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"Do-Nothing Feminism"

Unlike most media folk, I get a huge kick out of women's service magazines: Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, etc. ... ...And it's remarkable how much entertainment value you get from the Seven Sisters and their cousins for less than three bucks per issue. I usually skip the ubiquitous sex articles, which always strike me as depressing and futile, with that rank odor of failing marriages. But I love the lurid pieces on accident survivors and couples drowning in credit card debt and mothers dealing with leering school bus drivers. But these magazines almost never have anything to do any more with what for years was their core purpose -- keeping house -- and that's too bad, because God knows the post-"I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar" generation could use help in this area. I've had it with what I've come to think of as Do-Nothing feminism, which is far more pervasive and insidious now than the much ballyhooed Do-Me Feminism. Do-Nothing feminism makes domestic incompetence a point of pride: "I just CAN'T cook/sew on a button/clean up my house...I'm just..too...BUSY!" is its neurasthetic cri du coeur, the modern equivalent of 19th-Century fainting spells.

Posted by Peony on August 20, 2004 4:54 PM |

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this juxtaposes well with m'lynn's post on men
http://directly.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_directly_archive.html#109285655645835047
domestic skills are on the decline, not the least of which because too many women have the attitude that if it can't be perfect, why bother? that is why I love the fly ladies, even though I don't agree with them about shoes.

Posted by: alicia | August 21, 2004 12:23 PM

Funny, I found the shoe thing very helpful (if nothing else my socks are cleaner now.)

Thanks for the link to M'Lynn's superb post.

Posted by: Peony Moss | August 21, 2004 2:09 PM

Also check out the IWF's blog by the two Charlottes. Very good.

And I vote for the shoes with Flylady as well. My only modification is to wear strap on sandals when the temp is hotter than, say, 95 or so.

Made a big difference for me--which surprised me. I think she's right--it puts my mind more in "work mode" or something.

Posted by: MamaT | August 22, 2004 7:58 AM

The shoe thing does work, but I hate it. So only when I know that I have to get some stuff done, will I put mine on. BTW, "do-me feminism" -- brilliant!

Posted by: jordan | August 26, 2004 6:51 PM