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HOME ECONOMICS AND FEMINISM: TIME TO CLEAN UP
Posted by Charlotte on August 17, 2010
Tags: book, book review, do and mend, feminism, housewife, make, vintage
“Now that feminism has reclaimed the territory of traditional ‘housewife’ and empowered it…”
It’s a pity that came up in the press release because they had me at ‘practical advice’. I would just have enjoyed the book, maybe I would have said that it’s useful for anyone to have lying around in case the Internet breaks and they need to fix something.
As a woman with a penchant for vintage clothes combined with a skill at spilling food and drink all down the front of them and with a want for eco-friendly care of my belongings the older way of doing things is sometimes exactly what I’m looking for. Added to that I’m a serial sucker for prim looking things for my bookshelves and, my, Home Economics is prim looking all delicate fonts and illustrations anyone with an eye to past times style would be happy to leave it out for people to have a look at. It would have been fine. But they’re telling us we need this as part of our feminist day.
This is not a feminist bible (though, if we do put one together lets find out who did they design on this). Time isn’t enough to make doing the household chores twee and fun, particularly for those of us who have to wash our own clothes and floors. Particularly when you find that most cleaning and caring roles inside the home and within industry are filled by women. At the end of the day I can safely say it isn’t feminism that makes me want to wash things, its health and hygiene. So where does a book get off telling me that traditional feminist roles being played out in the most traditional of ways is reclamation of anything?
You’d be forgiven for thinking that feminism had better things to be doing, arguing too and fro about prostitution, objectification, lack of care and support for those suffering domestic violence and the many myriad ways violence against women shows itself and what to do about them. You’d think when it comes to the homes feminists would be embroiled in working to make sure refugee and asylum seeking women have somewhere safe to stay that isn’t a prison.
Well, look at you being wrong. Every other feminist you know is secretly swatting up on table manners and ‘the happy way of doing things’ as well as curiously studying how to fold them big old men shirts properly. Oh wait, are you reading that new feminist politics book? Now I see you were using to create a straight line you clever thing.
Hilarious rib poking aside, this book is a practical and slightly scientifically flawed repackaging of age old adages and soft focus advice from yesteryear very much pitched at the heterosexual female keeping the home and family clean and upright.
The introduction pays brief service to the interesting ideas behind flicking through now yellowed and unused home economics text books – homemade eco-friendly cleaners and an ability to mend and reuse your own clothes among them. It also makes the great point that many of today’s time saving implements freed women from slaving at the hot stove and the steaming laundry. But that’s not enough at all to try and crowbar feminism into what is a jovial little book with a few nice tips on removing stains and putting an end to food waste but little else.
But here, take an old adage from my book ‘not everything has to be feminist your feminism will be enough to keep you safe, sometimes’. So buy it, enjoy it, love up the vintage olden times glory but don’t buy or repeat throw away marketing pitches aimed at soaking up another segment of the audience know as “women”.
In the meantime if you know any good books which look at how modern kitchen implements freed women from the kitchen let me know, and if there aren’t any pay me to research and write it.
Tags for this post:book, book review, do and mend, feminism, housewife, make, vintage
August 17th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
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