When i was growing up, my grandmother used to say, “Little girls don’t walk. They skip, hop, or dance, but they don’t walk.” In my work with women, i have noticed a similar common thread. Women rarely just be. I hear many concerns and groans about being exhausted and depleted. I think it is important to highlight the role that societal messaging plays in this plight. Women historically perform more than half of the mental, physical, and emotional labor in the household. Furthermore, in modern times they do so after performing a full days work in the professional world, for which they get paid less on the dollar than their male counterparts.

In her book, “The Dance with Anger,” Harriet Lerner coined the terms under-functioner and over-functioner to describe what sometimes happens in heteronormative relationships. Lerner suggests that women tend to over function performing the aforementioned labor. Women may be motivated by dreams of reciprocity or feel like they get their value from doing and giving rather than for just existing. The propensity of women to over function sets up men and boys to sometimes under-function in their relational and household roles. As Lerner posits, why would they do more? They have a sweet deal.

Feminist philosopher Kate Manne explains the same phenomenon with the term “human giver syndrome,” a term she coined. She theorized that women tend to get assigned this role from a young age by her family of origin and the greater society. This role is interwoven throughout society from the beauty industry to the boardroom to the kitchen. Advertisements for beauty products adorn the internet. Women have been taught since early on that they are not okay as they are. They must change something about their hair, their face, and especially their body to make them okay. Often times there is a covert message that women exist for the male gaze. Conversely, this same messaging, though it exists for males, does not permeate every crack and crevice of men’s lives (no pun intended). Men are mostly allowed a “come as you are” mentality. They aren’t expected to color their faces and fit into a little black dress to attend the corporate Christmas party. Additionally, women are often taught to employ traditional gender roles throughout childhood by their mothers and their fathers. The kitchen warrants daily cleaning while the boys can mow the lawn once a week, with breaks in winter. This unequal labor distribution sets up the idea for little girls to be a human giver instead of a human being. They get praised for being “pretty” and baking cakes in their ez bake ovens. How many holidays have we witnessed where women are preparing and cleaning while men watch football?

Aside from “how did we get here?”, i think there is a bigger question. “How do we change these ideas and allow women to just “be” or do whatever the hell they want?” I would love to say we can create alliances with our male counterparts and start discarding traditional gender roles, lobby for equal pay, and herald the rights of women everywhere. It sounds nice, but seems highly unlikely in a time where first world countries still hold the ability to strip women of their healthcare rights.

I think it is going to be on women to save women. We will need to be our own unsung heroes in a societal structure that undervalues our worth. I think we do it by being mindful and practicing the pause before we jump in to caretake, overfunction, or kill ourselves in the gym or the car trying to apply mascara before the workday begins. This will feel uncomfortable because we have been taught that such an ethos is “selfish,” but it really is true that we grow when we get out of our comfort zone.