Loneliness, Power and Intimate Apparel

Expanded thoughts following a recent TikTok on Intimate Apparel and gendered loneliness 

 
Over the weekend, I went to see Intimate Apparel, a play by playwright Lynn Nottage at the Donmar Warehouse. It is a quiet, deeply intimate play about longing, desire, and constraint. Afterwards, I found myself sitting with questions about loneliness, especially the kind that is not loud or dramatic. The kind that is quiet, internal, and gendered. 

In Intimate Apparel, the central character is not alone in the traditional sense. She has a community of women around her, women who warn her, care for her, walk alongside her. But still, she is lonely. Her loneliness is not the absence of people. It is the pressure of a social narrative that tells her, as a 35-year-old woman, that being unmarried means failure. 

What struck me about the story was that her loneliness was manufactured. It was induced by patriarchy. And this made her vulnerable to exploitation. She was made to feel that the only relationship that mattered was the one between husband and wife. 

This sits in stark contrast to the way male loneliness is being talked about right now, which has become a kind of buzzword in contemporary discourse. There is this idea circulating that men are facing a crisis of isolation because women are no longer available to them in the ways they once were. But that framing is misleading. Male loneliness, is the result of men being unable or unequipped to build community outside of romantic or sexual relationships. It is not about companionship, it is about entitlement. 

Men are often taught to depend on women not just for intimacy, but for emotional regulation, social care, and community. And when those relationships are not accessible —because women are withdrawing, choosing differently, or just not centering men— then men experience that loss as a crisis. A crisis of power. 

And in contrast to women, whose loneliness is often a product of being overly policed, overly scrutinized, made to feel “less than” without a partner, men’s loneliness under patriarchy stems from not having the tools to maintain meaningful friendships or emotional networks.

So yes, loneliness is gendered. And Intimate Apparel reminded me that female loneliness is often quiet, unseen, even expected. It is built into the social fabric. It does not show up in headlines but it is real. And it requires a different kind of survival — if the woman can survive it. 

I shared a short TikTok earlier this week that touches on some of these themes. If you would like to hear these thoughts, you can watch it here.