"Our idea of stress — as a personal, internal problem — is a recent invention."

An interview with Dana Becker (whose new book is "One Nation Under Stress: The Trouble with Stress as an Idea"):

For instance... [t]here's a huge number of articles about working women's stress, and a lot of advice on what we should do. You know, we should eat more kale, we should do yoga, we should exercise, we should make more to-do lists. 

Sounds stressful!

So there's a primarily middle-class kind of solution or these solutions to what we see as the, quote, 'stress' problem today.

But unfortunately, that draws us into thinking more about how stress is going to affect, for instance, our health, or our psychological health, than it does to think about, say, the fact that family and medical leave is still unpaid, that the school day is shorter than the work day is, that we still are a society that essentially devalues care giving, that workplace policies haven't kept pace with dual-career families.

So she's saying the "stress" idea makes people think in terms of personal well-being and responsibility instead of agitating for social and political reforms? Sorry, but I think looking after yourself is less stressful than thinking the whole world needs changing.

But there is a lot of inanity around the idea of "stress" these days, especially when the solutions seem like new doses of the problem. Must scamper over to yoga class and take orders about what positions to put one's body in. Do this. Now, do that. Everything's organized. So many tasks. Whatever happened to leisure and unplanned playtime? These "stress" people seem so dull.