Nancy Colier's Blog
February 16, 2023
The Likability Cage: Are Women Still Trapped?
Thirty-five years ago, my sorority sister was raped at a fraternity party. She didn’t report it for reasons we can guess, having heard this story a thousand times by now.
Indeed, it was the clichéd story: the popular, handsome fraternity boy from a powerful family who happened to be a big donor to the university was the attacker. Socially important, he was someone you needed to like you–so that others could like you. Adding to the cliché, my friend had imbibed some spiked punch that night and was flirtatious with the guy, who later drugged and sexually assaulted her.
She understood as we all did at the time, that the benefits of reporting weren’t worth the consequences in the form of judgments (from women and men), dismissal, punishment, shaming, and, ultimately, rejection. My friend wasn’t willing to risk being labeled one of those difficult, overly dramatic women who thought being sexually assaulted was worth harming a cool guy’s future and possibly staining the whole sorority’s reputation. No, she needed to roll with whatever had happened to her so that everyone else could keep having a good time. She wasn’t going to give up her status as likable–no matter what it cost her.
Despite having heard this story countless times since then, I somehow believed that my sorority sister’s experience and the choices she made–and thought she could make–would be fundamentally different now.
But I was wrong.
Last month one of my close friends told me that her daughter was raped at a fraternity party at the university where she’s a sophomore. Like my sorority sister, this young woman had returned home the morning after the assault, dazed and foggy from the event, wearing no coat or underwear.
Hearing of my friend’s daughter’s assault, my first thought was that it could easily have been my own daughter, who attends fraternity parties each weekend at her university. Once I recovered from that terrifying thought and its accompanying adrenaline, I asked my friend if her daughter was planning to report the incident to the university or the police. She replied “no,” because her daughter was convinced that “nothing would happen even if she did.” The young woman also was certain that she would be blamed since she was drunk the night it happened. Furthermore, she didn’t want to be seen as one of those girls who created problems for everyone else. Just as my sorority sister had known, my friend’s daughter also knew that her social standing, security, and survival all demanded silence–still.
It’s been 35 years since my sorority sister was sexually assaulted. Yet, how far have we really come? Today’s young women also understand that if they tell an inconvenient or displeasing truth, they will be judged, labeled, dismissed, blamed, and ultimately rejected, which they view as more dangerous than accepting the unacceptable and suffering in silence. Many women still believe that the best way to take care of themselves is to be likable–no matter the cost.
Women lost a lot of freedoms last year. We’ll fight to get them back, which I believe we will, eventually. But even as we take on the obvious assaults on our freedom, we must also dismantle the subtler forms of our cultural incarceration, the bars of the likability cage within which we live on a daily basis.
We can’t be authentic and empowered while simultaneously trying to always be likable. We’ve been conditioned to believe that our survival relies on our likability and our success on other people’s perceptions. These assumptions keep us captive and silent from one generation to the next.
As we embark on 2023, I hope that women of every age realize that the door to the likability cage, in fact, opens from the inside.
Indeed, it was the clichéd story: the popular, handsome fraternity boy from a powerful family who happened to be a big donor to the university was the attacker. Socially important, he was someone you needed to like you–so that others could like you. Adding to the cliché, my friend had imbibed some spiked punch that night and was flirtatious with the guy, who later drugged and sexually assaulted her.
She understood as we all did at the time, that the benefits of reporting weren’t worth the consequences in the form of judgments (from women and men), dismissal, punishment, shaming, and, ultimately, rejection. My friend wasn’t willing to risk being labeled one of those difficult, overly dramatic women who thought being sexually assaulted was worth harming a cool guy’s future and possibly staining the whole sorority’s reputation. No, she needed to roll with whatever had happened to her so that everyone else could keep having a good time. She wasn’t going to give up her status as likable–no matter what it cost her.
Despite having heard this story countless times since then, I somehow believed that my sorority sister’s experience and the choices she made–and thought she could make–would be fundamentally different now.
But I was wrong.
Last month one of my close friends told me that her daughter was raped at a fraternity party at the university where she’s a sophomore. Like my sorority sister, this young woman had returned home the morning after the assault, dazed and foggy from the event, wearing no coat or underwear.
Hearing of my friend’s daughter’s assault, my first thought was that it could easily have been my own daughter, who attends fraternity parties each weekend at her university. Once I recovered from that terrifying thought and its accompanying adrenaline, I asked my friend if her daughter was planning to report the incident to the university or the police. She replied “no,” because her daughter was convinced that “nothing would happen even if she did.” The young woman also was certain that she would be blamed since she was drunk the night it happened. Furthermore, she didn’t want to be seen as one of those girls who created problems for everyone else. Just as my sorority sister had known, my friend’s daughter also knew that her social standing, security, and survival all demanded silence–still.
It’s been 35 years since my sorority sister was sexually assaulted. Yet, how far have we really come? Today’s young women also understand that if they tell an inconvenient or displeasing truth, they will be judged, labeled, dismissed, blamed, and ultimately rejected, which they view as more dangerous than accepting the unacceptable and suffering in silence. Many women still believe that the best way to take care of themselves is to be likable–no matter the cost.
Women lost a lot of freedoms last year. We’ll fight to get them back, which I believe we will, eventually. But even as we take on the obvious assaults on our freedom, we must also dismantle the subtler forms of our cultural incarceration, the bars of the likability cage within which we live on a daily basis.
We can’t be authentic and empowered while simultaneously trying to always be likable. We’ve been conditioned to believe that our survival relies on our likability and our success on other people’s perceptions. These assumptions keep us captive and silent from one generation to the next.
As we embark on 2023, I hope that women of every age realize that the door to the likability cage, in fact, opens from the inside.
February 4, 2023
How the Self-Care Industry Is Exhausting Women
Self-care encompasses a lot more than just mani-pedis these days; it’s bloomed into a 14-billion-dollar industry, one that’s been capitalized on by almost every other consumer industry: spa, bath, water, beverage, skin care, essential oil, travel, food, home design.
You name it. Everybody’s got a hand in the self-care market. Yet, it seems that the more products and services we purchase and practice, the more stressed out and exhausted we become. The more we focus on well-being, the more unwell we actually feel.
So what gives? What’s not working in our self-care model?
The fact is, there’s nothing wrong with self-care or what it offers–who can argue with a lavender-infused body wrap? Products and services can replenish us for an afternoon or evening.
Yet, self-care as we know it is an inadequate remedy for what fundamentally ails us as women, the wrong solution for the disconnection we feel from our authentic selves and our real vitality. Our self-care industry offers short-term symptom relief for what is a far deeper and more systemic problem: the problem of women’s exhaustion.
In truth, women’s depletion starts early, in large part, because of our cultural conditioning. From the time we can hold up our little girl heads, we start learning that we need to make ourselves likable, to be safe, valued, and accepted. We learn to take care of what everyone else needs, but along the way, we lose touch with (and interest in) what we need. Our conditioning teaches us to focus our attention outward and attend to our relationships with other people at the cost of our relationship with ourselves.
And so, we learn to take care of ourselves, in short, by abandoning ourselves.
Self-care then steps in to help, offering us cashmere sheets, chocolate facials, and alpha-wave sound baths. But at the end of the day, while swaddled in luxury and smelling delicious, we’re essentially pampering a selfless self, a self that’s gone missing.
The self-care industry is problematic, however, not just because its solutions are superficial and fleeting, but more insidiously because it strengthens the very beliefs and system that create our depletion.
Self-care, as we know it, solidifies the bars of the likability cage in which we imagine we’re trapped. On the surface, self-care sounds great and wise, but at a deeper level, the industry and its subtle messaging end up untethering us from our true vitality and, most importantly, from ourselves.
To begin with, self-care has become yet another "should" on a woman’s to-do list. “But are you taking care of yourself–really?” is used as an accusation as much as a question, a way of suggesting that any exhaustion you feel is probably your fault because you’re not taking care of yourself in the way you should.
Self-care becomes your responsibility, something you have to do for the people you care about to demonstrate that you are a woman who takes care of herself. So too, self-care supports the idea that, as we are, we’re inherently lacking, missing something external that we need to be well. If we could find the right guru, body scrub, empowerment song, or stretch session, we’d be okay, replenished, and well.
The underlying message is that our well-being and wholeness rely on something and someone else, which then strengthens the disconnection and dissatisfaction we feel with ourselves; it keeps us turning away from the real relationship that needs rebuilding: the relationship with ourselves.
Simultaneously, our self-care market keeps us happily preoccupied and distracted from the deeper questions: what we’re longing for and need underneath the hemp seed scrubs and gold-flecked powders. The seduction of pleasure and pampering kidnaps our attention as we seek more feel-good experiences and more endorphin highs. Enjoyable though these experiences may be, they divert us from investigating our real longings that the massages can’t provide.
Furthermore, self-care strengthens the exhausting and exhaustion-perpetuating belief that we women fundamentally need fixing. In truth, when we talk about self-care, what we’re really talking about is self-improvement. We should participate in all this self-care, not just because it makes us feel good, but because it will make us a better version of ourselves. Self-care products and services are marketed as gifts to ourselves, but underneath that marketing is a perpetual reminder that we can never rest, never get comfortable in our own skin, and never step off the self-improvement hamster wheel.
There’s always more work to be done on the ultimate project: ourselves.
The real problem with our self-care system, however, is the basic premise upon which it’s built. Namely, that self-care is something we buy or do–as opposed to something we are–as with self-caring.
Our culture focuses us on what we can give ourselves in the way of gifts, but not on how we relate and listen to ourselves internally–the attitude we bring to our own feelings, wants, and needs. We treat self-care as if it were an outside-in event when it is an inside-out practice, a way of being on our own side, aligned with our wants and needs, and curious about our truth. The core problem in our approach to self-care is that we think it’s reasonable to need a post-it note on our computer screen to remind us to pay attention to and take care of ourselves. Do we need that for anyone else we love?
Self-care products and services feel good, but they’re not the answer to what truly ails us as women.
They won’t nourish the fundamental depletion that results from our having learned to abandon ourselves, to be pleasing and likable at all costs, and to keep ourselves emotionally safe. And worse, if we’re not aware of the subtle messaging, they can reinforce the core belief that if we tried hard enough and sought long enough, we would find the answer to what’s broken in us, an answer that undoubtedly lies somewhere outside ourselves.
The key is to enjoy the delights of the self-care market, get the massages, and take the bubble baths, but not let them lull us into a pampered sleep or distract us from the real work of learning to pay attention to our real wants and needs, our authentic self.
Self-care is not something we buy or do that exists outside of us, but rather a way of being in a relationship with ourselves, on our own side–standing in our own truth. Ultimately, self-care is a path back home to value ourselves and practice–a way of being in the world such that we longer need a post-it note to remind us that we matter.
You name it. Everybody’s got a hand in the self-care market. Yet, it seems that the more products and services we purchase and practice, the more stressed out and exhausted we become. The more we focus on well-being, the more unwell we actually feel.
So what gives? What’s not working in our self-care model?
The fact is, there’s nothing wrong with self-care or what it offers–who can argue with a lavender-infused body wrap? Products and services can replenish us for an afternoon or evening.
Yet, self-care as we know it is an inadequate remedy for what fundamentally ails us as women, the wrong solution for the disconnection we feel from our authentic selves and our real vitality. Our self-care industry offers short-term symptom relief for what is a far deeper and more systemic problem: the problem of women’s exhaustion.
In truth, women’s depletion starts early, in large part, because of our cultural conditioning. From the time we can hold up our little girl heads, we start learning that we need to make ourselves likable, to be safe, valued, and accepted. We learn to take care of what everyone else needs, but along the way, we lose touch with (and interest in) what we need. Our conditioning teaches us to focus our attention outward and attend to our relationships with other people at the cost of our relationship with ourselves.
And so, we learn to take care of ourselves, in short, by abandoning ourselves.
Self-care then steps in to help, offering us cashmere sheets, chocolate facials, and alpha-wave sound baths. But at the end of the day, while swaddled in luxury and smelling delicious, we’re essentially pampering a selfless self, a self that’s gone missing.
The self-care industry is problematic, however, not just because its solutions are superficial and fleeting, but more insidiously because it strengthens the very beliefs and system that create our depletion.
Self-care, as we know it, solidifies the bars of the likability cage in which we imagine we’re trapped. On the surface, self-care sounds great and wise, but at a deeper level, the industry and its subtle messaging end up untethering us from our true vitality and, most importantly, from ourselves.
To begin with, self-care has become yet another "should" on a woman’s to-do list. “But are you taking care of yourself–really?” is used as an accusation as much as a question, a way of suggesting that any exhaustion you feel is probably your fault because you’re not taking care of yourself in the way you should.
Self-care becomes your responsibility, something you have to do for the people you care about to demonstrate that you are a woman who takes care of herself. So too, self-care supports the idea that, as we are, we’re inherently lacking, missing something external that we need to be well. If we could find the right guru, body scrub, empowerment song, or stretch session, we’d be okay, replenished, and well.
The underlying message is that our well-being and wholeness rely on something and someone else, which then strengthens the disconnection and dissatisfaction we feel with ourselves; it keeps us turning away from the real relationship that needs rebuilding: the relationship with ourselves.
Simultaneously, our self-care market keeps us happily preoccupied and distracted from the deeper questions: what we’re longing for and need underneath the hemp seed scrubs and gold-flecked powders. The seduction of pleasure and pampering kidnaps our attention as we seek more feel-good experiences and more endorphin highs. Enjoyable though these experiences may be, they divert us from investigating our real longings that the massages can’t provide.
Furthermore, self-care strengthens the exhausting and exhaustion-perpetuating belief that we women fundamentally need fixing. In truth, when we talk about self-care, what we’re really talking about is self-improvement. We should participate in all this self-care, not just because it makes us feel good, but because it will make us a better version of ourselves. Self-care products and services are marketed as gifts to ourselves, but underneath that marketing is a perpetual reminder that we can never rest, never get comfortable in our own skin, and never step off the self-improvement hamster wheel.
There’s always more work to be done on the ultimate project: ourselves.
The real problem with our self-care system, however, is the basic premise upon which it’s built. Namely, that self-care is something we buy or do–as opposed to something we are–as with self-caring.
Our culture focuses us on what we can give ourselves in the way of gifts, but not on how we relate and listen to ourselves internally–the attitude we bring to our own feelings, wants, and needs. We treat self-care as if it were an outside-in event when it is an inside-out practice, a way of being on our own side, aligned with our wants and needs, and curious about our truth. The core problem in our approach to self-care is that we think it’s reasonable to need a post-it note on our computer screen to remind us to pay attention to and take care of ourselves. Do we need that for anyone else we love?
Self-care products and services feel good, but they’re not the answer to what truly ails us as women.
They won’t nourish the fundamental depletion that results from our having learned to abandon ourselves, to be pleasing and likable at all costs, and to keep ourselves emotionally safe. And worse, if we’re not aware of the subtle messaging, they can reinforce the core belief that if we tried hard enough and sought long enough, we would find the answer to what’s broken in us, an answer that undoubtedly lies somewhere outside ourselves.
The key is to enjoy the delights of the self-care market, get the massages, and take the bubble baths, but not let them lull us into a pampered sleep or distract us from the real work of learning to pay attention to our real wants and needs, our authentic self.
Self-care is not something we buy or do that exists outside of us, but rather a way of being in a relationship with ourselves, on our own side–standing in our own truth. Ultimately, self-care is a path back home to value ourselves and practice–a way of being in the world such that we longer need a post-it note to remind us that we matter.
