The cherry on the cupcake

[shewhomust]

I thought I had already said all I had to say on this subject. But it occurred to me this morning, as I was washing up, that if I were to list the tokens of female oppression which my generation thought we had seen the last of, but which are inexplicably embraced by The Young Women of Today - well, weddings would come in well above home baking!

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Do you mean the wedding or the frou frou? We married because the law made it seriously inadvisable for us to stay unmarried.

Unpacking

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Truthfully, a generation ago we thought that marriage itself was on the way out.

But as you say, there are legal reasons for marrying; we thought that would change, but it seems not!

Which is why - in that rather compressed posting - I spoke of weddings, not of marriage. I did, however, mean weddings, not just the attendant frou-frou. That's just the additional twist which makes the whole thing so ironic!

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

if I were to list the tokens of female oppression which my generation thought we had seen the last of, but which are inexplicably embraced by The Young Women of Today - well, weddings would come in well above home baking!

TELL ME ABOUT IT. ;-p

(says she who makes a living off of the attendant frou-frou. I find it ironic that I couldn't care less about the frou-frou part and actually wore a dress that I already owned for my wedding. I just want to promote eco-sustainable fabric and making pretty dresses is one way to do it.)

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Having seen Bridezillas at close quarters, I agree about the weddings. I hadn't read the Guardian article (thanks for the pointer). I'm not sure this is anything new - one of my most beloved set of cookbooks comes from the feminist restaurant Bloodroot, who were suggesting in the 70s that there's nothing inherently anti-feminist in baking cakes (or knitting and weaving, for that matter). And I love frivolous cooking, and am enjoying learning to knit and spin.

However, it might be worth noting that with a lot of this stuff, it's probably a mistake to see it as purely a gender issue - whether from the feminist or the anti- point of view. I went to bed early last night with a good book (Roger Deakin's Wildwood, which contains a lot about woodwork), whilst T made crab apple jelly downstairs. I don't think either of us gave much thought to our allotted role - it's just that I'm finding the Deakin interesting and T is better at making jam than I am.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

*goes back and reads other post*

Home baking's oppression if one's a crappy baker, maybe.

I? Am not. :)

Nom nom nom.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Huh?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

It's a long story; which bit bothers you?

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Weddings and baking as symbols of female oppression.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

As I said, it's a long story. Briefly, then: for little girls growing up in, say, the 1950s, these were among the things it was assumed you would do, when you grew up, whether you wanted to or not. A generation of feminists grew up refusing on principle to do them, and are disconcerted to find younger women embracing them with enthusiasm. Likewise knitting and, as artistatlarge points out below, high heels. These things are not necessarily, in themeselves, either right or wrong, but other people's tastes are often baffling...

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and corsets, too, which have a considerable and passionate following nowadays. There seems to have been some assumption that all these Victorian/Edwardian/Leave-It-To-Beaver trappings of femininity were imposed on women entirely by men, with women having had no hand either in choosing them or in imposing them by social pressure on other women. I don't think that was an accurate perception. A case exactly like "real men don't eat quiche" in which if people follow simplistic, line-in-the-sand rules, they only impoverish their own lives.

[artistatlarge.livejournal.com]

Another towering symbol of female oppression- high heels!

I know the young wimmens who cherish them say they make them feel empowered and sexy and confident and bla bla bla. But the *real* reason anyone wears them is because men find such shoes sexy.

I may own a very few pairs of well-made heels, but in general, I would never spend $500 on shoe that hurt my feet and make it impossible to run.

Oppression, say I!

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Heh.

Indeed. High heels were the sign of being grown up, when I was a child. Though they weren't what passes for 'high' these days...

Also in this connection, mevennen's post on this topic touches on the related issue of feminist empowerment by buying things vs. domestic enslavement through making things.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

We do find them sexy. But then again, people regardless of gender or orientation doing things they wouldn't do just for themselves and even adopting them as habits for the sake of being attractive to other people isn't uncommon. Men, by and large, hate neckties, but we'll wear 'em if need be.

(I know the tone of this sounds like I'm disagreeing with you, but I'm not sure I am.)