An opportunity to wax lyrical for djbebe and her fellow femme-geeks. Suggested topics include female geek bonding and feminist commentary on geek culture.
djbebe's feminist spines have recently been made to bristle by reading some of 1978's Superwoman by Shirley Conran (actually reading this article I feel a bit better but the book made me cringe) which outlines techniques for various domestic duties, but mostly cleaning. For example it helps to have a routine - clean the kitchen on Monday, fireplaces on Tuesday, bedrooms Wednesday, bathroom on Saturday etc - of course if you "work", it may help to share these duties with a friend, but try to find one that doesn't talk too much. But of course if you are "working", make sure you count the real cost including make-up and hair which you wouldn't bother with if you were lounging around the house with the kids.
Superwoman opens with the phrase "life is too short to stuff a mushroom". The sentiment being that in order to have the bare minimum of clean house, happy husband, healthy children (career optional) you just have to eliminate some of the luxuries including manicured nails, spotless walls, and, it seems, stuffed mushrooms. djbebe disagrees: if you just re-prioritize, you can have your mushrooms and stuff them too. Sometimes a stuffed mushroom is at the top of the list. So can one femme-geek have it all - a fulfilling relationship with one's ipod, the occasional stuffed mushroom, as well as a career and optional partner that fit in with all of the above?
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Um, why is it my womanly duty to make my husband happy? Like, can't he manage that himself? Ditto children, happy to take on 50%, but really feel the other 50% should be carried by the one who contributed the other 50% of the DNA, y'know?
And personally, I am more inclined towards finding balance by letting the housework go to hell. I'd rather stuff a muchroom than clean the bath, because at least I get to eat the mushroom afterwards.
I agree with Germaine Greer, who said that women were "liberated" only to find themselves in the same cage as men. It's bigger, but it's still a cage. Once we stop writing newspaper articles about "why don't women have more babies" and start wrting ones about "why aren't more men being parents" then maybe we'll get somewhere.
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