Tired of being a woman in 2025? Why not become a nun | Emma Beddington

"Nuns are everywhere we've had Isabella Rossellini's Sister Agnes stealing the show in Conclave and nuns with main character energy in The Phoenician Scheme, And Just Like That and Nine Perfect Strangers. On #nuntok (yes, a thing), real sisters demystify and give surprisingly irreverent glimpses into their lives. There was the Austrian trio jailbreaking from a care home to return to their beloved convent, and at the other end of the demographic scale, a rise in younger women following, or at least considering, cloistered vocations."

"Nun memes have become a jokey shorthand for real dissatisfaction with life as a woman in 2025 unsolicited dick pics, workplace discrimination and the endless, soul-sapping scroll. They don't, mostly, express a yearning for strict religiosity or voluntary celibacy, but for community, purpose and a retreat from chaos. It's the same impulse that attracts women to single-sex communities or makes them pine, like Stella in Bernard MacLaverty's brilliant Midwinter Break, for beguinages"

"We all just want peace. Well, sisters, now there's a self-help book. I have been reading, and highly recommend, Convent Wisdom: how sixteenth-century nuns could save your twenty-first century life, a delightful glimpse into the colourful lives of counter-reformation nuns. The florid religiosity (levitation, mystical visions, eating cat sick and cobwebs) might not be entirely relatable, but it's thrilling to learn how powerful, purposeful women managed the unreasonable demands of male authority figures, made ends meet and lived on their own (and God's) terms."

Nuns and nun imagery appear across contemporary culture, from film and television characters to viral social media communities. Real nuns on platforms like #nuntok demystify convent life and offer irreverent glimpses. Stories range from elderly sisters leaving care homes to return to convents to younger women considering cloistered vocations. Nun memes function as shorthand for modern female dissatisfaction—unwanted sexual messages, workplace discrimination and endless digital distraction—signalling a desire for community, purpose and retreat rather than strict religiosity. Historical sixteenth-century nuns combined mystical practices with practical agency, navigating male authority, financial struggles, romantic feelings and complex friendships while pursuing autonomy and hard-won serenity.

Read at www.theguardian.com