The Soft Life: Love, choice and modern dating

By Lebohang Masango

For once, this is not a book about 'transactional sex' or HIV. There is no moral panic over women having standards in their romantic lives, or easy clichés of desperation in the face of unrelenting African poverty. In this book, Lebohang Masango explores how women in South Africa give meaning to aspiration, romance and love in their pursuit of the soft life -- a life free of hardship. Love it or hate it, soft life will not be a passing trend, even if it carries different names in the future.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Oct 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9780624092711

Lebohang Masango

Lebohang Masango is a multi-award winning children's book author, published and awarded poet and is a Phd candidate in social anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is an inaugural Zanele Mbeki Fellow in feminist leadership and is passionate about young people and women. She lives in Johannesburg.

Book preview

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Tafelberg

I just think money recognises me. Money is comfortable around me. Money likes me. So, money feels when it needs someone to talk to, it’ll choose me in the crowd and it’ll come and sit next to me . . .

It will choose me.

– Khanyi Mbau

Introduction

Soft life. More than just a lifestyle, it’s a way of life. I will not partake in struggle. I have opted out of strife. I am taking everything in my stride . . . I will do the bare minimum. I won’t be working hard, I’ll be hardly working. If it doesn’t serve me, it don’t deserve me. I’ll book flights and I won’t think twice. I will treat myself, who cares the price? . . . Soft life. It’s my human right.

– Adéṣayò. Tàlàbí¹

Hardship exists and I suppose it’s largely unavoidable, but as long as I’m an adult with some autonomy over the outcome of my life, I will live gently, nicely, softly. Somewhere between my own hard work, all the YouTube videos about manifesting, mapping my birth chart, getting my monthly tarot readings, charging my crystals, praying to my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, opening up my chakras, lighting my candles, having my Pinterest boards double as vision boards and so many of my Instagram faves literally spelling out the road map to success for me to follow, I can and will achieve the life of my dreams.

Every day I drown out the noise and curate a selection of visual and audio stimuli that remind me that I am on the right path. A secret weapon that I keep to myself even though the people around me can see the visible changes in my dress and demeanour. I once stumbled across the gem that is #femininity and #dating YouTube. You should really check it out. These beautiful women churn out multitudes of videos reminding us women that our role is to be pretty, soft, gentle beings and all of our life’s worries would be solved if only we allowed ourselves to lean heavily into our femininity.

After all, there’s a reason that men are known as strong, masculine and logical. Just release all of your stress about the economy, the climate crisis, your rent, gender-based violence and making a name for yourself and rather use that energy to keep up with your grooming appointments. Keep a neat, feminine hairstyle (longer hair is better), classy make-up and always dress like a lady.

If it all gets too much, a simple trick to help you remember is to just accentuate the qualities that make you different from men. Make sure that you also pursue ‘high value’ hobbies like attending gallery openings, playing golf or socialising at exclusive country clubs so that you are visible to the kinds of men that you would like to attract. In no time you will have bagged yourself a high value (rich) man who can take care of you, marry you and provide you with an opulent housewife life in an upmarket suburb with your children enrolled at the best private schools. Is it any surprise that women all over the world have managed to develop entire careers out of this kind of coaching?

I know all about this because it fascinates me to no end. I’ll also admit that I once longed for what I perceived as a shortcut through life and briefly fantasised that this would be the ticket to relieve me from having to decide and steer myself towards my own destiny. I wish this was that kind of book. I wish I was in the business of peddling Disney clichés of women only having to be beautiful and demure enough for the Prince Charmings that will certainly appear to turn rags into riches.

I wish I could be the testimonial that all the love songs, films, novels and reality shows are actually possible. That that perfectly authentic and in-love YouTube couple who are presenting romantic ideals that seem harder to recreate in real life have it all figured out. I wish there was an easy formula to disseminate so that we, myself included, could all just circumvent the realities of our economic condition with our pretty faces and feminine wiles.

I am certain that it would make life easier. It’s also hard to cosplay being ‘soft and feminine’ in the way that the dating coaches present it if that is not your default adult setting in the first place. While some women are happy to outgrow and abandon these fantasies in favour of imagining harder work and more progressive unions, or at least unions where they can participate more actively, others cling onto them more stubbornly in the hope of literally becoming the women of their wildest dreams.

Growing older, you can’t help but realise just how much goes into the making of a picture-perfect love story. It’s never as simple as having feelings and acting on them or simply being rescued from whatever difficult circumstances you’re stuck in. Romantic love requires daily commitment and collaboration. Feelings of devotion can only stand as strong as the foundations of compatibility and mutual agreement that they are built upon. We also never just fall in love with the first person that crosses our paths. So many factors have to be just right.

Before getting to the emotional, intellectual and spiritual qualities of that person, we likely need to be attracted to how they look, how they speak and to feel something whenever we imagine ourselves with them. Then follow the questions about what job they have, how much they earn, what their career ambitions are and how they feel about children, pets and marriage. If you picture it as a destination, falling in love is delightful but getting there is an important journey on its own that is shaped by who we are, what we do and don’t like, our circumstances and our ability to carve out the futures that we want for ourselves. This book is similar to that because it is also not just about love, but all of the factors that surround the possibility of its becoming.

This book is about five different women and what their truths, stories and insights can reveal to us about love, choice and modern dating in South Africa and how exactly these aspects contribute to ‘the soft life’ moment that we find ourselves in (and have been in before we even began to call it that). So please understand that this is not a book about ‘transactional sex’ or HIV. In fact, my years studying Social Anthropology have made me quite resentful of those terms and how they always show up when a certain demographic is being discussed.

This book is also not a contribution to the moral panic over women having standards in their romantic lives, nor a reduction of their ideals to the cliché of desperation in the face of unrelenting African poverty. Instead, I explore how women in South Africa give meaning to aspiration, romance and love in their pursuit of the soft life; a life free of hardship.

I discuss some of the considerations, anxieties and choices that women make in pursuit of this ideal amidst the precariousness that engulfs the majority of our population. I also suggest that South Africa’s economic climate, coupled with rapidly evolving digital technologies, have ensured that the soft life ideal will not be a passing phenomenon even though it may carry different names in the future.

The aspiration towards opulence by any means necessary is an entrenched part of our collective milieu as South Africans. A quick glance at news headlines shows the widespread corruption that leaves us to contend with the devastating consequences. It’s not just the politicians but also the ordinary citizens who don’t mind parting with some ‘cold drink money’ for bribes and skipping ahead in queues.

However, I am interested in the less harmful paths that are taken to actualise the dream life. I am particularly fascinated with the fact that middle-class women have become more vocal, at least on social media, about applying a neoliberal logic to decisions around their romantic lives. Which is to say, millennial women are not only highly aware of the rands and cents of everyday life, but they also show a newfound type of insistence on financial security and material comfort that goes beyond basic needs and wants.

All over the world, history has demonstrated that for women whom you date is as of much consequence for your material reality as your career path, how much you earn and in which area code you reside. The largely patriarchal social order has created the conditions for dating and marriage to be vehicles for the upward social class mobility of women.

Many of these women are first- and second-generation graduates who are among the first in their families to earn high incomes, indulge in an array of expensive consumptive practices, travel internationally for leisure and possess a global sensibility. It is precisely because of where they come from that they are fuelled to dream differently for their lives. These women are therefore unapologetic about having partners who fit into this outlook. Romantic relationships are absorbed into their repertoires of self-actualisation and thriving in South Africa.

‘Soft life’ as a descriptor of luxury and excessive comfort apparently gained its popularity through Nigerian Twitter users. I use ‘apparently’ because there are no studies to confirm this except my own. I imagine that by the time Nigerian musician, Naeto C, released his track ‘Soft’ in 2015 it was a phrase that was used and understood by many in that country². The explosion of Afrobeats and artistic collaborations between South African and Nigerian artists, as well as South Africa hosting a great Nigerian population, means that the phrase eventually made its way onto South African Twitter.

I began to notice the growth of its popularity in early 2020, right around the time when the COVID-19 lockdown was first introduced and we all thought that it would only last for 21 days. As a visual reference to what exactly the soft life is, one dedicated Instagram page features impressive photographs of beautiful South African women living lavishly, as shown by their immaculate designer outfits, bags, hair, make-up and surroundings³.

Simidele Dosekun classifies theirs as a spectacularly feminine style because it is ‘[i]ntricate, expensive . . . calls for material resources, technical and bodily skill, sheer labour, and mental vigilance and calculation. Not just any woman can pull it off’⁴. If we are to go by what socialites and influencers post on their social media then the spectacular femininity of the soft life is not only difficult to achieve, it is also inseparable from consumption.

Photographs of expensive goods, exclusive beachfront holidays, occupying business class flights or private jets and leisurely hours at the spa are some of the visual artefacts of soft living. The subtext of it all is that food, basic clothing, shelter and transport – all major concerns for most people – are minuscule details when money can be spent so disposably and so frequently.

Not a month can go by on South African Twitter without the public debut of someone with an inexplicable amount of wealth adorned in European luxury labels from head to toe, shoes, bags, expensive cars and VIP luxury living: all of the accoutrements of soft life. More often than not, the quieter conversation is about how the money may have questionable origins.

The louder, or rather the trending conversation, is about how inspiring and how revolutionary their consumerism is in a country that once shunned black life to poverty. The collective chest-swelling pride echoes up and down the Twitter timeline declaring: ‘Black child, it’s possible!’ It is possible to defy the odds in a country of 60 million people where 80 per cent are black and most likely poor or occupying the shaky middle class, living from payday to payday. It is possible to circumvent the adage that higher education is the key to success and it is possible to live a life of excess just like your favourite American celebrity.

These particular possibilities are showing us that you can own countless Louis Vuitton and Gucci items, travel business class or on private jets, consume expensive food and drinks and be one half of an expensively dressed couple without having to stumble up the ladder of self-actualisation that the majority of South Africans are relegated to; climbing one precarious rung at a time.

Some of these riches flow from dubious sources and can be attributed to either stealing public money directly or simply under-declaring taxes, both of which contribute to the inefficiency and disappearance of service delivery and the disrepair of our infrastructure which brings us closer to a ‘failed state’. It’s also common to see scathing tweets expressing regret over one’s relatives not being part of the African National Congress (ANC) because it is hard to ignore that being well-connected within the ruling party is a path to instant riches. However, none of this matters when the ‘Black child’ shows the world that it is possible to amass immeasurable wealth almost overnight. Nothing matters when held up against the pleasures of sheer individualism. #BlackExcellence, indeed.

Contentious images of rags-to-riches and overnight success stories seem to fuel the ethos of getting rich by any means necessary instead of rousing people to anger. We know very well that anger and protest are necessary political tools but they seem futile against a government that is steadfastly doing nothing to root out corruption. Mehita Iqani states that ‘the wealth of the elite . . . functions as a powerful symbol of freedom to which the poor aspire’⁵.

It is no wonder then that many have abandoned anger altogether and have chosen to queue for their turn to benefit from the torrential leak in the state purse. It also makes sense that the soft life phrase rose to popularity during the first few months when the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared in South Africa. This overwhelming period of confusion, grief, loss and economic ruin spawned a defiant rush towards self-soothing desires of hoarding wealth and maximising material comfort as made evident by social media posts at the time.

Neoliberalism, internet connectivity, social media and the dominance of Euro-American popular culture are some of the markers of globalisation that continue to influence us. The interconnectedness of our economies, technologies, media and forms of expression also wields great influence and helps us create many of the ways of being South African in the twenty-first century. Being constantly tapped in globally expands our worldview, shapes our aspirations and ups the ante of what we accept as proof of a successful life.

Through Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp and the burgeoning podcast culture, people, no matter how ordinary their beginnings and no matter how mundane their actions, are more accessible for public consumption and public admiration or criticism. Rising social media use has resulted in young people being able to catapult themselves into fame, popularity and even notoriety for their looks, talents and follower counts.

The category of ‘celebrity’ used to be confined to musicians, actors, radio and sports personalities or simply the people we see on TV and in newspapers and magazines. The steady displacement of those industries with web-based media has given rise to the Influencer and the influencer: a new kind of celebrity who either does social media as work or who has the ability to get social media worked up. First known to the public as make-up artists, YouTube vloggers and Instagram content