Naomi Wolf: sleep is a feminist issue

The Times ^ | February 6, 2010

[nickcarraway]

Sleep, say US feminists, is the next big issue for women to address — doing less and enjoying more duvet time is the way to go

Just as Virginia Woolf noted in A Room of One’s Own that one can’t “think well, write well, love well” if one has not “dined well”, so it would seem that women in particular can’t function well if they haven’t slept well. Two of America’s leading feminist super-achievers are on a crusade to get us all to have a lie in, or at least to take a nap.

Arianna Huffington, the powerhouse publisher of The Huffington Post, and Cindi Leive, the equally indomitable publisher of Glamour, have joined forces to identify women’s sleep deprivation as “the next feminist issue”. They cite studies that indicate that women are more sleep-deprived than men, including one that says American women are getting 90 minutes less than the seven to eight hours recommended for someone to be well and perform well.

The pair make a persuasive case that female exhaustion is undermining women’s creativity, judgment, and relationships. What does it profit us to win the whole world only to experience it cranky and irrational from fatigue?

But much as I admire Huffington and Leive, their advocacy for their sleep campaign reveals part of why we are driving ourselves to exhaustion. The pair argue, rightly, that: “The problem is that women often feel that they still don’t ‘belong’ in the boys-club atmosphere that still dominates many workplaces.

Ping

If we sleep more, they argue, women will become more powerful. “After all, we’ve already broken glass ceilings in Congress, space travel, sports, business and the media — just imagine what we can do when we’re fully awake.”

[freespirited]

If we sleep more, they argue, women will become more powerful.

Yo, Naomi. Is it possible that most women dont crave power?

[maddog55]

PMS:
Pre-Marital Stress
Post-Marital Stress

PMS Survival Tips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCwKbUVyHLY

[RipSawyer]

The prevailing belief that one “can get along on four hours sleep” is a myth,
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I have often wondered why so many people try to deny their need for sleep. I worked for a while with someone I enjoyed working with but he kept saying that six hours of sleep was plenty enough for anybody and he could get by on four. “Yeah”, I told him, “but I have never seen you come to work (even though he was always fifteen minutes or more early) when you didn’t look tired.”

[Popman]

Excellent observation !!!

[latina4dubya]

Until I read your post, I didn’t realize the article was about you.

is it? i didn't even read the article past the first sentence... i guess i'll go back and read it... i do function on not good sleep many days--sometimes i can't grab a nap, especially on the days that i'm teaching other children... but then 2:00 rolls around and i'm yawning... i hate that... it's rude and uncontrollable... i was teaching a Latin class on Thursday and i kept yawning... my young students (4th grade) thought it was funny... tried to talk into letting them out early... i was tempted...

[NativeNewYorker]

You have to LEARN to be that stupid.

Post of the day.

[driftless2]

I remember back in the late sixties when the feminists began their shrill demands to let women into the so-called, virtually all male, world of work... (something I support one-hundred percent, by the way.) Actually most women were already working full-time jobs as housewives. Yet when I started working full-time in my early twenties in the early seventies at a major corporation in my hometown, the workplace I started in already had many older women who had been working for quite some time. And there were quite a few younger women too, many with more seniority than me.

But now the feminist rabble are complaining about fatigue from long hours. Gee, wasn't that a great idea to demand to get into that patriarchial, male world where the men had such "fun" jobs? The feminists made it seem that all men had great jobs working at high levels for humongous pay. I doubt any of these feminists ever wanted to dig ditches or do the many miserably dangerous and dirty jobs men have done for centuries. Again, if any women want to do those jobs, I fully support them. But you won't see the likes of Naomi Wolf and other fem-nazis applying for them.

Men still suffer the most job-related injuries and deaths by a huge margin. Hey, Naomi Wolf, why don't you and your feminist pals try to really enter a "man's" world? Put down that word processor and try to do some gainful employment for a change? Full-time whining can only get you so far.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***The prevailing belief that one “can get along on four hours sleep” is a myth, held equally by men and women, I would say.***

I tried it years ago. It don’t work.

I just reitred from a job where we worked 12 hours a day, rotating shifts. We got an average of 4 hours of sleep a night (or day) due to the rotation and I thought I was gonna die! Work quality did suffer as a result.

Thomas Edison was known to get only four hours of sleep a night. This may be where the “4 hours” myth came from. It was later revealed that Edison also took several naps during the day at his business.