Can you remember the last time you felt free? Do you recall a time in which you weren’t consumed by text notifications, computer install updates, grocery lists, school pick-ups and drop-offs, work emails, the news, and shedding “those last ten pounds”? Remember giving less of a shit? Being psychologically unburdened? And relaxed?
Neither do many other women. Modern life, for all its comforts and privileges, can feel wildly overwhelming. To be a woman today is to be stuck in a loop of unrelenting maintance.
I am, by all accounts, not a chill person. Type A is a more accurate description. My husband likes to motion for me “to take it down a notch” whenever I’m riled up by politics, line cutters, or nonsensical fashion. This is partially due to my own makeup but partially bred out of a chaotic career existence. And yes, let me preface all this by saying that I am overall a very fortunate person who is housed, fed, and not stuck in a war-torn country. I am lucky, 100 percent.
But by my midthirties, I’d become loaded with stress, even for Type A me. I worked as a full-time reporter at Fast Company with set hours and was expected to participate in Slack channels, conferences, news shifts, and company-wide initiatives. I even had my own newsletter and represented the outlet at industry conferences. But I wasn’t granted any benefits, health insurance, or paid time off. For years I wasn’t technically on staff even though I functionally was. Like many others, I’d become a gig worker with none of the “freedom” of a freelancer and none of the assurances of a staff employee. A permalancer. I had a contract stipulating a specific number of stories, but it could be canceled within two weeks’ notice. This put me and my fellow writers in a perpetual state of job insecurity, of having to constantly prove ourselves to our “employer.”
As a gig worker, taking a vacation or sick leave is out of the question. You aren’t paid for any days you aren’t working. Thinking about having kids? Forget it. If you can barely afford two weeks off, who is going to pay for your maternity leave?
Mind you, I wasn’t about to start complaining, because by 2017, the journalism industry was in free fall as advertising money dried up. I was coming off previous positions where I saw budgets slashed, reasonable freelance wages disappear, and entire teams decimated. Site traffic—not necessarily quality—reigned supreme. Aggregation replaced original reporting. Ad sponsorship commitments steered content decisions. The sensational trumped the meaningful. Be more like BuzzFeed, we were told. Churn, churn, churn.
At those previous jobs, fewer bodies meant more work. It meant you had to be trendspotter, writer, editor, newsletter aficionado, sponsorship deal creative, contributor manager, media partner liaison, social media savant … an entire team in one body. And as digital journalism became more competitive, we had to follow our beats as soon as the “workday” ended. If I wasn’t at my desk, I was on Twitter or on blogs trying to keep up with a twenty-four-hour news cycle. Sometimes I’d do my after-hours “research” while I was at the gym—one sweaty, slipping hand on the elliptical machine, the other scrolling my phone—trying to ensure that neither my career nor my body would fall by the wayside.
You couldn’t complain. You were told you were fortunate just to have a job in journalism.
I was burned out at this point in my career. The stress was building, the anxiety seeping out sideways into other areas of my life. This was on top of everything else I worried about. As a Jew, I was anxious about rising rates of anti-Semitism. (By 2017, Jews were targeted in 58 percent of all religious-based hate crime incidents despite being just 2 percent of the U.S. population.)1 Then there was concern over reproductive rights, the growing political divide, and so on and so on.
It all kept me up at night. It was in my thirties that I’d stopped sleeping and shortly thereafter began suffering from anxiety. Which is how I found myself looking for stress relief—and major emotional release. Mind you, I was already dipping my toes in wellness at the time. This just heightened my need for it.
I found it one day tucked away on the third floor of a small and unremarkable brick building in Tribeca. Soothing neutral palettes and a wall of mirrors filled this airy fitness studio. Below one’s feet, the wood floor rested atop a layer of rose quartz crystals. (Even if clients don’t see the crystals, the hope is that they feel the “vibrational energy.”) Right outside the studio doors, a bathroom boasted marble counters, modern gold-plated fixtures, and Chanel bath products. Inspirational tunes by Florence and the Machine set the pace for this class called The Class.
Thirty toned women in Lululemon sports bras and leggings stood silent, their flat tummies on display. Eyes closed, they placed their right hands firmly on their hearts. In this pose, they patiently awaited the command of their instructor, the fitness guru Taryn Toomey, who would lead them through a “meditation, just with your body.”
This self-described “cathartic mind-body experience” serves as an unorthodox therapy session. Here, women are encouraged to yell, shout, scream, and express themselves while also doing challenging cardio moves. At other points, they’re told to stand still and quiet the mind. The Class centers around emotional management, which is why class names echo women’s late-night venting sessions: I Love My Kids Just Not Right Now (give me a break!), F*CK Everything (when everyone and everything seems like the absolute worst), and the I Don’t Wanna Workout (don’t make me work out!).
Toomey, a blond, lithe, statuesque figure with the raspy voice of a Kathleen Turner, addressed the room while perched on a window ledge overlooking the Lower Manhattan skyline. “We’re out of our bodies most of the day,” Toomey said. “It’s time for a reunion.” The crowd nodded in agreement. Some looked genuinely touched.
Together, the crowd furiously squatted and shook, all while repeatedly shouting “Huh!” in tribal chorus. From there, the women contorted themselves into winged positions, their arms outstretched. They breathed heavily as their leader urged them to “rise up.”
Midway through a medley of jumping jacks, lunges, and burpees, Toomey’s voice intensified, taking on new gravitas. “What are your blinders?” Toomey demanded. “Your blocks—what are they?” Her voice got even louder, like a commanding priest. “What are they? What are they?!” As if hitting the crescendo at an opera, she shouted with gusto, “Feel! Feel! Feel!”
The room lost it. The session devolved into a rave as the Prodigy’s electronic music anthem “Firestarter” roared over the speakers. Some class members moaned like birthing animals, while others shook their limbs with the spastic fervor of inflatable air dancers outside used car dealerships. One jumped wildly in place, tears rolling down her cheeks, as she yelled. Others frantically thrust their arms into the air, their $4,450 Cartier Love bracelets jangling. Rage, grief, and frustration were suspended in the sweat-mixed-with-Chanel-moistened air.
“This is a safe space,” Toomey whispered.
Toomey at times can come across as a therapeutic healer, a cross between Deepak Chopra and Jane Fonda. “You start to realize that most of what’s going on [in the body] is in the mind,” Toomey told me. “And you know that you actually have a choice, and you can reroute it—that’s what we do in The Class: we practice the ability to do that.” That type of thinking is part of Toomey’s appeal: a splash of the woo-woo grounded in the practical, incorporating her self-help messages within tried-and-true elements of mainstream fitness. She is completely aware that metaphysical and spiritual practices can seem foreign, and she makes the effort to render them more accessible to consumers without alienating her more Goopy fans. Her studio’s crystal-embedded floors, for example, are alleged to “cleanse” bad energy. Despite spending thousands of dollars on them, Toomey will quickly label herself as a “pretty big skeptic.” When asked whether she believes in crystals’ supposed healing properties, she says she believes the most important healing element is the “power of intention.”
Toomey created this new kind of workout after realizing she loved the meditative component of yoga as a way of connecting with her breathing but also craved the endorphin rush of cardio routines. The result is a mix of quiet reflection with bursts of fast movement. Sound is another component. She noticed that whether or not she vocalized what was bottled up inside made a difference in how she felt. Getting loud—really loud—was a catharsis of sorts.
Toomey built a cult following around this unique, visceral form of exercise—if you could even call it strictly exercise. Is it meditation? Athletic vocalization? Calorie-burning primal scream therapy? Celebrities like Naomi Watts swear by the $35 sessions. Ask New Yorkers to describe The Class, and they’ll call it “a brain-body release,” “an emotional workout,” and “a spiritually orgasmic exercise.” One participant simply explained it by saying, “Sometimes you just need to yell, ya know?”2
I definitely did know.
For almost two years, I was a regular at the L.A. outpost of The Class, surrounded by several dozen women who, by all accounts, seemed to have it together.
During one session, The Class took it up a notch. It was the Sunday following the Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, who had earlier been accused of sexual misconduct by a former classmate, California professor Christine Blasey Ford. Liberal-leaning women tended to view the proceedings in a certain way: they saw a woman take the stand, be doubted by the public, then be torn apart. Acknowledging the week’s news, the instructor led the entire room in a sing-along of the 4 Non Blondes song “What’s Up.” Participants thrust their arms forward and back—rowing without an oar—as the lyrics demanded,
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What’s going on?
The room erupted in song, women shouting at the top of their lungs, turning their faces to the ceiling as if to summon the heavens to rescue them. Some pounded their fists in the air as though they were punching ghosts. “I pray every single day for revolution,” they bellowed along with the 1993 hit single. The emotion was palpable. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, perhaps only rivaled by the kind of Christian revival faith healings I’ve seen depicted in movies.
After the class, I approached a few of the women about the intensity we had just witnessed. The Class skews older millennial—women in their thirties and forties, many of them moms or midcareer professionals. The atmosphere felt unreal, certainly not the norm for a nine a.m. workout class. “[The confirmation was] the last straw,” said one woman in line at the studio’s café. “We are broken camels.”
How could it be, I wondered, that so many “privileged” women were so exasperated? What was going on? This was much larger than just my own anxiety. A simmering cauldron of frustration had come to a boiling point, and somehow it was exploding on a pastel-colored yoga mat. It couldn’t just be the political situation inspiring such an outpouring. These women had evidently come to class to express their grievances, and no amount of sage was going to clear up that kind of toxic energy. But when and why did squats and burpees, among other wellness activities, become therapy?
Women are overwhelmed. I hear it over and over and over again from folks across the country, on all sides of the political and social divide. They can be stressed by PTA meetings and ever-rising childcare costs or by a never-ending stream of work coupled with growing piles of laundry. They can be single, drowning in student loan debts and unbelievable housing prices. They might be college students, 40 percent of whom report being so stressed and depressed that “it’s difficult to function,” according to the American College Health Association. Or perhaps they’re graduates hitting LinkedIn’s virtual pavement (with little success) or moms struggling to find the time to “sneak in” a shower. Expectations continue to mount, yet they’re barely able to tread the rough waters.
Of course, men are also overstretched, but women experience a particular strain of stress, and if recent surveys are to be believed, experience far more of it. Almost half of American women say their stress levels increased over the past five years (compared to 39 percent of men) and that anxiety keeps them up at night. And despite the benefits of coupledom, the legally bound seem to carry a heavier load: more than one-third of married women report managing “a great deal of stress” versus 22 percent of unattached women.3
The home is one of the bigger battlegrounds in the war between the sexes. The average woman spends two more hours each day than the average man cooking, cleaning, and caretaking,4 and nearly two-thirds of women say they bear the responsibility for most of the chores.5 They are constantly multitasking, holding a laptop with one hand and a Swiffer in the other. That unequal distribution of work affects them in multiple ways. Women have less time to focus on their careers, get involved in politics, kvetch to their friends, or heck, go to therapy. In one survey, 60 percent said the one person they never had enough time for was themselves.6
Stressed as they are at home, work, at least anecdotally, appears to also be one of women’s chief complaints. Americans work the longest hours of all the industrialized nations, with the average workweek clocking in at forty-seven hours.7 Germany, in comparison, averages thirty-five hours. The land of the free is also the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee workers paid time off, whereas European Union members mandate at least twenty days of paid leave.8 Three out of four women suffer from burnout, defined as emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive stress. Just how bad is it? One survey discovered that 48 percent of employees have cried at work, and while women are more inclined to break down in tears over stress, 36 percent of men also acknowledged crying on the job.9 That’s because day-to-day work is an exhausting obstacle course of stressors. Further, the stress often doesn’t end once you leave the office: an “always-on” environment encourages bosses to email you at any time. Knowing a ping of anxiety could be incoming at all hours, there is no real end to the workday.
One might tell women to just find other jobs if their workplaces don’t support them, but in this economy? It’s not so easy. Few options are available in what’s become a cutthroat race for well-paying, full-time employment with solid benefits. Job insecurity and a growing gig economy put the American dream ever-teetering on a pinnacle, always on the verge of tipping over. We’re not hustling to get ahead as much as to just stay put and pay off our student loan debt—or the mortgage.
A wide cross section of women battle stress, though their wounds differ. Caretaking responsibilities within the office—organizing birthday celebrations, mentoring new hires, mediating disputes between co-workers—often fall to female managers with little acknowledgment. Childless women complain they’re routinely expected to work longer hours than caregiving peers, and they feel insulted that management assumes they have no life after six o’clock. Maybe they too would like to leave at a reasonable hour so that they could tend to personal matters or just do whatever it is that fulfills them? Maybe they have a date?
Not that dating necessarily generates stress relief: many singles report they need to compete in a Hunger Games–like scene where individuals “swipe” their way through an endless supply of mates, where chasing “something better on the horizon” is as easy as ordering a pizza. Those wading through the dating circuit can get caught up in a shallow hookup culture, which some researchers link to lowered self-esteem. (Almost 50 percent of women report a negative reaction after a fling, versus 26 percent of men.) However you identify—gay, straight, whatever—casual sex may not always be as fun and carefree as Sex and the City would have us believe. While some do enjoy a buffet of one-night stands, others might experience depressive symptoms and loneliness.10
As for parents, the storm of stress elevates to a Category 5 hurricane: the average mom claims an 8.5 out of 10 on a scale of stress, positioning them somewhere between a Cathy cartoon and a ticking time bomb. A leading cause of stress is time. Sixty percent of moms say they simply can’t squeeze in everything on their to-do list, which usually amounts to planning a nutritious dinner, helping with children’s homework, organizing the social calendar, and oh, also staying fit and attractive. In addition to all that, 72 percent of moms are stressed about how stressed they are.11
Delving into why the American woman is about to burn down her white picket fence would undoubtedly fill volumes. But suffice it to say that one major reason is that she is in no way living the utopian dream envisioned by feminists past. Women are not equal in status nor immune from sexism, and they are still burdened by the domestic assumptions made by society. Our foremothers burned their bras and filed for divorce en masse, but that didn’t release Betty Draper from pot roast duty. College girls dreamed of being Tina Fey or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then found themselves soothing male egos in the boardroom or arguing with their spouse over whose turn it was to carpool.
While middle- to upper-middle-class women are technically liberated, for many their situation feels like further imprisonment: now they need to be both Working Girl and June Cleaver. Their life is nonstop emails and baby tantrums; they have two jobs but the respect of one. This is what the renowned sociologist Arlie Hochschild in 1989 termed “the second shift,” by which Western women inherit a double-career life. They’ll work a full day at the office, commute in traffic back home, hang up their coat, then run into the phone booth to transform into Superhousewife. The current hyperproductive and performative nature of American life is likely to blame. We’re on a constant treadmill of doing way more than a normal human would have aspired to do until recently: attain career success, birth two kids, achieve a slamming body, cook like Ina Garten … You get the idea.
Futher compounding the issue, the days of living off a single income are long gone; as the cost of living increases and wages stagnate, both partners need to bring home the Beyond Meat bacon.
But again, there’s the rub: as the average American increasingly needs to work long and sometimes unpredictable hours at demanding jobs, who is going to manage caregiving? When the workday doesn’t end until six, who fixes dinner? How can you make partner at the law firm when you need to scuttle out at a reasonable hour? Someone needs to hold down the fort. Someone needs to take care of the kids. Not everyone has relatives nearby who can pitch in and provide free babysitting. And not everyone can afford paid childcare. This is not a predicament exclusive to women raising children with men. Same-sex couples also deal with one partner who inevitably needs to pick up the slack at home.
We may have fought the good fight for women’s careers, but as Hochschild observed, “The workplace they go into and the men they come home to have changed less rapidly, or not at all. Nor has the government given them policies that would ease the way, like paid parental leave, paid family medical leave, or subsidized child care—the state-of-the-art child care, that too is stalled.”12 In essence, women changed, but many men, employers, and the government simply put up their feet. They see women struggle to scoot out of the office before children’s bedtimes. They hear the exhaustion of those pumping breast milk in their cubicle. But bosses just put another meeting on their calendars. In 2019, a Pew Research survey confirmed what everyone already knew: half of employed moms say being a working parent makes it harder for them to get ahead professionally.13
The COVID-19 pandemic only intensified this workload, exposing deep cracks in the system. With schools closed, moms quickly found themselves juggling work Zooms while trying to help their first-grader log in to class. Mothers scrambled to monitor the kids, keep up with double or triple the dirty dishes, and then somehow appear alert during department meetings. In between all of that, they had to stave off a virus that kept them away from friends and family. A significant portion also had to manage eldercare for their aging parents. Their lives, like their wardrobes, began unraveling. They wiped their hands on their sweatpants, looked all around, and asked, How?
We might have hit a breaking point. By the fall of 2020, not even one year into the pandemic, 865,000 U.S. women surrendered and handed in their resignation.14 The number was roughly four times more than the number of men, thereby further contributing to a gender disparity in corporate America. One mom, a friend of a friend, wrote on Facebook, “I’ve basically abandoned my career that I’ve worked for 15 years to build in order to care for my kids and give them an education. It’s crazy.”
An obvious fact that needs to be stated: some groups have it way harder than others, dealing with a wide array of stressors on top of the average American experience. One 2020 survey found that Latino and Black adults have experienced twice as much economic hardship as white adults during the pandemic. They also face more discrimination and greater mental health issues, and they do so with fewer resources.15 As one co-founder of a meditation program for Black communities once told me: “We joke that [mainstream outlets] always try to get you to calm down in your commute. Our communities are dealing with a lot more things than just a hard commute.”
Worn out by the daily grind and greater injustices, women seek solutions. During the last few years, breath work instructor Jay Bradley has drawn in far more female than male clients, many of them high-achievers who say they’ve tried everything to relax—pharmaceuticals, therapy, or “spiritual work”—but nothing’s worked in the long term. These women are, by his account, depleted, demoralized, and discouraged. They are driven but feel unable to “accomplish it all.” Bradley’s clients are afraid if they let go just a little, everything will all fall apart. They express an “underlying unworthiness,” says Bradley, who believes it stems from unhealthy boundaries surrounding work or family in addition to self-imposed expectations. This ongoing struggle leaves them “feeling powerful one day and then feeling powerless [the next].”
In his group sessions, Bradley acknowledges how well participants take care of everyone else. “Women, in particular, give, give, give,” Bradley tells his class. He encourages clients to spend the session to truly focus on one person and one person only: themselves. Through breath work, they can hopefully release whatever worries occupy their headspace, maybe even practice some self-compassion. At the same time, says Bradley, they are “ready for something that will permanently shift them out of that fight-or-flight mode.”
Women often voice that they need some time out, a Sabbath, a rest (though preferably not in a corporate nap room). They instinctively feel the urge to pull away and indulge in some self-care—a term that hit record Google searches in 2020. Some decide to waste a few minutes checking their Instagram, only to face an onslaught of clean kitchens and photoshopped bodies. What should have been a break turns into additional pressure. The same technology that was supposed to ease our lives is now arguably ruling them. Indeed, Americans who check their phones most frequently report the highest levels of anxiety. As soon as they wake up, they’re assaulted by a barrage of texts, then spend eight hours or more staring at a work computer screen, followed by incoming emails and breaking news alerts in the evenings. It never ends. What’s more, tech companies increasingly add more addictive features and design infinite ways to keep us hooked or “bingeing.” I once heard Netflix CEO Reed Hastings deliver a conference speech in which he flat-out said he was competing not with HBO, FX, or Amazon, but with … sleep. “And we’re winning!” he exclaimed to rapturous applause.
Well, guess what sleep deprivation causes? Fatigue, irritability, and stress.
Women are looking for less in their life. Less noise, fewer tasks, and reduced pressure. Self-care is marketed as the exit strategy. It’s become so popular that the Instagram hashtag #selfcare grew to 60 million posts, and self-care is one of the top downloaded app categories. But what exactly are we being sold? And to what extent are these practices helpful?
Flashback: Running Free: “Exercise Is the Best Tranquilizer”
James Fixx had settled into the sedentary American lifestyle by 1967. The magazine editor took public transportation to work, where he was stuck in an office all day working long, stressful hours. To blow off steam, he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. By his midthirties, he was unhappy with his weight and his habits.
Recognizing he was out of shape, Fixx tried running, and to his amazement, it made him feel significantly better. Running on an empty road became a therapeutic nirvana: quiet time to think, go at your preferred pace, and be free of distractions. In a domineering society, in which one is constantly being told what to do, wear, or think, running became an appealing way to assert some autonomy, to symbolically run away from “the chains of civilization.”16
In speaking with runners across the country, Fixx noticed that many reported that anxiety, depression, and ruminating thoughts melted away as they hit mile after mile. Divorced men claimed it worked as “an ideal antidepressant.” Women reportedly said they were “less cranky and bitchy.” Fixx quoted one doctor who stated, “exercise is the best tranquilizer.”
Fixx felt called to share his miracle cure, no doubt the work of endorphins and exercise’s ability to reduce stress hormones. Soon enough, he inspired Americans to do something they’d never done before: jog. Before then, running constituted a gym class chore or an army requirement. In the late sixties, the activity was so unusual that police would stop running “freaks” for disturbing the suburban peace.17 Bemused pedestrians hurled insults, and sometimes trash.
James Fixx changed all that. Considered the father of recreational running, his bestseller The Complete Book of Running became the bible of newly minted joggers. The handbook sparked a jogging revolution, prompting People magazine to label it a “craze” on a 1977 cover featuring Farrah Fawcett in gym shorts.
Was it just the stress relief and freedom of the road? Or something more?
Some historians have a different theory: Americans turn to fitness during stressful times.18 They took up exercising in greater numbers during the Great Depression, throughout the tumultuous seventies, after 9/11, and during the COVID-19 pandemic.19 Starting in 2002, boutique gyms exploded in popularity. Some industry experts believe the World Trade Center terrorist attacks spurred Americans into an existential crisis overnight. They wondered: Could being reminded of one’s mortality inspire a desire to want to live longer, better? Does caring for our health make us feel more grounded? I’ve heard this idea from several researchers (as well as crystal sellers, who saw sales soar after 9/11).
Rhythmic exercise routines are indeed calming. Intentional repetitive actions can redirect focus away from anxious and depressive thoughts, lulling us into a relaxing trance. Researchers have also found that repetitive, ritualistic behavior can increase people’s belief that they can manage situations that are otherwise out of their hands.20
In addition, as your body image improves, so do your confidence and sense of mastery. For women, this often also correlates with societal body size pressures. (Historically, women didn’t have control over many aspects of their lives, but they could determine their size.) Perhaps it’s a false sense of control, but people will grasp at whatever tools they have at their disposal.
“I felt more in control of my life,” Fixx said. “I was less easily rattled by unexpected frustrations. I had a sense of quiet power, and if at any time I felt this power slipping away I could easily call it back by going out and running.”21
“Your mobile phone is ringing. Your boss wants to talk to you. And your partner wants to know what’s for dinner,” reads the Mayo Clinic website. “Stress and anxiety are everywhere. If they’re getting the best of you, you might want to hit the mat and give yoga a try.”
The esteemed institution praises yoga’s ability to help lower blood pressure, manage lower back pain, and “quiet your mind.” The Mayo Clinic joins a wide array of outlets vouching for the workout’s ability to modulate stress response systems. (Of the many different types of yoga, I am sticking to the mainstream American adaptation for the purposes of this book.) The wellness site Well+Good reports that when it comes to stress, “one thing that works without fail for almost anyone is yoga.” The New York Times published a guide on “How to Use Yoga to Destress.”
If you haven’t read the dozens of headlines extolling yoga, then you’ve likely heard celebrities swearing by it. Reese Witherspoon relies on it before the chaos of award show season. Miranda Kerr says the daily practice keeps her grounded and calm. Lady Gaga does it in a thong. Yoga has become so popular that almost 37 million Americans hit the mat regularly, and of those, 72 percent are women.22 They come across soothing fitness gurus like Adriene Mishler of the hit YouTube channel Yoga with Adriene and like what they hear. Instead of body transformation talk, all the approachable yogi asks is that you love yourself, find what feels good, and—like catnip to women—“make space.” The space can be physical, mental, or emotional, but whichever kind it is, schedule in time for yourself, away from frenetic energies that consume us.
In fact, when Mishler asked her nearly seven hundred thousand Facebook fans what theme they wanted to honor for December 2020, she received an overwhelming response: “Myself.”
Yoga has grown so very popular because it emphasizes emotional health in the context of mind-body union. In a society where we feel so disconnected from our bodies (and confined to a sedentary lifestyle), we need outlets that let us explore that union. Some also see it as a less competitive discipline that lets them go at their own pace, in stark contrast to hard-hitting cardio; slow, gentle movements act as a restful cushion from the rat race.
Of course, movement has long been recommended to release stress. Strong evidence shows that regular exercise is associated with lower levels of anxiety, and even just a twenty-minute stroll has been shown to clear the mind.
Frequent exercise is also an American tradition, albeit one historically more afforded to men. While nineteenth-century women prone to “hysteria” were prescribed bed rest or hysterectomies, men were handed a horse and told to head to the wilderness. At the time, “neurasthenia” became a catchall term for elite men’s weakness of nerves caused by overly civilized life.23 The cure for spending too much time working indoors was returning to the rugged outdoors. Teddy Roosevelt advocated a “West Cure”: vigorous treks into the wild to build muscles while roping cattle, hunting wildlife, and exploring nature. Manly cowboy activities, he believed, could restore nerves sapped by an effeminate, coddling culture. (Some historians assert that the national parks owe their existence to the popularity of Roosevelt’s therapies.)24
Today we have far more options than a fainting couch or a cowboy expedition. A host of self-care modalities promises to get you back on the Zen track, filling whatever gap you need filled: massages (touch), facial masks and manicures (pampering), meditation (being present), cardio fitness (movement), cannabis (relaxation), and so on.
To be honest, anything can be self-care provided it makes you feel better (although no real money can be made by telling people to go take a walk outside). Two prominent desires for women are the need to escape stress and the need to release stress. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, but often both. Fans of indoor cycling studios, for example, compare pedaling in place to a vacation from life. They speak of mentally transporting themselves to something more akin to a nightclub than the perceived hell they’re living in. One SoulCycle devotee wrote, “I can shut out the world and my own thoughts for a while. There’s no beep from my notifications, no expectations, no deadlines, no rules.”25
With exercise, your worries completely shut off. Your brain is so intently focused on following the prescribed moves that you don’t have time to fathom if you potentially chose the wrong career. You are jumping so hard that your shitty ex melts into the abyss. The absorbing repetitive motions occupy the space previously afforded to a ticking biological clock. Nothing else exists, for you have one task and one task only: complete the burpee. You are, for once, present.
Some use running quite literally as therapy. Jogging therapy is a combination of talk therapy with mindful movement. The unique workout has gained a small following in Silicon Beach, the L.A. region home to more than five hundred technology companies. Start-up professionals lace up their sneakers to join psychotherapists-slash-trainers who run beside them as they complain about their demanding boss or nagging parent. One jogging therapist’s office has all the trappings of a Freudian experience—mid-century couch, end table topped with a tissue box—but also foam rollers, hand-sized FIJI water bottles, hair ties, and energy bars. A mini-gym of sorts.
“You’re literally moving forward, together,” the psychotherapist Sepideh Saremi, founder of Run Walk Talk, told me as I gasped for air while trying to vent and run at the same time. “That is a powerful experience for people to have when they feel really stuck in their lives.”26 (But only for those who can manage to talk while running.)
Solo runs prove equally powerful. One writer explained that she runs to break free of bad thoughts and to metaphorically pound frustration into the pavement. “There’s a point during my run when I get this invincible I-could-run-forever feeling, as long as I keep running forward,” Patricia Haefeli wrote for Women’s Running. “But my runs are always large loops, and as I round the bend to head back, I’m reminded that you can run away from your problems—at least temporarily.”27
Temporarily. That’s a key point. We are briefly excusing ourselves from our lives and engaging in spurts of stress release before jumping back on the hamster wheel. And what you do, therefore, is sometimes less important than just separating time for yourself. Self-care can be snuggling puppies, watching 30 Rock reruns, or stretching on a yoga mat because what often matters most is the disengagement from [fill in the blank].
As long as your mind is preoccupied with anything other than what would spur a meltdown, you’re golden. But what happens when self-care doesn’t cut it, or worse, is weaponized against us?
Beatrice* graduated from nursing school at one of the most challenging times for healthcare workers. The upstate New Yorker was fast-tracked through her last semester of school so she could help with the COVID-19 relief efforts. In 2020, she found herself working full time at a frantic hospital, shuffling from one heartbreaking death to another. Any free hours were spent educating herself about the latest pandemic policies or visiting patients in the ICU, holding vigil under harsh fluorescent lights. Beatrice didn’t complain. She knew full well these were extraordinary times that required extraordinary sacrifices.
As a healthcare worker in a short-staffed environment, Beatrice felt overstretched, though she knew her work was crucial in the “horribly stressful, grim” situation. At one point, she had a full-blown breakdown as she felt completely hopeless after “trying to follow every order to a T and people still died.” It was defeating.
Following the holiday season, when COVID-19 deaths hit a new peak, Beatrice was summoned to a Zoom meeting with her team and supervisor. The nurses had been working massive amounts of overtime and were in desperate need of a break. They had voiced their need for backup support so they could take a little time off, or at the very least get some extra compensation to take care of all the errands piling up at home.
But Beatrice’s boss didn’t offer that kind of relief. Rather, the staff supervisor gave a presentation about employees’ need to engage in self-care activities, asking them, “What are you doing to take care of yourself?” The suggested solutions were yoga, running, and drinking more water.
Beatrice was at first perplexed, and then furious. Why was the onus on her to fix a situation the hospital had put her in? Even a monetary bonus toward her student loans would have been more meaningful. When would the staff be able to exercise amid twelve-hour-plus shifts? How would sipping more water ease her anxiety? “It’s patronizing that during a pandemic you’re asking service workers to do so much more than they’ve ever been asked to do and then their employer doesn’t absorb any of the responsibility … it’s victim blaming,” said Beatrice. “At a certain point, employers are morally responsible for what’s going to [psychologically and physically] happen to their staff.”
To Beatrice, the suggestions came across as taking further advantage of a gendered profession, since 90 percent of nurses are women. She felt they targeted what little energy women—forever society’s caretakers—had left. “[Our employer] knows we would never go on strike,” she fumed, “they know we care too much about our patients.”
If you can’t take the heat, the saying goes, then get out of the kitchen. But what if the kitchen is on fire? Telling overworked nurses to do yoga is similar to walking into a sweatshop and informing the employees they really ought to do something about all that stress. Maybe they shouldn’t be working insane hours. Employers can dangle workplace wellness initiatives to offset the stress they create in part because we’ve accepted the concept en masse: it’s our job to fix what’s “wrong” with us. Consequently, employers are always suggesting more ways to get well, yet never offering less work or more substantial help.
My pet peeve is when companies offer “wellness days” but don’t readjust the workload so that we can actually take advantage of them. Employees secretly work anyway, then resent their employers who pat themselves on the back for accommodating “work-life balance.”
Or worse, companies offer nothing more than empty virtue signaling for press attention. In 2021, Nike publicly announced it was closing its corporate offices for a week in the name of mental health. Employees were told to “destress” and spend time with loved ones—a move rattled off in self-congratulatory statements shuffled out to reporters and applauded in LinkedIn posts. But guess who reportedly didn’t get time off? Warehouse and retail employees, proving that only white-collar workers matter to management. And you can be sure the company’s burnout “break” didn’t extend to all those hushed-about subcontracted factory workers abroad. The same goes for the athleisure darling Lululemon, which partnered with the United Nations Foundation to promote mental health for humanitarian aid workers and posts Instagram statements like “Everyone has the right to be well.” That is, save for their outsourced Bangladesh factory’s female workers who, in 2019, reported that they were beaten, overworked, verbally abused, and denied sick leave. These women said their paltry pay wasn’t enough to survive on. They allegedly made roughly $112 a month, just $6 shy of being able to afford a pair of the very leggings they produced.28 But you won’t see that scrawled on Lululemon’s feel-good mantra–covered tote bags.
I’m all for learning stress management techniques to aid us throughout day-to-day chaos. This is not a case against yoga. My point is that we should take a step back to analyze the root issues. Stress is rarely a matter of a broken brain or a poor “lifestyle choice” but often a symptom of the structural issues facing society. At times, wellness can serve as a disciplinary power whenever our emotions are unruly, or as horse blinders to keep us on track. We’re instructed to revel in feel-good escapism, thereby tuning out the untouched problems. Instead of pointing the finger at management, we absolve them of guilt; we use self-care to become mentally bulletproof, the better to serve corporate needs. Mastering your stress, it would seem, helps toe the company’s bottom line.
“[Burnout] is not a disease. It’s not a medical condition,” says Christina Maslach, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a pioneer of burnout research. She created the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the most widely used instrument for measuring work-related stress. “To treat it as such means it’s inside the person and the individual has more responsibility to take care of it on their own. It really misses a whole other part of what’s going on in life, which is that there are stressors out there.” Maslach is not opposed to relaxation tools, but there’s a balance that’s since been distorted. We believe our feelings are supposed to change while an imperfect system should remain as is.
The wellness industry stepped in to fill a void created by the unreasonable expectations that torment us. Self-care promised salvation, deliverance from the evils of stress. But if it’s a toxic workplace, a meditation program isn’t going to fix it. A fitness app won’t solve the uneven distribution of housework within your marriage; CBD gummies will not enforce better childcare policies; bath salts won’t stop late-night work emails. Buy whatever makes you feel good, but realize that these are short-term mental Band-Aids that do not ensure long-term redemption. Wellness remedies help, but the problem is that they’re sold to the public as miraculous cure-alls.
We’ve somewhat butchered what “self-care” means. Historically, it stems from far more radical, activist roots. Marginalized groups in the 1960s adapted the medical term in response to the lack of adequate attention from mainstream medicine. Health care, they proclaimed, is a civil right—one that should be available to all, no matter one’s skin color, ethnicity, or income. And if the powers that be failed to provide it, individuals would take it into their own hands.
In time, community members themselves took it upon themselves to serve their own. Hispanic civil rights groups set up programs to combat the lack of access to affordable health care; the Brown Berets, a Chicano activist group, founded the El Barrio Free Clinic in East Los Angeles. Likewise, the Black Panthers created and operated more than a dozen health clinics in underserved areas. These community-focused care centers offered a host of free services, ranging from food pantries to blood pressure screenings. Many centers were stationed in trailers or run out of storefronts and staffed by volunteers. But they all had a strong message: together we can take health into our own hands.
The Black activist and writer Audre Lorde expanded on the concept of self-care, viewing it as a radical vehicle for personal health in order to address larger societal issues. She wrote in 1988, “Self-care is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” At the time, Lorde was battling cancer. Self-care meant survival—so that she could continue to fight against racism, sexism, and homophobia.
Taking care of oneself was acknowledging your needs so you could adequately push back against a system of social inequality. It caused one to ask, “How can I fight injustice or overcome adversity if my tank is empty?” Self-care meant standing up for yourself to declare, “I need more.” I need to protect my mental and physical health so that I can right what’s wrong not just for myself but for others too.
Self-care today is far more inward-looking—and dependent on a purchase. Not only that, but it hands the problem back to the sufferer, repackaged and tied up in rugged individualism. America has always treasured the lone soldier who relies solely on grit and perseverance. But it seems like we’re giving up on communal change to cocoon ourselves, building our own Noah’s ark in place of petitioning God to spare the fate of our fellow man. That’s the new American way.
In this regard, we prioritize our inner private response over our potential ability to change situations via collective effort. By reimagining stress as something that can be overcome individually—separate from social, political, and economic influence—we are barring it from actual strategies to fix it.
To be fair, we obviously can’t tackle the root problems of all our stressors. That mentality doesn’t get us too far when we’re stuck in traffic. But escapism and consumption do not promise real change. Actual progress only comes from engaging in whatever was responsible for the stress in the first place. Self-care should move you toward a life you don’t need to run away from.
One could say we need to jump off the Peloton and fight for change, which is, of course, easier said than done. Structural transformations such as subsidized childcare or extended paid parental leave require complicated fights that most American women can’t afford to consider for many reasons—financial, emotional, and more. But certainly nothing will change if we lose sight of the real issues.
What would happen if we mobilized even just a little instead of performing so many downward dogs? Could we use all that energy to demand smaller but still worthwhile longer-term solutions? Wouldn’t that be preferable to shoving issues under the frayed rug?
Not that everyone suffers from soul-crushing burnout; some simply battle everyday chronic stressors that add up over time. Changes like organizing your own hours or taking adequate lunch breaks might not sound significant or sexy, but they might eventually lessen the stress weighing you down.
I’ve been in workplaces where the women came together to demand extended maternity leave. I’ve witnessed managers give Friday afternoons off after several employees complained of burnout. I’ve been in a newsroom where the staff stood up and organized a union. We can collectively treat some structural issues: a human resources department can dismiss your individual request, but what about when it’s a whole group—or a whole department—that’s asking? That’s a lot harder to ignore.
With more flexibility and fewer hours tied to a Herman Miller chair, mothers could make it back home for bedtime. Women could have time for physical movement in their daily schedule. Perhaps if we implemented these changes, we wouldn’t be constantly exhausted and “sneaking” an hour of solo time. We could enjoy our friends and family and look after ourselves.
In other words, we’d have a life.
In a way, there’s been a sliver of a silver lining to the pandemic, which inadvertently sparked a backlash to workaholism. Whereas in the past we may have believed stress is a good thing that builds character or resilience, now we’re (hopefully) leaning into a healthier work-life balance. While we once battled employers who insisted corporate life had to be a certain way, social distancing regulations proved that we could do things differently. Suddenly we discovered society wouldn’t fall apart if we worked from home instead of commuting long hours and rarely seeing the kids. The office, we learned, wasn’t essential.
We all came to the realization that many of our previous workplace mandates were unnecessary or burdensome or just plain dumb. We began insisting on better alternatives moving forward.
In a sick way, we’re sedating women with consumerist self-care—or worse, silencing them instead of encouraging them to vocalize their grievances. I want to see headlines that read STRESSED? HERE’S HOW TO CRAFT A LETTER TO YOUR BOSS STATING YOU WILL NO LONGER CHECK EMAIL AFTER WORK HOURS or FIVE WAYS TO TELL YOUR PARTNER TO DO THE DISHES SO YOU CAN TAKE A SHOWER or HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR WORKPLACE TO DEMAND BETTER BENEFITS. Why the hell is the advice always yoga? Weirdly, wellness is becoming almost as prescriptive as the medical industry. If we criticize some doctors for simply treating symptoms, why are we repeating the same mistakes with wellness?
The Class gave me the space to briefly reconnect and reset. But a few years into taking The Class, along with buying a host of other self-care products, I started questioning what was becoming a very expensive lifestyle. I had to ask myself: Was I significantly less stressed? How come the effect wore off shortly after? What else could help?
I also worry about how gendered this entire messaging has become. I spoke to one mother of a high school student who, along with her classmates, was resisting an elective offering. The curriculum mandated that boys would get to play team sports, while the girls would learn “how to relax” with a wellness course focused on yoga, meditation, and spa activities. Students complained that boys would learn team building skills, leadership abilities, and strength training exercises while the school presumed girls were so fragile that they needed a less demanding, soothing alternative. The mother described how the girls were required to buy “soft, pretty things.” The boys just needed to show up in shorts.
In the nineteenth century, “hysterical” women were sent to an asylum. In the twentieth century, they were put on Valium or Xanax. Today, they’re directed to a wellness app.
Stress exists for a reason: it’s a mental state informing us that something is wrong. And yet we’re constantly told this is something we should bury away. When women furiously pedal away on a Peloton to “silence their mind,” you begin to ask: Why should we silence our mind?
Maybe my mind has legitimate complaints.