Girl Punk
Two things got me thinking about the complications of being a girl punk:
1)At the last CANference in Manchester, Marie Arnberg talked to me about doing an interview for the blog No Country for Young Women. I've been looking at the interview questions off and on ever since, trying to think about how to answer them. One is “how has being a woman hindered your career?” I usually just think about my career in terms of classism, and that's so big it tends to overshadow other subtle and pernicious things like sexism. But just because you don't think about something doesn't mean it isn't there.
2) WCA has been very lucky in hiring acupunks lately: four new ones since August, all totally committed to community acupuncture, all great in different ways. Two of them are brand-new grads; also, young women. In talking about training and orienting our new punks, it became clear that the brand-new grads could benefit from some extra coaching and support, because as we know, acupuncture school doesn't prepare people for the real world. Thinking more about the needs of our two new grads, it also became clear that they are at a relative disadvantage not just because acupuncture school didn't help them AT ALL, but because simply being young and female makes it harder to be a successful punk.
In certain ways, actually, being a young female punk fucking sucks. In different ways, so does being a young female business owner. Lots of us are both. I would like to have a long ranty conversation about that, here, with my comrades, because I think it would help us. However, I only want to hear from you if you identify or have ever identified as a young female punk, or if other people might identify you that way. How did it suck for you, and what did you do about it? Is this still a work in progress?
It's pretty clear to us at WCA at this point, as I said in an earlier post, that no punk can take his or her job for granted. You have to create and recreate it every day. You build a patient base out of hundreds or thousands of individual connections, conversations, relationships, treatments. You can't just show up, hoping to poke and to get paid, as if this were a typical prepackaged capitalist sort of gig. You are responsible at a level that most people don't ever have to be responsible. You have to really pay attention, because you're making your job out of your own being.
That can be hard when you are young and female, simply because nobody — including possibly you yourself — is inclined to take anything you do all that seriously. That's what fucking sucks, and the permutations are endless.
The longer I do this work, the more I think that the crucial aspect of being a punk and of running a business is your ability to be a kind of nucleus. Other people converge around you like an electron cloud, and your job is to hold the center so that people keep being attracted and the clinic keeps humming around you. That's an important role, being the core of something. As a new, young, female punk, can you believe that you deserve to be that important?
I couldn't, and didn't, and am still working on that part, ten years after going in to business as a girl punk. Now that WCA is so much bigger, I need to put more energy into being the core. It doesn't come naturally and I still have a long way to go — which has plenty to do with sexism.
I was able to build a patient base as a girl punk in part because, although I didn't take myself seriously enough in some ways, I did take punking seriously. And I'm such a serious person in general that it took some of the edge off of being young and female. Still, ten years later, I really notice the difference. Forty-three is a universe away from thirty-three in how people treat you, especially if you look younger than you are. And I'm not sure that WCA would ever have gotten through its youth and mine if it weren't for Ilse. Having a German receptionist in her 70s at the front desk laying down the law to everyone who walked through the door sent a clear message that we were not to be trifled with.
At the same time, though, being too serious is also a liability; you won't attract patients if you're not having fun. And you can't have fun if you overcompensate for being a girl by hardening yourself, trying to be too tough. How tough can you be anyway when you're dissolving in the melting pot of pain that is a community acupuncture clinic? There a lot of ways for this girl punk gig to go wrong.
How do you trust yourself enough that other people begin to trust you too? How do you become the person that other people want to go to when they are in pain? All while being young and female? Let's talk about it.
I’m a young punk/business owner. I went to massage school fresh out of high school and have been self employed pretty much ever since. I was 21 when I started acupuncture school and am 27 now. I look young for my age too, it wasn’t too long ago someone asked if I was a freshman in high school. I’ve gone to networking meetings where people have made jokes after my 30 second infomercial. What has helped alot is not about proving how much I know but letting people know I am here to help in whatever ways I can. People seem to trust that a whole lot more then certifications and degrees and maybe even age. I do get asked occasionally about my qualifications or how old I am but I think my confidence (thanks ca for all the experience) and so much word of mouth referring has changed what questions people ask when they come in now. The big lesson I am learning this year is how to receive. I started a small CA practice and then a few months later I was surprise pregnant. I didn’t plan to hire anyone for at least a year, if ever. The clinic grew with my belly it seems maybe because all the energy I’ve really had is on showing up for work and going back to bed afterwards instead of running 3 or 4 projects at the same time to make ends meet. I still find myself saying that’s ok I can do it when someone offers to help. I am seeing what a huge road block it is. Maybe the I can do it mentality is a defense due to being a young woman/business owner.
I am also a young female punk/business owner and it is pretty fucking hard at times. I started acuschool at 23, finished at 26 (or something it is hard to remember) and now am almost 33. And let me tell you it is so frustrating at times I could just freak out. Other times it is a total advantage.
I have a very young patient base (either very young or very old. not much in the 40-55 range here) and I think the fact that I look super young is helpful. I see tons of young women who are treated like shit, used and thrown away. They come here and it is safe. I look safe. Shit I have been used and thrown away just like them. I totally get it and am not threatening and that is an advantage. I feel that being a young female punk helps me see people who aren’t seen or taken seriously.
The not so awesome part is having to step out of my little womb of a clinic. Or shit even get a bigger clinic. The sexism I face (And here I will say I am lucky. I am a white hetero lady with too much education. I can talk the privileged talk when I have to.) is astounding. Here I have this thriving, overflowing practice and no one will take me seriously enough to even return calls about new spaces. I am looking to rent their space! That means money in their fucking pockets, but I get brushed off over and over. And I am lucky. I have saved a fair bit of cash through my business to pay for renovations etc and I can’t get a realtor to take me seriously enough to help. I am a capitalist’s wet dream right now. I have a thriving business with hundreds of people waiting to come get some needles. I swear they hear my voice and just blow me off. And thins isn’t just men. I find older women are just as bad if not worse. The rude shit that I have heard from women in their 50-60s is horrible. Did they totally forget their second wave feminism? I guess so.
I have had patients ask me how old I am and a couple just leave when I answered. Shit I have been doing this for close to 10 years. And I am fucking good at it. Their loss, but damn, cut a sister a break. Or at least try it first.
I used to try to look older, sound older, be something I’m not. I just can’t do that anymore. I can’t be anything other than a young-ish female punk who pokes her heart out. I will say that I have seriously considered having my husband be the point man for looking at new spaces and other business shit. Only because I would like things to move forward for my business and I am sick of being treated like crap. It makes me feel weak, but what can you do? At least I am lucky to have a dude that could do that for me. But what does it say about us as a culture?
Anyway, that is my rant. Young female punks unite!
Thanks for opening this discussion. I’m not exactly a “young” girl punk (45) but am told I look younger ;), and Kelly is mid-thirties. I’ll share from when we first started three years ago. Kelly and I found CA at the beginning of our last year in school, so we knew from that day forward what we would be doing. We conceptualized what a CA clinic in our town would be and began learning what we would need to open and run a business. Because we were so psyched, we also spoke about it to anybody that would listen, so we got really good at the “ elevator pitch.” We completed a real business plan as part of our practice management class and had it reviewed by outside business types. Because CA was still so unfamiliar then, we were pretty well dismissed in acu circles, although in looking back, many of our peers—mostly boys—had equally crazy ideas that were praised as “innovative”. Maybe less to do with being girls, then rocking the acu illusion boat but it was there. Not to mention the sexist professors that would outwardly favor men in class, but that’s another story.
But our real wake-up came when we went to get help getting our business started from SCORE and a small business incubator in town. For those that don’t know, SCORE provides free business support from retired business people—in our experience (though others have said it’s changing) mostly white, mostly male. We took our plan and lots of background material including stats on existing, successful clinics. We were told that it was “unrealistic,” that it had no chance of making any money, and that we’d have to bill insurance if we wanted it to work. In all fairness, it’s a kind of hard model for conventional biz folks to wrap their heads around but we had facts that it did work from the first wavers before us. We left feeling like we’d been patted on the head. Big time.
The one that still makes us laugh (and cringe) was the business incubator guy. At every turn, he’d say: “once you have a business plan…” and we’d excitedly push it across the desk: “Yes! We have one, it’s right here!” and he’s just keep right on going: “when your business plan is done, you’ll see…” and we’d look at each other quizzically and slide it back across the desk: ”It IS done, we brought it right here!” And he’d ignore us and keep right on with the spiel. It was surreal. We felt invisible.
We were pretty discouraged but decided to try one more support center for women and minority owned businesses. We met with a woman, a former exec at a multi-national, multi-million $ company. She LISTENED to us. She got genuinely excited and read our WHOLE business plan. She said she wanted to take it home to digest it and come back with specific, helpful advice. We left there on a cloud. And we vowed to work with women from now on in these types of situations whenever possible. It may be cliché or unfair, but it was our experience.
We’ve had a handful of incidents with inappropriate behavior in the clinic, twice actual harassment where we had to ban the patient and one needing to involve police. As I type this, I was just about to say ”but that’s to be expected.” And then I felt the sadness of that. That even here, in this place we have tried as much as possible to create a sanctuary for all of us, we experience feeling unsafe on account of being girl punks.
It makes me also want to acknowledge how much support I have received from this community. And to acknowledge everyone’s contributions in creating the culture of CAN/POCA where I can be—am expected to be, really—as strong as I am, as loud and “unladylike” as I want to be, and able to feel the joy and feistiness of being a girl punk. Big love to all my sister girl punks!!
Wow, thank you for the detailed, thoughtful comments.
After I posted yesterday I remembered that two of WCA’s stellar punks, Moses and Cortney, both started working fulltime when they were in their 20s — they’re both now in their early 30s. Both of them trained with me and both worked overlapping shifts with me. I don’t remember ever having to shuffle my schedule because a patient took one look at Moses and insisted that I do the treatment instead — but that happened more than once with Cortney when she was new. I don’t remember ever having to reassure a patient that really, Moses was qualified and knew what he was doing, but I had to have that conversation about Cortney repeatedly. I think Cortney tackled the problem basically the same way that Sarah did — by approaching every interaction with an intense, earnest desire to help. And because acupuncture does work, her confidence grew rapidly. Eventually the advantage of being perceived as less threatening by virtue of being female started to show in Cortney’s numbers, but it didn’t happen overnight.
You need a certain amount of personal authority to be a successful punk and a successful business owner. I think developing that authority is a lot trickier for girl punks. Especially in a clinic setting that can get really busy, when at times your job description includes “traffic cop”. In a CA setting you have to have enough personal authority to handle not just each individual patient, but the room as a whole.
Not only am I young (32) I also look about 20, I’m only 5’2″ and I like hello kitty. I’ve had a few patients not take me seriously at first, however good results and seeing other people quietly resting in the clinic quickly changed that. I’ve had a few creepy experiences, like weird phone calls asking if I treat ED and one patient who did something totally disgusting with his tongue when I asked to look at it before I treated him. I do think he may have been intoxicated. (Does that make it better or worse?) A few patients have expressed worry I’m going to be robbed and one offered to help me purchase a gun for protection (I declined). Just last week a chamber employee told me I was “too pretty to be an acupuncturist”. Its hard to think of these experiences out of the context of my life because I swear being young and female has made me into a bitch.
Running your own business is hard. Especially when you are selling something not many people know about. I try to focus on that and not other reasons why it might be a little harder. Its worth it anyway. I love my clinic. And patients keep bringing me more hello kitty.
So. I’m a girl punk. I’m young and young looking. I also don’t look like your family or friends – and many many people have made this clear to me. I don’t own my own clinic and have only been practicing for a year. I am jewish by ethnicity but not in religious practice. I am not married, don’t have children, and have a liberal voice. But. Most dangerously: I am smart and funny. Sigh. Just not in the clinic.
I have found that these are major barriers in building trust, in being taken seriously, and just generally being in charge (patients coming in on time is a big one).
I have also found that I am capable of quieting these aspects of my personality down so that people aren’t marathoning through hurdles they have to jump to trust me, allow me to care for them, take my treatment plans seriously, to not hit on me, to not just laugh off the whole treatment and never come in again.
So. I can’t be funny all the time. Fuck. Can’t be serious all the time either. Can’t be a smart-ass smarter than everyone all the time kinda gal telling everyone what to do . That’s cool. Being any of these things all the time would be an intense pressure on me. That on top of the rest of the stress of this job seems a bit unnecessary. Besides, I decided to not become a comedian because I’m not usually funny the second time or in advance. Truth.
That means no scripts that make me say the same thing every time. No jokes written into the intake. Sometimes to make people comfortable or to further explain something I let it be funny – but I try not to make anyone laugh once they have all the needles in. Ow. I let seriousness come out of me when called on. Serious shit happens to our patients and I try to give it it’s due with my own seriousness. Certainly comedy at these moments is a mean quick fix. I have found that intelligence during the shift slows me down and doesn’t come up with anything new. Intelligence is saved for my book list. Putting the book list together. Reading the books. Understanding them, discussing them, acting on them. This is where my intelligence goes. That and the Sunday NY Times Crossword.
I have been hit on in the clinic a few times. Before during and after I was comfortable with the existence of and the necessity of drawing boundaries. Sexiness is rewarded with the most cruel of moments. I am not trying to bring sexy back to the clinic. That being said my body is to say the least, exaggerated and difficult to cover if I even wanted to.
I have noticed that for the first time in my life getting dressed is difficult. Something about sitting and standing and leaning and reaching and sitting and reaching again. Some idea about professional, appropriate, comfortable, practical, and fashionable actually being plausible. Oh. I’m sorry I didn’t realize I have to look like an androgynous sack of potatoes to heal the world. Excuse me for just wanting to look nice today while being comfortable and work ready. No. I don’t mean to exaggerate my curves. No. I don’t want you staring at my ass or cleavage or stomach. No. It’s not funny. Yes. I know who Rebecca Brooks is. I can relate to her – we have similar hair …. it’s weird to realize one day that you were born looking unprofessional. I empathize with her intensely. Can you imagine making it to that level of work as a woman and then once there and the shit hits the fan and there you are burning in front of the world and all anyone can talk about is your HAIR?!! Ugh. Ok.
These were my reactions to a great post. Thanks Lisa!
God. It’s really great to read this and everyone’s comments. There have been frustrating moments in this whole journey, starting even from the day I mentioned to an acquaintance Tcm student that I was enrolling in his acu school. He looked at me, then age 27 with my toddler on my hip, and condescending explained that school would probably be too hard for me and I shouldn’t do it.
Shit like that generally has the opposite effect on me, and the memory of that conversation propelled me many times to unnecessary overachievement- it’s not like getting top grades means anything when there are no scholarships or tuition assistance attached to academic performance. And yet I persevered in doing my best to prove people wrong, only to be shot down again in my final year, when my protestations that a sliding-scale clinic could be sustainable were met with head-shaking and “poor-naive-girl” admonitions from that old white lady extraordinaire, Marilyn Allen.
The insistence on behalf of my landlord that he meet with my husband when we signed the lease, and his subsequent refusal to take my calls when I was trying to negotiate moving into his larger space, have been infuriating. I have yet to find a way to get that asshole to have a straightforward conversation with me. The last time we talked about rent he explained that he knew my husband “let” me work for some reason, but of course I didn’t really need to, as women never did. I often wish there were enough empty offices in this neighborhood for me to walk away from this lease, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of better options out there.
But I have been lucky, so far, inside the clinic. Probably the streak of gray in my hair earned from parenting helps make me seem older than I am. Actually, being a parent has enabled me to tap into an inner, matter-of-fact authority I didn’t really know I could express. I’m sure it was always there, but for me having a kid forced me to figure out how to clearly and simply lay out boundaries and rules. So did the personal defense class I took in college. We spent the first session basically shouting NO at each other and thrusting our hands out into people’s faces. It was startling effective.
Still, I struggle with managing, delegating, hiring. I question my own authority all the time. I look at the Big Damn Clinics and wonder how the male-female ratio of owners at those shops compares to the rest of the CA clinics. I’d love to find an Ilse of my own. Maybe I should dye my whole head gray and see if I can convince myself I’ve been around the block a few more times. I wonder how much I hold myself back, business-wise. Something to keep pondering.
Back in the days of boutique acupuncturing I bought a bunch of flowing cotton and linen pants for work because otherwise I only had carpenters pants, and jeans to wear to work and I knew from school that I needed to look “professional.” Especially if I was going to ask people to cough up $100 for a treatment. I hated the idea that I was dressing for a role, and that I didn’t so much get to define what that role was for myself. The deal is, I was told: business men wear suits, business women wear skirts, and hose. No Fucking way. No skirts for me, so I had to go with the flow, literally, of the new age linen look.
I’ve always hated “dressing up” as a kid and even now when I think of occasions when I have to dress up I’ve always thought I would just like to wear a suit. But the cost of a suit that would fit my 5’3” frame—hips and all, has stopped me from doing this.
Figuring out how to dress for work, in clothes that can accommodate bending, and squatting, and lunging, and kneeling, and scooting around on the floor on my knees as I needle, is one of the thing that sucks as a girl punk. And I am known for my practical fashion sense lets just say. If it doesn’t have pockets that I can actually put things in, like my hands, or the knife that I like to keep clipped to my pocket, I don’t want to wear it. I like to keep tools in my pockets, like a pen, or my chapstick, or sometimes if I’m tinkering or fixing things, a screwdriver or wrench. It sucks because I have to put more effort into dressing than I want to. Can’t I just wear jeans and a tee-shirt?
I could, but it might undermine my patient’s ability to trust me. Maybe I should have tee-shirts printed with the words “Trust me” on the front and back. But actually if I wear a tee-shirt, then I have to think about wearing a bra, or an undershirt, or both, because I have to consider whether or not my breasts flap around (well flapping is a stretch-but the self-consciousness is the point.) I have to consider if my hair is flapping too. And if it is I have to contain it. Or cut it off. And if I cut it off, it may also offend, so I’d have to think about earrings. But I don’t want to. I just want to get dressed like on the days I don’t go to work where I don’t have to consider who, or how someone will be looking at me, and how it will affect their ability to access treatment, and my ability to deliver it with confidence, theirs or mine.
Does the stereotype of women caring more about their appearances and clothing belie vanity in the female or the fact that we have to dress to provoke, or calm, or instill confidence?
There is a funny flip side to the clothes thing as a CA girl punk vs a BA girl punk, which is since I no longer am playing a role as a high-cost healer, and am now a low-cost community do-er, I wear clothes that are much more like what I wear outside the clinic, and my body being more comfortable in these clothes helps me to be more present in myself and to convey confidence. But so does being able to casually mention that I’ve been doing this for a dozen or so years. What compels me to mention this? What compels patients to ask? I wonder how often boy punks get asked that? If I was a boy punk I’d grow a beard just for that reason.
When I originally read this post my initial reaction was to cry. I have always known that being a female put me at a relative disadvantage in a man’s world. Usually I just work hard and my work speaks for itself. I am having trouble stomaching the idea that just because I am young and female that I have to somehow compensate for preconceived notions of youth and gender. I show up with my whole heart and whole soul bent on being good at this, on healing people, on creating a safe place and on being myself because people can tell when you are trying to be something you are not. I do not have a any current solutions to this new obstacle and that is frustrating. I am a very new punk and I have never wanted anything more in my life. I want to treat as many people as possible and I want them to trust me and keep coming back. At this point, that is all I know.
This conversation just keeps getting better. (Maybe a future POCA fundraiser could be t-shirts printed with “trust me” on the front and back?)
I have been thinking about all the punks I have watched struggle to build a patient base. It almost always has something to do with the punks’ social skills, but that plays out differently according to gender. Men often have to work harder at learning to convey empathy — lack of empathy or openness interferes with making connections with patients. And regardless of gender, becoming an acupuncturist can totally ruin somebody’s social skills by making them lose the ability to see the situation from the other person’s point of view, which of course is crucial to making a connection. Gender has nothing to do with the horrors of droning on about Chinese medicine when the patient just wants you to fix their headache; gender isn’t the reason a lot of acupuncturists come across as socially awkward weirdos. You can be a male, female, or genderqueer punk and fail to build relationships and a patient base because, in the process of becoming an acupuncturist, you have forgotten how to act like a human being.
But for women specifically, I think the thing that often impedes the connection process with patients — if they are otherwise socially skilled — is confidence. There’s a certain kind of confidence that men are socialized to have — and it’s the template for a certain kind of business success as an acupuncturist. I think of it as the I-AM-AWESOME template: success in the business of natural medicine is disproportionately represented by dudes with huge egos.
There is this post on the blog Shapely Prose that I think is very relevant to this conversation — actually, never mind this conversation, I think all women should read it. It’s about women publicly accepting — reveling in, even — their own authority and power and how incredibly hard that is to do: https://kateharding.net/2010/04/23/slightly-pre-friday-sorta-fluff-im-kate-fucking-harding/
Anyway, I think a lot of us girl punks probably could use a little more of the “me? why yes, I AM AWESOME” vibe. Could someone please figure out how to extract that from the dudes with the huge egos and bottle it?
oh yes, I hope a lot of girl punks will talk about their experiences here becasue I still struggle with this a lot! It’s the old not confident enough = patients are scared. But “too much” confidence (that split second referred to in the article), especially as a woman, comes off as “hard” or “pushy” or “cold.” We see this a lot when patients get great results after treatment and after trying other acupuncture and everything else under the sun and then come back in and say something like: “I don’t know what it was, but I just feel great.” Kelly’s gotten really good at saying stuff with a giant smile: “Or it could just be the acupuncture, right? Keep coming back.”
The other interesting twist on doing CA as a girl punk is when we hate talking the esoteric acu nonsense in a town and profession where so many like to. You can see the slight double take, like we’re not being quite “nurturing” enough or that we don’t know what we know, even when we explain that we just choose not to talk about it a lot. It’s definitely won some people over, and the others we imagine find what they need elsewhere, which is fine, but I just wonder if guy punks get the same reaction or if it’s seen as more authoritive when they say it. We just keep on stepping and tell doubters to try to trust clinic setup and the process of acupuncture (if they can’t quite leap to trusting us right away). And we keep telling each other how awesome we are, so we don’t forget.
I’m FINALLY getting a chance to chime in here – and after looking through all your comments, found what Lisa said in the last one – “But for women specifically, I think the thing that often impedes the connection process with patients—if they are otherwise socially skilled—is confidence.” That would describe me absolutely.
I think for me the biggest challenge, even more than being female, has been my youth.
I started acupuncture school at age 22, straight out of college, single and new to the Boston area. My entire life up to and through acupuncture school was me being a student. I was great at getting good grades and studying but I was poorly trained for work or business. Thankfully my mother is a woman entrepreneur who owns her own business that she started at age 27 – another good role model for me – and truthfully one of the things that attracted me to practicing acupuncture in the first place was the idea of owning and running a business. I saw that for my mother it was a great situation to be in, better than for my father who had a job as an employee, and so it was something I always looked forward to doing going into acupuncture school and planned to do when I finished acupuncture school. (Little did I know it would be SO hard! Much harder than being an employee.).
I graduated acu school at age 25 and thankfully I had a part time punk job in Manchester for 8 months before I started my own clinic by myself at age 26. Having another place to work, another role model to follow, somewhere to practice communication with patients and to see results from treatments was HUGELY helpful. If I hadn’t had that experience I think my start in my own clinic would have been even more difficult.
The first big difficulty I faced was in starting a clinic with another acupuncturist (older man). I reasoned that if we wanted to do the same type of work it would be better to partner up than to go it alone. I was wrong and learned the hard way. It wasn’t a good fit as a partnership and we didn’t really have the same visions, nor did we get along very well on a personal level (partly because I was young and female). I didn’t expect to work my butt off getting a clinic up and running and then to have him buy it from me and having to go out and start another clinic all over again a few months later – but that is what I did, because I wasn’t going to give up on my dream/plan.
All the start-up stuff was so difficult for me – I remember trying to negotiate my lease with a very hot headed landlord (man in his mid-60’s, I would guess) and just being completely inexperienced with that sort of thing and afraid that what I would get rejected or screwed. It was a very scary step.
Initially working on my own was tricky from a financial perspective because although I was blessed to have money from my family to help me get started, it also made me feel somewhat indebted to them and controlled in some ways. I would begin to make a decision (such as how much the lease would cost) and then talk it over with my family and get their feedback – which I sometimes didn’t want to hear. I felt a lot of pressure to be successful – and I wanted so badly to become financially independent as soon as possible, but that took time. It was especially difficult when the clinic was slow to start and I felt badly that I wasn’t “doing enough” to get it up to speed faster.
We’ve seen clinics that grow wildly when they start and others that struggle along. My first year was definitely a struggle and was also incredibly difficult emotionally. I had a great grand opening followed by worrisome slowness. I actually became quite depressed about 6 months in, which I am sure only made things worse. For some time I just wanted to quit but I knew I had no choice – but also that I really needed to just give it time and ride it out. It was slow and I just was so full of fear all the time that the clinic wasn’t going to make it, that I wasn’t good enough, blah blah blah.
It was a struggle with confidence in communication with patients – answering their questions about acupuncture, how often to come in, etc. When people came in and the treatment room was empty (which happened all the time) it just felt awkward.
Answering patients’ questions about how long I’ve been practicing was also a bit uncomfortable the first couple years… again, lack of time practicing alludes to lack of experience and knowledge. These days I feel much more confident with it, but still it has only been 4 years since I graduated and 3.5 since opening my clinic.
Anyway – that is just a smattering of thoughts. Lisa thanks for bringing up this topic!
Another middle aged (45) punk chiming into this really amazing discussion. People do say I look younger than I am and I am in my 8th year of practice. I definitely have had the experience of patients questioning my level of experience, especially before starting the community acupuncture clinic and before I decided to stop covering the naturally huge amount of gray hair on my head (genetic heritage – thank, mom!). I also noticed that the more esoteric you make acupuncture sound, the more people think you should look like some kind of a wise guru in flowing linen clothes with turquoise rings and fancy accent. This is where having a simpler language and culture in the clinic really helps dispel the cloud of bullshit. In our current clinic, my business partner is older than me and Asian descent and our first hired punk was also older than me. The interesting thing that would happen (and still does sometimes) is that patients assumed that both my partner and the hired punk were more experienced than me, when in fact I was them most experienced acupuncturist in the clinic. As you might guess, the Asian thing adds a whole other layer to it that I have at times found hilarious (and at timed infuriating), since my Chinese American biz partner is born and bred in Massachusetts and does not speak Chinese. I do remember that his type of stuff bothered me more when I was a lone and lost boutiquer. Nowdays, I just shrug it off and get needling. I think showing genuine concern / empathy is really helpful in winning trust but so is being surrounded by snoozing patients and feeling confident in your systems, your community. Community acupuncture just takes off so many of the layers of fakeness that exist in our profession.
In terms of owning a business as a woman, I would say there are definitely obstacles and I have had people look at me funny when I would identify myself as a co-owner, but I think I have had it easier than some of the younger girl punks because I am older and I am kind of a blunt and direct person, so often people immediately sense that I do not have time for their bullshit. And the gray hair, I think it really has helped here too.
Since a student (hell, I’m still a student, literally and figuratively), I always wanted much more than TCM college offered me. This drove me to just giv’er and I have become a well-known figure in my community because of the many projects I used to organize. I’m still known as the “acupuncture girl” in many of the community centres, detox programs and annual events I have volunteers services to. It was these experiences that allowed me to learn that if you want a client to “trust” you to insert little metal bits into their bodies and show their vulnerable side, you need to first form a relationship with them.
I am the only female and person of colour that runs a CA clinic (mostly solo), in a city with 4 other clinics, all run by middle aged white males. Truthfully, I don’t know if I’ve run into any issues because of my age or my young appearance (I’m 31)…since Asian women look eternally in their 20s…My ethnicity gives be a subtle advantage, that somehow I have this unsaid authenticity. I’ve also noticed that I tend to slip in and out of different racial community settings (ie. Native Frienship centre) because I appear darker skinned and ethnic.
I have found frustrations in general with business ownership, flying by the seat of my pants and often confusing the community because of the nature of my clinic. However, I haven’t faced too many barriers due to my age or gender. The only advice I would really have is to act like you own it (even if you’re trembling in your boots), carry yourself with maturity and confidence, while being mindful of being condescending or domineering. My co-worker is in her 40s, but not as confident as I am and I’ve found that patients are not as receptive or compliant with her.
Otherwise, it is important to remember not to take things too seriously and if certain people are resistant to you either due to your appearance or your profession, they will likely not be a good client for now and not worth wasting your energy. Move on, the right people who respect and value you will find you.
i was always concerned that people somehow wouldn’t take us seriously enough as we created our clinic, but felt sure that once we were open, the sheer force of our warmth, friendliness, and confidence is what would bring people back again and again. and because that has always been our m.o., i truly think that’s been the case.
i started acu school when i was 26, and was a clinic owner by 29. i’m now 31. my female business partner is 13 years my senior, but looks about the same age as i do. a teacher of mine, early on in school, told me my main challenge as a practitioner was that i looked too young, so people wouldn’t take me seriously. my main plan to fix this disadvantage was to actively grow out my gray hairs so that i might look older than i am. i’ve done this for the most part (recently i’ve wimped out and plucked the white ones right up front). turns out i don’t really think it matters. more than anything, i agree that displaying an earnest desire to help with an “ok, let’s get down to business” attitude has by and large worked for me. (that and not stumbling over words, always acting like i know what i’m doing even when i don’t, and being present and humble.) there are only a few patients who have outright asked how old i am, or how long i’ve been doing this, in a distrustful/doubting-my-skills manner. In acu school, a patient once asked me, “have you always been this bold?”
we negotiated our space, buildout, and lease with these two thoughts in mind: 1) you don’t get what you don’t ask for, and 2) between you and the person you’re making a deal with, the first person to start talking after you make a request is the one who will end up compromising. my partner and i enjoy playing good cop/bad cop to get what we want. both of us hate feeling like we’ve been taken advantage of, which is absolutely a result of being taken advantage of in the past as young, inexperienced females.
we’ve definitely dealt with unwelcome attention and advances because of our gender and looks. my partner has had a male patient slap her playfully in the face, and another one stole a kiss to her cheek as he got out of his chair. we had to fire a male patient who was sending me inappropriate emails, who also found out where i lived and mailed me a card there. it took months for me to feel safe in my own house again. i hated feeling like i brought it on myself by being too warm and friendly, when actually, he was a lonely and manipulative person. it’s a challenge to figure out how to dress at work so no one’s spending too much time looking at your body, especially with all the bending and leaning in. After doing this for awhile, my boundaries are generally fairly clear, and i can turn stone-cold serious and business-like in a heartbeat when need be. boundaries are key. identify what you want and don’t want for yourself in your interactions with patients before you ever begin practicing, if possible. awareness and a plan of action is power. Don’t take any shit. if you do, the lesson will be that much harder to learn, and it WILL repeat itself.
oh, what a learning process. regardless, i’m stoked to be a girl punk. wouldn’t trade it.
I guess I am running into more of this stuff lately. The being a young business woman part and making decisions and having to negotiate with people is just SO frustrating. I graduated acupuncture school at 26 and opening the community clinic at 27. But somehow when I go talk to a CPA, lawyer, accountant, insurance person, landlord that is a “professionally” dressed with white hair about business stuff. I HATE the interactions. I come out of it feeling like I am four and just angry. Angry at myself, angry at the world. And it’s not that they were “unpropfessional” somehow the dynamics just makes me angry and feel powerless when I am trying to make important decisions about the future of my clinic.:P