My husband jokes from time to time that we have a “magic counter” at home. Usually, he does this after I tell him he left crumbs after making lunch. “Don’t worry, dear: this is the magic counter,” he replied with a mischievous smile. “The crumbs clean themselves up. I don’t know how it works…” If it’s not obvious, the magic is, in fact, me. Sure, he apologized and cleared the counter, but I appreciated the subtle apology of the joke itself: an acknowledgment that a lot of the work I do around the house (as the main person doing it) often goes unnoticed. TikTok founder Shaunie (@shaunie1988) recently emphasized this point after her partner accused her of “doing nothing.”
Oh yes. Buckle up, folks.
According to her resume, Shawnee works as a critical care nurse. Later in the video, she explains that she and her partner of 13 years run a farm, just the two of them. In these videos, she also explains how stressful it can be, as she and her partner work extremely hard together to juggle everything they need to do to maintain the life they’ve built together.
It can feel stressful at times. When stress becomes intense, harsh words are said and feelings are hurt…
“What do you do when your husband says he thinks you have nothing to do all day?” she began. “Because last night, I almost pushed him out the back door…so I did it today. there is nothing. Absolutely not. Because I want to prove what ‘nothing’ is.
Shawnee went on to explain to the men there that just because they didn’t notice things being done, it didn’t mean women weren’t doing a lot of things when they were home. There is one reason There is always toilet paper, shampoo and clean clothes.
“We are the magical fairies who come to visit us every day,” she said.
She gave the example of working three night shifts in a row and coming home to a house that looked like “a bomb had gone off.”
“I don’t know how a grown man and two cats could destroy a house in two days, but they did,” she marveled. “So when he came home we cleaned up the mess he made, but he thought I’d done nothing all day.”
Shaunie’s TikTok account is relatively small, with only 5,500 followers, but as of press time, the video has received 2.6 million views and more than 250,000 likes. Nearly 8,000 commenters weighed in, with most people either shocked or urging her to end the relationship.
In subsequent videos, including several in which she documented the couple’s “silent confrontations,” she pushed back against the idea that her relationship had always been miserable and that her partner was a bad person. But her frustration with all of her invisible labor in the original film was deeply visceral, and clearly something that too many women can relate to.
