Tag: a woman’s place is wherever she wants it to be

The weekly roundup – funerals and cupcakes edition

On By BekkiIn The Weekly ReviewLeave a comment

I’m making an effort to start these up again, to get myself writing more often. And I’m using the Magic of the Internet to post this one in the past, due to a slight hiccup with my hosting provider.

1. My uncle died last week, and so I spent a good portion of this week in transit so that I could make the funeral. My brothers both made it out as well, which meant that the three of us got to squish into the backseat of the rental Kia. You can guess who got the middle seat. I remember going to a cousin’s funeral, back when I was still married, and thinking about what a beautiful community my cousin had built and comparing that to my own life and social circles, which was limited almost entirely to my husband. This time, as I looked around at the community who came for my uncle’s funeral, I thought about all the various connections I’ve made in the past few years, all the community building and volunteering I’ve done, and had a moment of profound gratitude for all the people I’ve made part of my life.

2. Speaking of community, I finally managed to get to the Sex Positive Womxn’s Sangha yesterday. I love that I’ve created something that doesn’t need me present to happen – and I love even more when I am able to show up.

3. Interested in hanging out with me? I’ve been running a social experiment the last few months with an Activity Buddies Google Form, as a way to increase the amount of friend dates in my calendar. It’s definitely producing interesting results.

4. Z made red velvet cupcakes this week, almost entirely solo. I’m equal parts proud of them and concerned that I no longer have an office to take baked goods into. If you’re local and willing to take extra goodies off my hands, let me know!

5. I ordered a Little Free Library kit a few months ago, and it’s sat in the corner of the dining room waiting for me to have time to tackle it. I’m hopeful that my dad and Z will be able to get it assembled, painted, and installed while my dad’s in town the next few weeks, but it’s entirely possible that it will spend the next few years half assembled in the basement.

Links and things

You should have asked: French webcomic artist Emma has a great explanation of the mental load and how this invisible aspect of household labor is borne almost entirely by women.

I’ve been loving Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, which takes the political events happening today and situates them in an historical context. It never ceases to amaze me just how often history repeats.

I was recently given this recipe for the world’s moistest chocolate cupcakes, and if you can get past the inordinate amount of times the word moist is used, the recipe is pretty spectacular.

Leaning Out

On By BekkiIn This is FeminismLeave a comment

Yesterday was the first day in forever that I didn’t have to work.  It was wonderful.  I cleaned the house and made a lemon chiffon pie.  Then A and I took a drive down toward Coney Island, stopped at Spumoni Gardens to grab a pizza, and came home to watch Game of Thrones.

It was pretty much a perfect day.  The kind of day that made me think, I’d be happy doing this every day.  Except that would mean I’d be pretty much a stay at home wife.  And wouldn’t that mean I’d somehow failed?

I feel like women of my generation are supposed to want the high powered career, to become the Fortune 500 CEO or the partner with the corner office or the next Secretary of State.  Between the Anne-Marie Slaughter article and the Cheryl Sandburg book, it’s starting to seem like even though we were told we had choices, we were expected to go down the career path.  Which, in its own way, is as strange as telling women their place is in the home.*

I’ve seen a bunch of theories lately about how to keep women in the work force.  They range from tax incentives (treat child care as a fully deductible expense) to work/life balance suggestions (don’t schedule meetings after school hours).  The problem is that all these suggestions go toward disguising the fact that the American workplace is inherently un-family-friendly, rather than implementing the kind of structural value change that would give women – and men – the ability to have both meaningful careers and rich family lives.

Maybe, then, we’re looking at this the wrong way.  What if women are leaving the work force because they aren’t interested in playing by the same rules that men do?  What if women would rather opt out of the system — some by starting their own businesses, some by staying home with the kids — because they don’t buy in to the corporate ethos in this country?

What if the solution is not for women to lean in, but to drop out?

Let the men run the rat race if they want to.  Let them pile up money they don’t have time to spend.   Let them miss the baseball games and the school plays.  And maybe, by the time I have daughters who are the age I am now, the question won’t be why women can’t have it all.  It will be why it took men so long to figure out that there was a better way for everyone.

*If this sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve written about the subject of women in the workforce before.