Jlo and the fetishisation of a good work ethic

This week, I watched both the Jlo music video and the documentary on Amazon Prime. (I’m almost afraid to refer to This Is Me…Now as a music video because Jennifer gets so annoyed at people calling it that in the doc.) This Is Me… Now is, to put it mildly, interesting – insert gif of Russell Crowe shouting ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? – but the documentary is well worth your time. My main takeaway after watching The Greatest Love Story Never Told is that Jlo has a remarkable lack of vanity (I would have been in full glam the entire time, and insisted on only being shot from my ‘good side’, ala Mariah Carey), she’s a phenomenal dancer, and that if she and Ben Affleck don’t make it, I will lose all faith in the possibility of true love. Yes, I know that’s a lot to put on two people I don’t know but it is also My Truth. Whatever you think about Ben Affleck, he comes across as charming and self-aware in this, and more importantly, it is clear that he adores his wife. Forget all the memes of him looking miserable at award shows, he is obsessed with Jennifer Lopez. He believes in her, he encourages her, he takes her work and her ambitions seriously, he supports her as an artist, even when she’s passing his handwritten love letters around to random collaborators as ‘inspiration’. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, JENNIFER?! I am always intrigued by how creative people will sometimes use their ‘art’ as an excuse for a lack of boundaries but that’s a conversation for another day. But trust, this man is all in.

*prays to the romance gods that these two crazy kids can make it work*

The one thing I did notice was how often Jlo’s work ethic is referenced. She talks about how she never felt good enough, that as the middle child, she was always looking for more love, more attention. Then she discovered that there was one thing she could be the best at – working hard. That seems to be the narrative that has followed her around ever since. People will say she’s not the best singer or actor or dancer (I disagree about those last two, by the way) but she works so hard. It’s such a strangely backhanded compliment, although I don’t think it’s meant to be. Even in the viral clip of Brie Larson meeting Jennifer on the red carpet at the Golden Globes, crying as she told Lopez how watching Selena as a child made her want to be an actor, Larson says, “your work ethic is so important.”

This fetishisation of hard work is something I’ve been guilty of in the past. I took time off last year to recover, physically and emotionally, and while I knew this was the right decision for me, I couldn’t shake the shame that I was ‘lazy’ for doing so. I can’t find it now but I wrote a column for the Irish Examiner years ago talking about how important I thought it was to work hard, and that it was a more likely harbinger of success than talent alone. (Which is true! You don’t become Beyoncé without your 10,000 hours of practice. If you want to excel at something, discipline and effort are required.) These days, I find myself commending friends as they kill themselves to meet self-imposed deadlines that could easily be moved by a couple of days, two weeks even, to give them more breathing space. You’re a powerhouse! I’ll say. You’re a machine! How do you do it?!  When really, perhaps the question I should be asking is – why are you doing this?

I don’t want to speak for all people who make art for a living, but there can sometimes be this fear that those around you think you’re getting away with something. We feel we have to prove that what we do is actually work so others will value it, and more so, they will understand that they need to pay us for it. We are not just day-dreamers and time-wasters, we are worthy of your respect because we work hard too.

And it’s not just in the creative fields. I grew up with a father who worked himself into the ground, and continues to do so, and all I ever heard were people praising him for his work ethic. “He/she is not afraid of hard work” is a compliment readily given in this country. In 2017, Leo Varadkar said he wanted Fine Gael to be a party for “people who get up early in the morning”. I know it’s a cliché to go, that’s late-stage capitalism, baby! but like, that’s late-stage capitalism for you, baby. If you look at almost any billionaire, they did not attain that level of wealth because of hard work alone. I’m not exactly Karl Marx but it’s fairly obvious to me that it’s usually because of a clever idea and the exploitation of the working classes. While we’re all out here, complimenting each other on our incredible work ethics, they’re enjoying the fruits of our labours. They are not working hard. That’s for us, the proletariat lol. And this idea, the very notion of the American Dream, that you can achieve the same level of wealth and success if you just work a little harder, is frankly insulting. Do you really believe janitors and nurses and teachers and care-givers need to work more? Or do you think, perhaps, they should simply be paid more and given better working conditions?

Listen, it’s not that I think we should just give up and lie on the couch all day watching re-runs of Sex and the City in perpetuity. Immanuel Kant said the rules for happiness are as follows – “something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.” We need purpose in life, and for many of us, that will be found in our work. I feel lucky enough to have a career which is (at times!) fulfilling and creatively rewarding, but not everyone feels the same. It has to be okay if someone’s purpose is found in other places – in their children, or their friends, or their hobbies. That if someone works to live, and sees their job as merely a means to an end, that they’re not morally inferior in some way because they don’t possess what society deems as a quote unquote “great work ethic”. The truth is, if you died tomorrow, your company would probably send a lovely bouquet of flowers to your family and then advertise your job next week.

What exactly are we all working so hard for?