Love’s Labor
Or… this may make you smash that unsubscribe button
🦻If you prefer to listen rather than read, I’ve recorded this newsletter above
It’s Labor Day weekend, 2025 and I’ve been reflecting on the strike we were ensconced in two years ago.
In 2023, people were shocked to hear that acting is labor. Even some actors were surprised by this information. The confusion is by design.
Almost all of us have a “day job.” The work we have to do to get by. Acting is our passion! The work we want to do, the work we love to do, the work we fight to do. It’s because of this, that the bosses find us pretty easy to take advantage of.
We are thrilled to have a day’s work in our field. One day’s work which usually carries the requirement of:
Years of training
The cost of keeping headshots and reels and websites updated
Paying for or asking a friend to help tape the audition
Familiarizing oneself with the audition material
Clothes, makeup and hair for the audition
Character development, script analysis, motivation, emotion and action for the audition
Research about the project itself for tone and style
Once the job is secured, any and all emotional, physical and mental prep for the day
Costume fittings
Hair and makeup consultations
Aesthetic upkeep
Checking in with another friend who has been on the show for tips on the vibe and what to expect socially
This list could go on and on depending on the type of role and type of actor. And it truly doesn’t matter if the role is going to work for months or one single day… this is the bare minimum of work that will go into any job for any one of us, aside from maybe a lucky direct offer from someone you’ve worked with before (only because you’ve proven you put in this amount of work every time!).
Acting. Is. Labor.
The mirage of reaching multi-million dollar contracts and choosing-your-projects and having a full time glam team, will only happen to a minuscule percentage of actors. But they point to that minuscule percentage as possible! They dangle it just out of our reach and it feels attainable! It makes us take one more job at scale and one more and one more and one more - because eventually we’ll prove our worth to capitalism!
But it’s a losing game.
Capitalism will never value people. Capitalism will never value art.
Capitalism will never value labor.
Ummm. Have I mentioned that this is not the newsletter that will help you win the game of how-to-make-money-as-an-actor?
During the strike, I had to force myself to stop arguing with internet trolls who made fun of us for “complaining” when we were “all millionaires.” Though the demoralization of being misunderstood was overwhelming, my fractured mental state could not continue to focus on each individual who thought greed was the problem of the laborer and not the boss.
How do I explain to every stranger on the internet that the powers-that-be took a sledgehammer to all the middle rungs of the ladder? How do I explain that most of us are clinging to bottom rungs with the tight gripped desperation of a baby to her mama in the ocean for the first time?
The energy of the strike though was electrifying. In Atlanta, the speeches were giving us goosebumps, the unity was strengthening us where weariness had set in. We created spreadsheets of union members who had other services we could patronize. We passed information on side jobs around. We encouraged businesses to offer union discounts. I took my children with me to pick up a box of necessities from a food drive so they would understand what the strike cost, what it feels like to be on this side of mutual aid, and how kind people are in caring for us.
In a country so steeped in the mythology of “individual rights” and “bootstraps,” unions are resistance.
You don’t become a billionaire by working together in groups of brethren. You become a billionaire (or a multi-millionaire for that matter) on the backs of hundreds and thousands who you underpay and overwork.
That’s the system we have, not just in this industry, in this country. That’s what’s happening to everything and everyone around us. They pit those of us who labor against each other in a race to the bottom just to find work, so the top can keep getting richer.
When you see the cost of goods continuing to rise, while wages have stagnated for years - you don’t need to solely blame Republicans or Democrats, you can look to the very few who benefit and know who to point your finger at.
How will we come together in this time? How will we mutually prop each other up? How will we topple the broligarchy who are quietly (and sometimes loudly) chipping away at societal safety nets all for… what?… another deck on their yacht? To be so giddy with power that that maybe they’ll forget that their fathers were emotionally unavailable to them?
*ping, ping, ping!* (that’s the sound of my inbox being filled with “email disabled for One Job Away”!)
…
Look, I get that thinking through this isn’t for everyone. Some of you are just trying to survive. Some of you still cling to the hope that the mirage will be real for you. Some of you, heck, me too at times, still believe you’ll find the key that will unlock a secret door to steady work and steady paychecks (you can certainly find grifters around EVERY CORNER trying to sell this to you!). But the more of us who are willing to see it, the more of us willing to say the true things out loud, the better chance we all have at survival.
Actors. Artists. We’ve survived throughout history.
Not because we bow to the powerful and are best at the game of hoarding.
We survive because we can see the game.
We survive even though we show the world the futility of the game.
We mirror to the powerful what they are.
We show society the weakness of wannabe kings.
We exemplify mutual aid and unity.
We show what an embarrassment it is to not value those who labor for love.
Those who hoard power and capital love to act like it’s all due to hard work, brains and talent. I think it’s due to one thing: their ability to close their eyes to the suffering of others. The thing about being an actor is that the only way to do our job is to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. To take on the burden of others is our job description.
To take on the burden of others is our job description.
This Labor Day, I hope you celebrate yourself as a laborer. I hope you remember the power of unity we learned during the strike. I hope you remind people that unions are why we have weekends and working hour maximums and child labor laws and still how much more we could AND SHOULD DO with stronger unions. With stronger unity.
I hope you dig deeper in the work of dismantling the gap between the owning class and the working class: Cancel your Amazon Prime! Buy food from a farmer/CSA! Go see a local play! Read a book from a local bookstore! Engage in your neighborhood mutual aid! Babysit for a friend! Let them bring you a meal in return!
I hope you remember that you are the mirror, and every piece of that mirror shows our culture what it is and compares it to what it Could Be. I hope you continue to fight for the monetary value you are worth. And I hope you know, deeply, despite what capitalism may tell you over and over and over, your full, inherent worth.
Thank you for laboring with love.
Tip Jar
To be honest, this feels awkward. And I know tipping culture has gotten out of control… probably because wages have stayed so low? I’d love to start a subscription here in order to be able to keep up the labor of writing for you. It doesn’t make sense just yet though, so I’m throwing in a tip jar. Purely optional, throw in a dollar or two if the work here has been meaningful to you!
Quote of the Week
“The oligarchy wants Americans to view the system as a neutral meritocracy in which anyone can make it with enough guts, gumption, and hard work. The standard platitudes of market fundamentalism are that people "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and that America is a nation of "self-made men" (and women), both of which translate into a moral code: People deserve whatever they earn in the market.
Income and wealth are measures of worth. If you amass a billion dollars, then you must deserve it because that's what the market awarded you. If you barely scrape by, then you have only yourself to blame. It is assumed that the system, and how power is allocated within it, plays no role whatsoever.
Of course, the oligarchy doesn't want Americans to see its mounting wealth as the engorged winnings of a game whose rules it has decided on. It wants everyone to believe the oligarchy deserves what it has accumulated, even as it denies much of society the opportunities it enjoys.”
~Robert B. Reich, from the book The System
“The powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice”
-Reinhold Niebuhr
Your Turn
I’d love to hear how you’re engaging in your community, mutual aid, empowering the laboring class over the hoarding class. The smaller and more granular the better! Please share your ideas below…
My MAGA cousin loves to say, "A rising tide lifts all boats," and I reminded him that some folks don't have boats - they are swimming for dear life. Rising tides are dangerous to them because they churn to help those in yachts drift along, not those on broken liferafts. He replied, "Yeah, sure."
However, it's pretty simple: one cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they are barefoot.
I'm sitting here crying. Smash the unsubscribe? Hell no! This is brilliant Bethany. I beg you: please never stop writing. The universe needs your contributions!