In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Domesticity

Mommy Dearest

bitch

I think most of us would agree that young girls are over-sexualized, and that’s a problem. So here’s a novel idea: Blame mommy!

Judith Warner’s column doesn’t start off all that poorly. She writes:

Bling-Bling Barbies and pouty-lipped Bratz. Thongs for tweens, and makeover parties for 5-year-olds. The past couple of shopping seasons have brought a constant stream of media stories — and books and school lectures and anguished mom conversations — all decrying the increasingly tarted-up world of young girls and preteens. Now the American Psychological Association has weighed in as well, with a 67-page report on the dangers of the “sexualization” of girls.

The report takes aim at the music lyrics, Internet content, video games and clothing that are now being marketed to younger and younger kids, and correlates their smutty content with a number of risks to girls’ well-being. It finds that sexualization — turning someone into “eye candy” — is linked to eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression in girls and women. Adopting an early identity as a “Hot Tot” also has, the researchers wrote, “negative consequences on girls’ ability to develop healthy sexuality.”

Read More…Read More…

More Proof of the Housework Gap

Another story that makes me glad I live alone.

Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet writes about a BBC report of a study showing that single women who live alone clean less than women who live with a male partner — and that men who live with a female partner clean less than they did when they lived alone.

The findings come from analysis by labour economist Helene Couprie of Toulouse University.

Her research, based on data from the British Household Panel Survey looked at working women – single or living with a partner, both with and without children.

And by examining information on more than 2,000 people, she concluded that on average, an employed woman does 15 hours a week of housework when she lives with her employed partner, up from 10 hours when single.

Meanwhile the men, who do seven hours while living alone, do only five when they co-habit.

Am I surprised? Not really (except for that 10 hours bit, which I definitely don’t do now). Though things have undoubtedly improved somewhat from past generations, when men weren’t expected to do much at all once they cohabited with a woman. And part of it, apparently, is what we see when we’re growing up. If Dad pitches in, we see that as normal. If Mom does everything herself, we see that as normal:

The findings are partly, Ms Couprie suggests, due to influences that people have grown up with – where traditionally women have taken on the lion’s share of domestic tasks.

She says that as long as children see their parents stick to certain tasks, such trends become hard to change.

Ultimately, she adds, “it is the work of social evolution”.

And that kind of tells you what needs to change now in order for equity later. Of course, how to accomplish that is always the big question.

Clark-Flory raises an interesting point, though:

The disparity between single and cohabitating women’s cleaning habits could be explained by any number of things. Women might feel more pressure to play domestic diva when they’re living with their significant other. But, I’d also love to see an analysis of single women who live alone versus single women who live with a (platonic) roommate. Having a witness of any kind to your slothfulness can be an incredibly motivating factor; it could be that women are just more prone to that pressure.

I spent pretty much all day Sunday cleaning my rather filthy apartment (I could knit several new pets from the hair I swept up, for one thing. I know where it’s coming from, but how is there so damn much of it?).

Why was I cleaning? My neighbors are coming over tomorrow to look at the apartment and (pleasepleaseplease) sign a contract to buy it. And I just couldn’t deal with them seeing dirty dishes and pet hair and an unmade bed and piles of clutter and the mountains of mail I haven’t sorted through for about three years. Granted, it’s always a good idea to clean before someone who’s interested in buying your apartment comes over; but I won’t even let the Chinese food deliveryman see the mess.

I was much neater, at least in common areas, when I had a roommate, and also when I was dating a lot.

Kitchen Bullies

This article made me feel like this:

YOLANDA EDWARDS was at a friend’s house in Brooklyn for dinner when the hostess asked her to pull out a pot for boiling pasta. Ms. Edwards froze. As her friend looked at her in disbelief, she said she was not up to the job.

“I used to think I was a good cook,” said Ms. Edwards, an editor at the parenting magazine Cookie. “But my husband’s a kitchen bully. He’s so critical, I second-guess myself now.”

Oh, those crazy-in-love kids!

Actually, the arrangement sounds abusive to me. Here’s a perfectly competent woman who begins to second-guess herself under whithering scorn from her husband. But it’s cute and funny because it’s in the kitchen, a woman’s natural domain!

We’ll even give it a darling Style-section-worthy hook: Alpha cooks! Beta cooks! Let’s call the whole thing off!

“I have no problem admitting that I’m an alpha,” said her husband, Matthew Hranek, a photographer. “Yolanda wouldn’t know a corked bottle of wine if you put it in front of her. When we met, she had four days’ worth of dishes in her sink, most of which had what looked like black bean on them. Ever since then, I’ve cooked for her.”

He had to save her from her own low standards, you see. So now she’s gone from eating black beans to a steady diet of scorn and humiliation to go with the “restaurant-quality wild mushroom risotto on a Tuesday night.” And striking back with passive-aggression:

So, over time, an embattled beta will find ways to level the playing field, ways that do not involve wresting the meat thermometer from the alpha’s hand. This is the case with Ms. Edwards, who may have lost the ability to choose a pasta pot when put on the spot, but who has carved out a particular position of power of her own.

For one, she makes oatmeal and eggs that her 3-year-old daughter prefers to anything her husband cooks.

She also discovered the beta’s best weapon, and the secret to living with an alpha cook: criticism. An alpha is nothing without a beta.

“I couldn’t strive to be good without her,” said Mr. Hranek, her husband. “If she’s not happy with the food, I’m devastated.”

Ah, love.

Though there are some female professional chefs featured in the article as examples of alpha cooks, most examples of this kind of bullying are of men who can’t let go of the idea that the carrots might not be julienned just so — but can’t seem to just do it themselves rather than enlist a partner to take direction and, inevitably, criticism. And, strangely, some of the women express guilt at “letting” their partners do all the cooking after they’ve decided it’s not worth sharing kitchen space. Those culturally-enforced gender roles do die hard.

Kinda makes me glad I live alone.

We’ve secretly replaced Cary Tennis with Folger’s Crystals

Seriously. What’s gotten into Cary Tennis? He’s given some good advice for once:

One night, after talking about a friend of ours who met his girlfriend in a threesome, he asked me if I had ever been in one. It didn’t occur to me to lie, particularly about something I consider so minor, so I answered honestly and told him yes.

After that, everything changed. The night I told him I’d had a threesome, he cried and said he felt sick. He became so angry with me that he began to pick at me, and it seems like everything I do is wrong. Overnight, I went from being in a relationship that made me even more confident and happy with myself to being in a relationship that brings me down and constantly reminds me of my shortcomings. . .

I can’t keep feeling so ashamed of a past I had come to terms with, but I also can’t bring myself to give up on someone that I love so much. Before the threesome fiasco, we’d been talking about marriage and our future, and now I wonder how he could have meant any of that. If he loved me so much, how could his love and respect for me be so conditional? Is there anything he can do to get over this, or am I going to have to forget about how good things used to be and move on?

Regretting Telling

Dear Regretting,

This guy is nuts. What’s wrong with having a threesome?

No, don’t marry him. Get away from him. He sounds crazy. Not to be too judgmental, but really. . . .

I don’t know how you deal with the hurt of this ending, but obviously you cannot be with someone the rest of your life who can’t deal with something from your past like that.

OK, so maybe it was dumb to tell him. But you found out something. You found out he’s nuts.

Color me stunned. Go on with your bad self, Cary! You almost sound like Dan Savage.

I’ve written before on how and why I believe that it’s not really anyone’s business what I got up to sexually before I met them unless there was some kind of aftereffect — disease, unexplained short people running around, what have you — that might affect my partner; and while that’s the kind of information I might very well share with a partner voluntarily, I don’t consider it something to be demanded of me. This guy clearly has issues, clearly has insecurities, and clearly wants to have something to hold over his girlfriend’s head (or else he might, you know, actually have gone to therapy and done something there).

But the thing that really got me was the part of the letter where the girlfriend was saying that they’d been discussing marriage. They were discussing marriage, and yet she didn’t know about this sacredness, this insecurity, and all his rules about sex. Probably because they’d never discussed that. It never fails to surprise me how many people get married without asking some pretty damn basic questions and raising some pretty damn basic points of discussion (like, say, whether there will be a TV in the bedroom). Or, say, whether to have kids.

ouch.

My hands hurt. I’ve been reupholstering my sofa all day. Only about half-finished, but it looks pretty good. Back, cushions and trim tomorrow.

Wielding a staple gun is a LOT more taxing than I’d realized.

The Good Wife’s Guide

I believe we’ve posted this before, but just in case you all missed it, an article from a 1955 edition of Housekeeping Monthly.

via Tatiana, my pushy broad of a best friend, whose husband sent this to her all the way from Iraq (because Tatiana would make the Housekeeping Monthly ladies keel over in horror). Posted below the fold because it’s big.

UPDATE: It’s totally fake. Oh well. Good times anyway.

Read More…Read More…

Well, Color Me Unimpressed

Married couples dip below the majority mark for the first time.

Why am I unimpressed? It’s rather an artificial statistic, given that gay couples can’t marry (and account for some 1-2% of the total (though that figure may be a bit low due to reluctance to reveal such information), and 5% of households were unmarried opposite-sex partners. Clearly, people are still coupling up in large numbers, regardless of whether they plan to eventually marry.

Also? I’m not overly concerned if marriage becomes a historical footnote in the course of several generations. I don’t think much of the institution, particularly the fact that it’s been given special legal status and confers all kinds of public goodies on what is essentially a private arrangement.

Still, it warms the cockles of my icy little heart to see the fundies trying to spin this one — especially when it’s the red states where marriage has fallen the most:

David Blankenhorn, president of the marriage advocacy group the Institute for American Values, said married couples had become a minority largely because of the growing number of households made up of people who planned to marry or who used to be married.

Steve Watters, the director of young adults for Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group, said that the trend of fewer married couples was more a reflection of delaying marriage than rejection of it.

“It does show that a lot of people are experimenting with alternatives before they get there,” Mr. Watters said. “The biggest concern is that those who still aspire to marriage are going to find fewer models. They’re also finding they’ve gotten so good at being single it’s hard to be at one with another person.”