From working hard to hardly working: Hail the ‘lazy-girl job’

SPOTLIGHT / She works (not so) hard for the money

Gen Z and younger Millennials have a new way of framing the work/life balance.Credit: Getty Images

Earlier this year, Gabrielle Judge, a 26-year-old account manager for a tech company, made a TikTok video from her Colorado living-room talking about a phrase she’d coined: the “lazy-girl job”. “It’s not [about] you being lazy or a jerk at your job,” she explained: it’s a job that pays your bills but gives you so much work-life balance you feel like you’re “operating in a lazy state”.

The hashtag #lazygirljob has since generated 32 million views, and triggered thousands of videos, posted by Gen Z and younger Millennials of all genders, extolling the virtues of having a life outside one’s career. The idea follows on from “quiet quitting”: the phenomenon of employees doing as little as they can to hang on to their jobs. A 2023 Gallup State of the Global Workplace report found disengaged workers make up more than 50 per cent of the world’s workforce.

Examples of lazy-girl jobs, according to Judge, include any nine-to-five position that involves low-pressure tasks, a laidback boss, remote working and – crucially – a reasonable salary (she cites account manager, digital marketing executive or marketing associate as examples). No overtime, no weekend-retreat bonding, no kowtowing to a chief executive like Elon Musk who, in May, called working from home “morally wrong”.

Judge says she knew her coinage “was going to be a polarising statement” but, in August, The New York Times declared its support, with opinion writer Jessica Grose stating that laying down boundaries “should be the basic way we think about work”. Judge has since left her job and now works as a “career influencer” – within the lazy-girl-job parameters she defined. She earns more than $US20,000 ($30,000) a month from online content creation – from her couch. Lenny Ann Low

SHOP / Hot coco

Chanel’s reusable art-deco lipstick case allows for easy colour switching.

Engineered to technical perfection, this faceted jewel-box of a lipstick case shimmers like, and draws inspiration from, the mirrored art-deco staircase that connected Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel’s apartment to her atelier at 31 rue Cambon in Paris. The glass packaging for the 31 Le Rouge collection features an all-metal mechanism, with each component recyclable. Not only is it refillable (there are 12 satin colours in the range), the lip colour “bullets” are housed in metal-capped casings, enabling them to be effortlessly swapped in and out at any time. Priced at $235 (refills $105), the case is undeniably an investment piece, designed to be passed down through generations. Frances Mocnik

READ / What’s cooking?

Danielle Alvarez’s new collection of recipes reflects her love of European and Asian flavours – and her Cuban heritage.

Who includes a love letter to a herb (tarragon) in their cookbook? Only someone with a passion for food, such as Danielle Alvarez, who draws on her years at California’s Chez Panisse and Sydney’s Fred’s in Recipes for a Lifetime of Beautiful Cooking, which she has written with Libby Travers ($50). Created for the home cook, these beautifully produced recipes for seductive pre-dinner snacks, tantalising mains and gob-smacking desserts (hello, raspberry and mascarpone tart) bear the hallmarks of Alvarez’s Cuban heritage and love for Italian, French and Asian food. She writes with warmth, humour and joie de vivre. And she had me at “I live for cooking”. Nicole Abadee

WEAR / Rhapsody in blue

Melbourne designer Joslin’s “Belle” dress, featuring organic cotton and recycled polyester buttons.

Barbiecore pink has prevailed for most of 2023, but Elinor McInnes, founder of Melbourne label Joslin, is making a statement with her timely take on blue. Joslin’s drop-waist, “Belle” midi dress in lapis blue ($580), with embroidery motifs along the bodice and flattering, bell-shaped skirt, packs a feminine punch while championing its green credentials in the form of organic cotton and recycled polyester buttons. Dreamy. Damien Woolnough

ORGANISE / None too soon

Soon app: designed to help curate everyday wish lists into manageable categories.

Is the Notes app on your phone an unnavigable mishmash of workmates’ streaming recos, names of restaurants/bars/cafes that someone interesting mentioned, and long lists of books you Absolutely Must Read? Help is at hand. Two Stockholm-based developers have created Soon, an app tagged (not terribly inventively) as an “everyday bucket list” (App Store; free). Essentially, it helps you curate your wish lists into categories, including movies, television series, books, restaurants, bars/clubs, hotels, museums, podcasts and so on. You add your recommendations and the app sorts them into “Soon” (as in, still to sample) and “Done”, providing helpful deets along the way – think movie plots, venue addresses – as well as letting you know what’s trending in your area. Maybe not as much fun as having a chinwag at the water-cooler, but infinitely more practical. Deborah Cooke

EAT / Can do

Little Tin Co. houses local seafood in tins packed by hand.

Rachel and Dan Weeks were holed up on Deal Island – home to Australia’s highest lighthouse – in the middle of Bass Strait during the pandemic when they started seriously contemplating tinned fish. “We were volunteer caretakers, but we ended up being more isolated than we expected,” says Rachel. “We had to take all our own food, which included lots of tinned fish, and we wondered why, in Australia, it was mostly imported.” Three years later, they’ve launched Little Tin Co., a boutique canning operation in South Australia, which houses local seafood in tins packed by hand: think filleted Port Lincoln sardines, spicy kingfish and vermouth pâté, and whisky-spiked smoked mussels ($16 each). With local artist Ingrid Mangan painting the designs for each product, the pretty boxes hold their own alongside the ones from Spain and Portugal, which are renowned for their artwork. Dani Valent

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