RBP
12-11-2014, 03:03 AM
My fave feminist, Jessica, :puke: and her take on Christmas.
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The holidays bring another set of gendered expectations. This season should be all fun and family, not enduring more chores and consumerism.
I love everything about the holiday season. I like the brisk weather, the festive wreaths lining door after door as I walk on the city’s busy sidewalks – we’ve even decorated our tree already, topped with a cardboard glitter star that I made with my daughter when she was two years old. It’s the hap-happiest season of all!
Unless you’re stuck writing 100 holiday cards to family, friends and coworkers, having to remember to tip the postal worker, baking cookies, standing in line to ship presents to distant loved ones, and eventually cooking a multi-course meal for a small army of Italian-American relatives. Then, jingle bell time aside, it’s a goddamn clusterfuck.
We all know that women do the majority of domestic work like child care, housework and cooking. But the holidays bring on a whole new set of gendered expectations that make the season less about simply enjoying fun and family and more about enduring consumerism, chores and resentment so that everyone else can enjoy rockin’ around the Christmas tree. (I bet even Mrs Claus gets upset that Santa works one night a year but she’s dealing with hungry elves 24/7. That would be almost enough to make you want to over-indulge in eggnog and hurl yourself in front of a reindeer-pulled sleigh.)
Being the holiday point-person can be drudgery. Making lists, wrapping presents, finding sales to indulge a particularly demanding relative’s requests to Santa ... baby, let’s just say the brisk winter weather starts to feel bitter cold outside.
My charming husband tries to help when he sees me drowning in the expectations of gendered caregiving around the holidays – on more than one occasion, for example, he insisted I only buy gifts for my own family and he would worry about his. (In a mistake of epic proportions, I tested that theory out on his mother’s birthday. I’m so sorry, Jill.)
But we know that, if a present doesn’t get somewhere on time (if at all), if the cookies for the school’s holiday bake-off are store-bought, or your family holiday cards arrive just shy of February, it’s not men who get looked at askance. After decades of feminist progress, women are still considered primarily responsible for an entire family’s holiday joy.
And it’s not enough that women actually manage to finish all of these chores – we’re also expected to plaster Christmas grins on our faces the whole time, lest the masses think we’re not thrilled with all the wrapping-paper-inflicted paper cuts.
Last month, for example, former Growing Pains star and current evangelist pain in the ass Kirk Cameron posted a video telling women to make sure to show their “joy” when performing their womanly duties:
Let your children, your family, see your joy in the way that you decorate your home this Christmas, in the food that you cook, the songs you sing, the stories you tell, and the traditions you keep.
That was enough to make me want to sing The Most Offensive Christmas Song Ever. I hope Cameron gets nothing for Christmas this year – or better yet, a copy of The Feminine Mystique.
So please, as the women in your lives work their fingers to the bone to bring you holiday cheer, get up and lend a hand. Santa’s not the only one who keeps a list of who’s naughty and nice.
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The holidays bring another set of gendered expectations. This season should be all fun and family, not enduring more chores and consumerism.
I love everything about the holiday season. I like the brisk weather, the festive wreaths lining door after door as I walk on the city’s busy sidewalks – we’ve even decorated our tree already, topped with a cardboard glitter star that I made with my daughter when she was two years old. It’s the hap-happiest season of all!
Unless you’re stuck writing 100 holiday cards to family, friends and coworkers, having to remember to tip the postal worker, baking cookies, standing in line to ship presents to distant loved ones, and eventually cooking a multi-course meal for a small army of Italian-American relatives. Then, jingle bell time aside, it’s a goddamn clusterfuck.
We all know that women do the majority of domestic work like child care, housework and cooking. But the holidays bring on a whole new set of gendered expectations that make the season less about simply enjoying fun and family and more about enduring consumerism, chores and resentment so that everyone else can enjoy rockin’ around the Christmas tree. (I bet even Mrs Claus gets upset that Santa works one night a year but she’s dealing with hungry elves 24/7. That would be almost enough to make you want to over-indulge in eggnog and hurl yourself in front of a reindeer-pulled sleigh.)
Being the holiday point-person can be drudgery. Making lists, wrapping presents, finding sales to indulge a particularly demanding relative’s requests to Santa ... baby, let’s just say the brisk winter weather starts to feel bitter cold outside.
My charming husband tries to help when he sees me drowning in the expectations of gendered caregiving around the holidays – on more than one occasion, for example, he insisted I only buy gifts for my own family and he would worry about his. (In a mistake of epic proportions, I tested that theory out on his mother’s birthday. I’m so sorry, Jill.)
But we know that, if a present doesn’t get somewhere on time (if at all), if the cookies for the school’s holiday bake-off are store-bought, or your family holiday cards arrive just shy of February, it’s not men who get looked at askance. After decades of feminist progress, women are still considered primarily responsible for an entire family’s holiday joy.
And it’s not enough that women actually manage to finish all of these chores – we’re also expected to plaster Christmas grins on our faces the whole time, lest the masses think we’re not thrilled with all the wrapping-paper-inflicted paper cuts.
Last month, for example, former Growing Pains star and current evangelist pain in the ass Kirk Cameron posted a video telling women to make sure to show their “joy” when performing their womanly duties:
Let your children, your family, see your joy in the way that you decorate your home this Christmas, in the food that you cook, the songs you sing, the stories you tell, and the traditions you keep.
That was enough to make me want to sing The Most Offensive Christmas Song Ever. I hope Cameron gets nothing for Christmas this year – or better yet, a copy of The Feminine Mystique.
So please, as the women in your lives work their fingers to the bone to bring you holiday cheer, get up and lend a hand. Santa’s not the only one who keeps a list of who’s naughty and nice.