Yep, I’m a huge proponent of sleep. I’m not joking – two nights in a row of only six or seven hours of the zzz’s leaves Christine a very broken, and more than willing to break something over your head, person.

I’m more of a 8-to-9er. Caffeine only breaks my adrenals down further when I haven’t gotten enough sleep, so never mind trying to get good work outta me if my head didn’t stay on that pillow from 11pm-7:30am. That’s part of what this new wave feminism argument is getting at: women can work smarter if they get enough sleep, instead of working longer hours in order to fit into the ever elusive Boy’s Club.

Ok, I can dig it. But Naomi Wolf, one of my favorite female voices of reason, makes a darn good point:

The pair [Arianna Huffington and Cindi Leive] make a persuasive case that female exhaustion is undermining women’s creativity, judgment, and relationships. If we sleep more, they argue, women will become more powerful…[but] shouldn’t there also be voices calling for us simply to do less?

Oh, and how I continue to love her so – she GETS it:

At these [high-powered] luncheons, there is not a woman who is not sensational-looking — in a very labour-intensive way. Heads of corporations, political leaders and innovators are usually in attendance: their hair spectacularly highlighted (that’s three hours every six weeks) and usually blown out (20 minutes every other day); their clothes are divine; and man, are these chicks toned. Their bodies speak of hours in the gym or on the yoga mat. They run business empires, they decide the fates of nations — and they have the kind of bodies you get only if you are on the treadmill at 5am. And they are outperforming expectations in the deliverables of their private lives as well.

I get exhausted just reading about it.

Every once in a while, I contemplate what it must mean to be a truly powerful woman in our culture. These days, looks are not an option for strong women, as they may have been during the time of say, Eleanor Roosevelt. They are necessary now, along with intelligence, wit, charm, a tight body (and wrinkle-free face), not to mention being motherly, sisterly, technologically savvy, and a yoga-goddess-grounded-meditator. Who the hell has time for sleep?

THAT is the problem. We just keep ramping it up. Do more, be more, the wheels spin ever faster and the mouse has to move her legs quicker just to not-really keep up. What end are we searching for?

Back to the sleep question. Sleep is good. It not only revives you, but actually restores you. It literally makes you healthy, and if you don’t get enough of it, your chances of being struck with just about every disease out there increases ten-fold, including heart disease, diabetes, obesity and depression in kids, and cancer. Yeah, our bodies get tired for a reason – they need a revival!

Whether this is a feminist issue (I’m down with that argument), or just a health issue in general, upping the anti on just about everything is not the best thing for our bodies. Maybe the question needs to be re-framed from whether getting more sleep will give us more juice to work harder when we’re awake. Instead, we might ponder whether more sleep gives us a chance to be more present with the people in our lives, enjoy relaxing moments more, and allows us to simply step more deeply into each moment.

I feel a nap coming on.

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