My boyfriend and I were talking about success. “I feel successful because I eat fruit every day. Between breakfast and lunch. I’m always full of vitamin C.”
He is bemused. It’s strange to him, this idea of success — bodily care. But to me it feels gratifying, it feels good. To serve my body as if it were another. My self, I think, virtuously. A man wouldn’t understand, I venture. You think success lies in writing books and rescuing people from fires and making money. I feed the body fruit. Good body.
This makes me think of the children’s books. The books for boys — about train drivers and builders and firemen and postmen and all of the things that you can do when you dive into the world and begin to act. Well, boys can do. And the books for girls — about love and flowers and hugs and kisses and being nice and the colour pink. All of those lovely things that I so appreciate myself, deeply, and always will. And about the highest form of girlhood you can aspire to — princessness — where you don’t have to do anything at all because you’re rich in some mysterious way that you don’t think about. You just brush your hair and are lovely.
You’d been peacefully weaving a friendship bracelet and talking about what kind of pony you’d like with a dear dear friend. And then this violent being appears, and you never understand what they’re doing or why
All of this has been recognised and widely known, though not remedied, for a long time. Boys are trained to act, women are trained to care for others. We are lovely after all. And without a doubt, the little boys could use some more of this loveliness in their training — I still remember with terror the great mystery of why boys always wanted to come over, say something mean, and push you over in the mud. You’d been peacefully weaving a friendship bracelet and talking about what kind of pony you’d like with a dear, dear friend. And then this violent being appears, and you never understand what they’re doing or why.
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Women as carers. We know this story well: we’ve watched it crush female potential since the start of history. I’ve watched it, growing up, and always said: not me. I’m a writer.
In the meantime, it seems we’ve all discovered another form of caring. One that women can do, all day every day, without ever having to feel that we’re wasting our short lives, our energy or our minds. It turns out that the problem with care was its selflessness. So we’ve found a way around that, misusing another academic term so that it can be used to sell things. Self-care. You know, that trillion-dollar industry that immobilises women. Well, immobilises me. I was a kind of rabid femcel communist before someone bought me a smartphone. I’m much, much calmer now. Science says that dark undereye circles do not go away, but I’m a bastion of hope and I will prove them all wrong. I appreciate that this is probably some kind of capitalism vs women thing, but I’m tired of that discussion. I want to glow.
Self-care means, for me — I haven’t prepared my classes, I haven’t written anything, and I haven’t had any fun, but I feel very, very good. I feel like virtue itself. Because I did a hair mask before I got into the shower, even though it was boring. I ate a bowl of beautifully sliced fruit. I did yoga for so long that my thoughts are pleasant and slow and peaceful. Hours pass inexplicably, but virtuously. I am completely on top of things.
Sometimes my students talk about things that are wrong, but which, even as they strive for goodness, they have been made to feel are the only possibility — it might be prisons, capitalism, or some other cruelty
One thing I’ve learned from teaching literature, where the discussion is often ethical, is that everybody wants to be a good person. This is always an earnest conversation — no one wants to miss the argument that might better their souls. How do I treat others right? What do I do, in this world of horror, but also any world; what is the right thing to do? Goodness. Everyone wants goodness. Simone Weil wrote: “Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.”
Sometimes my students talk about things that are wrong, but which, even as they strive for goodness, they have been made to feel are the only possibility — it might be prisons, capitalism, or some other cruelty. No one ever thinks that these things are good or kind. They just can’t yet make out the other options.
We want to be good. We buy eco-friendly, and we offer to do the dishes like our mothers taught us. And sometimes this translates into letting a piece of writing or work or something I deeply care about sit idle while I scrub a countertop, or, because it is 2024, exfoliate my feet. I crave virtue and I need to care for someone. And I know I shouldn’t be making my boyfriend salads all the time, I know that for the sake of womankind, I should try to escape the forms of oppression that have swallowed up lines of women before me. But how has this become a weekly glycolic peel, a thing that I don’t want or believe in? Distraction, procrastination, lack of a Xanax prescription — sure. All of these personal things. But this stuff has all found its outlet in one particular way, and that is for one reason only. Because I am a woman.
Rivkah McKinley is an Irish writer living in Amsterdam and working on her first novel
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