The Bee Hotel and the AI Portrait: On Good Girls, Green Guilt, and the Policing of Progressive Choices
What if we let imperfection be part of the work?
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Last week I shared a silly, AI-generated portrait of myself in my garden with my dog to my stories. I had asked ChatGPT to turn my current life into something out of a Beatrix Potter book after seeing the social media trend. It gave me a whimsical watercolor of raised beds, blooming flowers, and a dog that actually resembled mine.
I thought it was charming. A bit ridiculous. But fun.
Then the messages came in.
“You just wasted a ton of water to cool the high-powered machines that created this.”
And another:
“As progressives, we should think critically before uploading our photos to AI—given the environmental toll, the labor ethics, the scraping of artists’ work.”
Here’s the thing: They weren’t wrong.
AI carries real ethical questions. The energy consumption, the stolen labor of artists, the way surveillance tech repackages our creativity back to us. I think about those things too—especially as someone with a platform. I don’t take that responsibility lightly.
And if I had shared something truly harmful, I’d want someone to call me in. I believe in repair. I believe in accountability.
But I also want to be honest. When I posted that image, I knew I might be judged. I heard the voice in my head whispering: “This might not look good.” And another voice followed: “Don’t overthink it.” I overthink a lot! Most people who know me would say that I’m thoughtful and while I value that about myself, it can also be exhausting.
So I said “F it” and shared it.
The Exhaustion of Ethical Living
Last year, my husband and I bought a compost tumbler. He’s usually the one who dumps in the eggshells, banana peels, veggie scraps, and coffee grounds that our family collects throughout the week. And it’s actually worked—we’ve made real, usable compost! We’ve proudly added it to our backyard garden, which now includes four large raised beds that I’ve been excitedly (okay, maybe obsessively?) filling with a mix of seeds and plants.
We’ve also bought a lot of soil and compost. Everything from the much-maligned-by-real-gardeners Miracle-Gro to the cult favorite Black Kow—which, fun fact, apparently also sells merch because of course they do!
I’ve gotten really into gardening these last few years. I love the creativity, the trial and error, the feeling of efficacy. It feels like I’m learning a life skill I never saw modeled growing up in the suburbs in the ’80s and ’90s, when convenience reigned and mass production was marketed as freedom. Like a lot of people in my generation, it feels empowering to be able to grow food to feed my family—and to swap seeds, crops, and garden tips with friends and neighbors like we’re actually building the village we keep missing.
And I’ll admit it: when I’m into something, I’m into it. I’ve learned this about myself over the years, and I’ve come to accept that this is just how my neurospicy brain likes to operate.
Over the weekend, I took my gardening/environmentalist hobby to new heights. I left the farmer’s market—much to my husband’s chagrin (do people still say “chagrin?”)—with two dwarf citrus plants, a pint of fresh strawberries, a loaf of sourdough (because I haven’t made baking sourdough my personality yet), and a tiny box of mason bee cocoons to insert into the wooden bee hotel I just hung up above my bed of native plants.
All of this is to say: I’m trying to figure out what contribution feels meaningful right now. Before the last presidential election, I poured a lot of energy into political organizing. That felt like the most urgent thing I could do. And now? It feels like learning to sustain my family, building skills I didn’t inherit, supporting pollinators, and planting flowers just to look at something fucking pleasant in the middle of this world… matters too.
And also:
I use paper towels, even though I own reusable ones.
I boycott Target, but still grab a few things on Amazon sometimes.
I toss random junk when I’m overwhelmed.
I don’t research every brand I shop at.
I use ChatGPT to help me identify mystery plants in my yard, calculate how much mulch I need, and yes—to edit this very Substack.
We all draw lines somewhere. But lately, I’ve noticed that instead of honoring the messiness of those lines, we’ve started treating them like a new moral measuring stick.
Is This a Diet?
has a brilliant essay called “Is Everything a Diet?” In it, she unpacks how the mindset we use to pursue thinness often mutates into other areas of life: clean eating, green living, ethical parenting, tech shaming.Boycotting Amazon? That’s a diet.
Refusing to let your kid have screen time? Diet.
Never using AI because it’s imperfect and problematic? Diet.
These things may have real merit—but when they become performative, binary, or morally loaded, they start to smell like something more familiar: Good Girl Culture.
The Good Girl Haunts Us
This whole AI thing reminded me of how I approached early motherhood.
I read every book. Absorbed every expert. Tried to optimize every decision—like I was studying for a test I couldn’t fail. But rather than falling into the more mainstream parenting traps—like obsessing over sleep schedules and perfectly timed feeds—I had one foot in what people might now call “crunchy” or alternative parenting.
When I became a mom twelve years ago, before there was “gentle parenting” or “conscious parenting,” there was attachment parenting. And I was all in. I wanted to be more responsive, more attuned, than what conventional wisdom seemed to recommend. I didn’t let my babies cry it out. I nursed them beyond infancy—three and five years, respectively. I co-slept with my second.
But even then, I didn’t check every box. I used disposable diapers. I put my kids in daycare. I mixed baby-led weaning with a blend of homemade and store-bought purees.
Now that they’re older?
They get too much screen time.
They eat too many packaged snacks.
But also—how do you judge a parent who’s trying to survive a pandemic, raise kids in a society that actively devalues mothers, and navigate years of political, financial, and climate instability?
Like most moms I know, I was doing the best I could.
And yet, we don’t ask dads to optimize like this.
We don’t hold them to these standards.
They get the “good dad” sticker for being involved. Drop the kids off at daycare? Instant praise. Pack a lunch once in a while? Hero. Doing is what makes dads “good.”
But for moms, doing isn’t enough. We’re expected to research, agonize, second-guess, and make choices that serve everyone: the kids, the partner, the employer—even the environment.
As a therapist who works with mothers, I see it daily: the anxiety, the decision fatigue, the crushing weight of trying to get it all “right.” And I’ve also seen how choosing the crunchy/natural/ethical path can sometimes be just another way the Good Girl reappears in a new outfit.
“Extended breastfeeding” worked for me and my family. I wish it were more normalized. But I also wish we could support one choice without making another one feel inferior. Because none of us can do it all. And honestly? None of us should have to.
The Judgment We’ve Learned to Pass On
Somewhere along the way, we started weaponizing what we’ve learned. Instead of using our knowledge to build compassion, we use it to measure who’s doing it right. We judge women who use Ozempic in a fatphobic society. We judge women who get cosmetic procedures in an ageist one. We judge mothers who use formula, or disposable diapers, or AI.
We say we want liberation. But sometimes what we’re practicing is just a more enlightened version of control.
AI Isn’t the Only Thing Burning Energy
Yes, AI consumes energy. But so does watching Netflix.
Streaming just one hour of HD video can emit around 300 grams of CO₂.
Generating a ChatGPT response? Roughly 0.02–0.1 grams of CO₂.
That AI-generated garden picture I shared? A drop in the bucket compared to the emissions of driving a mile, buying a fast-fashion t-shirt, or grilling a single beef burger—each of which can emit thousands of grams of CO₂.
This isn’t to justify AI or dismiss its very real ethical concerns. It's to put those concerns in context.
Because in progressive circles, we often zoom in on visible or trendy infractions—while quietly normalizing others. We come down hard on certain personal choices, while turning a blind eye to the deeply embedded systems and corporations that have shaped what’s available to us in the first place.
Yes, it’s good to reflect on our individual impact. But what about the platforms that have trained us to crave convenience at any cost? What about the companies that have made it harder and harder to not rely on Amazon Prime—or now, ChatGPT?
This isn’t an either/or conversation. We can be thoughtful about our own habits while also acknowledging the manipulation and limited options we’re navigating. The pressure to shop “ethically,” live “green,” or use only “approved” tools is placed squarely on individuals—especially women and caregivers—while corporations rake in profits and governments continue to subsidize the industries doing the most damage.
It’s not that individual choices don’t matter. They do. But the moral weight we place on them often feels wildly out of proportion to their actual environmental impact. And more than that—it distracts us. It turns us against each other instead of directing our collective energy toward systemic change.
My point isn’t to excuse AI. Or to ignore its impact.
It’s to say: if we’re going to critique, let’s be honest about what we normalize—and what we choose to scrutinize.
Let’s remember who actually benefits when we keep moralizing each other’s choices instead of demanding accountability from the systems designed to keep us overworked, overwhelmed, and complicit.
Imperfection as a Practice
I don’t believe ignorance is bliss. I’d rather be awake, even when it’s uncomfortable. I want to understand my impact and learn how to reduce harm—especially toward the communities who are too often on the receiving end of that harm: Black, Latino, immigrant, Autistic, and trans communities.
But I’ve also learned that being awake doesn’t mean being perfect.
It’s not about being able to name every issue, cite every source, or make every flawless ethical choice. Sometimes the pressure to “get it right” keeps people from showing up at all. It makes advocacy feel like a performance instead of a practice. And it turns learning into something we do to be seen as good, instead of something we do because we care.
I’ve seen this in progressive spaces—the way we can become so focused on saying the right thing or choosing the right product that we forget the deeper work of building relationships, redistributing resources, taking collective action, and repairing harm when we inevitably get it wrong.
Being thoughtful matters. Repair matters. But constant self-policing? That’s not liberation. That’s just perfectionism in activist clothing.
Also—I don’t think it’s healthy to project perfection on the internet! Performing perfection impacts our collective mental health. So if you follow me I’d rather you know that I’m imperfect than to project some unrealistic idea of who I am.
We can’t fix the world by perfecting ourselves. And we definitely can’t fix it by shaming each other into silence, submission, or moral exhaustion.
What we need—what I need—is more room for complexity. More context. More grace. More honest conversations that leave space for change, for contradiction, for the mess of being human.
That’s the only way this work becomes sustainable. That’s the only way it stays real.
Unlearning Good Girl Culture
So no, I don’t think that AI-generated garden portrait was the most essential or ethical thing I’ve ever posted. But I also don’t think it made me a bad person. It gave me a moment of joy in a heavy time.
And joy is a resource too.
says it best:“We are just all casualties of the various forms and flavors of Good Girl culture… even after we stop relentlessly pursuing thinness, that experience leaves us vulnerable to new projects and goals that are maybe not quite as unachievable but often draining in all too familiar ways… My answer, and yours, will be murkier and more individual. And that’s okay.”
Maybe the real question isn’t “Is this perfect?”
Maybe it’s “Is this sustainable?”
Or even better: “Does this make space for people to be fully human?”
Where in your life are you holding yourself—or others—to impossible standards in the name of being “good”? What would it look like to replace that impulse with curiosity, compassion, or care?
I speak and teach on how to use AI in parenting, small biz and home management, and home education. I agree with your assessment about how many tools we use require more water and energy than generative AI. It’s also true that these tools are disproportionally used by women. I think it’s no mistake that a free, widely available tool that can relieve the mental load of home management and admin tasks, help non-native language speakers, and free up women’s time is bashed more than streaming video or music.