High Maintenance

There is a meme floating around that invites you to score how "high maintenance" you are.  It lists a number of different personal care activities and gives each one a points value.  For example: regular pedicures are something like 5 points. 

Cute, right?  Harmless fun? 

Actually, no.  When I thought about this cute little nothing test, it occurred to me that the implied value system was anything but harmless. 

Let's start with the list itself.  When you look carefully, or even more-than-glancingly, at all the items on the list, you see that they all have one very important thing in common.  they are all stereotypical "female" activities.  Not even actual female activities, like getting a pap smear.  They are socially ordained female activities.  (All except one, but I'll get to that later.) Applying makeup.  Having your nails done.  Shopping.  Wearing high heels.  There is a whole lot of forced gender normativity in that little list.  All these stereotypically female activities somehow contribute to how difficult a person you are to be around.  So, somehow, we are supposed to navigate the expectation that, as women, we must somehow want to do these things along with the sanction against being "high maintenance." 

Look at that, another Scylla and Charybdis for the ladies. 

The thing that gets me the most though, is this line: "Gets massages regularly --- 10 points."  So, one of the highest point values is assigned to massage.  Meaning, that getting regular massage is one of the most high maintenance things you can do.  Aside from this irritating me as a massage therapist, this strikes me as an extension of a dangerous assumption women are encouraged to make:  the assumption that time spent on their own care is time somehow wasted.  Or, by extension, that time for self-care takes time away from others who need this woman's time.  (Spouse, parents, children, co-workers, literally anyone) 

This is why I had this recent, far-from-unusual, client experience: a woman in her late 50s came in for her first ever massage.  She was fit, active, and engaged in her community.  She lived a good life, full of love and fulfillment.  She loved her partner, her children, her job.  And yet -- at the end of a massage, she walked out with tears in her eyes, and embraced me, crying into my shoulder.  She told me she had never felt so cared for;  she didn't know she could even experience that.  All that stuff about her wonderful life was absolutely true.  And so were her tears as this new layer of honoring herself was opened up to her. 

So, no, I don't find it cute or harmless when memes like this go around.  Not as long as any human in the world denies themselves a moment of compassion and care because of social expectations.