How to Set Boundaries: 11 Expert Tips From Jemima Kirke

17.12.2025, 18:28 elle.com

Tender Tips is a new advice column by Jemima Kirke, dishing out unfiltered guidance on everything from love and sex to all the messy moments in between. This month, she’s answering reader questions about setting boundaries—no fluff, just real talk. Want to be included next time? Drop her a line at tendertips@elle.com and get in touch.

Well, Florida is really where you go if you don’t know who you are or what you want. Nothing is normal over there and no matter how weird things get there’s always something weirder right around the corner. It’s a little bit like Wonderland in Alice in Wonderland. You fall down the rabbit hole, intending to find the exit but it’s a disorienting place and eventually, you adapt. Not to the place, but to being disoriented. It’s a state of mind I highly recommend. Just make sure to tell your friends you’re going before you leave.

It’s awful the way our phones will surprise us with a “memory” pulled from way back in our photo album. At this stage in your life, pictures of your kids when they were younger can feel like mini assaults on your heart. If I’m being honest, it’s not an easy thing to see at any stage of parenthood. I happen to know that you can turn off this officious little feature in the app. Find the closest man or child and ask them to do it for you.

Sounds to me like you’re not using your 2-year-old correctly. Your child is your hottest accessory. Motherhood is highly fetishized. You should know that. The right perverts will see you patiently standing in line at the coffee shop, holding 14 bags with one arm and tenderly holding the hand of a child in the other. How calmly you field relentless questions spoken in a language no one else in the world speaks and catch things, midair at superhuman speed before something catastrophic happens. They know that you know how to do most things and if you don’t you figure it out. It’s understood that you don’t mess around, that you aren’t clingy and you don’t take pleasure for granted. Physically, mentally, emotionally, you’ve been through some hardcore shit, which means you’re funny too. And to top it all off, you clearly don’t use condoms.

This applies to cases where your lease is up and the landlord decides that a few nails in the wall or a painted door is worth your entire deposit. After you’re all packed up and the place is gorgeously empty, get a friend to help you paint the entire place neon green or jet black. Make sure it’s high gloss and remember to paint inside the cabinets, the doors, the ceiling, and the floors too. Old wood floors make it even better. Revenge is more important than preserving old-world charm. Don’t forget the radiators and fuse box labels.

I don’t make it work. It doesn’t work. I just work on making it work and try to accept that it will never work. No need to strive for a goalpost that doesn’t exist. The system is rigged so that you feel like you aren’t doing enough when in actuality there was never any quota to fill or standard to meet anyway. You aren’t required to find “a purpose” and there isn’t a golden secret with your name on it waiting to be discovered. So give up. You’ve arrived.

Not everyone is afforded that convenience. Here’s a list of things that people do that others just can’t do.

Like a true gentleman. The kind that doesn’t exist.

Remember that your STDs are like scars. Each scar tells a story of the good old days, when people had sex in person and a few cuts and scrapes were par for the course—evidence of a sex life well-lived. It’s their loss for not getting laid by a fucking pro.

Give up? What is wrong with you? Where is your team spirit? Have you no sportsmanship? No curiosity? Maybe you’re not horny enough to think beyond intercourse. Or not creative enough to do more than just grab his crotch. You sound basic AF.

Talking about you when you aren’t there is what friends do. Analyzing you and your life choices “behind your back” is common practice, I assure you. I say ghastly things about the people I love. It’s mostly just creative conversation born out of intrigue and has little to do with how I really feel about said person. Gossip is a sport; shots in the dark of an empty room where you have no business being.

Sleeping with bosses transcends style. It’s about survival: adapting to the world around you and making good use of your resources. Marilyn Monroe wasn’t famous for being a dumb blonde. She was famous because she created the template for the “dumb blonde.” She is among the grassroots of female powerhouses—a secretly sovereign starlet who crafted her own career while making it seem like everybody else’s idea. Marilyn understood the power of feminine fragility. We can argue about who was really exploiting that, but her cautionary tale isn’t actually about her but about us. It’s about the kinds of female prowess we will applaud and the kinds we won’t. We were wrong about her, and we know that now. So take it from Marilyn: You can absolutely use your body to get ahead and still be a fucking legend.