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9.62M
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7mo ago
ashleylouisejames
Anyone else noticed the media panic about falling birth rates, and how quickly it turns into blaming women? 👀
Birth rates in the UK are at historic lows, with deaths now outnumbering births for the first time in decades 📉 With one MP even suggesting we should “bonk for Britain”.
But before anyone starts telling women we need more babies, let’s be honest about why people aren’t having them.
Childcare costs are crippling 💸
Maternity services are shrinking 🏥
Around 74,000 women a year are forced out of work due to the cost of childcare and lack of flexible working, widening the gender pay and pension gaps 📊
Fertility testing and treatment remain prohibitively expensive 🧬
Women still carry the bulk of the unpaid domestic and emotional labour 🧠
Many women can’t find emotionally available men who want to be true equals
And some women simply don’t want children, now they finally have the freedom to choose
If governments are serious about birth rates, they should start by fixing the systems that make motherhood financially, professionally and emotionally punishing.
For years, women have been shamed no matter what we do.
Don’t have babies if you can’t afford them.
Don’t pick the wrong man.
Don’t be a single mum.
Don’t wait too long.
Don’t want them at all.
“Keep your legs closed.”
The message was never really about responsibility. It was about control.
For the first time in history, many women are financially independent and know that happiness and fulfilment don’t only come with a marriage certificate or a birth certificate ✨ And we’re not giving that up for fear-mongering headlines.
Rolling back rights, pushing us into outdated gender roles or blaming women as if we’re just baby-making machines won’t increase birth rates. It will just make more women choose different paths, on our own terms 💪
And notice how falling birth rates are always framed as a failure of women’s choices and bodies, never men’s behaviour, never policy, never power.
Maybe start by seeing women as people, not reproductive infrastructure ❤️
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5mo ago
ashleylouisejames
More men speaking up against misogyny please 👏🏻
So many men consider themselves “good men” because they aren’t actively misogynistic. And look, that’s great, but that’s also literally the bare minimum.
In the same way not being racist doesn’t make you anti-racist, and not being sexist doesn’t make you anti-sexist. Silence in the face of it is still complicity.
You know that saying about one bad apple spoiling the barrel? Well the good apples don’t save the barrel by just sitting there doing nothing. They just watch it rot. 🍎
A perfect example of this was the men’s hockey team sitting quietly while Trump discredited the gold winning women’s team. It would have taken ONE man to say “actually this is unacceptable.” Just one! And none of them did.
When the Epstein files dropped, when Sarah Everard was murdered, when story after story of male violence fills our timelines, I see collective grief and fury from women and girls. And mostly silence from men and boys. I genuinely want to know, don’t you feel our pain? Don’t you want us to be safe?
Because we cannot change this culture on our own, we really can’t. We need men to have the conversations behind closed doors, to tell their mates that certain language isn’t funny or acceptable, to not laugh along, to just say something.
And yet instead we get “not all men” when what we actually need to hear is “too many men.” And those same men saying “not all men” are often the same dads talking about locking their daughters away to protect them from… other men. The irony.
You don’t need to have a daughter to give a damn about women’s safety. You really don’t.
So a massive shout out to these men and every other man out there being loud about it, because it matters so much more than you know. Reproductive rights, male violence, the safety of women and girls, it all starts with a culture that refuses to see women as less than. And that culture shift has to include men stepping up, not just stepping aside. ❤️
Be the good apple that actually does something to stop the rot.🍎
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3mo ago
ashleylouisejames
ad Mummy and Alfie day at the World Of Paw Patrol! 🎢🐾❤️
OMG we’ve been talking about this day since I saw the launch and we’ve been SOOO excited. It’s the first time I’ve put a mini microphone on Alfie and I’m obsessed because you can really hear and feel his excitement!
The World of Paw Patrol is the newest area of @chessingtonworldofadventures (we already love it there, especially the Gruffalo ride and the Room on the Broom experience) - but I think this one beats it all. Alf had the best day ever, which of course meant so did I.
There are 4 rides, character meet and greets throughout the day (we met Skye and Rubble) and a big play area. We also did Hook a Bone and Alf managed to score a ten, which meant he got to pick a toy. Go in, Alf.
The excitement of spotting his favourite characters, running between rides and wanting to do everything again and again - I don’t think he stopped smiling. The Chase ride is such a good first rollercoaster, but my highlight had to be the Zuma ride. OMG, I was not expecting it to go that fast when I pulled the lever - that scream is genuine hahaha.
What was so good was that because we stayed over the night before, we got early access to the park, which meant we got through lots of the rides before the rush. I always say no toys, but I couldn’t resist the gift shop and Alf’s request to get Ada a Skye toy too. Always thinking about his sister - so cute! 🥹
What I loved about Chessington is that it wasn’t just about the World of PAW Patrol. We spent the day exploring the wider park too, from the rides to the animals. We even popped back to the hotel for a sit-down lunch and a little chill before heading back out again. Alf got his PAW Patrol fix and I got to enjoy seeing him have the best day ever.
I know I say it all the time, but they really do grow up so quickly. I’m so glad I got to experience this with him and Alf is already asking when we can go back with Ada. 🐾💙 #Chessington #WorldOfPawPatrol
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1mo ago
ashleylouisejames
Accurate representation story of when I met @Munyachawawa at a party - poor guy 😂💀
But in all seriousness, how do people socialise without eventually getting onto politics and the state of the world? Asking for a friend x
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3mo ago
ashleylouisejames
I’ve been thinking a lot about what society considers a threat.
When women say they don’t want children, marriage, or a relationship in general, it sparks national debate and politicians worry about falling birth rates. Women are blamed and accused of being too selfish, too ambitious, or too feminist.
I can’t help noticing how differently we respond to the things that genuinely impact women’s lives.
Women and girls grow up navigating harassment, stalking, abuse, sexual violence and male violence so routinely that it has become part of the background noise of being female. While sexism is often dismissed as banter, we share our locations, text friends when we get home, avoid certain routes after dark, and learn countless unwritten rules designed to keep ourselves safe.
What frustrates me is that we search for explanations everywhere except where the evidence is pointing. We look at race, religion, immigration status or culture, despite the fact that violence against women exists in every community. Time and time again we’re encouraged to see these cases as isolated incidents despite how common they are.
Today I saw a headline about a girl who was murdered on a cruise, yet the headline led with the fact she’d had consensual sex with another boy beforehand. Even in death we still to scrutinise women’s behaviour.
If fewer women are choosing marriage, fewer women are having children, and more women are leaving unhappy relationships, perhaps the question isn’t what’s gone wrong with women, but whether we’re creating a society and relationships that women actually want to sign up for?
Instead of obsessing over falling birth rates, culture wars and rolling back women’s rights, perhaps we should be asking how we make motherhood more supported, relationships more equal, and the world safer for women and girls?
Because if women’s choices are treated as a crisis, while violence against women is treated as an unfortunate fact of life, we’re asking entirely the wrong questions.
Reel Inspired by @yasoura_amor ❤️
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6mo ago
ashleylouisejames
I wish I didn’t have a need for this costume or that I could keep it to Halloween, but it feels like our rights and respect are being attacked weekly - and not just from losers in the manosphere but from world leaders like the president of the United States and those making decisions about laws that effect us.
I first read the handmaids tale when I was 18, 20 years ago now. I loved it straight away but it felt like a dystopian world so distant from our present - although of course I knew she’d written about everything that had happened somewhere in the world. I felt like we were living in a time of progression.
Now I can’t even watch the series because it feels too close to our reality. It’s awful to view men discussing our bodies, our reproductive rights and all our other hard faught for battles - like they should be entitled to an opinion.
This week we are building up to yet another international women’s day where we see how far from equality we have to go. Where Trump, Farage and the likes are being louder in their disrespect towards our journalists or our athletes or women in general.
I wrote my book to offer an antidote - to help us reclaim our voices and our confidence so we say enough is enough. Together we can - and we must - keep fighting back. Until then, this outfit will have to keep coming out. ❤️
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2mo ago
ashleylouisejames
Feminist hills I’d die on… ⛰️
Proceed with caution… you may be personally offended by one or more of my opinions. 😂
Some are backed by research, some come from history, some from becoming a mum, some from conversations I’ve had over the years, and some are just things I’ve found myself thinking, “Surely we can do better than this?”
So much of what we accept as “just the way things are” isn’t inevitable at all. It’s often just the product of the society we’ve inherited.
I think that’s what feminism is for me. It’s asking why things are the way they are, who benefits from them, who doesn’t, and whether we could build something fairer for everyone.
Turns out I have so many feminist hills to die on that it’s less of a hill and more of an entire mountain range. 😂
I should also add one that didn’t make the carousel. After going to watch the football (we don’t talk about the World Cup 🏴💔), I’ve decided public venues need to sort out women’s toilets. I queued for 25 minutes, missed half the second half, and every woman I spoke to was strategically choosing her drinks based on how often she’d need a wee. Meanwhile, I noticed men were kicking off the moment they encountered a queue for the gender-neutral loos, and it struck me that they simply don’t expect to have to wait. And honestly… neither should we. 😂
The reality is women generally take longer because we’re more likely to be managing periods, accompanying children or relatives, pregnancy, disability needs, and yes… because we probably wipe our bums properly. 😉 It’s not “just one of those things”, it’s a design problem, and it’s one we could fix if we actually wanted to.
Anyway… I wanna hear which feminist hills youd die on - and which you disagree with. ❤️
I got this idea from @salmaelwardany ❤️
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10mo ago
ashleylouisejames
He must be a sucker for punishment because Piers Morgan keeps coming back on This Morning with me 😂
This week is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Week, and I wasn’t letting him get away with yet again telling me – a woman – what women want in a man, while pushing the dangerous narrative that men showing emotion is “weak”.
Loose Men’s Big Mental Health Survey found that almost half of men wouldn’t cry in front of their friends, and only 18% have cried in the last month. That’s not strength. That’s social conditioning.
This is the frustrating part of feminism for me. We KNOW patriarchy harms men too – and in turn, it harms women.
When boys grow up being told that crying “makes you weak”, that liking “girls’ toys” is shameful, and that doing anything “like a girl” is an insult, we teach them that femininity – and therefore women – are inferior.
But we also completely box them in emotionally.
We raise men who have to suppress normal human feelings, and that suppression doesn’t disappear. It turns into anger, loneliness, conflict, stress, and breakdowns behind closed doors.
🧠 Suicide is still the leading cause of death for men under 50.
💔 And the leading cause of death for women? Male violence.
These things are connected. This is a crisis.
I want my son to grow up knowing he can cry, dance, laugh, be sensitive, be silly, be emotional, be soft – even wear dresses if he wants to.
Because you can’t stop people being who they are.
But you can shame them out of their authenticity – and that shame spills into adulthood, relationships, parenting, and mental health.
The solution isn’t telling men to “man up”. *That* is toxic masculinity.
The solution is giving them permission to be human. Because we all have human emotions and I want men and boys to thrive. And to stop hurting us. ❤️
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2mo ago
ashleylouisejames
Where are my millennials at?
I was at a Strong gym class this morning that was playing all the millennial CLUUUUB tunes and it got me really into my workout and I was thinking about how much the generation you’re raised in shapes you.
Our generation were raised by girls who questioned authority, answered back, rolled their eyes, saved the world, challenged double standards and refused to shrink themselves. 💪
Whilst traditional gender roles still teach us that being a “good girl” means being quiet, obedient and putting everyone else first, we grew up watching Kat Stratford refusing to conform, Buffy literally saving the world, Cher Horowitz proving that femininity and intelligence aren’t opposites, Lisa Simpson speaking truth to power, Buttercup solving problems with her fists 😅, and Angelica from Rugrats declaring, “Because I’m the boss, that’s why”… and that’s just off the top of my head. Who else am I missing??
Not one of them was celebrated for being sweet, quiet or compliant. They were sarcastic, opinionated, funny, fearless, challenged authority, stood up for themselves, took up space and, looking back, that was actually pretty radical.
It’s funny because we’re often told millennial women are “too outspoken”, “too intimidating” or “too much”, but if those were the women we admired growing up, why would we have become anything else?
At the same time, I’m so excited for the next generation of girls. Whilst we grew up during heroine chic, on a steady diet of Disney princesses and rom-coms where getting the guy was the happy ending, today’s girls are growing up with Moana, Mirabel, Luisa and so many more female characters whose stories aren’t defined by romance. They get to see girls leading, adventuring, saving their communities and discovering who they are, rather than simply waiting to be chosen.
Stories matter because the girls we watch become the women we imagine we can be. Maybe every generation of girls stands on the shoulders of the fictional girls who came before them, and if millennial women grew up with opinions because of the girls who raised us, I can’t wait to see what Gen Z and Gen Alpha girls do next. 🤘💪💅
Inspo from @oliviawhite
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7mo ago
ashleylouisejames
Does anyone else feel genuinely terrified at the thought of a Reform government?
As a woman, as someone not born into elite circles… I think we should all be afraid. I’m scared for our NHS and public services and I’m terrified of the UK sliding into USA territory.
what I see is a party filled with the same people who brought us austerity, who partied while we couldn’t say goodbye to loved ones, who gutted youth services, cut police numbers, underfunded prisons until the system is now “full”, and normalised food banks.
We’ve lived this already.
It’s also theit tone and lack of empathy. It’s the constant division and obsession with punching down.
Most of us, me included, would rely on the state if something awful happened. If I couldn’t work. If my child was sick. If I became disabled.
And instead of talking about rebuilding the NHS, fixing social care, making childcare affordable, properly funding schools, tackling male violence, we’re told the real threat is immigrants and trans people.
It’s the Trump playbook - create a culture war and keep people angry at each other to protect those at the top.
Male violence is a gender issue, not an immigration one.
Trans women are far more likely to experience violence than cause it.
Culture wars will never lower your rent.
Scapegoating minorities won’t fund your GP.
And “low taxes” won’t feel like much if we’re paying out of pocket for healthcare.
The idea of leaving the ECHR or scrapping the Equality Act genuinely haunts me. That’s not “wokeness” it’s our basic protection from power.
What chills me most is the Handmaids Tale rhetoric around women’s reproductive health and the sneering at women who don’t have children, while simultaneously making it harder to work and raise a family.
We need to pay attention. Especially when we’ve seen how quickly our rights can be rolled back.
The only people giving me any sense of hope right now are Zack Polanski and the Greens. 💚
We deserve better than recycled austerity dressed up as rebellion. We deserve better than grifters. ❤️
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4mo ago
ashleylouisejames
When you accidentally walk into the manosphere… 🫠
Except it’s not just hidden away in podcasts and forums anymore. It’s creeping into mainstream politics, media and culture - and the normalisation of misogyny should terrify all of us.
We now have newspapers warning us about “angry young women” instead of the actual rise in misogyny. Feminism is reframed as extremism while misogynists are platformed as “important voices for young men”. Trad wife content romanticises women giving up independence - often monetised by influencers earning money from telling other women not to work.
And while all of this grows louder, women’s rights feel increasingly fragile.
We are hearing conversations about scrapping the Equality Act. Reproductive rights are being debated again. Donald Trump built an entire political brand around belittling women, mocking female journalists and treating difficult questions from women as something hysterical or disrespectful. And now Nigel Farage appears to be following the same playbook in the UK - speaking down to female journalists, dismissing legitimate scrutiny and turning women asking serious questions into the punchline.
Young boys are being radicalised online by men who profit from hatred, humiliation and control.
Women are not imagining this shift. We are reacting to something very real.
And feminism is not the “mirror image” of the manosphere. Wanting bodily autonomy, safety, equal rights and freedom from violence is not equivalent to movements built on misogyny and resentment.
We cannot afford to shrug this off as “internet discourse” anymore. We have to stay loud, informed and politically engaged. Support women. Challenge misogyny when you hear it. Protect hard won rights.
Because once rights are lost, history tells us they are very hard to win back. ❤️🩹
Inspo from the amazing @beckydoestattoos ♥️
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9mo ago
ashleylouisejames
It’s only in recent years that I’ve realised just how much of a man’s world we still live in. So much of our society has quietly been built around men as the default. Even our language reflects it. We say “female CEO” but never “male CEO”. We say “women’s football” but “football” means the men’s. We grow up assuming doctors, surgeons and leaders are men unless told otherwise.
Once you start noticing it you cannot unsee it. And if we want any of this to change we have to challenge it intentionally.
We have to unlearn the things we were taught to accept as normal. The sexual double standards. The way women are judged for things men are applauded for. The labels. The jokes. The assumptions. The invisible rules that shape who gets to take up space.
This is where microfeminism comes in. 🚺
Microfeminism is all the small, everyday acts that question sexism in real time. They are tiny switches in language, behaviour and expectations that chip away at the idea that men are the standard and women are the variation.
They might seem small but together they disrupt the narrative. They shift culture. They remind people that women are not the footnote.
These are some of the things I do in my daily life to push back, reclaim space and, honestly, have a bit of fun with it too.
I’d love to know your daily acts of microfeminism. The more passive aggressive the better :) 💗
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1mo ago
ashleylouisejames
There’ll be signs… 😂
If I don’t agree with you, I’ll always be polite, professional and respectful, but unfortunately my face has never signed the same contract. 💀😂
A collection of some of my most subtle reactions on @thismorning 🤪💅
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8mo ago
ashleylouisejames
“Not all men.”
It’s something I’m often told when I talk about violence against women and girls. It’s usually said defensively, and yes, of course it’s true. It isn’t all men. But every woman and girl I know has a story. A moment she felt unsafe. A comment that crossed a line. A time she planned her route home, gripped her keys between her fingers, or shared her location just in case.
Things are bad right now, and they’re being made worse by the rise of the manosphere, the normalisation of violent porn, and the fact that around a third of young men think Andrew Tate is a positive influence. This isn’t happening in isolation. It’s shaping how women are treated, how relationships feel, and how safe the world is for girls growing up in it.
So the real question isn’t whether it’s all men. It’s whether enough men are willing to listen without becoming defensive, to believe women when we speak, and to take responsibility for challenging the culture that allows this to continue. A culture that continues to protect and reward perpetrators.
If it’s “not you”, then that’s good. But it’s worth asking yourself whether you challenge sexist jokes when they’re made, whether you call out friends who cross lines, and whether you think twice about the content you share, like, or laugh along with. And whether you’d still reach for “not all men” if it were your daughter navigating this world.
Women and girls are living with this reality every day, never quite knowing which men are safe. It’s unhealthy to live in a constant state of fear, yet so many of us do. We’re also trying to date, to love, and to build relationships in a culture where so many women are lied to, used, or repeatedly let down. Things are bad, but they don’t have to be.
Acknowledging the problem isn’t an attack on men. But we can’t change the culture - and make things safer for women and girls, if men don’t start realising how common place our lived experiences are. It’s not all men - until it’s their daughters. Women and girls deserve better, and honestly, so do men. I really hope in 2026 we start to take this seriously because I know lots of us are exhausted. 🙏
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9mo ago
ashleylouisejames
I’ve been thinking about this A&E “time wasters” headline since we discussed it on @thismorning… it’s wild how quick we are to blame patients one minute and doctors the next.
Last week it was “time wasters”.
This week it’s “greedy NHS staff” for striking.
But somehow we never point the finger at the governments who have left the NHS in absolute crisis.
People don’t go to A&E for fun.
They go because they’re scared, or they can’t get a GP appointment, or their surgery doesn’t answer the phone, or because they genuinely don’t know what’s wrong.
Most of us aren’t medically trained. If your child has a fever or you’re pregnant or you’ve had cancer, you’re not going to sit at home and risk it.
You go to the one part of the system you know is open.
And instead of asking why people feel they have no other option, we tell them off for turning up.
But punishing patients won’t fix the NHS.
Better GP access will.
Funding walk-in centres will.
More nurses and doctors will. And to keep staff we have to look after them.
And this is the bit that really gets me:
The staffing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere.
Universities and experts literally begged the government to train more nurses years ago.
They were ignored and nursing bursaries were cut.
Morale is so low and medical staff have had a real-terms pay cut for a decade.
They don’t get free parking (MPs do).
They’re going home exhausted, burnt out, and feeling like they’re failing patients even though they’re doing the impossible with not enough staff.
Calling them “greedy” for striking won’t make them stay.
But it will push more of them out, and then our waiting lists get longer and our A&Es get even worse.
If I end up in hospital, I want the person caring for me to be supported, not stressed about money or whether there are enough staff on shift to keep patients safe.
So no, patients aren’t the problem.
Doctors and nurses aren’t the problem.
The problem is austerity, privatisation, and governments ignoring warnings, cutting resources, and expecting the NHS to run on goodwill forever.
We need to be careful who we give our vote to if we want the NHS to thrive. 👀❤️
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6mo ago
ashleylouisejames
“You know you’ll have to pay more tax?”
That’s always what people say when I say I’m not a Conservative or Reform voter.
And I find it fascinating that the debate so often stops there.
Firstly, I don’t believe voting purely for my own short term financial gain creates a better society. A society is only as strong as its public services, its safety nets, and how it treats the most vulnerable.
Secondly, what exactly are we protecting with that “bit less tax”?
We have some of the highest childcare costs in the developed world. Our NHS is under extraordinary strain, with more private providers stepping in as waiting lists grow. Schools are stretched, youth services have been cut, and our communities are feeling it.
And then we act surprised when crime rises or social cohesion breaks down.
Look at countries like Norway: They pay higher taxes than we do, but in return they get heavily subsidised childcare, free higher education, strong parental leave, and some of the highest quality of life scores in the world. It is not “socialism” in the scary Cold War sense, it is social democracy. It is investment.
Of course no system is perfect. But the idea that lower taxes automatically equals a better life feels simplistic.
And when I look at the wider picture, women’s rights, same sex marriage, the rise in racist rhetoric, I know what kind of party I want to give my hard fought for vote to and who I do not.
It certainly is not a party that talks about removing us from the European Court of Human Rights or repealing the Equality Act.
Sometimes I would rather pay a little more into the pot if it means my children grow up in a society that actually functions.
Because this is not just about my bank account. It is about the kind of country we want to live in. 💖
This words in this video were inspired by the amazing @fiftyshadesofshhrey 💖✍🏻
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3mo ago
ashleylouisejames
“Men should be grateful women want equality and not revenge.”
Every time women talk about misogyny, someone responds with, “men don’t hate women.”
Of course, not every man hated women. But for most of history, men as a class benefited from women’s inequality.
Women have been punished for speaking out with devices like the scold’s bridle. Women accused of witchcraft were tortured and executed. Girls had their feet broken in the pursuit of beauty and marriage prospects. Chastity belts - while often exaggerated in popular culture - reflect a long history of attempts to control women’s sexuality and bodily autonomy. Women could be diagnosed with “hysteria” for being emotional, sexual, ambitious, outspoken, grieving, angry, or simply inconvenient. Under coverture laws, a married woman’s legal identity disappeared into her husband’s. She couldn’t own property, sign contracts, or keep her own wages. In some places, husbands could have wives institutionalised against their will. There were even doctors who performed clitoridectomies as a medical “treatment” for women deemed sexually deviant.
As I say in Bimbo, had I been born a few centuries earlier, I’d probably have been burned at the stake. Loud, opinionated, difficult women have never been particularly popular with the people who benefit from our silence.
And that’s why I find the current backlash against equality so worrying.
We’re seeing politicians openly question DEI initiatives and equality protections. Rights are won, and rights can be lost.
We only have to look around the world to see it happening. Roe v Wade overturned in the United States. Women and girls stripped of basic freedoms in Afghanistan. Child marriage protections weakened in Iraq.
Every right women have today exists because a woman before us was willing to be called difficult, hysterical, troublesome, bossy, dangerous, unnatural, or worse.
So yes, we need more loud and difficult women, especially leading up to the next election. Don’t let leaders convince you that stepping back from DEI and the Equality Act is in our interest. 🥹❤️🩹
Because history has shown us exactly what happens when
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3mo ago
ashleylouisejames
I’m sick of girls being told that the most important thing about them is being pretty.
Of course, Ada is beautiful, but beauty is the least interesting thing about her.
When I look at her, I see a little girl who loves herself. She takes up space, she speaks her mind, she looks at herself with wonder, and she knows how to say no. She doesn’t worry whether she’s too loud, too much, too bossy or too opinionated. She simply exists in the world exactly as she is.
And I hope that continues. I hope she never learns to shrink herself, physically or mentally. I hope the world doesn’t chip away at her confidence, because we need more strong, confident women - especially when we know the world we’re growing girls into.
I hope she never learns that being liked is more important than being herself. I hope she never feels pressure to make herself smaller, quieter, easier or more palatable for other people. I hope she never confuses kindness with compliance, or mistakes self-sacrifice for virtue.
I don’t want her to be a “good girl”.
I want her to be kind, brave, curious, compassionate, determined, and completely herself. I want her to fight for what’s right, to ask difficult questions, and to know that her voice matters.
So much of my book, Bimbo, is about the labels used to keep women in line: bossy, difficult, dramatic, attention-seeking, hysterical, too much. Words designed to teach us that there is a penalty for taking up space.
I hope she never believes them.
Because girls aren’t born doubting themselves. They aren’t born feeling not enough. They aren’t born believing their value lies in being beautiful, desirable or chosen.
They learn it.
The world will spend enough time telling her who she should be.
My job is to remind her who she already is. 💪❤️
Inspo from @jaclyneva_ ♥️♥️
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1mo ago
ashleylouisejames
Can you be happy without children?
I’m on my way to the airport to collect my babies after a week away, I found myself thinking about this conversation we had on @thismorning.
I’ve missed them every single day and cannot wait to cuddle them, but having a week on my own also reminded me of life before children, waking up on my own schedule, living in a tidy and organised house (so important for my brain), working without interruption and having the space to think creatively.
I often think about life like a Sliding Doors moment.
I would never, ever wish my children away. They’ve brought immeasurable happiness to my life and changed me in every possible way, but motherhood is also like entering the matrix. You look the same from the outside, but nothing is quite the same again.
If my life had unfolded differently and I’d never had children, I don’t think I’d have been any less complete. My happiness would simply have looked different.
For centuries, a woman’s success was measured by whether she married and had children, and although we’ve come so far, echoes of that thinking still linger today. We still ask women if they’ll ever be truly happy without children, while rarely asking men the same question.
Motherhood is wonderful for many women, but it isn’t the only route to a meaningful life. Some women desperately want children and can’t have them, others choose not to, and neither deserves pity or judgement. We never know someone’s fertility journey, which is exactly why we shouldn’t assume motherhood is universal.
To be clear, I adore my children, I’m endlessly proud to be their mummy and I can’t imagine my life without them now. But I also reject the idea that women without children are somehow less fulfilled.
The happiest women aren’t the ones who all make the same choice, they’re the ones who get to make their own choice without being judged for it.
The goal shouldn’t be convincing every woman to have children or not to have children. The goal should be creating a society where a woman’s worth isn’t measured by her womb. ❤️
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8mo ago
ashleylouisejames
This isn’t just SkinnyTok.
In a world that feels like we’re under more and more pressure to shrink, here’s a reminder that health, happiness and confidence doesn’t come from being the smallest version of yourself. And I have more confidence in my body now than I ever did before. And I’m proud of that, and I never want my daughter to see me hating on my body, and I want the same for you. 🎀
Ashley James (@ashleylouisejames) Instagram Stats & Analytics
Ashley James (@ashleylouisejames) has 835K Instagram followers with a 3.42% engagement rate over the past 12 months. Across 410 posts, Ashley James received 8.30M total likes and 210M impressions, averaging 20.2K likes per post. This page tracks Ashley James's performance metrics, top content, and engagement trends — updated daily.
Ashley James (@ashleylouisejames) Instagram Analytics FAQ
How many Instagram followers does Ashley James have?+
Ashley James (@ashleylouisejames) has 835K Instagram followers as of September 2026.
What is Ashley James's Instagram engagement rate?+
Ashley James's Instagram engagement rate is 3.42% over the last 12 months, based on 410 posts.
How many likes does Ashley James get on Instagram?+
Ashley James received 8.30M total likes across 410 posts in the last 12 months, averaging 20.2K likes per post.
How many Instagram impressions does Ashley James get?+
Ashley James's Instagram content generated 210M total impressions over the last 12 months.