Like most human beings on the planet, I am enamored of Ted Lasso, the hug of a TV show we didn’t know we needed. But then yesterday it dawned on me what part of the attraction was: Ted Lasso is a man doing emotional labor. He is a man who knows when it’s a player’s birthday, when someone is missing home, and how to make them feel appreciated. Ted is up on the intricacies of Couch Beard’s romantic life. He knows Rebecca loves shortbread and makes them for her every night. In the finale, he even left a little gift for the entitled Jamie Tartt just because he knew he’d be low.
In short: Ted is a woman.
If I allow myself to think about this too much, it will make me angry, and I love the show too much to want to be angry. But it would stand to reason that after decades of asking to see more women represented on TV, the answer that took the industry by storm was to have a man take on the characteristics every woman has had to adopt since the dawn of time and act like that was a fucking revolution.
Oh, dear, I’m going to get angry, aren’t I?
It’s not Ted Lasso’s fault I’m angry. And, by all accounts, of all the Ted Lassoes in the world, Jason Sudeikis is the Ted Lassoiest. And to be honest, I don’t know that I’m angry, so much as I’m just fucking tired. I’ve spent decades doing what Ted does for 10 half hour episodes and I’m exhausted. Ted makes it look easy, and it’s not. Plus, not to be callous, but Ted doesn’t have a spouse or even full time custody of his kid. As as too many women hopped up on caffeine and resentment know, emotional labor is a full-time job. We spend the day doing it at work for our bosses, colleagues and customers, and then go home to do it for our partners and family.
“What is emotional labor?” you may be asking. Here’s a hint: I could answer that question, but it would just be yet another example of it. But a cursory google will turn up countless articles, including my personal favorite.
But, because I’ve been indoctrinated this way since birth, here’s brief primer anyway: When men are at work, it is most often assumed that they can only focus on work. Anything happening in the household- kids, food, laundry, cleaning, repairs, homework, school functions - this was all the purview of women to do or arrange. And it didn’t stop there. Social engagements, both the planning and scheduling, are women’s work. Gifts for friends and family, regardless of whose friends and family they are, that’s women’s work, too. This was an unbalanced division of labor when women were being conned into being “homemakers.” But then women got their own jobs and nothing changed, except that they took on the caretaker roles at work, too. Some of it was by necessity: We got into the workforce only to find that we were being promoted less, paid less and listened to less than the men. We dealt with men who didn’t want us there and didn’t mind showing it. So, like Ted Lasso entering the Richmond locker room, we had to read the room, make ourselves likeable, and find ways to be useful in which the other men could not.
I could be here all day giving you the thousands of examples of “well-meaning” guys just fucking it up and not getting it, even after the women in their lives patiently explain it to them time after time. I started actually doing it, too, but then I realized I was only doing so in the hopes that my own husband might finally get it this time, before I realized I don’t think he actually reads these posts anyway. And the truth is that you don’t have to be married to a man, or at all, to be bearing the burden of emotional labor, or in my case, crumbling under it.
Because that’s where I found myself this week when I cried, “Please don’t be a fucker!” to the cat, because he has figured out how to use his paws to take my hand off of my laptop and put it on his head. Which I know sounds adorable, but I was in the middle of trying to schedule a plumber and writing a disgruntled letter to the home shield company, after a week of trying to get these two seemingly minor problems dealt with. I’m tired of being the superior species. I’m tired of being able to hold six separate things in my head simultaneously, while always planning three steps in the future. I’m tired of knowing where things are kept. I’m tired of being interrupted constantly and then not being heard when I’m finally not.
I hit the skids of burn out this week, but it’s actually really depletion. I have nothing left to give. Gen X women were sold a bill of goods that told us we shouldn’t rely on a man for anything. We should be able to do everything for ourselves, including giving ourselves validation. But telling women that we shouldn’t need anything didn’t stop others in our lives from needing stuff, and looking to us to be the ones to give it. Bosses, co-workers, kids, spouses, parents - everyone wants something from us. And in many cases, it’s only our other female friends showing up to support us. Which is lovely, but they’ve got their own troubles. We’re the depleted leading the depleted. In the Kingdom of the Exhausted, the woman who isn’t ready to start screaming is Queen. And goddamnit, we do deserve validation from someone other than ourselves. We are fucking superheroes every goddamn day. We are the Ted Lassoes we want to see in the world.
Brilliant.