The virtue costume line is the one I'll be turning over for a while. I didn't realize I'd been wearing it as a credential — I can handle anything, I don't need much — until I read that and recognized it as the bargain it actually was.
The easy daughter became the easy employee became the easy everything. Same costume, different decade.
Thank you so much for this post. I went into it thinking it didn't really apply to me. I left it realizing that it runs so deep and so far back that it's who I am.
I prided myself in having been called an 'easy baby' (and 'rightfully so', because I was my mother's first) And as a baby, there was an accident and I was rushed to hospital, and I was 'the calm one' (of course, I was in shock) while my parents were panicking.
From there, I had a reputation to uphold. I went from 'easy this' to 'easy that'. As a small business owner, too, I know I keep my prices too low and I offer too much, and that's all related.
Thank you for this piece. I found it brought up feelings of anger in me, which is incredible because my anger is exceedingly hard to find, and if you can't even find your anger, then you're just doomed to enact trip-on-the-floor low-maintenance forever.
Tara I am so pleased that this article resonated with you. I think the anger is justified, and I think we all shove this down so deep that we don't realize the impact it has on our daily lives
SUCH A GREAT PROMPT! Even at 35, I've reached the point where I choose to embody the "too much" woman, the high maintenance woman. Because fuck everyone. The people pleasing requiring us to shrink in submission is complete bullshit and it makes me enraged. It makes me mad because I believed that lie for so long.
Now, I definitely believe that "accurately maintained" is a more respectful way to put it, and also, sometimes we need to be assholes first then calm down and find the balance.
This was an incredible piece. Thank you so much for writing and sharing it. It resonated with me as very insightful about women's lives across many generations as well as the mythology around "difficult women" who, if they'd been men, would have been celebrated and admired rather than shamed, derided, and even jailed. (hello, Martha Stewart & Hilary Clinton).
Now it looks as if women are even melting away and disappearing PHYSICALLY as well. Have you seen the photos out of Hollywood lately? Ugh! Nothing but skin stretched thin over bones. Denying ourselves literal nourishment is apparently de rigour these days. Is there anything that more symbolizes the scorn and hatred of women than telling them they need to shrink themselves in order to be considered "good" and "worthy of admiration?"
I've prided myself on being "low maintenance" my entire Gen X adulthood, and mostly it worked for me because I did insist on a few things: like time and space to be creative in exchange for giving up material stuff like fancy tableware and expensive clothing and vacations, etc. When I actually think about it, maybe I wasn't so much low-maintenance as focused on what I needed/WANTED to maintain and able to let the other stuff go in exchange. I was low-maintenance in some areas because I was high-maintenance in other, to me more important, areas. BUT I recognize the truth here that not all women, or even very many of us, were able or were allowed to make that choice.
Be strong. Be healthy. Be demanding. Be needy about things that make sense to be needy about, like emotional support and respect and love and connectedness and time to pursue your interests, creativity, and purpose.
This is such a strong naming of how “low maintenance” becomes a virtue costume.
The piece I keep thinking about is that this is not only a belief.
It becomes a pattern.
A woman learns that needing less keeps connection safer. Asking for less keeps her more desirable. Wanting less makes her easier to love.
So the body starts predicting danger around need itself.
If I ask clearly, I will become a burden.
If I require care, I will become too much.
If I stop being easy, I may lose approval, desire, belonging, or love.
That prediction can run so quietly that she does not experience herself as abandoning her needs.
She experiences herself as being reasonable.
Flexible.
Chill.
Low maintenance.
That is why awareness is not enough.
A woman can journal about her needs, name the cultural conditioning, understand where the pattern came from, and still feel her whole system tighten when she has to actually require something from someone.
To me, the real opening is not just realizing that “low maintenance” was self-abandonment.
It is resolving the pattern where the body still believes having needs will cost her connection.
Because when that changes, she does not have to perform ease in order to be loved.
She can let need exist without immediately shrinking it into something more acceptable.
The virtue costume line is the one I'll be turning over for a while. I didn't realize I'd been wearing it as a credential — I can handle anything, I don't need much — until I read that and recognized it as the bargain it actually was.
The easy daughter became the easy employee became the easy everything. Same costume, different decade.
It's one of those instant identities we rely on to avoid the hard work of figuring out who we really are, I think.
Thank you so much for this post. I went into it thinking it didn't really apply to me. I left it realizing that it runs so deep and so far back that it's who I am.
I prided myself in having been called an 'easy baby' (and 'rightfully so', because I was my mother's first) And as a baby, there was an accident and I was rushed to hospital, and I was 'the calm one' (of course, I was in shock) while my parents were panicking.
From there, I had a reputation to uphold. I went from 'easy this' to 'easy that'. As a small business owner, too, I know I keep my prices too low and I offer too much, and that's all related.
Thank you for this piece. I found it brought up feelings of anger in me, which is incredible because my anger is exceedingly hard to find, and if you can't even find your anger, then you're just doomed to enact trip-on-the-floor low-maintenance forever.
Tara I am so pleased that this article resonated with you. I think the anger is justified, and I think we all shove this down so deep that we don't realize the impact it has on our daily lives
SUCH A GREAT PROMPT! Even at 35, I've reached the point where I choose to embody the "too much" woman, the high maintenance woman. Because fuck everyone. The people pleasing requiring us to shrink in submission is complete bullshit and it makes me enraged. It makes me mad because I believed that lie for so long.
Now, I definitely believe that "accurately maintained" is a more respectful way to put it, and also, sometimes we need to be assholes first then calm down and find the balance.
I'm impressed with your attitude, Amanda. I aspire. 🙂
This was an incredible piece. Thank you so much for writing and sharing it. It resonated with me as very insightful about women's lives across many generations as well as the mythology around "difficult women" who, if they'd been men, would have been celebrated and admired rather than shamed, derided, and even jailed. (hello, Martha Stewart & Hilary Clinton).
Now it looks as if women are even melting away and disappearing PHYSICALLY as well. Have you seen the photos out of Hollywood lately? Ugh! Nothing but skin stretched thin over bones. Denying ourselves literal nourishment is apparently de rigour these days. Is there anything that more symbolizes the scorn and hatred of women than telling them they need to shrink themselves in order to be considered "good" and "worthy of admiration?"
I've prided myself on being "low maintenance" my entire Gen X adulthood, and mostly it worked for me because I did insist on a few things: like time and space to be creative in exchange for giving up material stuff like fancy tableware and expensive clothing and vacations, etc. When I actually think about it, maybe I wasn't so much low-maintenance as focused on what I needed/WANTED to maintain and able to let the other stuff go in exchange. I was low-maintenance in some areas because I was high-maintenance in other, to me more important, areas. BUT I recognize the truth here that not all women, or even very many of us, were able or were allowed to make that choice.
Be strong. Be healthy. Be demanding. Be needy about things that make sense to be needy about, like emotional support and respect and love and connectedness and time to pursue your interests, creativity, and purpose.
But you weren't high maintenance in your need to be creative, Shelley. You were accurately maintained. 🙂
Well, yes.
This is such a strong naming of how “low maintenance” becomes a virtue costume.
The piece I keep thinking about is that this is not only a belief.
It becomes a pattern.
A woman learns that needing less keeps connection safer. Asking for less keeps her more desirable. Wanting less makes her easier to love.
So the body starts predicting danger around need itself.
If I ask clearly, I will become a burden.
If I require care, I will become too much.
If I stop being easy, I may lose approval, desire, belonging, or love.
That prediction can run so quietly that she does not experience herself as abandoning her needs.
She experiences herself as being reasonable.
Flexible.
Chill.
Low maintenance.
That is why awareness is not enough.
A woman can journal about her needs, name the cultural conditioning, understand where the pattern came from, and still feel her whole system tighten when she has to actually require something from someone.
To me, the real opening is not just realizing that “low maintenance” was self-abandonment.
It is resolving the pattern where the body still believes having needs will cost her connection.
Because when that changes, she does not have to perform ease in order to be loved.
She can let need exist without immediately shrinking it into something more acceptable.
It takes a lot of practice to get comfortable with having needa and expressing them. Gen X curse!