Why do Young H*s Cook Everything on High?

Do you use Apple Pay for all your transactions? Better yet, do you cook all your food on high? If yes, congratulations! You’re a young ho!

A few months ago, an X user tweeted, “young hoes cook everything on high”, and the young ho archetype was born. Young hos are understood to be impatient young Black women who do everything in the most convenient manner. 

User @/Bean_____1 on X.com

I talked with Jihan Bailey, a proud young ho, and Autivia Pervis, a self-proclaimed old ho, to get some more perspectives on the trend.

Bailey shared that she loves being a young ho; A young woman just trying to get through the day-to-day is what Bailey said comes to mind when she thinks of a young ho.

 “If I could assign a song to young ho-ism, it’d be ‘20 Something’ by SZA.”

The simple joke has grown into a way for people to judge young Black women and critique their self-serving labor. In and out of the Black community, Black women and girls are seen and treated as beasts of burden that must toil for everyone else.

When Black women and girls don’t fulfill this expected role by providing domestic and emotional labor for the benefit of others, they become young hos.

Young hos are impatient, they can’t wait for nothing or nobody, and they don’t care about doing things the ‘right’ way.

Forget the fact that young hos are becoming more culturally recognized for their degrees, or that they often do domestically and emotionally labor in their day-to-day life. The problem is who they do it for: themselves.

Any time and labor Black women and girls pour into their communities, they do it because they choose to, not because their labor is a prerequisite to them taking up space.

While interviewing Pervis, she validated young ho-ism as a way of life. “A lot of people consider young ho-ism to be the “convenient” way of doing something, but in reality, you're just doing it the way you know best. Even if it doesn’t produce the best results, they’re still results.”

If there is any issue with young hos and their impatience, it should be taken up with our modern need for convenience and quickness.

The popularity of ChatGPT and other AI usage and the growing dependence on it showcase how quickly people need to get things done, regardless of how it’s harming environments and people.

Algorithms on social media such as Instagram and TikTok have effectively shortened our attention spans, rotted our ability to focus, and discouraged the art of thinking. 

Both Pervis and Bailey shared the similar ideas about old ho-ism being a luxury that isn’t afforded; however, Pervis argued that there can be a bit of luxury in young ho-ism as well.

“Not everyone has that opportunity to let cooking be calming, people gotta eat, and people have tight schedules. That's a luxury, but the other side of young ho-ism is spending without thinking, and the materialistic side is where being a young ho is actually a privilege.”

Our capitalist society demands its laborers to move through the world as quickly as they can, producing as much labor as they can. There’s no time for slow roasts for young hos feeling the constant ticking of capitalism’s dehumanizing clock.

Although Bailey loves young ho-ism, she’s fearful she’ll never be an old ho. “I don’t think I’ll ever be an old ho simply because the current state of the world doesn’t give me the privilege of seeing that far into the future. ICE is killing people in the streets in broad daylight, and AI is worsening our climate crisis, so I don’t think it’s dramatic to say that things feel uncertain and the future looks rocky.”

Young hos prioritize efficiency in their lives, but valuing their time and labor for themselves contradicts traditional society’s role for them. When Black women aren’t in servitude to others, they are deviating from the norm and thus demeaned.

When young Black men juggle jobs, school, and family, they get to be hustlers. This ignores the fact that they likely aren’t contributing much domestic and emotional labor in their day-to-day. A young ho does the same, and there’s no pat on the back, just a degrading name and criticism.

Whether you’re a young ho or not, there’s always going to be someone in your ear criticizing your choices. Wasting time listening to them isn’t something a true young ho worries about, though.