“Women are fed up because we’ve realized we can’t clock out. Emotional labor is expected from us no matter where we turn. We are fed up with the ongoing demand to be the primary providers of emotional labor in all arenas of life because it is taxing, it is time consuming, and it is holding us back.” (Fed Up by Gemma Hartley)
Fed Up expands the language of ’emotional labor’, defining it as anything a person does to make other people’s lives more comfortable, often at the expense of our own comfort. Examples include planning family vacations, organizing weekly schedules, knowing where every object in the house is located, and smiling at strangers to put them at ease. Hartley claims that our society expects women to take on this largely unseen labor, which results in our being completely overwhelmed and also results in men not being fully connected with their lives.
Hartley thoroughly explores her own life and relationship, interviews many women, and investigates the history and research into emotional labor. She comes to the conclusion that it is possible to share emotional labor with one’s partner if the conversation is brought into a larger picture of society, if the motivation is clear, if women can give up their ideas of perfection, and if we realize redistributing emotional labor will take time and patience. It’s a conclusion that’s full of compromises, but also grounded in reality. This book would benefit being read in the company of Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection, and any works by Kristin Neff on self-compassion, subjects that Hartley touches on but deserve further exploration.
It’s important to note that every book, even nonfiction, imparts a feeling to the reader in addition to the information. This isn’t a dry article on emotional labor. It’s not a dictionary entry, concerned only with educating us on feminism. The book is couched in an incendiary rhetoric that is designed to make the reader angry, too. Like Screaming on the Inside, I became depressed while reading this one. I felt taken advantage of, overworked, fed up. Perhaps I felt these things anyway (why else would I read a book with this title?), but the tone of the book inflamed my emotions. Though I am glad I read it, because it helped me label my work and begin a conversation about emotional labor with my husband, the experience of reading it was difficult.
Book Lion 