We’ll begin on the floor in child’s pose. Stretch your arms in front of you, and as you deepen the stretch, reach, reach, to grab your shoes.
Come into table top. On your first cat/cow, soften your gaze and bring it up to the bathroom door. Closed. He’s just started the shower.
Step or hop your feet up to a forward fold. Put on your shoes.
We will now progress into the Warrior series. Reach your right leg back and stretch your left fingertips to come into Warrior One.
Reach those fingertips out and scoop up your purse. Extended side bend to take your keys.
We are going to skip the floor routine for today, leaving behind your dishes and toothbrush for now, and move straight into our balance postures. Left arm straight out, right arm wraps around it to bring your phone up to eye-level. Read again your friend’s message. Go now.
Spread the toes on your left foot to create a strong foundation, then interlace your fingers. Type out Coming.
Right foot comes forward. Then left foot. On your own breath, Open the door. Walk out. Release.
You leave not with your heart, but with your feet and friends.
Along with much of the Netflix-viewing world, I fell into the Bridgerton black hole. Did I lie awake at night thinking Why can’t Daphne and Hastings just have a conversation already?? Why yes, I did.
I will admit that my experience watching Bridgerton was similar to the three days in which I devoured The Hunger Games: stressful, panicky, and charging ahead toward resolution. I don’t know what I would have done had Shonda Rhimes decided to leave our love-match in a quarrel until next season.
Love-match. Right. The longer I watched, the more depressed I grew. Oh yes, I enjoyed the shots of the shirtless duke and the magically pure Daphne, but their character was so much less attractive. The woman gives up her own dream and makes a bold decision in order to save the Duke’s life. He, in turn, repays her by getting drunk and refusing to speak to her for days. She is left to smooth everything over, make sure the wedding goes off without a hitch, and keep everyone thinking that the love match is just that. Okay, okay, Daphne is not blameless in all of this. She has her own manipulation at play.
A therapist once told me that the great delusion of the Western world is that women are emotionally responsible for relationships.
This show paraded the delusion fully. But it was more than just that. I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was until I listened to the Gin and Topics podcast about the series. Tropes. The show is chalk full of tropes. Of course. What was I thinking? It’s not like Bridgerton was supposed to be an example of perfect relationships. It’s based on a series of romance novels, for heaven’s sake. And here we have a supposed love match, based on a tale as old as time. The angry, brooding male who needs to be saved from himself by the pure, kind, self-sacrificing female. Daphne and Hastings have a conversation near the end of the series, after she has discovered his tortured past, in which she excuses him completely for his bad behavior and actually tells him that she knows he can be loving and good, and through her love, he will be.
Wait. Let me repeat that. Everyone feels terrible for the man and excuses his bad behavior because he’s had a hard past. The women puts up with bad behavior and promises to heal the man through her kindness. Cue singing and dancing flatware.
Fine. We can have a beautiful and beastly pairing, but can we not hold it up as romantic? As loving? These are stories – only stories. It is a fairytale. A romance novel. With messages that are deeply imbedded into our thinking and which serve the continuation of male dominance and loss of female potential.
I’m glad to see that by now, many people have called out Bridgerton for the toxicity of its key relationship- and at the same time we’re all wondering “Why can’t I look away?” I guess that’s the pull of it. No one would be in a toxic relationship if it wasn’t so…enticing.
But I said this was TV therapy. Bridgerton is a mesmerizing fairytale which needs to come with a warning label. Do not try this at home.
The same podcast that enlightened me to the tropes in Bridgerton also did an episode on Fleabag.
And there she is. Skinny. Broke. Desperately lonely. Self-loathing. Wracked by grief. And covering the whole thing up by being hilariously witty. Fleabag.
This is not a fairytale. However, the second season opens with our heroine (in a fancy bathroom having just cleaned the blood off her face) giving the camera that smirk and saying, “This is a love story.”
And it is.
Not a love story about a gloriously pure debutant and a dark, brooding duke. A love story about a grief-stricken woman who somehow manages to hold onto her life and, eventually, accept herself as not so much of a fleabag.
I haven’t re-watched many shows. But I think now is a good time to spend a few hours with Phoebe Waller-Bridge: Fleabag.
Dear Dying IKEA Palm, 