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

[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.