The History and Legacy of Women and Anxiety
Anxiety is a totally natural human emotion. It is felt by people of all identities and has been throughout history. In early human beings, anxiety began as a necessary feeling which informed our survival mechanisms. Nowadays, where influencing has replaced hunter-gathering, it is safe to say that people living in modern developed countries like Scotland, anxiety no longer exists as a cautionary tool for staying alert or anticipating threat, the way it was in our ancestors. Back then or today, though, to be a woman is to be threatened as a member of the second sex . To be an anxious woman was useful in the beginning of our development as people; women in the age of Skara Brae needed a constant hyper-awareness of their environment. Fear was needed to stay vigilant and be able to react and survive against so many immediate dangers in the ancient world. With the birth of early civilisation came the creation of social institutions and cultural norms which created order, a greater level of safety and less day-to-day survival concerns.
Progressive action to liberate women from oppression seems to be underway in politically liberal countries. Women by law in Scotland, for example, are entitled to the same legal rights as men. There is also the help provided by social initiatives, anti-discrimination laws and all of this means that women are living in vastly different circumstances to the environment which our anxiety response initially formed to protect us from. Why then are people currently experiencing higher rates of anxiety, especially younger generations, who have experienced the most progressive levels of equality in our history?A BBC study was conducted on Scottish University students looking for mental health support and found that
more than 11,700 students asked for help in 2016-17 compared with about 7,000 in 2012-13.
So we can see that an increase in theoretical security measures does not in fact seem to be eliciting an emotional response. It would be expected that with less fear of discrimination, better opportunities and generally higher standards of living would reduce mental health problems. This should be especially true for women and other groups who directly benefit from such social and legal changes; protecting them from the predatory and oppressive norms and restrictions of the past. But women are reportedly twice as likely as men to experience anxiety; with the question then being how have the causes of anxiety for women, the threats we face, evolved?
Unlike those first female ancestors who lived in fear of immediate physical threats or of finding shelter and food, the stress today comes from less obvious places, often coming from within our own minds. Rather than external, the threats to women have become internalised as we self-regulate and live in fear of the cultural information which is constantly flooded into our consciousness.
Never in history has there been such constant and widespread access to media, which reflects the cultural norms of our time. It is widely recognised by now that on social media women are put under immense pressure to be, act, speak, behave, dress, eat, move, pose and buy a specific way. Influencers, so called for their sole purpose of influencing mass behaviour through trend-setting, direct the social and economic behaviours of their followers and this manifests in life off-screen. Trends are motivated by profit making, under neoliberal capitalism which values money over morals. Corporations have shortened trend cycles so that the expectations are ever-changing and therefore increasingly impossible to meet. Engagement is the key profit driver on social media, as users do not pay for the platforms and so income comes from advertising and exposure. But what gets views? Mediocrity, nuance and long-form content is unlikely to go viral; it is the quick and controversial which drives engagement through shock value. Anything which is extreme or extraordinary garners attention in all areas, including extreme diets, exercises, plastic surgery and misogynistic or violent behaviour.
As young girls and women have become immersed in online culture which thrives on extreme emotional reactions, we internalise the pressure of meeting societal expectations and suffer from the unnatural dopamine responses that this content produces. Every time retouched or surgically augmented imagery of women is viewed on our screens, it sets an unattainable standard of beauty which is growing more and more unrealistic.
This online perfection pressure on women and our bodies was set into overdrive in 2020, as the “real” world shut down and isolation grew. After almost 2 years of higher usage of social media, social isolation, rapid-changing laws, disruption to routines, lost jobs and overall too much time with nothing to do, many girls and women became more vulnerable to the harms of diet culture. Eating disorders during the pandemic skyrocketed-
The COVID pandemic caused sudden massive change, which triggers our nervous system and anxiety response. This coupled with social media and the particular target on women’s insecurity, is a huge reason for the increased levels of anxiety.
Eating disorders often occur when we feel a lack of security or a sense of threat. This means that the historic lack of freedom given to women over our own lives and the shrinking mould in which we are expected to fit into to be accepted are bound to cause an increase in cases. Similarly, these are some of the reasons hiding from plain sight for women’s anxiety at large, worsened by the impact of an unexpected global shutdown. Overall, this may be a very different society than what we came from and women may, in some countries, have achieved milestones in gender equality but it is clear that although reformed, there are still very real threats.
To know that an emotional reaction is not unreasonable is probably one of the most important first acknowledgements to be made when faced with anxiety. It is easy to fall into a cycle, feeling that the problem is personal rather than environmental.
The stigma associated with anxiety in women, like the stereotype of a “hysterical woman”, create further self-blame and worry. Breaking out of this cycle requires rejecting that shame that comes with expressing emotion in general, the enemy of capitalistic ideology. So much of what we see online is filtered and sugar-coated, a polished presentation of life and emotions which rarely reflects the complicated and sometimes unpleasant truth in order to sell products and aspirational lifestyles. Authenticity itself has been commodified, with trends like #nofilter being hollow attempts to break down a culture of performative superiority and competition between women on social media. What it really takes for us to fight the trend-cycles and beauty-standards is radical and constant acceptance from within. Anxiety related to how us women “should” look or act reflects not on flaws within yourself, but those created within your culture.
Since the world has gradually re-opened, it is understandable that daily activities and interactions can be stressful after such a long period of change. Women have a far higher chance of having faced harm at the hands of another person or inflicted on themselves as a coping mechanism during the pandemic. This is a volatile and difficult time for many of us but also, for many women, it can be a period of healing and recovery also. It is difficult to tackle some of the greater economic, political and social issues going on, but the socially constructed issues can be deconstructed. By being open with female friends and family members and creating supportive communities for women in general can provide some comfort. Small changes on a personal level will also create changes in behaviour towards ourselves. For example, when women learn and affirm ourselves or one another that our “flaws” are constructed to sell products or gain views, we can stop blaming and punishing ourselves. We have little control when it comes to massive global issues, the actions of others or sometimes of our own circumstances which understandably feels frightening. But we can find acceptance of what we cannot control and realise the absolute control each of us has over our reactions. Where anxiety has evolved from self-preserving to self-destructive, focusing on treating yourself and other women with respect can be chosen as a replacement survival mechanism, in the name of self-acceptance.
