[“When young women come to work for her as swim instructors, Joann, a recreation and parks manager in California, has to sit them down and have a very particular kind of conversation with them she does not have with her male recruits. While new coaches’ induction might include conversations around safety protocols, kids’ ages, and progress reports, the conversation Joann finds herself having with young women is around word delivery. Joann says instructors, male or female, will shout “KICK! KICK! KICK!” in the same way to the children perfecting their swim strokes, but to very different reception from closely monitoring parents.
“Female swim coaches who don’t add enough upspeak in their voice when they are yelling ‘kick’ across the pool deck are often seen as mean, while their male coworkers can yell all they want,” Joann explains, referring to the practice of rising intonation at the end of a sentence so that it sounds like a question. She also suggests they add positive, encouraging phrases like “You got it!,” something men do not need to do.
If women do not sweetly modulate their voices as they question mark their way through “Kick? Kick? Kick?” leg movement directions, Joann says she has learned the hard way it will only be a matter of days before parents will come forward to complain.
Joann does not need a sociology textbook to teach her about counter-stereotypic backlash—that punishing effect that happens to women refusing to adhere to the kind, sweet, and demure trope mentioned in earlier chapters. She has seen it summer after summer, with every new cohort of swim instructors coming in. “That is the only way that people can take women’s voices,” she states bluntly.
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—is 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.
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, nonconfrontational status, it also presents the power status quo as inevitable, paralyzing those doing emotional labor in place.”]
rose hackman, from emotional labor: the invisible work shaping our lives and how to claim our power, 2023
