SAY I UPDATED my Instagram bio to Emotional labourer (derogative). I’d be on trend, to say the least. In the 1980s, the ascendant era of today’s ultra-cutthroat capitalism, sociologist Dr Arlie Russell Hochschild struck on the concept of ‘emotional labour’. She observed that flight attendants followed strict codes and scripts: smile; never overreact; cover any sign of fatigue, offence or stress. In this perfect expression of an unconflicted inner self, the attendants’ emotional lives were subject to a commercial logic, and their professional ability to hyper-regulate their emotions was yet another aspect of their work that was devalued. Dr Hochschild’s research persuaded her that performing kindness was the true skill of the service employee, be it the flight attendant or the McDonald’s server.

Flavoured with the affective language of therapy and authorised by the stamp of academia, the concept of emotional labour built on the macroecon-omist vision popularised by feminists since the 1970s: that women’s unpaid work at home limited their participation in paid work in the market, and simultaneously brought a substantive contribution, economic and beyond, to how this world turns.