre-release critical armor. Any criticism of this movie will be branded as sexist or misogynistic. They use race and gender as critical armor to protect their poorly written scripts from legitimate criticism.”
Zegler became a legend following the disastrous release of Disney&#8217;s &#8220;Snow White&#8221; in 2025. The movie was bad, but additionally, the lead actress made it all worse by disparaging fans and the original storyline ahead of its release. The negative press for Zegler is believed to have contributed to the abysmal box office results.
The “Supergirl” description from Warner Bros. says, “When an unexpected and ruthless adversary strikes too close to home, Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl, reluctantly joins forces with an unlikely companion on an epic, interstellar journey of vengeance and justice.”
The film opens in theaters nationwide on June 26.

Milly Alcock

Another ‘Snow White’? The Fight Superhero Star Picks With Fans Before Movie Hits Theaters

Box Office

Celebrities

Warner Bros

I spent the day watching more of “The View” than I ever have before in my life.
Turns out, the insufferable hosts of this failing network show, on Disney-owned ABC, took it upon themselves to spend seven uninterrupted minutes on national television <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-host-fires-back-after-the-view-melts-down-over-her-support-for-young-families?author=Virginia+Kruta&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Daily+Wire+Host+Fires+Back+After+%E2%80%98The+View%E2%80%99+Melts+Down+Over+Her+Support+For+Young+Families">bashing me</a> by name, and anyone else with the audacity to promote marriage and parenthood to Gen Z.
I’ve been a content creator since 2019, covering some of the most contentious issues in the American culture war, and I’ve gotta be honest: I never thought this, my most wholesome, pro-America take, would be the thing I’d get attacked for.
Last week, I joined a panel of incredible women on stage at CPAC to discuss the importance of the American family, and was asked specifically to talk about what it’s going to take to save America. My answer was one <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-host-torches-the-view-over-claim-only-rich-women-can-afford-kids?author=Virginia+Kruta&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Daily+Wire+Host+Torches+%E2%80%98The+View%E2%80%99+Over+Claim+Only+Rich+Women+Can+Afford+Kids">I often repeat</a> in speeches or interviews, and reflects a simple timeless truth — we must renew the importance of the family as the cornerstone of society again to a generation that’s being lied to about it. Addressing a crowd older than myself, I said this:
<blockquote>If you’re not encouraging your children to grow up and have the courage to grow up to get married and have kids — more kids than they can afford, before they think they’re ready, it is high time to start.</blockquote>
Before long, Whoopi Goldberg &amp; company would be furious and virtually foaming at the mouth over the very idea that I promote marriage and motherhood to my generation, and dedicated an entire segment of everyone’s favorite “View-erless” show to launch an attack. 
The “anti-family” segment on &#8220;The View&#8221; opened with Whoopi predictably labeling me a racist – because, clearly, I must only want more white people to have children as a white woman myself. That’s obviously not true. 
But it’s a curious criticism coming from Whoopi Goldberg, an ardent supporter of the abortion industry, which grew in America specifically as a way to kill black babies in the womb at the hands of renowned and infamous eugenicist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.
In 2022, Black women made up about 40 % of all abortions reported in the U.S. – in New York City today, as Whoopi Goldberg runs her mouth on television from the heart of Manhattan, you are more likely to be aborted as a black baby than you are to be born… all in the name of racial progress and equity, right?
Let me be clear: the only racial component to any of this is the continued desire by the abortion industry to convince black women it’s more empowering to end the lives of their children than to give birth to them.
Moving through the panel, Sara Haines spent her time on air reminding viewers that having kids is a choice. That’s true. But what about my choice, and that of literally billions of other women around the world, to get married and have children? The very notion is seemingly unfathomable to the women on this miserable panel.
In other words, if you make the choice to “want” kids – it’s the wrong choice. You’re less of a woman. You aren’t a feminist. You don’t support equality. You deserve to be publicly SHAMED, which is exactly what they proceed to do to me.
Ironically, every woman but one around that table has children of their own. And every one of them is either in a long-term relationship or has been married. They somehow make it work as working moms. They have had the courage to commit their lives to someone they love. They get to snuggle their babies at the end of a long day of work — so, why isn’t it worth pursuing for you?
For the rest of the segment, all of the hosts collectively wasted air throwing out every anti-natalist argument to see what would stick.
They lied, saying having children is somehow beneath women, that we as a sex (amazing, how suddenly we can all define woman, right?) have come “too far” to still be sucked into the innate, natural, instinctual desire to have a beautiful baby and share your life with someone.
They lied, claiming childcare costs a whopping $400,000 a year, so must be financially inaccessible to anyone outside of the 1% of the 1%. For the record, it costs about $10,000-$15,000 on average a year… but I wouldn’t expect a woman screaming at me in an $800 jacket to know.
They lied, saying if you want a baby you must be in an abusive, oppressive marriage to an evil, misogynistic man–and someone ought to help you escape with a divorce attorney. To clarify: I love my husband, and no one is more supportive of my motherhood journey or my career.
They lied, saying that I must not understand how tough having kids are because I have a mere one-year-old, who “just sleeps all day.” News to me, after over a year of my life not sleeping all the way through the night.
They lied, saying that breastfeeding ruins your boobs. I know Whitney Cummings remains deeply concerned about my breasts – after 11 months of breastfeeding my daughter, they’re doing just fine.
They lied, of course, to claim we’re facing an overpopulation crisis, which is objectively the opposite of our current reality. In fact, over half of the world’s countries and areas now have fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. These countries represent over two-thirds of the global population, and that number is expected to increase to over 90% by the end of this century.
By 2030, nearly 45% of American women aged 25-44 are projected to be single and childless.
It’s not hard to understand why – virtually every single influencer, television show, movie, college professor, woke pastor, politician, and mainstream media outlet today is dedicating massive air time to trying to convince you NOT to have kids.
Why? Because they want you miserable and lonely. They are intentionally seeking to brainwash you into what my friend &amp; fellow mom Allie Beth Stuckey calls “Toxic Empathy,” so you think you&#8217;re a better person and more compassionate for essentially hating children.
In fact, getting married and having kids is better for everyone in the long term. One study found that having kids increases your wealth by 23% throughout your life. Young married moms are three times happier than their unmarried, childless counterparts. Statistically, married, religious couples with children have the most satisfying intimate lives.
Most importantly, the joy and purpose we experience in sharing our lives with our children is unparalleled anywhere else in our often empty and meaningless society.
How dare we want that for the next generation, right?
I further find no coincidence that this segment aired this week at the start to Holy Week as we walk toward Christ’s Passion on the cross this Friday and His resurrection into heaven on Easter Sunday. The family is the most beautiful example we have of God’s perfect design for humanity. His love is exemplified for us as we lay down our lives for one another, humbling ourselves to serve our spouses and our children. The family, as a result, presents an unparalleled threat to the demonic forces of evil and darkness in our world.
St. John Paul II said during his tenure as Pope, “As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live,” and “The future of humanity passes by way of the family.”
&#8220;The View’s&#8221; attack on the family and those promoting it is just the latest example of spiritual warfare being waged against what is good and true and beautiful, and we must remain deeply committed to sharing the timeless truth of God even in today’s culture.
Mother Teresa once famously said, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” These words have always been meaningful to me, but certainly have packed a huge gut punch this week as I reflect on the unexpected backlash to such a simple message I shared on stage last week.
It’s a call to action for all of us to ponder, and determine what course we will walk as we work to build our own American Dream as a generation among Gen Z.
The truth is, there’s no better advertisement for the joy of a God-centered marriage than the alternative being blast on full display from the set of &#8220;The View&#8221; – would you rather live among the misery, contempt, and judgment of these angry middle aged women, or pursue purpose and fulfillment in marriage and motherhood while you can?
So, thanks to the ladies of &#8220;The View&#8221; for giving me another opportunity to address this issue. In case it wasn’t clear, I stand by everything I said at CPAC. And in case you’re still unsure at this point, let me reiterate:
Have the courage to fall in love, get married, and make more babies.
It’s good for the world, and even better for you.

JOY BEHAR, SARA HAINES, WHOOPI GOLDBERG, ROBIN WRIGHT, SUNNY HOSTIN, ALYSSA FARAH

I Told Gen Z To Get Married And Have Kids — ‘The View’ Lost Its Mind

I Told Gen Z To Get Married And Have Kids — 'The View' Lost Its Mind

Children

Marriage

Planned Parenthood

The View

Whoopi Goldberg

Sheryl Sandberg thinks women are stupid. The former chief operating officer of Meta and the founder of the nonprofit Lean In, based on the ideas in her 2013 book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, is back in the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/sheryl-sandbergs-lean-in-sheds-quarter-of-staff-will-focus-on-manosphere-fight-1baf7d84?mod=e2tw">news</a>, this time (again) voicing her disappointment in the fairer sex’s inability to conquer corporate America.
Sandberg has pivoted from her claims that women aren’t fulfilling the DEI prophecy because of a systemic failure in American corporate culture (patriarchy!), to aiming her sites on the manosphere and pushing back on the “tradwives” movement. In a recent LinkedIn post, Sandberg writes:
<blockquote>
The problem with the romanticized vision of the tradwife is that it signals to women that to be a good wife, partner, or mother, you have to do it full-time. 
This gives working women one more burden to carry on top of everything they already manage: guilt. Arianna Huffington says it best: “As a working mother, it feels like they take the baby out and put the guilt in.” As I told People magazine last week, I’m worried that the glamorization of the tradwife trend risks putting that guilt back into women — guilt that many of us have worked long and hard to shed.
</blockquote>
As a full-time working mom of three (4- and 2-year-olds and a one-month-old that I’m holding while writing this essay) who has never taken a maternity leave and has felt the intense pressure of being a good — or at least not so bad — mom, wife, employee, and colleague, Sandberg is partly right about the guilt; she just wants to own all of it.
Twenty-first-century feminists emphasize choice the same way Henry Ford offered color options for the Model-T: You can choose any path, as long as it’s the one prescribed by the Lean In feminists.
It’s been over a decade since Sandberg proclaimed that she does not “believe two countries run by women would go to war. Full stop,” and she’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyohphFqRJU&amp;list=PLKlRp-ywAMm6-0HCixmEqXiqZtdNPCpng&amp;index=2">still</a> making the case that more women in positions of power and influence would make for a better world — especially for women. First, it’s obvious by this statement that Sandberg has never seen an episode of The View, and second, she’s denying an inherent truism of human nature: that the most cruel and unforgiving people toward women are…other women.
Note to my fellow women: Sheryl Sandberg is angry at you for taking her advice and exercising your agency just as readily as any man’s. The trouble is you chose unwisely in the eyes of the pseudo-empowering world of Lean In feminism.
Sometime after Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote her revealing 2012 Atlantic essay, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/">Why Women Still Can’t Have It All</a>,” (to which Sandberg’s book is a reply), society pivoted from the “Mommy Wars” of the 1990s to flattening the sexes into androgynous groups where there should be no differences in the types of ambitions or motivations between sexes. So, when outcomes are disparate by sex, there must be something wrong with the individual or the system. It couldn’t possibly be because women have a natural tendency to choose maternal roles or prioritize home and child care over professional advancement. Women have been duped again! Don’t you understand that deep down under all that maternal instinct is a girlboss destined for the C-Suite?
In the journal Fairer Disputations, Elizabeth Grace Matthew <a href="https://fairerdisputations.org/vocation-not-identity/">writes</a>, “Modern feminists’ failure to acknowledge the well-established desire of most women to spend more time mothering and less time working involves no mystique, but an unwillingness to recognize women’s average differences with men. Declining marriage rates, a fertility crisis, and increasing rates of female anxiety and unhappiness are all perpetuated by a hegemonic bill of goods about women’s desire for a functionally androgynous identity.”
Sandberg wants to guilt women into denying their intuition, ironically, something society fully acknowledged with the oft-used phrase “women’s intuition.”
I was a Division I collegiate athlete, a U.S. Marine, and a working professional, all so-called “male-dominated” activities (one might label the “manosphere”). No one told me I was less than; no one challenged my ability based on sex. What I did hear was other women trying to convince me I would fail because the deck was stacked against me, or that if I came to the realization that being a tech overlord wasn’t my true ambition, I was a tool of a sexist system. There is nothing more toxic than a supposed feminist saying you shouldn’t try because you’re set up for failure. That’s nonsense and a lie.
In reality, women need to follow their instinct despite the upside-down, passive-aggressive, pantsuit messaging from their fellow travelers. The real threat to women carving their own paths and finding fulfillment, purpose, and happiness isn’t the patriarchy, the manosphere, or tradwives; it’s women like Sheryl Sandberg who don’t believe average American women have the capacity or mental wherewithal for making the “correct” choice for themselves, their families, or their careers, and who get angry when they don’t want to be Sheryl Sandberg.
That women are exercising real choice and have life ambitions outside the boardroom signals a shift away from the guilt-ridden Lean In feminism lie and shows that we’re not as stupid as Sheryl Sandberg wants us to be.

Sheryl Sandberg Visits “America’s Newsroom”

Sheryl Sandberg Champions ‘Choice’ Except When It’s One Specific Choice

Culture

Girlboss

Lean In

Sheryl Sandberg

Boy Scout Shirt with Rank Badge and Merit Badges

Everything In Society Has Been Feminized, And It’s Been A Total Disaster. Here’s Proof.

Everything In Society Has Been Feminized, And It's Been A Total Disaster. Here's Proof.

Animation

Boy Scouts

J.R.R. Tolkien

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
The rise of Ozempic is as much a story of American ingenuity as it is of our culture’s posture toward its food. For every excess pound Americans gain, the pharmaceutical industry is just a few steps behind, developing band-aid after band-aid for our crisis of chronic disease. Yet while our alarm bells only recently began sounding over the obesity epidemic and its cascade of related health issues, the roots of our disordered relationship with food run decades deeper, back to the <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/political/convenience-culture-crisis-how-second-wave-feminism-helped-make-america-sick">second wave</a> of feminism and the rise of a convenience-driven culture that ushered in mass dependence on ultra-processed foods. This deeper crisis is not one we can medicate ourselves out of: We are a nation that has deliberately forgotten how to feed itself.
Feeding America well is less about nostalgia than stopping a tangible, observable public health and environmental crisis. By now, data regarding our obesity, hypertension, and related deaths, diseases, and disorders saturates popular discourse almost too deeply to bear repeating, but the fact that our poor health has become a cliché doesn’t make it any less true. Much of this crisis, unsurprisingly, begins in the kitchen. The “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/15/garden/new-lost-generation-the-cooking-illiterate.html">cooking illiterate</a>,” a term coined by the New York Times, is reproducing faster than ever, with younger generations decreasingly likely to know how to cook. <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/do-millennials-really-not-know-how-to-cook-with-technology-they-dont-really-have-to">More than a quarter of millennials</a> say they couldn’t make a cake from a box mix, and <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/do-millennials-really-not-know-how-to-cook-with-technology-they-dont-really-have-to">under a third of 18-to-29-year-olds</a> say they feel “confident” in the kitchen. It isn’t an issue of free time, either; <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/america-addicted-food-delivery-takeout-plastics-coronavirus_n_5ed013eec5b64f10cb090b29">the COVID-19 lockdowns led to a spike in DoorDash and Uber Eats</a>, not a renaissance of home cooking.
Our obsession with convenience culture is not a coincidence. Rather, it’s the direct result of devaluing work such as homemaking, caregiving, and food preparation, traditionally women’s work, as lesser forms of work. This shift then combined with rising dual-income households to create a cultural and logistical void in domestic food production as households’ mothers entered the workforce. Industrial food companies were all too quick to rush into that void, seeking markets for post-WWII manufacturing capacity. Corporate interests aligned all too conveniently with the “you can have it all” ethos, promoting shelf-stable, processed foods as “freedom” from and “progress” beyond the home. This cultural transformation was hardly intentional; in many ways, it was barely even a conscious one. Nevertheless, markets picked up on our demonstrated preferences, and our homemade food was replaced by manufactured supplements that quickly became substitutes.
Industry replaced the family kitchen, filling a vacuum with promises that were too good to be true. Additives and preservatives were marketed as “science,” frozen and boxed meals were sold as “liberation,” and the rise of the microwavable dinners framed speed as ingenuity. Generational skills eroded as cooking, gardening, and food knowledge were outsourced, and food quality plummeted as additives, preservatives, artificial ingredients, refined seed oils, and industrial-scale commodity crops became dietary staples. Systems once centered around nourishment came to serve America’s new favorite god: efficiency.
With our food sequestered away in boxes and plastic, cobwebs began to grow around tables where we soon forgot how to commune. Feeding ourselves became a necessary evil rather than an excuse to socialize, exacerbating <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/16643">America’s declining social capital</a> along with its biomarkers. Rates of metabolic disease climbed along with the number of ingredients in our staple foods and our <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/youre-eating-out-of-season-and-its-costing-you-more-than-you-think">distance</a> — physical and cognitive — from our foods’ origins. Today, <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/children-struggle-to-name-common-vegetables-survey-shows-ctxv3z3kg?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqccnk_ELKc_OqByRR6uQ4YjzfobSGBhOu1floda0nEiqjZQMeW7GkMjReIAtDg%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6938c117&amp;gaa_sig=Y0jubow8RBDTeD5iIV-dOChvetUmJaIwJepvhCVvLAtwF0h5Ak-jYAqVLkYec1YGKuNXw48aCzhmDBdEbOSXjA%3D%3D">less than a third of children aged 7-11</a> can identify a beet or a zucchini, though few kids have the same struggle recognizing logos for McDonald’s or M&amp;M’s. The decline in familiarity with food may have begun with the decline in farming and cooking, but it has accelerated over just a few generations to a full-fledged outsourcing of our culinary and nutritional autonomy.
The consequences of our predicament are difficult to overstate. Our country is now unsuccessfully battling parallel rises in childhood chronic disease, allergies, autoimmune disorders, and metabolic illness, and our decline in food literacy means that children who don’t know where food comes from can’t learn from their equally clueless parents. While the biotech industry may be able to patch up some of our health issues, it cannot heal a sick culture. Our loss of connection to food is also an atrophy of cultural rituals, among them shared meals, family identity, and an intergenerational knowledge transfer we cannot rebuild with an injectable, pill, or patch. All of this is underscored by our deteriorating relationship with the land we call home, as industrial food production has increased our land degradation, reliance on synthetic inputs, and biodiversity loss, reinforcing a cycle where the cheapest calories are the least nutritious and most environmentally damaging.
Making America healthy again will require rewiring the broken systems that have made her sick. We need to fix the regulatory frameworks that make it easier to produce processed food at scale than to support small farms, diversified agriculture, or nutrient-rich perishables. We need to address the permitting barriers currently hindering regional food processing, regenerative farm expansion, and the infrastructure needed for local food systems. Most of all, we need to accept that a healthy America requires aligning food policy with human health and environmental integrity — not just agricultural output — and we need to write agricultural policy that reflects that. Ultimately, success would look like an inversion of the industrial food supply chain that prioritizes export capacity and shelf-stability over nutrient density and ecological health.
And yet policy alone cannot save us. The real work begins in the home, with the deeply pro-human and pro-family pursuits of reclaiming shared meals and rebuilding a relationship with what we eat. Promoting food literacy, normalizing cooking as a basic life skill, and restoring the dignity of the farm and the kitchen are all efforts that will need to begin from the ground up, not an executive order or a farm bill. Restoring agency over the food that sustains our bodies and communities is a project that will take several generations and, if we’re successful, save several more.
America cannot be healthy again until families, communities, and institutions reclaim the ability to produce, prepare, and understand real food. We’re mistaken to believe that the fallout we’re enduring is merely biological, and equally mistaken to believe its solutions are merely political. Our country’s health is a project capable of nourishing a nation starving socially, culturally, and environmentally, if we choose to pursue it. Restoring it promises both the work and the reward of a lifetime.
***
Danielle Butcher Franz is CEO of the American Conservation Coalition. As a founding member of ACC, Danielle has dedicated her career to building bridges between traditional conservative values and environmental advocacy.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

GettyImages-1974650688

The Weight Loss Shot Is Rising, But What Happened To The American Family Table?

Food

Upstream

Former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg said the popularity of the “tradwife” lifestyle could be “detrimental to women, and further asserts that these “very, very, very, sexist” gender roles need to be revised.
Sandberg claimed that the rise of the tradwife trend has caused more harm than good. &#8220;The message that is going out is that in order to be a good wife or a good mother, you need to do it full time,&#8221; the former Meta exec <a href="https://people.com/sheryl-sandberg-the-tradwife-trend-is-not-a-fresh-idea-11922052?taid=69b0a187f9dd4700017de416&amp;utm_campaign=peoplemagazine&amp;utm_content=new&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com">told</a> People. &#8220;And the truth is that that is a decision almost no women can afford to make.&#8221;
&#8220;If you look at the percentages of women who need to work outside of the home to support their families, it&#8217;s the great majority of women,” Sandberg went on. “And so these messages that &#8216;this is how you have a successful marriage, that this is how you have six children,&#8217; I think, are very detrimental to women.&#8221;
The 56-year-old tech exec is best known for serving as Meta&#8217;s chief operating officer from 2008 to 2022. She is also the founder of LeanIn.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to “offering women the ongoing inspiration and support to help them achieve their goals.&#8221;
She went on to clarify, &#8220;I don&#8217;t think they are meant that way &#8230; there are so many messages that tell women what their place is that limit their ambition…and this is potentially, inadvertently, one of them.&#8221;
&#8220;If you have the resources and you want to be a tradwife, that&#8217;s great,&#8221; Sandberg told the outlet. &#8220;That&#8217;s for you to decide.&#8221;
She went on to repeat the popular leftist talking point that traditional gender roles were the real villain of the story. 
&#8220;We need to be realistic and we need to not use new ideas to reinforce what are old, outdated and very, very, very sexist notions of what roles are,&#8221; Sandberg said, adding that she thinks terms like “tradwife” make women who choose to work feel guilty.
&#8220;Let&#8217;s be clear: You are not harming your marriage and you are not harming your children by working and by being ambitious,&#8221; she insisted.
One of the most infamous examples of the tradwife trend going viral online is social media influencer Hannah Neeleman, better known by her social handle and business name, Ballerina Farm. She just made headlines again for announcing she was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nine-kids-thats-fine-but-theres-one-thing-the-debate-is-missing">pregnant with her ninth child</a>.
Neeleman has received criticism from the Left for being “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mom-of-8-ballerina-farm-founder-defends-her-life-choices-marriage-after-scathing-expose">a hammer blow for feminism</a>,” but she’s also earned a decent number of critics on the conservative side. They argue that because her husband’s family is very wealthy, she’s not exemplifying the sacrificial life of a stay-at-home mother.

Former Meta Exec Claims Tradwife Ideal Is ‘Detrimental,’ Says Women Must Be ‘Realistic’

Former Meta Exec Says Tradwife Ideal Can Be ‘Very Detrimental’ To Women

Motherhood

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Within hours after the joint U.S.-Israel operation against the Iranian regime over the weekend, the Women’s March organization <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DVUR8OlCY3e/">posted</a> to its Instagram account, “feminists vs. fascists.” In a surprise to actual feminists, the post also proclaimed “no war on Iran.” That’s right: To the organizers of the Women’s March, the governments fighting the Iranian regime are the fascists. Confused? Me too.
Think about how backwards that is for a moment. The regime has massacred <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-iran-protest-crackdown-death-toll/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-iran-protest-crackdown-death-toll/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3mnzRWdgB0HTdYlhrA8ofI">over 32,000</a> of its own civilians in a matter of days, and some estimates suggest <a href="https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2026/01/19/criminal-ali-khamenei-killed-16500-and-wounded-300000-iranian-protesters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2026/01/19/criminal-ali-khamenei-killed-16500-and-wounded-300000-iranian-protesters/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw296k3UfXf00u5QU0f_ofcu">300,000 more were wounded</a>. Iran’s reckless expansionism is responsible for the deaths of perhaps one<a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/865326/amp" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.arabnews.com/node/865326/amp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1Di96wfe3VKF6RLQHXd5Ji"> million civilians</a> in nearby Arab countries, and the ayatollahs’ hands are also stained with the blood of <a href="https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/06/19/iranian-and-iranian-backed-attacks-against-americans-1979-present/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/06/19/iranian-and-iranian-backed-attacks-against-americans-1979-present/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1OhMxAZcLYn6u2DejXNt9O">thousands of American</a> service members and civilians. Female protestors, including minors, have been <a href="https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602031576" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602031576&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1v4_wFikC7dbSpWyd_TWdW">sexually assaulted</a> in the regime’s custody.
This oppression darkens my earliest memories. Growing up, many in our Jewish Iranian community were forced to <a href="https://jewinthecity.com/2023/03/dr-sheila-nazrian-on-fleeing-iran-forced-antisemitism-and-becoming-a-voice-for-good/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://jewinthecity.com/2023/03/dr-sheila-nazrian-on-fleeing-iran-forced-antisemitism-and-becoming-a-voice-for-good/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772651621268000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3LD3uBA1fVY3tZQ8nh6X_C">hide their identities</a> to blend in. When I was six years old, my family and I <a href="https://jewinthecity.com/2023/03/dr-sheila-nazrian-on-fleeing-iran-forced-antisemitism-and-becoming-a-voice-for-good/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://jewinthecity.com/2023/03/dr-sheila-nazrian-on-fleeing-iran-forced-antisemitism-and-becoming-a-voice-for-good/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772651621268000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3LD3uBA1fVY3tZQ8nh6X_C">escaped</a> Iran in a clandestine journey that took us across the Pakistani border on the back of an old truck, hidden under corn and burlap.
We have always known the horrors that could have awaited us if we had stayed. Iran’s women have been the <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/iranian-feminist-resistance-paving-way-national-and-global-change" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/iranian-feminist-resistance-paving-way-national-and-global-change&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772651621268000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3VwoYV-aXUmMJVf27puF58">faces of protest</a> in their country, and they faced the full fury of their misogynistic government in 2022. After the regime <a href="https://www.vidc.org/en/detail/women-life-freedom-a-new-revolutionary-era-in-iran" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.vidc.org/en/detail/women-life-freedom-a-new-revolutionary-era-in-iran&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772651621268000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2zyIUdFLDsP5nugBHlLKmO">roughly arrested</a> Mahsa Amini, and she died in custody, thousands of her peers took to the streets. Regime enforcers <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/7480/2023/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/7480/2023/en/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772651621268000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3UdmWp5-VWlXVPvizZLGiM">violently raped</a> nonviolent protestors in their attempt to silence them.
Women have almost no rights in the theocratic regime that has ruled Iran for the last 47 years. Even leaving home often <a href="https://jcfa.org/iranian-womens-courage-must-not-be-forgotten/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://jcfa.org/iranian-womens-courage-must-not-be-forgotten/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2gY64XSeGDz7Gl2SXLV0SG">requires permission</a> from a woman’s husband, father, or closest male relative. All women are subject to a very <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47032829" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47032829&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2TtAo-zY56pgV72o26uhsG">strict dress code</a>. Disregarding these or other requirements can lead to a woman being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/19/iran-protesters-teenager-sexually-assaulted-in-custody-rights-group" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/19/iran-protesters-teenager-sexually-assaulted-in-custody-rights-group&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3EblE5iLU-_IQ70K7cgKFt">violated</a> by regime enforcers. It’s no coincidence that Margaret Atwood drew inspiration from the Islamic Republic when writing her dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
This is why I am flabbergasted by purported “feminists” siding with the radical regime in Tehran. Even as Iranian Americans danced in the streets to celebrate the strikes on the dictatorship that has ruined their country, elite white feminists such as actress Jane Fonda had the gall to “<a href="https://nypost.com/2026/03/01/us-news/jane-fonda-protests-tehran-strikes-as-iranian-americans-celebrate/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://nypost.com/2026/03/01/us-news/jane-fonda-protests-tehran-strikes-as-iranian-americans-celebrate/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772651621268000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2iCu4wJvhvJL5o9NhgZc3U">protest</a>” America’s intervention. Women&#8217;s media sites, usually the first to call out anything they perceive as women&#8217;s oppression, are suddenly silent. The Cut hasn&#8217;t used its <a href="https://www.thecut.com/tags/iran/">Iran tag</a> for three years. Elle, which ran a 2023 <a href="https://www.elle.com/fashion/a42396951/iranian-revolution-fashion-protests/">article</a> on &#8220;Decoding Protest Fashion in Iran,&#8221; now seems to have nothing to say.
Since the Islamic Republic regime first took the people of Iran captive in 1979, it has positioned America as its primary global adversary. Iran’s long-suffering people, themselves among the most <a href="https://medium.com/@Santenello/iran-the-most-pro-american-country-fae4bc7d83f3" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://medium.com/@Santenello/iran-the-most-pro-american-country-fae4bc7d83f3&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2qkoGOfFer65ROFRulrUBB">pro-American</a> populations in the Middle East, are even now being butchered by the dictatorship in the face of their demands for change.
Here in America, Iran is a threat to our democracy and public discourse. Iran has worked to seed unrest on <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/us-student-protests-palestine-israel-iran-1999-uprising/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/us-student-protests-palestine-israel-iran-1999-uprising/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0dPKaKC_CPLcdaH2Bq0TpE">college campuses</a> and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/iranian-government-actors-seeking-advantage-pro-palestinian-protests/story?id=111786372" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/iranian-government-actors-seeking-advantage-pro-palestinian-protests/story?id%3D111786372&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw38e4SG1UDOeFK8IAJebF5V">erode our institutions</a> from within. Iran actively plotted to <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2766" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2766&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1eQ8Kr60O5_YhEo4PNcoEx">interfere</a> in the 2024 U.S. election and has orchestrated assassination attempts against American <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-journalist-masih-alinejad-survived-multiple-assassination-plots-by-iran" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-journalist-masih-alinejad-survived-multiple-assassination-plots-by-iran&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3t26nivTlzk2nkfsYpPVjQ">journalists</a>, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/31/uk-us-and-allies-accuse-iran-of-cross-border-assassination-plots" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/31/uk-us-and-allies-accuse-iran-of-cross-border-assassination-plots&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3YIfYJaC2ii2P98wu0KlDD">officials</a>, and even <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-murder-hire-and-related-charges-against-irgc-asset-and-two" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-murder-hire-and-related-charges-against-irgc-asset-and-two&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw12C9rN1Ic6KJem99P-Y7Zd">President Donald Trump</a>. The Islamic Republic, even during negotiations, has signaled violent intentions by releasing <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/news/15914542/iran-propaganda-trump-armada-wiped-missiles-drones/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.the-sun.com/news/15914542/iran-propaganda-trump-armada-wiped-missiles-drones/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0BxfTxfm7t7Y87gUJWjFBs">AI-generated videos</a> portraying the destruction of U.S. Navy vessels and calling upon America to dig <a href="https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602024783" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602024783&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1772635221504000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2rnNoEzs9CKfwvjNOMDGWD">5,000 graves</a> for our troops.
In these circumstances, can anyone really call it “feminist” to stand with this murderous regime and against the women of Iran? So, while celebrities and Instagram infographics worry over the United States&#8217; military actions but refuse to celebrate the liberation of women in Iran, remember that you can&#8217;t take them seriously. Those who really stand for women’s rights in Iran know they will only be granted when the regime has been brought down for good.
***
Dr. Sheila Nazarian is a Los Angeles physician whose family escaped to America from Iran. She starred in the Emmy-nominated Netflix series &#8220;Skin Decision: Before and After.&#8221;
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

U.S.-Israel War Against Iran

‘Feminists Vs Fascists’? The Brutal Truth About Iran’s Treatment Of Women

Iran

Editor’s note: This week, we’re reprinting some of our best stories from the past year. This piece delves into the negative impact that feminism has had on a generation of women.
Country artist Kelsea Ballerini has struck a chord with “I Sit In Parks,” a song about yearning for motherhood after being told that chasing career success would deliver deep and lasting happiness.
“I Sit in Parks” feels less like a song and more like a mirror held up to an entire generation of women who were told they could have it all if they chased achievement first and dealt with the marriage and family stuff later. It gives voice to the quiet grief of realizing the consequences of that choice.
And while Ballerini hasn’t said the song was autobiographical, that’s how many fans are seeing it.
Her lyrics begin with the image that many women know well but rarely speak about:
“I sit in parks, it breaks my heart, ’cause I see / Just how far I am from the things that I want / Dad brought the picnic, Mom brought the sunscreen / Two kids are laughing and crying on red swings.”
These lyrics aren’t about envy of another woman’s designer clothes or corner office. They speak of a deep, vulnerable ache for motherhood and family life.
“We look about the same age / But we don&#8217;t have the same Saturdays,” the song goes on. “Did I miss it?/ By now, is it/ A lucid dream? Is it my fault/ For chasing things a body clock/ Doesn&#8217;t wait for? I did the damn tour/ It&#8217;s what I wanted, what I got/ I spun around and then I stopped/ And wonder if I missed the mark.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Kelsea Ballerini - I Sit In Parks (Official Music Video)" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Ccgd5MT9s4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Ballerini’s frank admissions have emboldened women to weigh in on social media.
“Wow. The picture painted by Kelsea Ballerini in this song is tragic. How many hearts has feminism broken with its lies?” one person <a href="https://x.com/biblicalbeauty/status/1986955863370715335?s=43">observed</a>.
“This is grim,” another commenter <a href="https://x.com/IndieLauraSDG/status/1987218755211104468">said</a> of the song. “I feel so sad for the girls who got duped into putting off the most important things in life.”
“My gosh, this is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read. I’m 45 with a 15-month-old, so this almost became my reality. An entire generation of women has been sold a bill of goods under false pretenses,” a third commenter <a href="https://x.com/Babelfish80/status/1987157480879604153">replied</a>.
“As a single girl in her thirties, I’ve never related to a song more,” a popular comment on the YouTube music video for the song says. 
“I wasn’t prepared for this. As a single girl at 39 this song hits so deep,” another person wrote.
Predictably, there were plenty who shot back, saying they were perfectly content in their choice not to have kids. But the marvel of Ballerini’s song isn’t just the message, but also that it’s coming from a mainstream artist.
It’s telling that at the same time this single started gaining traction, the radical pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights began circulating an <a href="https://x.com/ReproRights/status/1986939347250143385">old interview</a> with singer Stevie Nicks discussing how her abortion in the 1970s &#8220;allowed her to continue her career at the height of Fleetwood Mac.&#8221;
Nicks described her unexpected pregnancy as a “nightmare scenario” that would have “destroyed” the band. During that interview, she spent no time reflecting on how her life would have unfolded if she hadn’t decided to sacrifice her child on the altar of fame. It’s a much more common outlook that other celebrities have spoken of, while Ballerini’s wistful reflection on what could have been is almost never heard.
“So, I sit in parks, sunglasses dark, and I/ Hit the vape, hallucinate a nursery with Noah&#8217;s Ark/ They lay on a blanket, and God d*** it, he loves her/ I wonder if she wants my freedom, like I wanna be a mother/ But Rolling Stones says I&#8217;m on the right road/ So I refill my Lexapro, thinking…” she sings. 
Interestingly, Ballerini was married young and got divorced within five years because her husband, Morgan Evans, wanted to have children right away while she preferred to freeze her eggs and delay becoming a mom, as The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kelsea-ballerini-claims-her-marriage-ended-when-morgan-evans-wanted-kids-while-she-pursued-egg-freezing-route">reported</a>.
“That was something that we had talked about early on, and that was something that I was changing on,” the singer said during a 2023 appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. &#8220;Cause he was ready. He was like, ‘I don’t want to be an old dad,’ is what he kept saying. And I was like, ‘I’m not there yet, and I can’t do that to save this and give you something that I’m not ready for.&#8217;”
Ballerini said she “wasn’t ready for kids” and decided to visit a doctor to discuss egg freezing, which she planned to do before turning 30. She didn’t discuss the appointment with Evans until later.
“It was not a good day,” Ballerini said of telling her husband about her plan. “And I think that was when I was like, there’s a fundamental difference here that has happened, that has shifted. And it’s no longer like, I don’t see this person, I miss this person, I’m alone, I’m lonely. It’s like, he wants something out of life … [and] I’m not there.”
The “Half of My Hometown” singer said she filed for divorce not long after that conversation in August 2022. 
There’s a chance Ballerini wrote the song to make money, knowing it would make headlines and she could capitalize on the buzz it would generate. There’s a chance she doesn’t regret her decision to chase a career rather than becoming a mom sooner.
But either way, based on the reactions and comments, there is a group of women who feel duped by the subtle yet relentless messaging to build their careers and identities first and worry about marriage and family later… or never.
In practice, biology never agreed to that timeline. These women were told that motherhood was a detour from fulfillment, not part of it, and that it was equally if not more noble to collect passport stamps. 
They were told motherhood was a cage. That freedom was the goal. Yet in this song, the woman with all the freedom and fame is also the one with a broken heart.

Best Of 2025: The Saddest Song Of The Year Exposes The Lie Of Modern Feminism

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Editor’s note: This week, we’re reprinting some of our best stories from the past year. In this piece, originally published in June, Gates Garcia offers a reminder that true masculinity is not toxic.
* * *
The Left’s successful rebranding of masculinity as “toxic” didn’t just rewrite a dictionary entry — it rewired the cultural DNA that once produced great men.
In 2018, the American Psychological Association updated its Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men, effectively declaring stoicism, risk-taking, and competitiveness — the building blocks of masculine virtue — “<a href="https://www.apa.org/about/policy/boys-men-practice-guidelines.pdf">psychologically harmful</a>.”  
Within months, Gillette aired its infamous &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYaY2Kb_PKI">We Believe</a>&#8220; commercial, scolding ordinary dads at backyard barbecues while implying every son harbored a bully within. Seemingly overnight, &#8220;toxic&#8221; became the default adjective attached to manhood.
But this cultural ambush was decades in the making. It has its roots in second-wave feminism, which in the 1960s began reframing male strength as patriarchal oppression. By the ’80s and ’90s, freshly-minted gender studies departments were churning out theses that branded healthy male assertiveness “hegemonic.”
On television, the upstanding patriarch of “Father Knows Best” gave way to the beer-bellied, weak-willed Al Bundy. When clickbait culture arrived in the 2000s, every societal ill — from climate change to mass shootings — found a convenient culprit in “<a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/17/gun-violence-masculinity-216321/">traditional masculinity</a>.”
C.S. Lewis foresaw the danger. “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise,” he warned in The Abolition of Man — adding the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/113211-we-make-men-without-chests-and-expect-from-them-virtue?utm_source=chatgpt.com">punchline</a> our era can’t escape: “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
The cultural costs are no laughing matter. Today, 17.6 million American children — nearly one in four — <a href="https://www.fatherhood.org/father-absence-statistic">grow up without a father in the home</a>. Their odds of suffering are grim: Barack Obama, citing Census data in 2008, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2008/06/text-of-obamas-fatherhood-speech-011094?">noted</a> that such children are “five times more likely to live in poverty… nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”
If only he did something about it. 
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Almost 60 years earlier, Daniel Patrick Moynihan <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Moynihan%27s%20The%20Negro%20Family.pdf">sounded the same alarm</a>, saying, “the deterioration of the fabric of &#8230; society is the deterioration of the &#8230; family.” At the time, he was dismissed as an alarmist. The empty chairs around dinner tables prove him prophetic.
Classrooms reveal the next domino. The same ideology that pathologized masculine energy has left boys academically stranded. On the <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2022">2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress</a>, 8th-grade girls outread boys by nine scale points, continuing an unbroken gender gap that dates to 1992. Overall scores for both sexes hit the lowest level on record. 
College quads tell the same tale. Men have fallen to just <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/12/18/fewer-young-men-are-in-college-especially-at-4-year-schools/">44% of American undergraduates</a>, a gap that’s widened every year since 2011. UNESCO, surveying 140 countries, now calls boys’ lagging literacy a “<a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/leave-no-child-behind-global-report-boys-disengagement-education">growing global crisis</a>.” Christina Hoff Sommers <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9334744-boys-today-bear-the-burden-of-several-powerful-cultural-trends">captures the cultural headwind:</a> a school climate that “valorizes feelings and denigrates competition and risk…views masculinity as predatory. Natural male exuberance is no longer tolerated.” 
Why did “toxic masculinity” stick? Because it performed a linguistic jujitsu: attach a moral defect to the identity you want to erase, then offer “liberation” through re-education. Courage degenerates into “aggression,” leadership into “oppression,” fatherhood into “patriarchal privilege.” The outcome is predictable: abolish the virtues that civilize male strength, then lament the violence or apathy that follows.
Yet the data refuse to cooperate with the narrative. Children with involved fathers are <a href="https://www.lakeconews.com/news/community/commentary/56433-delcol-happy-father-s-day">40% less likely to repeat a grade</a>, more likely to earn As, and far less prone to behavioral problems. Even the <a href="https://www.apa.org/about/policy/boys-men-practice-guidelines.pdf">APA guidelines</a> — often cited as proof of masculinity’s hazards — concede that male risk-taking can be “harnessed for good” when directed toward service and innovation.
Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child <a href="https://developingchild.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/The-Science-of-Resilience2.pdf">summarizes</a> decades of research showing that self-regulation and disciplined resilience — traits once labeled stoic — buffer children from stress and reduce lifetime mental-health risk. In other words, the same virtues our culture now brands “toxic” are the ones empirical science says we need.
Trust the science.
Conservatives bear some blame for this inversion. While we tallied marginal-tax victories, Hollywood and higher ed rewrote the story of manhood. Institutions we once guided — churches, Scouts, civic clubs — sat vacant as HR departments filled the void. The cockpit was empty. The Left merely climbed in and took control.
We didn’t arrive here by accident. The cultural collapse around masculinity wasn’t inevitable — it was permitted. While conservatives focused on policy wins and economic metrics, the Left waged a full-spectrum cultural campaign that redefined manhood itself. They infiltrated the classroom, the newsroom, and the writers&#8217; room. They turned moral virtue into pathology and repackaged fatherhood as oppression. And we let them. Not out of malice, but out of misplaced trust — that truth would prevail unaided, that tradition could defend itself, that boys would become men by default.
Now, we stand in the wreckage of that assumption. A generation of boys has been raised to doubt their instincts, to apologize for their strength, and to see their fathers as liabilities rather than legacies. This is not just a political failure — it’s a civilizational one. But it also means the stakes are finally clear. If the conservative movement wants to conserve anything worth passing down, it must begin with this: the restoration of masculine virtue. Not nostalgia. Not anger. But clarity. The recognition that the war on manhood is really a war on order, on protection, on the nuclear family.
We’re not at the end of this story — we’re at the hinge. The institutions may be hollow, the narratives poisoned, but the hunger for truth remains. And in that hunger lies our moment. Not to manage decline, but to name it. Not to tinker around the edges, but to tell the truth loudly enough that our sons can hear it. Before we rebuild, we must remember who we are — and what we allowed to be stolen in the dark.
Masculinity is not toxic — it’s virtuous. When we reclaim that distinction, we invite our sons to stand tall instead of apologizing for existing — and we give civilization the allies it deserves.
* * *
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast &#8220;We The People.&#8221; Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Best Of 2025: How The Left Hijacked Masculinity — And Why That’s Bad For Society

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