We’re used to seeing countries disputing over land, but this Caribbean nation is currently fighting for water.

In Jamaica, the land of wood and water, residents can access only about 1% of the country’s beaches. The other 99% is locked away behind private owners, most of whom operate in the tourism industry.

Jamaica’s beach laws are quite old-school and filled with loopholes that foreign corporations exploit to their benefit.

For instance, the Beach Control Act of 1956 is still in use today. This colonial-era policy states that the foreshore (the area between high and low tides) belongs to the government and cannot be privately owned. Conveniently, this policy does not restrict ownership of the land leading up to the foreshore.

This means that foreign investors can buy up the land in front of beaches, turn it into private property and make it extremely difficult for locals to access the actual shore.

This formula is the blueprint of the Jamaican tourism industry that prioritizes foreign profit over local autonomy.

But was Jamaica always destined for this path?

The Tales of Two Jamaicas

The country’s 1980 election was a battle between capitalism and democratic socialism. Edward Seaga of the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) campaigned for more foreign ventures, fewer regulations and quick turnarounds on investments.

His opposition, Michael Manley of the People’s National Party (PNP), wanted to play the long game and acknowledged that the new country would need to strive and struggle first to reap benefits later.

It is a policy that calls the poor of the world to stand together, to struggle together, to struggle for change, to struggle for justice, to struggle through organization, to struggle through will, to struggle through determination, to struggle to build a new kind of world in which your children and mine will walk with more dignity.

Michael Manley, Campaign Rally Speech, 1980 General Election Campaign

Manley had already served as Prime Minister, but he needed more time to build Jamaica and the Caribbean into an independent powerhouse free from imperial influence. He tried weaning the country off IMF loans and opened up collaborative programs with neighbouring countries in an attempt to break the cycle of foreign debt dependency.

The US was never pleased with Manley and saw him as a radical to eliminate. Manley made several claims of the CIA attempting to assassinate him, but the US labelled him paranoid and denied these allegations. What they couldn’t deny is their meddling in the 1980 election.

Recently declassified documents show that the White House backed Seaga and offered funding and support to his campaign. When Seaga won the general election, his vision of prioritizing tourism as the main economic driver quickly materialized. 

Jamaica was now for sale, and foreign investors lined up to buy.

Seaga didn’t lie when he said that tourism was exorbitantly profitable. The main question is: for whom? 

Sixty cents on a dollar

Jamaica currently has a leakage rate of around 60-70% in relation to the tourism industry.

Essentially, for every $1 spent by tourists, $0.60 flows away from the locals and goes towards imports, travel agencies, foreign owners, etc. The high leakage rate reveals that the longstanding argument that tourism boosts the local economy might not be that simple after all.

Of course, many locals are employed within the tourism industry, but work at the lower levels away from ownership and management. Tourists do have the freedom to engage in local commerce, but up to 75% of tourists choose all-inclusive resorts rather than traditional hotels or independent villas. That means their food, drinks, shopping, partying and other forms of entertainment are all confined within the all-inclusive ecosystem.

Thanks to policies of the 1980s, Jamaica is now a tourist’s playground that closely resembles similar structures from the 18th-century plantation system. In fact, many of these high-end resorts are literally built on former slave plantations.

The Tryall Club didn’t try very hard to hide their name and history. The luxury club now nestled beside a private beach in peaceful Hanover was once the Tryall Estate, a site of the 1831 Christmas Slave Rebellion. Led by National Hero Samuel Sharpe, the rebellion was a pivotal moment in Jamaica’s fight for freedom. Yet today, this history is washed away by white villas and wellness spas.

“That beach raised us”

Private resorts control most of Jamaica’s coastline, but local groups are organizing to fight back. The Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (JaBBEM) is leading that charge, and its president, Devon Taylor, has a name for what’s happening. 

He calls the mass privatization of Jamaica’s beaches “plantation tourism,” due to the similar patterns of restriction and control. 

For Taylor, the fight is personal. He grew up by the beach and points out that the coastline isn’t just a place for sunbathing. Locals fish there for their income, children socialize and learn to swim, and elders congregate to soak away their aches in the mineral baths. 

The beach is a sacred site. 

JaBBEM wants unconditional access to these cultural sites written into the constitution, and they are willing to fight this out in court. Five cases on beach restrictions are currently working their way through the Jamaican legal system. 

We know who sold Jamaica back then. The results of these civil battles will decide if Jamaica is still for sale today. This conversation around land and water forces us to confront how old power structures still decide the fate of an entire country. 

One by one, under the hot Havana sun, Caribbean leaders disembarked at José Martí International Airport to meet with Fidel Castro. They shook hands, formed friendships and spoke of Caribbean self-sustenance via strong political alliances.

That was the 1970s.

Today, Cuba is increasingly isolated, its economy strained and its resources running dangerously low.

It’s a stark difference from the mid-century Caribbean climate, which was rich with dreams of democratic socialism and heavy collaborations with Cuba. These collaborations gained momentum throughout the 70s and 80s as more Caribbean nations stepped away from imperial forces and sought to build economic relationships with their neighbours. 

Bite the Hand and Still Get Fed

Well-known leaders such as Michael Manley of Jamaica, Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago and Errol Barrow of Barbados aimed to form a strong political bloc that prioritized Caribbean authority and ownership.

These leaders strove to stand against indignity and sought out a different world order where Caribbean nations, although small and young, would be able to feed their own people, educate and keep their own professionals and improve the life expectancies of their new citizens.

One of the most notable actions towards this goal was the rapid expansion of the Cuban medical brigades.

Jamaica adopted the program in the 1970s, and over the following decades thousands of Cuban medical professionals served on the island. Additionally, Cuba took in Caribbean medical students and trained them for free at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana.

Mixing healthcare, socialism and anticolonialism ensured that underserved communities received vital care and that this care could not be used as a form of colonial control.

Dollar amount: Redacted

Even with these attempts at collaboration, it’s hard to make friends when there’s a giant elephant in the room staring right at you. The United States, of course, particularly hated this newfound friendship between Cuba and Jamaica. They went as far as to conduct covert campaigns against both Castro and Manley, who openly supported each other. 

In a memorandum labelled Covert Action Options for Jamaica, the Central Intelligence Agency wrote that Manley must be stopped from turning Jamaica into a totalitarian state. 

There is nothing totalitarian about free healthcare and education.

Nonetheless, the redacted letter shows that the CIA’s main mission was to:

“Establish direct confidential contact with Edward Seaga, the leader of the main opposition party, the Jamaican Labor Party (JLP) and also provide guidance, assistance and funds to the JLP in the upcoming Jamaican national election campaign.”

Seaga did win the 1980 election against Manley, and the targeting of Cuba and their brigades continued. Young Jamaicans who were sent to Cuba were now being accused of training as paramilitaries, not professionals. Many had their training programs cancelled despite the Seaga administration failing to create its own replacement programs.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because the United States still uses the same tactics. 

Washington continues to target Cuba’s medical and training programs by labelling them as a front for human trafficking. Under the table, they are placing pressure on Caribbean countries to discontinue their contracts with Cuba. 

While the US denies this, at least one Caribbean nation, St. Lucia, has come forward with details of this political pressure.

While the US still uses old-school tactics to target Cuba, there is one main difference between then and now: the lack of Jamaican solidarity. Jamaica, now under Andrew Holness’ administration, has formally ended its bilateral medical arrangement with Cuba. 

Cuba relies on these contracts from their medical programs to fund their subsidized economy. Especially now, as America continues to starve them out, the medical brigades were a mutually beneficial system of support. 

In this ecosystem, Cuban doctors, who earn relatively low wages in Cuba, get to work in neighbouring countries at an increased wage. A portion of their wages goes back to the Cuban government, and underserved communities in host countries receive healthcare. It’s a nuanced system, but it’s been operating in Jamaica for half a century.

Until now.

Jamaica was one of Cuba’s strongest partners. Now, those partnerships are collapsing in real time. The situation is even murkier now that most Caribbean nations have become reliant on tourism and aid from the United States.

Even if countries wanted to stand up for Cuba, they would surely pay a significant price.

The same forces that targeted leaders like Manley and meddled in elections back in the 1980s are still deciding what’s possible for the Caribbean today.

No one knows isolation like Caspar David Friedrich. At the tender age of seven, family members around him died one after the other. First his mother, then one sister, a brother and another close loved one. By the time he was thirteen, he had an up-close relationship with death, loss and abandonment.

Instead of hiding behind a veneer of toughness to avoid being alone, he embraced solitude and even made it beautiful. The male figures in his paintings are strong, majestic and all alone. For Friedrich, being solo wasn’t a sign of weakness. It is an opportunity to appreciate your position within the natural world.

“I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am. Solitude is indispensable for my dialogue with nature.” – Caspar David Friedrich

The wrong red pill

Although these words by Friedrich are profound, they’re from centuries ago. Today, loneliness, particularly among men, is an epidemic across societies. Even in Canada, 63% of our young men report feelings of considerable disconnection. But as men reach out for community, the manosphere snatches them and drags them deeper into isolation.

The manosphere is a shapeshifter, disguising itself as a safe space for ‘high-value’ men. Like the red pill in The Matrix exposing Neo to the truth, the manosphere vows to show men the inner workings of the world. It promises total domination in every important category: relationships, finances and appearance. The problem is that this space is an echo chamber of grifters who sell snake oil solutions to impressionable men. Solutions that red pill influencers never seem to use themselves.

On his podcast, influencer David Cooley claimed that when it comes to dating, single mothers are for “recreational use” only. He calls stepdads ‘beta males,’ wasting their time raising someone else’s child. That did not stop him from dating a single mother and becoming a stepfather of three. Cooley is not the only hypocrite. The red pill gym bros are on steroids, and the relationship gurus are not in healthy unions. Even worse, the financial alpha males steal from their loyal audiences through crypto-meme rug pulls.

The manosphere is a dangerous space for young men to be in. They become prey instead of alphas, religiously following the words of professional fraudsters. Luckily, there is a way modern men can release themselves from this bear trap. The 18th-century sentiments of a German artist can help us conquer the manosphere.

The power of the natural world

Imagine you’re standing on a high precipice way above the clouds and mist, gazing out at the world around you with no one else in sight. In that moment, would you consider yourself lonely? 

Friedrich believed that man shares an intimate bond with the natural world around him. Even when the closest person is a world away, we are still interconnected with the sunset, the changing of the leaves and thick fog sitting above the sea.

Many at the time labelled him a *misanthrope for his love of landscapes. But even though he painted people who are alone, Friedrich rarely painted loneliness. His subjects are one with their surroundings, blending with the clouds or the rocks in a way that destroys hierarchy. Friedrich forces us to see the landscape as an equal subject to the man.

*misanthrope: a person who hates or distrusts humankind

Another artist whose work routinely comes up when discussing loneliness is Edward Hopper. Hopper’s approach clashes with Friedrich’s by showcasing disconnected subjects who are surrounded by other people.

In The Sheridan Theatre, a lone woman on the right stands far from the two men on the stairs. Even the two men, standing closely, are avoiding eye contact. The man in black stares straight ahead at the man in uniform, who lowers his gaze. Even with three subjects in a frame, there is no emotional connection. Hopper paints people as isolated loners. 

In contrast, Boy sleeping on a grave does not emit that same feeling of loneliness. It’s hard to see a graveyard as a happy place, yet the young boy is peaceful. I think he’s smiling. He belongs in the scene and takes his place alongside the butterflies, the lush leaves and flowers. Knowing your place within the wider world offers comfort in times of distress.

Take time to recalibrate 

Solitary communion with nature is necessary to develop a strong sense of self. Solitude recalibrates your moral compass. Without established principles, men become vulnerable to fake portrayals of masculinity online. They end up mesmerized by streamers and influencers who lie about eating raw liver every day, flex with rented cars and whose girlfriends are also on their payroll.

These successful men with so much money aren’t successful due to their good looks or their ‘grindset’ business acumen. They get rich selling courses to other men. They present themselves as masters in their field and charge upwards of $10,000 for courses and bootcamps. Few participants know that their mentors are swindlers with disturbing criminal histories.

My advice to modern men

I’d like to start by stating that I am a woman. I admit that I cannot experience the strange phenomenon plaguing young men. But everyone can see that the patterns are unsettling. The red pill movement weaponizes loneliness. It takes young men in need of guidance and shoves them through a pipeline that leads to toxic masculinity at best and white supremacy at worst.

Social media tells us that as young people, we should be having the time of our lives, non-stop. Young men should be sowing their wild oats far and wide and arriving at exclusive clubs in expensive cars. Friedrich would disagree. Paintings like The dreamer or View of Schmiedebergerkamm show us that men can be confident without company. Many of his subjects have their backs turned to us, yet we can feel their exuberance.

My advice to modern-day men echoes Friedrich’s sentiment: solitude is necessary to achieve inner strength. Whether it’s a night drive at 1 am or a weekend solo camping trip on the outskirts of the city, men need to be alone and far away from Andrew Tate. Only then can their brains begin to debug from the constant attack of the algorithm, and they can value the solitude of the world around them. As a bonus, for the most part, the natural world is free.

About the artist

Although Caspar David Friedrich is regarded today as one of the most important German Romantic painters, his work during his time caused some controversy. He painted landscapes not as backgrounds to the human experience but as equal participants in the scene. Not everyone agreed with this vision.

Friedrich was most active from 1798 to the 1830s, when he created the majority of his most popular works. These pieces featured both men and women enveloped by the vast mists, fogs and forests of his creations. 

He was born in 1774 in Greifswald, a town perched alongside the Baltic Sea. The surrounding coasts of northern Germany became his muse and are depicted in many of his works. You can find the Baltic Sea in Chalk Cliffs on Rügenand, of course, Friedrich’s most famous piece, The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.

Every morning I jog 5k through the Assiniboine Forest and follow it up with a 30-minute bike ride. If it were the 1960s, people would think I was crazy, especially because I’m a woman.

When Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman encountered New Zealand’s jogging movement, he brought the idea back to Eugene, Oregon. He stated that the exercise was for anyone “six to sixty, male or female.”

The public didn’t agree with this sentiment. The popular rumour that circulated at the time was that jogging, hiking or any other type of endurance exercise would cause the uterus to fall out.

The truth is that concepts of fitness and exercise are relatively new in the North American zeitgeist, and almost immediately after it became normalized, it became male-coded.

The female body was an anomaly in the world of fitness, and men became the baseline. 

As exercise became a mainstream fitness industry, the research, technology and innovation built around it continued to treat men as the perfect default.

Metrics tracked by wearable tech like heart rate, metabolic rates and body temperature were calibrated from decades of medical studies that unsurprisingly had mostly male participants.

Women remain underrepresented in the research used to understand athletic performance and recovery. This medical bias is just one example of the gender disparity in fitness; a lot of it is social bias as well. 

The Tale of Two Runners

Terrance Stanley Fox hated having cancer. Even more, he hated seeing fellow patients suffer knowing that more research and funding could improve their survival rates. Despite his osteosarcoma diagnosis that led to the amputation of his right leg, Terry decided to run across Canada in hopes of raising just $1 from each of the country’s 24 million residents. 

The Marathon of Hope lasted 143 days before his cancer returned and forced him to stop outside Thunder Bay. Even within that short time, the 21-year-old became a national hero. To this day, buildings, bus lines and street names bear his name, and each September schools across the country participate in their own Terry Fox runs. 

As heartwarming as his story is, it draws out a sharp contrast. While men used exercise to become legends, women athletes were being assaulted. 

Twenty-year-old Kathrine Switzer registered for the 1967 Boston Marathon under the bib number 261. She signed up under the neutral name K.V. Switzer, but on race day her sex was revealed.

She only got a few miles in before co-director John “Jock” Semple jumped from the press truck and attempted to rip her from the race.

Her boyfriend, #390, and other runners noticed the man in street clothes going after Katherine and went on the defensive. They blocked Jock, allowing Katherine to complete the marathon. 

In 1972, the Boston Marathon officially welcomed women to compete against men, and Katherine placed third. But even though women were now free to compete in major sports events, the exclusion of women from fitness continued in the lab. 

We Need More Studies. Period.

Gender inequality is baked into fitness algorithms, medical studies and the technology developed from those studies. The data and how it’s understood are centred around the male physique, but there’s one very big thing women do that men don’t. 

Menstruate. 

During the luteal phase, HRV tends to decrease while resting heart rate can rise. For many women, that is a normal physiological shift. Except, to the algorithms that interpret data collected by wearable fitness tech, this signals that the user is tired, unprepared and needs to lay off training. 

Ironically, when a naturally cycling woman leaves the luteal phase and starts her period, her heart rate can dip back down, and her HRV can return closer to baseline. To a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, that can look like everything is back to normal. The problem? For many women, this is when period symptoms like cramps and fatigue can be at their worst, and they may actually want to step away from strenuous activity.

When women feel fine, the data can locate a problem. When they feel awful, the data can tell them to get moving.

This confusing behaviour that leaves many women feeling misunderstood is exactly why we need more access to fair medical studies.

Luckily, a few companies are willing to crunch the numbers. 

Catching Up to the Female Body

Fitbit and Apple offer cycle tracking, while Garmin, Oura and Whoop are developing their own studies and proprietary models that integrate a wider scope of female health into their products.

In 2026, Oura introduced a women’s health model within Oura Advisor. The LLM combines users’ biometric data with research reviewed by women’s health experts. Users can ask the Oura Advisor personalized and direct questions about cycle changes, symptoms, early menstruation, all the way up to menopause. 

This breakthrough development is not meant to replace a doctor’s visit. It’s built on the collaborative research of women’s health experts and is meant to offer a way to break down the barriers of gender disparity in fitness tech by placing well-vetted information in the hands of users. 

Influencer Kendall Faith turned to Oura after stopping a decade-long stretch of birth control. She found that the ring, paired with the app, helped her gain a deeper understanding of her body, especially as she plans her family, does CrossFit, and manage her life with ovarian cysts. 

While these companies are truly trying to incorporate women’s unique health patterns into their products, they still rely on everyday women to offer data in order to personalize their wearable tech devices. This is a step in the right direction, but the gender gap in fitness and health lies within the research patterns themselves.

WHOOP has started building features that go beyond period logging by examining how cardiovascular metrics change across the menstrual cycle.

The WHOOP 5.0 uses both Hormonal Insights and Cardiovascular Amplitude to analyze long term health patterns in women. It gathers insights from past cycles to measure and adjust HRV, respiratory rates and body temperatures. Whoop does this with only one piece of required data, the start date of a woman’s cycle.

By removing the burden of endless tracking, women who train stop guessing why a hard day feels draining and start planning around it instead.

Still, this correction is new, and it’s incomplete. A handful of companies rebuilding their algorithms doesn’t undo sixty years of research built without half the population in mind. But it’s a start.

Bill Bowerman said exercise was for anyone, six to sixty, male or female. Sixty years later, the industry is finally trying to make that statement true. Oura built an AI that treats women’s bodies as their own baselines. Whoop is allowing women to train with their cycles instead of despite them. 

Tomorrow morning, when I run through the forest again, I’ll wonder how many more runs I’ll have to complete before wearable tech, across the board, finally catches up to women.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about John Berger and his 1972 acceptance speech, in which he called out Booker McConnell’s history of exploitation in the Caribbean

Although I don’t discuss Berger in my book, [Private], his speech forces me to think about how easily colonial corporations rebrand after doing decades of damage.

When browsing through old Guyanese newspapers from the 1950s, it’s impossible to skip a few pages without seeing the Bookers brand.

Bookers Guiana

For over 100 years, Booker Bros, McConnell & Co had their hands in much of what was harvested and produced in British Guiana.

That’s over a century of economic dominance, built on the exploitation of enslaved people and later indentured labourers.

In 1968, two years after Guyana achieved independence, Bookers decided to rebrand. 

They launched a literary award known today as the famous Booker Prize. 

Before long, the company name was being associated with arts and culture, rather than with underpaid workers living in cramped quarters. 

In 1972, John Berger decided to expose them. 

He was awarded the Booker Prize for his book, G. But when he stood to give his acceptance speech, he highlighted the hypocrisy of Bookers and declared that he would donate a portion of his £5,000 winnings to anticolonial activism groups.

His speech contrasted the greedy colonial businessmen with the exploited Caribbean labourer. 

Why is this important?

Berger used the Booker Prize stage in London to do what anticolonial leaders like Cheddi Jagan (Guyana) did for decades. 

He brought awareness to the violence of colonialism and advocated for a future that gave priority to social justice. 

His full speech can be found here if you’re interested in reading.

Do you have any thoughts on this week’s post? If so, hit the reply button. I would love to hear them.

Stay tuned for more reflections from my project, [Private]. 

[Private sign-off]

The flip phone was the most feminine piece of tech ever to exist. From Paris Hilton and the iconic bright pink Motorola RAZR to the bedazzled “Style-Up” covers on the Sony Ericsson, there was a time when the clamshell phone was the ultimate fashion accessory for women.

Tiny enough to fit in the pockets of low-rise jeans, flip phones went from being the businessman’s tool in the ’90s to an “It girl” symbol of style and femininity through the 2000s. 

Manufacturers understood that women wanted tech that blended into their vibrant lives, and they gladly supplied that demand. The Samsung Cleo mimicked the exact shape of a blush compact, and Nokia’s L’Amour Collection arrived straight out of the box wrapped in etched floral patterns and pink petals.

For teen girls and women alike, using the flip phone was a fun, tactile experience with bumpy rhinestones, beads and swinging charms. They could pop off the shells and exchange them with friends, and when they were done talking, they could hang up with attitude and an audible snap.

Y2K was the era of optimistic futurism where tech became fashion. Phones, music players and digital cameras were props for consumers to style, swap and display.

Then the iPhone ruined it all.

In 2008, 64% of people said they would consider buying a flip phone. By 2011, that number dropped to under 35% and would continue falling. The iPhone ushered in a new era of mobile tech that pushed aesthetics to the backseat and made functionality the primary driver.

The App Store expanded what the iPhone could do, from gaming and photo editing to music and social apps. Users no longer needed to log on to MSN on their computers to share pictures they took on their digicams. They could do it all from one device. 

As time went on, the iPhone and its competitors swallowed up more functionality and more space in our lives. Banking, social media, fitness tracking and online dating all moved to a single screen. The iPhone could do everything, except look pretty.

Rhinestones and phone charms were all but eradicated and replaced with flat, rectangular boxes. No keys to clack away on, no cheetah prints and most importantly, no dramatic way to end a call. 

One could argue that phone cases became the new wave of cell expression, but even those are built for protecting the smartphone’s sensitive screen and expensive body rather than to decorate. 

The iPhone didn’t just steal away our sense of creativity. It left us with screen addiction and a dash of cognitive decline. 

Designed for Distraction

Dr. Manfred Spitzer suggests that relying on devices for basic mental tasks starves our neural pathways, causing our brains to atrophy. Even worse, a 2017 University of Texas study revealed that simply having a smartphone nearby was enough to reduce undergraduate students’ available cognitive capacity. 

Ironically, the very devices equipped with productivity tools actually hinder focus through constant interruptions. The smartphone’s all-in-one integration keeps us connected through constant notifications, whether you missed a day on Duolingo or someone just texted you about brunch. Each notification, regardless of whether you check it, is cognitively pulling you away from completing important tasks. 

Even when there are no notifications or dings, people still check. We’ve all done it before. We know that our phones can deliver dopamine, distractions or entertainment, so we pull down to refresh in hopes of seeing something new, almost like pulling the lever on a slot machine. 

The dangers of digital burnout are well documented. What is often overlooked, however, is that women experience significantly higher levels of digital fatigue and overload than men. Tech giants know smartphones are damaging and have decided to double down, but a select few brands are choosing to dumb down instead.

Stripping Down the Smartphone

A dumbphone is essentially a basic cell phone limited to calling and simple messaging. All across YouTube, creators are deleting apps and dimming graphics on their smartphones to strip them down to the bare bones. This movement is gaining traction as an increasing number of Gen Z and millennials are finding ways to push back against screen addiction and digital burnout. 

The “digital detox” trend that intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic has been growing stronger ever since and presents an attractive market opportunity. To tap into this new market, companies like Punkt and Mudita are specializing in building “mindful technology” devices promising to “restore balance in a world full of distractions.”

Punkt, for example, wants users to banish doomscrolling and soften the noise of modern tech, but as good as this all sounds, there are still a few problems. 

Dumbphones look boring. 

Not everything needs to be Scandinavian minimalism. Dumbphone brands ignore the fact that many women want a more expressive relationship with their tech. When it comes to decorative tech, women dominate the market for customizable stickers, cases and clip-ons. The feminine urge to decorate technology never left; women now have fewer options to do so. 

Punkt missed the opportunity to bring back the colorful futuristic optimism stolen by the iPhone in 2007. Instead, they designed products void of personality and lacking any tactile excitement.

Surely there’s a way to blend digital minimalism with decorative maximalism to give women what they really want.

Unfortunately, dumbphone companies have missed this opportunity, and big tech isn’t even trying. 

In recent years, tech giants like Motorola and Samsung revived the flip phone with their Razr Ultra and Galaxy Z Flip6 models, but these modern twists on old classics overlooked an important concern. 

Engineering a flip phone with full smartphone capabilities ignores the growing number of young women actively fighting screen addiction. Having a hinge phone that’s reminiscent of the early 2000s but still includes all the pings, addictive graphics, and notifications of the smartphone is just a way to sell nostalgia rather than solve any social concern. 

So, on one hand, dumbphone companies are solving digital burnout but ignoring design, while tech giants are redesigning old classics but adding room for addiction. 

Instead of waiting for companies to give women what they want, many are taking matters into their own hands and going straight to the source. 

The Secondhand Solution

eBay and other secondhand marketplaces continue to see surges in sales for Y2K-era flip phones. Nearly two decades later, thousands of Motorola Razr V3s still sell on eBay for an average of $50. That’s a much friendlier number than the $500 price tags on the Flip6 and pre-owned Motorola Ultra. 

This secondhand rush proves that women will choose outdated hardware over dull minimalist dumbphones.

There was a time when tech was built to enhance the lives of users while fitting perfectly into their personal aesthetics. Sadly, over the past few decades, companies have shifted from creating devices that fit into our lives to creating devices that demand more of our attention.

Even companies that create intentional tech produce items that are bland and fail to speak women’s creative language.

A Glimpse of Joyful Tech

One company stands out from the rest and shows some true promise. Although the phones are still on pre-order, the Light Flip Phone is the only device that checks all the important boxes for women. The color options are bright, the phones are Y2K-coded, and the price sits at a reasonable $299. 

Of course, it is still much cheaper to score a refurbished Motorola Razr V3 off eBay, but at least one company is listening to what women want. 

Tech executives need to recognize that functional hardware does not require aesthetic sacrifice.

Digital minimalism can coexist alongside expressive maximalism. Until hardware designers learn to embrace femininity and playful design, women will keep looking to the past to power their future.

Featured in The {C}.