THE PLAYFUL SELF:
Why Women Need Play in Their Lives
(Fourth Estate, £12.99, ISBN 1-85702-550-4)
‘Play adorns life, amplifies it, and is to that extent a necessity both for the individual and for society.’
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy - but what about Jill? While women slowly achieve equal rights in the working world, women’s play continues to be seen as frivolous, self-indulgent and non-essential. With the triple load of paid employment, child-care and housework, women are increasingly losing touch with their playful selves and paying a heavy price as a result.
Offering a radical new perspective on contemporary feminism and the causes of sexual inequality, Rebecca Abrams argues in THE PLAYFUL SELF that play constitutes a crucial and consistently overlooked aspect of women’s lives, and that like the right to work, the right to play is not something we can afford to ignore.
An extract from THE PLAYFUL SELF:
‘However we choose to play, whether through our bodies, our voices, our words, our thoughts or our dreams, play is a vital part of our repertoire as women and as human beings. It has a key role to play in our social, psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. If, as Shakespeare put it, we play many parts in our time, then play itself plays many parts in our lives, sustaining and healing us, relaxing and relieving us, encouraging us, protecting us, connecting us. Play, above all, is proof that we have a valid place in the world. It declares, affirms and celebrates the fact of our being alive. Play, truly, confirms existence. Play at is best is a celebration of wholeness and rightness, a state in which we feel so secure and secured of our existence that we can play with our place in that existence. To allow yourself to do that requires a belief in your own self, a commitment to your own experience of the world, both in reality and in fantasy, both inwardly and outwardly. That may be hard for women, who are so often discouraged from taking delight in the sensation of self, but it is not impossible. We need not dream of rescue by knights in white armour; we can and must dare to believe that it is possible to be the knight in our dreams, and still to be whole as women. The odds against play in our lives are very great, but seldom insuperable. Play is not meant only for the few; it is something that all women can benefit from profoundly. On a personal level, we can revive our desire to play and reinstate it at the centre of our lives. We can start to do this by granting ourselves permission to play; we can start by fostering a playful attitude to life; we can start by reminding ourselves that one no sooner forgets how to play than one forgets how to ride a bicycle and that all of us, once upon a time, knew how to play; we can start by remembering there is time for play, and there are ways to play. By making these small beginnings towards cherishing the playful self, we can not only own our right to play, but thrive by it.’