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A review by addicted2booksstefania
Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward by Gemma Hartley
3.0
Physical TBR read! Here’s the deal, it was emotional labour to read this book. I think the book presented some great and important topics, especially for people with no prior knowledge on the topic, but man was it a pain to read by the end. If you’re curious, I have 3 main issues:
1. Most annoying of the 3 issues - it is EXTREMELY repetitive. For someone who claims to be a writer, this could have been 200 pages shorter and gotten the point across in a clearer way. There was no need for a full fledged book to repeat what you said 1000 times.
2. What was the method of presentation? This book wanted to come off as non-fiction, analytical, all that. However, it gave absolutely no data! There were some interviews with women and blanket statements, Give me some proper data outside of other magazine articles, because frankly this turned into a memoir of Hartley’s experiences with her husband and kids.
3. My biggest gripe. Emotional labour is an important topic, and I absolutely agree it needs to be talked about and appreciated. That being said, I have a real problem with the way Hartley let men off the hook and almost said it was the fault of women/ society for placing these expectations on men. Give me a fucking break. Do not write a book about emotional labour and then discretely blame women for how men turn out. Some people are a joke with no life skills, so do not give me this bs that it’s a woman’s job to fix it now. I’m getting angry just hashing this out again.
Let me say this for anyone reading, especially any women: you do not need to stay with someone who is abusive, childish, incapable of being a functioning adult, or someone who has no emotional bandwidth. There is no obligation to.
1. Most annoying of the 3 issues - it is EXTREMELY repetitive. For someone who claims to be a writer, this could have been 200 pages shorter and gotten the point across in a clearer way. There was no need for a full fledged book to repeat what you said 1000 times.
2. What was the method of presentation? This book wanted to come off as non-fiction, analytical, all that. However, it gave absolutely no data! There were some interviews with women and blanket statements, Give me some proper data outside of other magazine articles, because frankly this turned into a memoir of Hartley’s experiences with her husband and kids.
3. My biggest gripe. Emotional labour is an important topic, and I absolutely agree it needs to be talked about and appreciated. That being said, I have a real problem with the way Hartley let men off the hook and almost said it was the fault of women/ society for placing these expectations on men. Give me a fucking break. Do not write a book about emotional labour and then discretely blame women for how men turn out. Some people are a joke with no life skills, so do not give me this bs that it’s a woman’s job to fix it now. I’m getting angry just hashing this out again.
Let me say this for anyone reading, especially any women: you do not need to stay with someone who is abusive, childish, incapable of being a functioning adult, or someone who has no emotional bandwidth. There is no obligation to.