The Occasional Wife.
It is your official midday fluff post. But isn't it funny?!
Oh wait this isn't vintage, this company exists today. Sociological Images (which is increasingly my go-to place for great break-downs of visual sexism) has a great breakdown of their not-so-funny marketing claims.
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Somehow I feel like this service is marketed towards women, though...particularly working moms. I know that me and my ilk often sit around wishing that we had a "wife"...in the white upper middle class suburban 1950s sense of the word... So somehow I don't find this offensive, but rather an acknowledgment that those women actually did ALOT of work...work that women like me now have to do in addition to our jobs, meaning zero time for any sort of non-job-or-household-task related activities.
OK, so I cheat and post on feministing too sometimes.
the thing is, there are plenty of places where one can hire a housekeeper or some other domestic person to take care of various household tasks. though i personally have serious reservations about the morals or ethics of it.
my first impression was this company was advertising the W.ash I.ron F.uck E.tc labourer.
and while i may currently stay home and do most of the domestic tasks, it certainly would be refreshing to see male domestics being something other than the lawn/pool boy.
"the thing is, there are plenty of places where one can hire a housekeeper or some other domestic person to take care of various household tasks. though i personally have serious reservations about the morals or ethics of it."
This comment confuses me. What are your moral or ethical reservations about hiring someone to clean your house? Is it that those jobs are typically labeled as "women's work" and therefore only filled by women? Do you feel that it is wrong to not clean your house yourself? Do you feel the cleaning industry itself is morally bankrupt in some way?
mostly it has to do with someone, usually a woman or person of colour, doing the housework for a white middle/upper middle class person which is mostly the things i have witnessed.
and some from a neurotic need to "do it myself" - i can thank my dad for that. it took him a year to tile the bathroom because he refused to let anyone else do it - it would cost too much and "they wouldnt do it right."
i just need to know the person who is doing something is being adequately compensated for their time and their labour, especially when im saying "here, im paying you to do this task because i am perfectly capable of doing it, i just dont want to."
Eh. I find this kind of funny. I know this makes me a bad feminist. But, if I were to see this out of the feministing.com context, I would find it kind of clever...subversive.
Yeah, I have to agree. As a working mom with a working dad husband, and two small children, we spend a lot of time looking for people and services to help us out.
We use babysitters, laundry services, cleaning services, lawn services, and it's never enough. I wish these professional women who started this business lived in my town. I would employ them in a heartbeat to de-clutter my house, get the immunization forms together for camp, plan my 5 year old's birthday party, and any number of other things.
I was a young idealistic feminist once too, and I married a young idealistic feminist man. And FF 10 years, heck yeah, we want a 1950's housewife to help us manage al this craziness. I'm willing to pay!
Yeah, I don't actually see any issue with this either. I think it's clever. I totally don't get why this is offensive. Like, at all.
Maybe if the company only hired women, and if those women were required to wear an apron, pearls and heels to work everyday, I might be rankled.
But this--it's funny. And kind of subversive. What's the beef?
"Hire a husband" has been around for a while. (or maybe it's hire a hubby, I forget.)
We have that here too. "husband for a day" I think it's called. Basically an oddjob person.As someone with no nearby grandparents
I have to admit, I have watched Big Love and thought having extra pairs of hands would be an enviable situation.
I see the logic to the old extended family model. Believe me I see the issues too:)
Oh my god, I have had that exact thought! If only my husband were into the idea... ;)
Personally, it has been a long-standing joke between myself and my peers (including my partner) that we would like a wife - because it makes life much more convenient that way. No dishes, housework, cooking, someone that exists purely to make your life better, rather than someone in a personal relationship.
The fact is that the label wife, and for that matter, husband, both carry historical connotations that are difficult to remove or reclaim. My personal belief is to get rid of them altogether.. My partner is my partner, my gorgeous boy, my partner in crime, and one day will be my spouse as well. It's difficult to resist the will of society if you are trying to do something different with the same dictionary - You'll constantly be fighting the subconscious connotations.
We say we'd like a "housewife." We're poly, and when we talk about a third adult in our family, my dream situation would be a woman (because I don't have any interest in other men) who would be willing to do all of the domestic tasks. So, yeah, we use this terminology, too.
Yes, that is part of the problem. Using the word wife implies that the work that these people do is women's work...that housework is something that women/wives are supposed to do, that it's almost part of the "job description". Men/husbands are certainly just as capable of doing this type of work as women, so I do not see the need to perpetuate the tired idea that this is only work that women do.
I think the whole point of the company is that they understand that the skinny smiling figure in high heels drinking a martini is a mythical image that represents a theory of womanhood which modern women know never actually existed anyway. My husband and I always talk about wanting one of these mythical "wives" that will buy the groceries, clean the house, etc. Sure, I'm a wife, but I am not, and will never be one these mythical creatures. I go to work and go to graduate school and so does my husband, and quite frankly if we didn't stuff the mounds of dirty laundry in the walk in closet it might consume us both a la "swamp thing." That reminds me I need to buy clean underwear on the drive home from work.
The ad reminds me of this "classic piece of feminist humor" by Judy Syfers:
http://www.cwluherstory.com/why-i-want-a-wife.html
Therefore, I find it quite funny, and I would hire this company (as long as they treat their employees fairly!)
I think misselaneius makes a good point about language as well. The word "partners" seems to me to be a much better choice than "husband and wife" to describe egalitarian heterosexual marriage. Both "husband" and "wife" carry a tremendous weight of oppressive cultural baggage.
I actually think that the ad cleverly foregrounds the gendered privilege structures that attach to the word "wife," and that that kind of foregrounding is positive cultural work. Call it irony as a political tool.
What is bad about being a traditional housewife ? There should be the choice to go into a career, but do we lable the other choice "bad" now ?
Money isnt everything.