Stacey May Fowles
When I started reading Moody Bitches, I was overwhelmed by how many women wanted to talk to me about it.
Near the end of an unusually cruel winter, when mental health is precarious and frustration at its peak, it's no surprise a book that opens with "women today are overworked and exhausted" would garner so much interest. Working women have been told to lean so far in we'd rather just lie face down on the floor, balancing our myriad deadlines and domestic demands, with little gas in the tank left for ourselves. We designate a crying stall in our office bathrooms, and schedule our mini-breakdowns the same way we'd pencil in a dentist appointment. We're repeatedly told to have it all under control and to never betray a calm, capable exterior – an exterior that is expected to be slim, plucked, painted and look impossibly young.
As a result of these enormous pressures we are self-medicating, overmedicating, teetering toward burnout and neglecting our genuine needs. Yet with all this multitasking and emotional toughness, women earn only 74 cents to a man's dollar, still pick up a majority of the housework and child care, and are generally not getting the sex they want as often as they want it. It's no wonder we're all so "moody."
While most books in the genre of "everything that's wrong with your life" tend to leave me with anxious unease, Moody Bitches delivers some solace, explaining the chemical and social sources of our dissatisfaction in a friendly, pop-science tone. In her practice as a psychiatrist, author Julie Holland has seen many healthy women wanting to blot out their natural reactions to stress with pharmaceuticals, whereas she believes many should be confronting the sources instead.
"Stuffing down your feelings is going to make you sick," she says, suggesting that our emotions actually have evolutionary benefits, and should be listened to before being medicated away by sexist standards. This comprehensive and detailed overview of the biology behind women's so-called "moodiness" is intended to give readers permission to feel their feelings, and there's certainly something empowering about knowing the science behind why you're suffering – beyond the usual sexist, dismissive accusation of "that time of the month."
Thankfully, Holland acknowledges that many of the lessons she imparts have gender essentialist implications – a sort of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus from the perspective of evolutionary science. The idea that men are unfeeling compartmentalizers, and women are erratic basket cases is certainly a regressive generalization, but it does serve the notion that women are treated unfairly in a world that prioritizes masculine rules of emotional behaviour. Holland also recognizes that there is a difference between popping an anti-depressant to combat natural emotions, and needing medication to manage mental illness, non-judgmentally urging the former to investigate diet, exercise and lifestyle before being designated the latter. She stresses the drive-through-window nature of our medical system that is causing doctors to write scrips to solve problems rather than looking into possible causes. Maybe the reason you can't sleep is because you go to bed with your smartphone under your pillow. Maybe the reason you're not interested in sex is because your partner isn't very good at it. Maybe the reason you've locked yourself in the office bathroom crying stall is because your boss is a jerk.
There are certainly occasions when Holland's biases get in the way of her otherwise well-reasoned arguments. Her very obvious anti-porn stance neglects recent evidence that one-third of pornography consumers are women, undercutting the lazy assertion that the men who consume it have ruined sex. She devotes long passages to her obvious distaste for plastic surgery, cosmetic procedures and waxing, again alienating a wide swath of readers who make that choice. She frequently dissuades us from seeking pharmaceutical options, yet promotes marijuana as a drug worth pursuing. What is worse is that she egregiously undermines her self-love/harm-reduction messaging with ideas such as "women are getting trashed and losing all responsibility for their behaviour and their bodies." Holland's prose also has a tendency to derail from knowledgeable expert into a kind of Ya-Ya Sisterhood rant, with talk of being in tune with the Earth and "honouring our own cycles." Yet a great deal of her advice is sage and inclusive, such as "resist the urge to become a pathological accommodator" and "change can only come from the discomfort and awareness that something is wrong."
In a world that asks women to flatten and file away their emotions, the intended takeaway of Moody Bitches is a plan to manage the pressures of day to day, and for readers to feel in control of what once seemed uncontrollable. Yet how practical the lessons imparted are for all women is certainly up for debate, and to access Holland's advice, one must concede to her fundamental premise – that women are, indeed, more emotional than men. It's an idea that I myself don't entirely buy into, and in the wrong hands is commonly used against our success. It's all well and good to say our feelings are the source of our talents, but when we're consistently required to hide them in order to be respected, celebrating our cycles works well in theory, less in practice. Moody Bitches is certainly a case of a reader taking what they need and leaving the rest, but with chapter titles such as "You. Need. Downtime." it will have no problem finding its overwrought audience.
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