I’ve admired Mary for a long time, for many reasons. Partly because she is a gifted and beautiful writer, but also because she is unapologetically herself. Despite her online presence and popularity, she has resisted becoming a caricature, a predictable personal brand, or handing over any of her humility. She is rare for that.
In our conversation we start with Mary’s concept of “digital modesty”, and why young women might want to resist posting their lives online. We talk about fear of commitment and why it’s often parents who now panic when their children marry young. Mary also explains how we are confusing contracts with covenants, and what that means for our relationships.
Paid subscribers can access the full conversation, where we go on to discuss the problems with 50/50 partnerships, how to avoid resentment in relationships, and the lost art of letting things go. I talk about my generation’s fear of fully trusting one another, and Mary argues that the problem isn’t so much the “dating market” or “mental health”, but something deeper. Her advice is much more counterintuitive than therapy or self-optimisation; it’s humble, it’s hopeful…it’s an actual first step toward finding the courage to commit.
Here’s our discussion, I hope you enjoy. And don’t forget to subscribe to Mary’s Substack here:
Freya India: Mary, you coined one of my favourite terms, “digital modesty”. You describe this as “a general disposition: an effort, however difficult it is in practice, to avoid any form of online self-presentation that veers into spectacle.” Your general principles are: no selfies, no pictures of your child or husband, no discussion of private relationships, pictures of friends only in a professional context, and self-disclosure only if it serves a wider argument. This, you say, is a “digital practice of self-veiling, against constant pressure in the other direction”.
I follow similar rules, although I’ve never seen it so much as modesty but more of a personal failing. Growing up I just thought of it as insecurity. That’s also what people tend to assume these days. When I tell people I don’t take selfies they often reassure me that I look fine, that I shouldn’t worry about it, as if I’ve presented them with a problem. I see the same thing happening with mental health—if you don’t feel the need to “open up” you aren’t stoic or reserved anymore, you’re stunted and repressed; it’s a trauma response. Sexuality, too—if you don’t talk openly about sex, if you use euphemisms or prefer to keep that part of your life private, there’s something wrong with you; you’re frigid, old-fashioned, almost childlike. It’s as if there’s a spectrum from stunted to enlightened that we’re all on, and some of us are further along than others. We’ve lost the words “reserved” or “modest”, because, as you put it, “we came to believe that all ‘openness’ was by definition good.”
So basically the message is be yourself, be your authentic self…but if your authentic self is reserved or modest or understated in any way, you need fixing. I’ve even seen articles about “Instagram anxiety” and how to get over an aversion to posting yourself online. Why is that a problem to be solved? We are pathologising modesty, like there’s no such thing as humility anymore, only low self-esteem.
Which makes me wonder, what would say are the benefits of digital modesty? Why be digitally modest? There are so many incentives for girls and young women to post pictures of themselves online—whether it’s to keep up with other women (it’s hard not to feel disheartened when you don’t post selfies, but know your crush is inundated with images of other women…it feels like you have to take part to be seen), to advertise themselves better on dating apps, or simply because it’s easier to build a personal brand and get your name out there with selfies. So why not? I guess what I’m asking is, what do the girls who choose digital modesty gain, when it often means losing out on attention, on career opportunities, and more dating options? They are trading all of that for…what?
Mary Harrington: The way I see it, the internet in aggregate feeds on an illusion of intimacy: a sense of “knowing” the figures with whom we have parasocial relationships. In that context, you feed the machine every time you offer up a fragment of your inner life, and invite participation by strangers in a simulacrum of your “self” evacuated into the public domain. And while there’s considerable upside in feeding the machine - reader engagement is reliably better when I offer some self-disclosure - it’s a Faustian bargain in that the more of yourself you evacuate into the digital realm, the thinner the sense becomes of having an inner life as such.
I remember being very struck by hearing a younger person describe friends who didn’t really distinguish posting about their relationship from having the relationship as a one-to-one, intimate experience. That struck me as a very much reduced - or at least radically different - way of thinking about personhood.
In plainer terms, there’s a point at which a participant in online public life becomes a meme, and stops being perceived by their fanbase as a person. I think it’s critically important for people in that position to be intentional about distinguishing themselves from their meme-persona. Otherwise there’s a meaningful risk of simply becoming the audience-captured version of yourself and as it were being puppeteered by the aggregate desires of thousands or perhaps even millions. I wrote recently about how I think something of this nature happened to the porn star Lily Phillips, to her very obvious detriment.
I’ve also come to suspect that while the internet incentivises “transparency” and conflates it with “democracy”, the net effect of this transparency ends up being not more democracy but, ultimately, tyranny. From this it would follow that resisting tyranny implies deliberate occlusion. This is less arcane than it sounds; think of Twitter anons, who talk about “opsec” and gather in closed groups. The shared language of memes and an emerging counter-canon of esoteric political thinkers adds to the brew.
But this isn’t just about people swapping spicy opinions. One of the most interesting examples of a digital creator exploring occlusion recently was Nikocado Avocado, a YouTube influencer known for ‘mukbang’ videos in which he eats huge amounts of food. He pre-recorded months of content then suddenly revealed a dramatic weight loss, a move that caused shockwaves and jarringly highlighted the gap between the apparent “transparency” his grotesque content offered, all emotional excess and gluttony and fights with his boyfriend, and the evidently still hidden interiority of the man creating and then playing with this illusion. I think his stunt signalled a definitive vibe shift away from total transparency; but it’s clear that mainstream culture will take a while to catch up.
I hope it does though, because deliberately withholding ourselves from the all seeing digital eye has ramifications that reach well beyond Twitter anons or YouTubers. It’s especially relevant to women, who are socialised from a young age to see ourselves always somewhat through the eye of the Other. This habit makes the digital culture of transparency especially dangerous for us - because if you’re being encouraged to make yourself completely transparent online, you are in danger of viewing yourself only ever through the third-party perspective, and trying to evacuate your own inner life accordingly. The promise is agency, but the reality is a kind of half-life, as a pixellated puppet. The practical consequences of this can be seen in the empty eyes of a Lily Philips.
It’s strange because my generation talks so much about empowerment, agency, independence, and fear of losing ourselves, yet we will willingly offer ourselves up to the algorithm. We will surrender our souls to the machine without a second thought…but are terrified to surrender anything in a human relationship.
You write a lot about relationships, marriage and motherhood. It seems to me that one of the biggest obstacles to falling in love and starting families today is fear—fear of risk, vulnerability, and sacrifice. Young people seem to struggle to get their heads around actual commitment. Partly because we are young, yes, but also because that’s the message we hear everywhere: be careful not to commit to any one thing, never narrow your options, don’t allow yourself to be vulnerable.
It’s funny because I was talking to a friend recently about how if you get engaged young now, or do anything that signals actual commitment, that’s when family and friends worry for you. It’s like some parents are protective only when it comes to commitment. They worry about you closing down options. A few of my friends, young women in their mid-20s, made commitments recently—they got engaged, for example—and their parents panicked. They would rather their daughter have kept her options open, for as long as possible. They would rather she move in first with a boyfriend, because that’s less final. Now judgement and concern are directed toward anything slightly more traditional. If you come from a family that isn’t religious, or your parents aren’t conservative, you almost feel like you are disappointing them by committing. Their biggest worry is that you are being naive.
I thought this was just happening in my life, but I saw a tweet the other day describing this exact thing: parents thinking their 25 year-old daughters are too young to commit, and discouraging them from settling down or starting families. Maybe this is partly why we put it off. Maybe it’s not young women wanting to be girlbosses, or hook up more, maybe some are actually afraid to let their parents down. Now the fear isn’t so much what would my parents think if I slept around! but what would my parents think if I got engaged at 23! and having to break the news to them.
I wonder what you make of this. Why do you think parents are fearful of their children committing, and have you seen this yourself? How can we encourage young people to commit? Because as far as I can see, by refusing to sacrifice anything we sacrifice everything. The people I respect and admire most in my life are those who fully committed to something, to someone, and did not look back. How do we get that message across, that maybe the biggest risk of all is never fully committing to anything?