Somewhere between updating my three-page resume and perfecting my Pinterest board titled “future kitchen,” I realized I had been lying to myself. And so has modern womanhood.
Modern womanhood praises certainty. We praise the women who know exactly what they want — the career-driven woman with a thought-out five-year plan or the traditional woman who longs for a family and home. What we don’t ever talk about is the woman who wants both, and feels quietly guilty for it. The women who are filled with ambition but crave softness, the women who want both success and comfort, who desire independence and true intimacy. For a long time, I’ve thought admitting that meant I was doing womanhood wrong.
But then I met Amy March again. This time, not as a teenager watching from a distance, but this time, as a 20 year old woman seeing myself in the film.
The Sister who dared to want both
When I first watched Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, I thought I was supposed to pick a favorite sister. The eldest, Meg, represented tradition and warmth, while Jo represented ambition and rebellion. Their paths seemed clear and confident in their unique ways. And that was comforting to my 14-year-old self, dreaming of what I could become. But I never quite felt drawn to either, and it made me think I must be wrong. Meg wanted a marriage and home, and chose it with pride, while Jo wanted freedom and a career, with unwavering certainty.
But Amy? Amy craved both.
Throughout the film, Amy so honestly articulates what so many women are thinking, but doesn’t actually say out loud. That is that love, for women, has always been entangled with economics. Marriage for some women is less about romance and more about survival. Now as an economics major, I see that truth differently. I spend my days at college studying labor, incentives, markets, and how markets reward certain behaviors while punishing others. I wouldn’t say Amy is being pessimistic — she’s analyzing the system she lives in. She doesn’t pretend like love is the same for everyone.
That’s where Amy becomes the bravest sister to me. There’s a striking scene where Amy says “Well, I’m not a poet. I’m just a woman.” And the first time I heard it, it sounded like a dismissal of herself and her passions. But when revisiting, I realized it’s a recognition of the reality women live in. Being “just a woman” was never enough for society. Amy understands value: social, emotional, and economic. The opportunity cost is love, career, security, and independence. She grounds herself in the understanding that craving stability and intimacy doesn’t make you weak, and a desire for independence doesn’t make you cold.
When Love meets markets
As a woman studying economics at 20-years-old, I’ve learned to see how the world’s markets reward some paths, while punishing others. I see how unpaid labor, emotional labor, and domestic labor remain invisible in most economic systems. So when Amy talks about marriage as an economic proposition, she isn’t being cynical at all — she’s being literate to the system that she has been raised in.
I believe most women today know this reality. We just aren’t supposed to say it out loud.
Why? Because modern womanhood or “feminism” still pushes the narrative of Meg or Jo. You have to choose to be soft or strong. Be a nurturer or a CEO. And wanting both is a selfish idea that can’t be done.
Amy refuses to accept this idea.
The False Facts of feminism
There’s another moment that will forever stay with me from the film. When Jo says to Amy, “When did you become so wise?” Amy chuckles and responds, “I always have been, you were just too busy noticing my faults.” Most women feel this line deeply. From childhood through adulthood, a woman’s wisdom is often unseen, while her faults are wildly on display.
And maybe that’s what makes Amy feel personal to me.
The older I get, I slowly realize I don’t want to live in opposition to myself. I have no desire to build a career just for the sake of proving I can, and I also don’t want to soften my ambition just to seem lovable. I can have a life with a well written resume, and still cook a family dinner. I want to study and understand markets and things that inspire me while also choosing stability and love, and that doesn’t make me naive. I think sometimes the most radical thing a woman can do is admit she wants both.
Yes, you can have romance and a resume
Amy teaches us that wanting security doesn’t make you small. And success does not make you selfish. It makes you brave. To recognize the world we live in, and still choose to design a good life within it. The world doesn’t always need more Megs, or Jos, to show us what being a woman is. It needs more Amys: women who understand the world, speak of it proudly, yet still choose what they want for themselves anyways.
So somewhere in between polishing my resume and saving another pin to my “Future Kitchen” board, I finally realized that I don’t have to pick a side.