Whenever I hear someone say “put your own oxygen mask on first” I bristle. It took me a while to understand why this phrase made me so uncomfortable, since I know that generally people say this not from a place of malice, but from a place of goodwill and intended support. It’s one of those phrases that gets trotted out on the regular when it comes to discussions around self-care, particularly with reference to women. And this isn’t the only one – we often hear things like “you can’t pour from an empty cup” or “you can’t draw water from an empty well”, which are variations on the same theme.
The Oxygen Mask saying is something like what you hear from flight attendants during the pre-flight safety instructions. When they demonstrate where to locate the oxygen masks that get deployed in the event of a loss of cabin pressure, you’re advised to put your own oxygen mask on first before assisting others (your kids, other family members, or other passengers needing help) with theirs. The idea here is simple math: you can potentially save at least one life (your own) by putting your own mask on first, but if you run out of oxygen in an effort to save someone else, it could have disastrous consequences for both of you.
This notion makes logical sense from an emergency preparedness perspective when it comes to flight safety. It bothers me though when it gets applied in the context of self-care for women, because it reinforces the idea that our worth – our value – is tied directly to our ability and fitness to care for others. We use this phrase to help women justify self-care to themselves: if they won’t care for themselves for their own sake, maybe they will for the sake of others because, of course, if a woman burns herself out, how will she ever be able to give more of herself to the people that depend on her?
In this way, it becomes more about caring for yourself because of the responsibility you bear to others rather than caring for yourself because of the responsibility you bear to yourself. And by uttering this phrase as a way of extending well-intentioned support, we continue to unwittingly reinforce the idea that we don’t inherently deserve care. That we aren’t worthy of it for our own sake, but only because others would suffer if we weren’t equipped to do the work of caring for them.
For many of us, we see our worth as being in direct correlation with the roles we inhabit (wife, mother, daughter, worker) – and we lose sight of the inherent value we have as individuals. Over time, our identity outside of these roles dissolves, and we become more and more disconnected from who we are outside of them. As Glennon Doyle writes,
“Ask a woman who she is, and she’ll tell you who she loves, who she serves, and what she does. I am a mother, a wife, a sister, a friend, a career woman. The fact that we define ourselves by our roles is what keeps the world spinning. It’s also what makes us untethered and afraid. If a woman defines herself as a wife, what happens if her partner leaves? If a woman defines herself as a mother, what happens when the kids leave for college? If a woman defines herself as a career woman, what happens when the company folds? Who we are is perpetually being taken from us, so we live in fear instead of peace. We cling too tightly, close our eyes to what we need to look at hard, avoid questions that need to be asked, and in a million ways insist to our friends, partners, and children that the purpose of their existence is to define us. We build sandcastles and then try to live inside them, fearing the inevitable tide.”
Glennon Doyle, Untamed
French feminist Mona Chollet refers to this condition as “femme fondue” or dissolving woman, a state wherein women become consumed by a reflex of service, disappearing into motherhood and childcare and forgetting who they are outside of the identities they inhabit. This is a real quandary, since – as Glennon Doyle suggests – these identities aren’t fixed to begin with. All of our earthly relationships are transient and subject to grief, transformation, and loss in one form or another.
It’s not our fault that we’ve internalized these labels to such a degree. For centuries, women have been indoctrinated with the idea that their domestic roles constitute the highest calling to which they should aspire. As Chollet argues in her book In Defense of Witches, the rampant and violent misogyny that characterized the witch hunts that began around 1400 and reached a crescendo in the mid-1500s before largely petering out in the late 1700s preyed upon women that didn’t conform to gender norms. The spinster, the outspoken independent-minded woman, and the aged woman were all prime targets of witch hunters during the period. While we like to think we’ve come along way since, to this day, many women are left feeling deficient or somehow defective if they don’t or can’t wear the mantle of these labels; if they’re unmarried past a certain age, or unable to have children, or decide not to work outside the home (or decide to work outside the home rather than in it), or decide not to have a family, or are estranged from their family, for example. The cultural messages we continue to receive give primacy to women that put Family and Others before Self.
We need to find a way to understand the Self behind the labels – who we are underneath and outside of all of these identities – and to give value to that Self irrespective of the hats we wear. And we need to find a way to talk about caring for ourselves that isn’t tied to the roles we inhabit.
We should be putting on the oxygen mask because we deserve to breathe. Period.
