Title: Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward
Author: Gemma Hartley
Genre: Feminism/Social Justice
Trigger Warnings: Subconscious misogyny
Back Cover:
Day in, day out, women anticipate and manage the needs of others. In relationships, we initiate the hard conversations. At home, we shoulder the mental load required to keep our households running. At work, we moderate our tone, explaining patiently and speaking softly. In the world, we step gingerly to keep ourselves safe. We do this largely invisible, draining work whether we want to or not—and we never clock out. No wonder women everywhere are overtaxed, exhausted, and simply fed up.
In her ultra-viral article “Women Aren’t Nags—We’re Just Fed Up,” shared by millions of readers, Gemma Hartley gave much-needed voice to the frustration and anger experienced by countless women. Now, in Fed Up, Hartley expands outward from the everyday frustrations of performing thankless emotional labor to illuminate how the expectation to do this work in all arenas—private and public—fuels gender inequality, limits our opportunities, steals our time, and adversely affects the quality of our lives.
More than just name the problem, though, Hartley teases apart the cultural messaging that has led us here and asks how we can shift the load. Rejecting easy solutions that don’t ultimately move the needle, Hartley offers a nuanced, insightful guide to striking real balance, for true partnership in every aspect of our lives. Reframing emotional labor not as a problem to be overcome, but as a genderless virtue men and women can all learn to channel in our quest to make a better, more egalitarian world, Fed Up is surprising, intelligent, and empathetic essential reading for every woman who has had enough with feeling fed up.
Review:
Most of this book made me very angry. Not angry at the book itself, though; the first half of the book was dedicated to stories and examples of emotional labor to help illustrate the concept for those who needed help understanding (mostly, I assume, the men Gemma hoped would read the book). And it made me angry, partly on behalf of the women in the stories who were exhausting themselves with emotional labor and getting no help from their male partner, and partly because I saw myself and my relationship in a lot of the stories.
I’m nonbinary, but since I usually dress like a girl and my partner is male, I fell by default into the female role in the relationship. We recently got married, and through most of our relationship, emotional labor (from calendar management to making sure the laundry gets done) has been my domain. And for the most part I just accepted it, although recently I’ve been trying to push him to take on more. But Gemma talked about her own relationship and how at the beginning, she was perfectly fine with taking on all the emotional labor, but as the relationship went on she got more and more resentful. I don’t want to see that happen in my relationship.
She also talks about how not taking on emotional labor is hurting men, too – it keeps them from being a full participant in their own life. When everything from managing his calendar to buying his clothes is taken care of by someone else, life becomes something that happens to a man rather than something he creates and participates in. It also causes men to wrap their entire identities in their work and provider-hood, which can be devastating during periods of unemployment, or even when they’re not the one bringing in the most money.
Most of the book is spent outlining the problem, but it does end on an optimistic note. The last section is about “the way forward,” how we can move towards more equality in regards to emotional labor. Yes, there were suggestions for men to take on more of the emotional labor, but there was also suggestions for women – mainly to let go of perfectionism and give men space to do emotional labor.
I do think the book was a little longer than it needed to be. The parts just detailing examples of emotional labor were good, but I don’t think there needed to be as many examples as there were. The book also focused on cisgender heterosexual monogamous relationships, and mentioned homosexual relationships once in passing. But it was a good book with valuable content (especially in the last section), and if you’re looking for more equality in your relationships, it’s a good place to start.