Toxic positivity

Ahhh yes the Lego Movie a brilliant film, a genius concept and the home planet of toxic positivity, more on that shortly…

I am a big fan of comedian Bill Bailey and one of my favourite sketches is this reflection on the British psyche and how we report on our current mood. In the clip below he mocks a frequently used response “not too bad” and riffs on the relentless optimism of our culture – the comment on convertible car ownership is inspired. There is an important point amidst all of the hilarity and this clip came to mind this week in a discussion with colleagues about the perils of Toxic Positivity.

This year Kendra Cherry wrote an article on t oxic positivity which she describes it as “the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset. It’s a “good vibes only” approach to life.” As we hopefully progress beyond the pandemic, there is a real risk that this mindset is encouraged and expected by organisations. Let’s look forward with optimism, the worst is behind us or in the words of D:Ream ‘things can only get better’.

Cherry’s article helpfully articulates the negative impact this can have on individuals:

It’s shaming: When someone is suffering, they need to know that their emotions are valid, but that they can find relief and love in their friends and family. Toxic positivity tells people that the emotions they are feeling are unacceptable.
It causes guilt: It sends a message that if you aren’t finding a way to feel positive, even in the face of tragedy, that you are doing something wrong.
It avoids authentic human emotion: It functions as an avoidance mechanism allowing people to sidestep emotional situations that might make them feel uncomfortable.
It prevents growth: It allows us to avoid feeling things that might be painful, but it also denies us the ability to face challenging feelings that can ultimately lead to growth and deeper insight.

I believe there is a fifth spoke to the toxic positivity wheel that particularly comes out in conversations about inclusion and diversity: ‘denial‘. The lack of empathy that runs through the four elements raised by Cherry is also at the heart of this point. An acceptance that there are issues within an organisation is an admittance that the system is unfair, unjust and / or imbalanced. It takes openness and a willingness to be vulnerable to admit that as an individual you may have contributed to that situation or scenario either directly or indirectly (by not challenging the status quo). The potential reaction is to focus on all the good stuff and dial up the positivity. The result threatens to be a bit like this ear worm.

Challenging this requires honesty with ourselves and with each other. It needs us to be open and supportive. Our emphasis needs to be placed on dialling up our empathy and understanding and toning down impressing on others to be upbeat and positive. Let’s be kind and honest to ourselves while we are at it. If things are tough, if you are feeling tired or burnt out share it rather than opting for a 7/10 or a not too bad. This is not a plea for us all to be moribund or miserable but vulnerability and honesty can help us share the burden. A call for help can allow us to support a colleague in need. We can pull through this together but we don’t need to make a (ridiculously upbeat, inaccurate and overly optimistic) song and dance about it.

To my inspiration for this week’s blog thank you – you know who you are! #ImNotTired

A Tale of Four Cities

Featured

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…

This week’s post is not a deep dive into a Dickensian classic but the story that has inspired it feels like a work of fiction. A talented 18 year old races from qualifiers to US Open champion without dropping a set just months after a heart breaking withdrawal from the 4th round at Wimbledon. It is a script that I am sure will at some point be turned into a Netflix movie, but if it wasn’t based on truth, we’d say the whole premise was bordering on ludicrous.

Emma Raducanu, US Open Champion (Image: The London Economic)

However, this isn’t just a story about steely determination, years of dedication, focus, raw talent and self belief. It is also a tale of identity and, ever since that winning ace flashed past Leylah Fernandez on Saturday night, the narrative has been split between a fairy tale victory and British multiculturalism. The catalyst to the debate was probably Emma Raducanu’s meteoric rise to stardom being greeted with adulation and superlatives from ‘unexpected’ quarters. Chief among them all was Nigel “I wouldn’t want to live next door to a Romanian” Farage sending his congratulations to the newly crowned Queen of the US hard court. Many people have leapt onto the offensive to remind the former UKIP leader of his disparaging historical remarks about Romanian migrants and the hypocrisy at his change of heart given that Raducanu has a Romanian father, a Chinese mother, was born in Canada and moved to Bromley at the age of two.

Raducanu’s fluent thank you message in Mandarin

Unsurprisingly, to some she is multilingual and in a brilliant PR move she thanked her Chinese supporters in fluent Mandarin. I am a massive fan of David Baddiel but his tweet in relation to this message surprised me somewhat. While it is certainly not the norm to speak more than language in the UK and as a nation we are lagging behind the rest of world (I am sad to report I’m a negative stat in this regard). We still have four out of ten people in the UK (38%) who can speak more than one language. The challenge is we don’t really celebrate that quality in ‘ordinary people’, some times it can even be viewed as a negative and treated with hostility. So when we get incredibly giddy about it in a high profile individual, especially when it is a language clearly shared with them from birth by a parent, it leaves me a little bemused.

Like many I was up late on Saturday, chewing furiously on my finger nails, as she sealed her victory. In my mind at that point was that fact that in January she was innocently tweeting about whether she would sit her A levels and the next making an unexpected run into week 2 at Wimbledon. Thoughts about her heritage hasdn’t really crossed my mind, so I’ll admit to being a bit caught out by the spark of debate and discussion that started almost instantaneously. Good Morning Britain presenter Adil Ray caused a stir celebrating her heritage as a symbol of modern Britain but also highlighting the issue that for many you are only really adopted as British when you are successful. Like Ray I love the fact that her Twitter bio simply says London, Toronto, Shenyang, Bucharest and agree with the questions that he raises in this article.

As the dust settles, I agree that this is an important discussion for us to have as a nation and the best I have read on the topic is this one by Alexandra Topping in The Guardian on the topic of multiculturalism in the UK. I hope that one day the success of a hugely talented teenage tennis player isn’t over shadowed by a debate on immigration. I couldn’t agree more with Wanda Wyporska’s summation who “as a half-Bajan, quarter-Polish, quarter-English” British woman reflected that while she delighted in celebrating Raducanu’s success and talent, she was wary of holding her up as an example of successful immigrant integration.’

“The more that people get used to the idea that Britishness is a very varied thing has to be positive, but my concern is that valuing immigrants and refugees in the UK is sort of predicated on being successful and giving back a contribution rather than just being human. That’s not good for us either.”

Mind the (pay) gap…

This week I will make only a passing mention of the uproar surrounding Gavin Williamson and his inexcusable confusion of Maro Itoje and Marcus Rashford. Though I have been amused by the various memes (personal favourite being the Dalek being confused for R2D2) the situation itself is much graver than that. As a Black man who has been ‘mistaken’ for someone else on more than one occasion I find such incidents deeply upsetting and in my view racist.

However, this week I am going to save myself the personal trauma of exploring issues of race and instead focus on gender pay. Followers of he blog will know I am a big fan of sport. I was gripped to the golf every evening over the weekend. The viewing was compelling and reflected a wider growth in interest in women’s sport. The Women’s Football Super League is now on Sky and a record 130,000 spectators flocked to the Inverness Golf Club in Ohio to watch the Solheim Cup. The latter is an event where Europe’s female golfers take on their American counterparts. Though the event is very different from normal golf, with players competing in teams instead of individually, it highlighted the unbelievable gulf in prize money in the individual game.

The victorious European Solheim Cup Team (Image: Golf Digest)

Suzann Pettersen, a former Solheim Cup star, who played 315 events on the LPGA Tour, with 22 wins and who sits in sixth place on the all time money list won less prize money in her entire career than Patrick Cantlay did for winning the Tour Championship that took place the same weekend as the Solheim Cup. Just let that sink in for a moment. A highly decorated and exceptional female golfer won less money across her whole career in the sport than one male golfer did after two impressive performances in the end of season tour championship.

Though sport offers up a really extreme example of the pay gap challenge, we know that the issue runs right through society. The Fawcett Society, the UK’s leading membership charity campaigning for gender equality and women’s rights at work, at home and in public life, announced last year that Equal Pay Day 2020 (the day in the year when women effectively, on average, stop earning relative to men) was on 20th November. It remains unclear what impact the pandemic has had on the gender pay balance but it is important that we continue to collectively for equal pay in all walks of life.

There are signs of progress. In Ireland the men’s national football team have agreed to reduce their match fee, a reduction matched by the FAI to increase the women’s fee to ensure equal pay. It is a small but positive step and demonstrates what can be done where there is a will and commitment to equality.

This article by Timewise highlights some simple and effective ways of addressing the pay gap. The article focuses on research that identifies four key areas driving the pay gap:
1. There are more men in senior roles than women
2. Caring responsibilities and part-time roles are shared unequally
3. Women choose to work in low-paid roles and sectors
4. Women are paid less than men for the same role

The report also reveals that for three of the four there is a relatively straightforward solution: get better at flexible and part-time working. Perhaps as we move out of the pandemic, embrace hybrid working and continue to experiment with a four day working week: gender pay parity may occur in the not too distant future.

Loaded language: Inspiration porn

This phrase was first coined in 2014 by disability activist Stella Young and to summarise her definition:

“Inspiration porn is the objectification of disabled people for the benefit of non disabled people.”

It is a deliberately provocative term and for a fuller, more rounded explanation I really encourage you to watch this short video.

I share this post this week at the height of the Paralympics, where Team GB are flying high in the medal table and Dame Sarah Storey has set a new record for Paralympic gold medals with an incredible tally of 17. She has competed in two sports in her Paralympic career swimming and cycling and she is an extremely talented athlete. However, there have been times where the stories of our athletes has drifted into the inspiration porn territory. These uses tend to share one or more of the following characteristics highlighted in this brilliant article by Forbes:

an attempt to generate sentimentality and/or pity
contains some form of moral message, primarily aimed at non-disabled viewers
disabled people anonymously objectified, even when they are named

The first question I have for you this week is are you watching the Paralympics? I am going to call myself out on this and say I have been much more selective than I was in watching the Olympics where I would pretty much watch everything. Second and much more important question – what are you thinking when you do watch Paralympic athletes perform. Do you see them as elite athletes or do you see something else?

Have a watch of this Channel 4 advert for the 2016 Paralympic Games. Whilst well intentioned, the title sets the wrong tone and I would ask the question of whether an advert for Olympic Games coverage would include footage of someone answering a phone in an office, a child eating a bowl of cereal or a mother holding her baby?

Like the late Stella Young, I subscribe to the social model of disability. I really like the Scope definition:

“the social model says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference. Barriers can be physical, like buildings not having accessible toilets. Or they can be caused by people’s attitudes to difference, like assuming disabled people can’t do certain things.”

So rather than being wowed by disabled people performing every day tasks or enjoying their hobbies let’s think about how we can remove barriers and change our attitudes and perceptions. But most of all let’s stop celebrating inspiration porn and call it out when we see it.