J L’s Reviews > Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power > Status Update

// Empathy in action becomes emotional labor. //

// Should value really be seen as simply measured in dollars, or should we not now insist that value also be seen as time, not only hours of the day spent on specific activities but years of on's life, lived fully, happily, free of unnecessary burdens of mental and physical ailments? Should that not be the measure of true value? //

// If emotional and social support is the kind of activity that helps people not only survive but thrive and live longer, healthier years, far more than money does, then should that not be seen as the ultimate creator of value—or even the ultimate value itself? //

// Social psychologists Peter Glick and Susan Fiskelt in the late 1990s offered a great answer by differentiating between two forms of sexism—hostile and benevolent—that, respectively, threaten women with the stick of hatred and lure them into submission with the carrot of adoration.

Horrific.
// A perfect example of benevolent sexism as a sprinkling of sugar disguising a gendered threat in pop culture is the 1965 song "Run for Your Life" by the Beatles. In it, the male narrator addresses his female partner as "little girl" sixteen times as he simultaneously informs her that if she were to leave or cheat, he would kill her. //

// When performed in public, before an audience, emotional labor imposed on subjugated groups serves to infantilize and delegitimize those doing it. As an active expression of a submissive, non-confrontational status, it also presents the power status quo as inevitable, paralyzing those doing emotional labor in place. //

// Tweaking and altering your authentic self to adhere to what is expected of you as a woman, either to please others or for fear of serious repercussion—in the form of social penalties like angry parents, economic penalties like job loss, or physical penalties like violence-i emotional labor. It is not only emotional labor; it is emotional labor with the threat of a slap on the wrist or more if you don't do it. //

The case of female swim coaches on “word delivery”, “the practice of rising intonation at the end of a sentence”, “positive, encouraging phrases”, “sweetly modulate their voices” had me laughed so hard that I started to cry as it spoke to the bottom of my heart, being a fitness coach myself.

// Prosocial orientation are those communal attributes that are often associated with the female gender: being other-oriented, con-cerned, and considerate of others' interests, as well as the company's interests, being sweet, caring, nurturing, and expressing thoughtful-ness.