Nothing Serious: How Modern Love Lost Meaning (and How We Can Restore It)

Journalist and commentator Rikki Schlott demystifies what has gone wrong for women when it comes to dating and sex and what they can do to reclaim happiness, commitment, boundaries, and self-respect.

Why, despite the many wins of modern feminism and the promise of empowerment, do many young women feel anxious, unfulfilled, and alone? And with so many choices on dating apps, why is modern romance a hellscape? In Nothing Serious, journalist Rikki Schlott, who has known these struggles personally, addresses these questions with reporting, expert interviews, and analysis—ultimately offering a different approach to female empowerment and relationships that actually works. 

At the center of Schlott’s argument is a contradiction women keep running into: The things meant to empower women end up disempowering them. If hookups and casual sex were once liberating, today many young women feel they must be sexually available. Once women fought to choose something other than marriage and family life, but ironically, today young women face stigma when they express traditional desires for commitment. 

Schlott shows that a new vision is desperately needed for female life and relationships―one that reclaims sexual choosiness as empowerment, that leverages the experiences of past generations of women, and that embraces biological realities with wisdom.  

Nothing Serious is not a call to turn back the clock or judge other women’s choices. Instead, Schlott’s perspective is relatable, honest, and deeply empathetic. She invites us to rethink what female empowerment really means and encourages women to trust their own instincts—so they can build lives that are truly free and fulfilling.