“Happier” times. What about the angry or surprised times?
In response to feedback from our community, we will be changing the name of our monthly happy hours to “all-emotions hours.” We regret our role in reinforcing systemic emotional inequalities by perpetuating the happiness hegemony, and we hope this change will encourage people of all emotions to feel more comfortable in our spaces.
Our happy hours were intended to be open, inclusive spaces where people of all emotions could be hit on by creepy men. Names matter, and the name “Happy Hour” clearly privileges happiness over other feelings like sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. When people leave feeling disgusted, we want them to know that’s totally OK.
We were surprised to learn that there are more than five emotions, a misconception that persists due to the constant exclusion of lesser-known emotions in movies like Pixar’s “Inside Out.” We were then surprised – again – to learn that “surprise” itself is one of those lesser-known emotions. These emotions have been so marginalized in our society that we didn’t even recognize it within ourselves. Clearly, then, we weren’t honoring it within others.
Sure enough, looking through photos from our past happy hours, we realized that not a single other emotion besides happiness was represented; we’re ashamed and embarrassed that every single photo featured people who were smiling or laughing.
Moving forward, we will make sure we photograph people experiencing the full range of human emotions.
Originally, we thought about highlighting a different, underrepresented emotion each month – e.g. September’s Sad Hour or April’s Angry Hour. But then it was pointed out to us that this still would be favoring one emotion over all the others. To truly break the happiness hierarchy, we needed to make space for all emotions at every hour.
So long Pharrell.
We are also becoming increasingly sensitive to the role of our implicit biases in all of this. One additional change that will take effect immediately will be changing the music that is played. We will never again play “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, “Can’t Stop the Feeling” by Justin Timberlake, nor any song from Uncle Kracker’s album “Happy Hour,” even though “Smile” is a pretty great song and – be honest – you haven’t heard it in a while and kind of want to hear it again.
We have also set up monthly “open meetings” to help us better reach out to all emotions, though so far only the emotions of “pissed,” “righteously indignant,” “bored” and “gassy” have been represented. And if you’re thinking, like we were thinking, that “gassy” isn’t an emotion, then maybe you should think about whether you really want to be policing what is and is not a legitimate emotion – a lesson we had to learn the hard way.
To reiterate – no one emotion is better than any other emotion. We may not validate your parking, but we validate whatever emotion you’re feeling, even if it’s anger at our not having validated your parking. Also, to reiterate – we don’t validate parking.
We acknowledge that some may feel that all of this change is happening too fast, while others may feel that we’re not going far enough. (It’s been pointed out that “all-emotions hour” still privileges the hour over other units of time.) Still, we hope this is a step in the right direction, and we appreciate your patience as we grow together through this learning experience.
See you at next month’s all-emotions hour!
The views and opinions expressed in this blog and on this website are not even those of the original author. They are totally made up – Happy Purim!
