Arlie Hochschild, the sociologist who coined the term emotional labor, defines the term as work, for which you’re paid, which involves trying to feel the right feeling for the job through evoking and suppressing feelings. Depending on who you are or what your job is, the emotional labor of a job can be even more draining than the work itself. For example, jobs in customer service where you have to be attentive and polite to lots of customers within a day even when you are not treated so well, and jobs like nursing or caretaking where you have to take care of many people and deal with sickness or death on a daily basis while keeping your composure. This strain can be added to when also dealing with things such as anxiety or depression, which can make it harder to manage your own emotions.

Back in 2019, my healthy active mom started having dizziness attacks that came and went. Eventually, she went to a doctor who misdiagnosed her and sent her home. She contacted her regular doctor when she completely lost hearing in her left ear and couldn’t move because of vertigo and nausea. She was sent to a specialist, had an MRI, and spent months in bed. She gradually recovered, but she had lost all of the hearing in her left ear. While it was scary seeing her so sick, at the time we all thought it was something temporary. She was recovering from an illness, not permanently disabled. As time went on though we realized it was permanent and a disability. She had to stop teaching since the noise made her head ache so badly that she would have to lie down for hours afterward. Going out to loud venues, from restaurants to concerts was too painful. We all learned to stand on her right and to repeat ourselves when needed. 

I also discovered that there are those who just don’t care. One time we walked by a woman at a store who yelled at my mom, “I was next!” When my mother kept on walking, I stopped to explain that there was another register open and that my mom is deaf. The woman’s response was a snort of disgust. I was furious that my mom’s disability could be dismissed with a snort by a person who persisted in believing that she had been wronged. My mother dismissed it as one of the advantages of not always being able to hear. At my brother’s rugby game she couldn’t hear the racist, sexist and homophobic “jokes” made by the people behind us. She has found it freeing in some ways to not always be able to hear. At the same time, she was excited to go to a theater that had headphones available that made it possible for her to understand what the actors were saying. Having a disability often means that people simply accept the difficulties life presents, but there is an amazing feeling of liberty when an accommodation has been made that removes that difficulty. 

My mom’s experience made me realize how much our society is set up based on some undetermined norm of physical ability when in reality our society is made up of people with a wide range of abilities. We tend to only see a disability when it is obvious: someone in a wheelchair or walking with a white cane. While we have the Americans with Disabilities Act, there are many people whose disabilities go unseen or are unsupported, thus making navigating everyday life more difficult. I believe disability can be viewed as a design issue. We can do more to design spaces that accommodate people with varying abilities. For example, at airports and train stations, having announcements displayed on a scrolling screen, would help direct people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Our government, at all levels, needs to require more up-to-date accommodation standards to be incorporated into our public spaces. 

You are in the campus library when a strange light envelops you, transferring you to another world. With fantasy knowledge limited to pop-culture references, you find that this place reminds you a lot of a very generic fantasy setting. You always liked Dungeons and Dragons, and you hope that you’ll be able to fit right into the world. You approach something that looks like a tavern, and try to open the door. Scanning for a handle, you realize that this door does not have a handle. You try to open the door by pressuring it with your body, but that doesn’t seem to be the way to open it.

With the constant hustle and bustle of our ever changing society, it seems like taking a break is viewed as “weak”. We’re expected to perform 120% every single day with little to no leeway or remorse – but why is that? I understand in the working world, notice is required if you want to take off – but how can you plan the unexpected two weeks in advance? Things happen and it’s okay, but time and time again employers, teachers, and society in general show us that it’s not. I’ve worked in the restaurant industry for years and one story always stays with me. I had worked a double shift the previous night and I was expected to come into work in the morning. This was a typical weekend for me, but I was going through a lot outside of work and didn’t have easy access to an iron for my shirt and pants. As much as I wanted to take off, I knew I couldn’t without repercussions. I went in that morning and within 5 minutes my manager looked at my shirt, (I really tried my best to uncrumple it without an iron lol) and sent me home. I mean, I guess I got what I wanted – but why did I have to go through all that when I was ready to work, just to be treated like that? You take abuse for years in that industry, just to come out with little to nothing to show for it.

The laboring body is incredibly important in putting the pieces together, whether we realize it or not, but that doesn’t mean the body should take abuse by the isolating effect or how Slavishak put it “[it] is easy to lose sight of human labor in a capitalist system centered on service, global outsourcing, and automated assembly”. We all have a wealth of unique situations – that’s what makes us human –  but we shouldn’t be punished or viewed differently because we took a day or two off. I guess it’s getting better though, every day, and it helps that we are having dialogue about this now. It’s okay to take a break, it’s okay to breathe and live. We’re not corporate machines – our mental and physical well-being comes before anything else. One day at a time.

Jobs that require physical work are hard to some extent, but nothing can beat emotional labor. When one works physically others can see him/her working and they know their body is being utilized for the job. Emotional labor is more of behind-the-scenes labor that only the person going through can see and understand. If you’re physically tired from work, you can sleep it off and be better the next day. But the emotional level affects mental health in a way. For example, when I was working at chipotle which was my first job, I had to deal with a lot of emotions. While I was physically working, I would constantly get scolded by the managers for being “too slow” or giving “bigger” portion sizes. Or sending me to clean the tables off because I wasn’t good enough to be in the lane to prepare bowls. All of that took a toll on me because it was hard to manage my emotions and work in a busy environment. It was almost as if I didn’t even have time to unravel anything. That kept going on every day and the emotions kept building up. Physical labor was never an issue but the emotions that came with it didn’t do me any good. It is better to leave that job than it letting it get to your mental health because some of these people will keep reminding you that you are not good enough and can be easily replaced. However, I feel like some people are targeted and taken advantage of because they don’t retaliate in a serious situation and let the managers treat them however they continue to treat them. Not only that, but the race could be another reason, a try to get a certain person to stop working there by emotionally torturing them. I feel like sometimes, the managers and coworkers automatically put certain people in categories by how able they are, and I was “less able” for that job. It is human nature to judge people based on certain visible things and categorize them into categories and assume that they’d be bad at some tasks just because of the things they noticed in them. There is a lot of discrimination in the workplace which can lead to emotions being built up and starting to affect mental health.

Step 1: Get married

Step 2: Have kids

Now I will not lie, I dreamt of my wedding day since I was a kid. It is a want of mine but that want is slowly diminishing nowadays seeing the state of humanity. There is no compassion in people anymore, no empathy, no chivalry. Maybe I just have bad taste in men but why would I subject myself to entrapment if I won’t get all my needs met? Just like Dr.Kate said in class, more women now do not want to get married because men won’t do anything to help the house and more men want to marry in order to get out of doing housework. Why should I have to nag my husband to clean, to do simple chores? Wives are expected to mother their partners and later, kids. Not to mention that some fathers think of taking care of their own kids as babysitting. Frankly, it seems more like hell than a dream. The role of a wife is to cook, clean, and care for everyone in the family. The role of a husband is to work and do absolutely nothing after or cheat because life is too hard after having the kids they wanted. 

Currently, my new favorite show to binge is “Desperate Housewives”. This doesn’t help my views of marriage and kids either, all the characters have real struggles when it comes to marriage and kids. The children lie and are complete menaces to their mothers, the trouble they go through to raise young kids and teens would honestly make me lose my mind. It happened to three of the mothers in the show, one checked herself into a mental institution after her son falsely accused her of abuse and her daughter ran away to be with a boy, one committed suicide over a crime she did to protect her psychotic son, one started popping Adderall like candy to be the perfect wife and mother. All their husbands have affairs or work so much that they are never home to help with the kids, leaving their wives to suffer alone. I know it is an exaggeration but it is a struggle for wives and mothers to have all these pressures on their shoulders. As someone who already struggles with mental health issues, being a mother and a neglected wife would be my last straw. 

If your dream is to get married and have kids then of course follow your dreams but be realistic. The gender role of being a wife and mother makes you handle all the responsibilities alone, the husband won’t help much if even at all. Are you prepared to go down this path alone? Look at Dr.Kate, if she had kids she wouldn’t be able to go to Paris in January. Kids and marriage come with the cost of freedom and a whole lot of sacrifices as a woman. However, for men, it won’t devastate their life.