This morning upon waiting in the gynecologist office to undergo yet another wonderful exam that reinforces the satisfaction of the sexist biological accident that being a woman is, I unfortunately had forgotten to bring along reading material to occupy myself while waiting. My attention was forcefully distracted by the television screen and the loud, jubilant bubbles of excitement emanating from the dark haired, bright smiling, Daytime Emmy Award winner, Rachel Ray. First let me say that my previous grievance about being a woman and all the biological inconveniences we must uniquely endure throughout our lifetime wasn’t an attempt to denigrate my existence as a woman. Like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, I would not trade my existence for anything different. I simply recognize that “there is pleasure in toothache”. Therefore there is a certain satisfaction gained from the suffering only we as woman can understand and would not prefer to be anything else. Yet less than six minutes of listening in and being witness to this show, the bulldog feminist in me began to pick up on a scent of the patriarchal reinforcement of self inflicted servitude oozing from this woman and her excitement over basic household and kitchen products. Before getting into rationalizations for my sniffing suspicion of Rachel Ray being just a counterfeit pioneer in the advancements of women across the country, a slight illustration of what those six wasted minutes of my life looked like might be appropriate in assessing the absurdity of the situation. I unwillingly tuned in while Rachel was interviewing another woman, by which if my context clues serve me correctly, had just invented or revolutionized a new form of the crock-pot. In Rachel’s model kitchen television set, the two ladies were merrily demonstrating to the audience the wonders of this new kitchen gadget, the way B-actors on late night info-commercials do with such artificial enthusiasm, you’re sure they’re overcompensating for the cheap plastic uselessness the product’s real performance. Like every other female television host, Oprah, Rosie O’ Donnell, Ellen, a commercial demonstration would not be complete without a free gift for the audience – everyone’s own new-age crock pot. At Rachel’s riveting announcement, the audience applauded and cheered as jovially as you would if someone had just cured cancer (and no, that is not a sarcastic hyperbole). After a brief commercial break, the show continued with Rachel giving awards to those people who have been innovators in their community to raise information on healthy eating habits. The screen flashed to a little montage anecdote about a father who cleverly devised a way to get his five year old to eat vegetables. Sitting at the family’s dining room table, the blonde haired, blue eyed boy would pick the broccoli off his plate and put it on the table while the father sat next to him just casually putting the broccoli back on his plate.In honor of his son’s ability to, “turn into a little monster” when being told to eat his vegetables, the father wrote a story book about the “veggie monster” in which he read to his son and playmates. Drifting off from the exhilarating chronicle before me, I failed to hear the exact context of the “veggie monster” story itself. Feeling disappointed I didn’t get to hear just how effective this father’s story book was on getting his son to eat his vegetables, I reminisced back to my childhood and the persistence of my brother and me against eating our vegetables. My mother would simply force us to sit at the table all night if we gave her a hard time about eating anything that was put on our plates. If by bedtime there was still food on the plate, she would wrap it up and put it in the fridge for us to eat for breakfast. Not to sound too abrasive, but this woman is nothing but an inflated celebrity housewife who plays a role model for unsuccessful housewives across the country, who have to find a way to make their existences more bearable by finding new ways to keep their monotonous routines of servitude exciting. As inspiring and creative as this woman may seem, she is only enforcing the standards of this patriarchal society that imprisons women into a subconscious form of slavery to their children and husbands. This is absolutely not an attack on the maternal role of women in the household. I have contemplated the future possibility of having a child and creating a home in which to live with my chosen companion. The biological accident that allows me the potential to create a life remains astonishing. Whether it may be a maternal instinct or my human compassion to the people I love, I harbor a strong nature to care for those people. But not at the cost of my dignity and sacrifice of my human potential. I have no desire to make a child my life’s work. Why should I forfeit my accomplishments and goals to serving a man and his children just because of my biological abilities? Why should anyone subjugate themselves to another group of human beings just because of their gender, race or ethnicity? We live in a society where child-worship is more prominent than Christianity. Women surrender their lives to birthing, raising and caring for the children and household of a man (typically speaking). There is a riptide of patriarchal expectation after a certain point in young adulthood where women are desirable as a tool of reproduction.Though throughout human history women have generically played the role of birth giver and housekeeper, we’ve reached a new stage in society where women now have the potential to excel beyond the kitchen. The predicament lies in womankind’s unwillingness to employ those opportunities because of the plethora of self-deprecating customs embedded into their minds from the moment they are born. Little girls are given baby dolls and plastic kitchen sets to play with. In junior high school, girls take home-ec classes where they learn how to cook and sew while boys take woodshop and learn how to build. Women are from day one prepared for the servitude of motherhood and housekeeping. Shows like Rachel Ray’s only perpetuate the stagnation of women’s advancement in this country. The unfortunate aspect of being a wife and a mother is not inherent in the roles itself but the ultimate sacrifice the woman gives to serving others and the lack of motivation to accomplish anything more with her life. In The Feminine Mistake Leslie Bennett tells of how her mother held a career and took care of her family at the same time. She also paints examples of the dangers of willingly choosing a life of housewife servitude: “On New Year’s Day 2006, The New York Times published an essay by Terry Martin Hekker, a mother of five who had once crusaded as a self-appointed spokesperson for the joys of being a full-time homemaker. ‘I spoke to rapt audiences about the importance of being there for your children as they grew up, of the satisfactions of ‘making a home,' preparing family meals and supporting your hard-working husband,’ she recalled. ‘So I was predictably stunned and devastated when, on our 40th anniversary, my husband presented me with a divorce.’ ”
Unfortunately these situations are not as rare as you think. Though it feels like there will be a noticeable generation gap between my generation and my mother’s generation, there are still an abundance of women out there whose only aspiration is to being a housewife when their potential exceeds such roles. In turn, women become completely financially dependant on their husbands and end up on food stamps forty years down the line after he leaves them for a younger model. Motherhood, homemaking, cooking, sewing, cleaning – unfortunately are all inherent in being a fulltime housewife as it is easier to fulfill these duties without a career. Yet I think the necessary common ideology that is absent in the feminine collective conscious of our society is the confident ability to be independent and self-sustaining, the ambition to maximize one’s existence as far as the potential reaches and enough self respect to not accept a lifetime of submission, unappreciation and servitude where identity is compromised and dignity robbed.
