My sister and her two babies have been staying at my mom while her husband is travelling. Part of me feels terribly jealous: the part that remembers how it used to feel when my mom used to wake me up with a bowl of Kreemymeel on winter mornings. The other part of me thinks back to the last time I slept at her house and woke up feeling as if all my vertebrae had been fused during my sleep, courtesy of a 20-year futon. This is the side that won, encouraged as it was by reports of my four year old niece waking my father (who usually sleeps until 11am) well before sunrise by turning on all the lights and hitting him on the head with a rolled up magazine.
But I digress. What struck me most about the visit is the fact that said niece innocently asked my sister," Mommy, when are we going to all go on holiday together without daddy so that he can stay at Granny Leslie [his mother]?"
This exchange brings to mind the differences between men and women, of which there are several. Some of them are funny. I am reminded of the time my husband and I moved into our house, amid tremendous excitement. I ran - literally - from room to room, marvelling at the gorgeousness of the first property I owned and reacquainting myself with the features that I had forgotten all about during the months of securing a home loan, packing up my old house, etc. I was brought up shortly in the en suite bathroom. There, skulking in the back of the shower, like a dessicated cockroach corpse no one had thought to dispose of - and engendering similar terror - was a full. length. mirror. I was horrified. First of all, I ain't no 'Our bodies, our selves' kind of girl. I have absolutely no desire to see myself naked. Yes, call me sexually repressed (I'm sure you're right) but honestly - why would I want to be able to keep track - day by day - of the burgeoning colonies of cellulite clustering around my ass? As I stood there, trying to self soothe (I would make sure that my back is always to the mirror! I would use steaming water so that it fogged up in seconds!), my husband walked in, took one look and said "AWESOME. Shower mirror. Imagine the kinky sex we can have now."
Example number two (and I am beginning to fast think that perhaps said husband has only one thing on the brain): The other day, I took myself to a coffee shop called Warm and Glad. I love this name. It reminds me of those nights when you are little and tucked up in crisp sheets and your hair smells of shampoo and you have a cup of Milo next to your bed. Husband has a slightly different take: "Warm and Glad?" he says. "It sounds like a brothel." (Think long and hard, the similarities should soon become apparent.)
So, looking at these instances, one might be tempted to think that men are fun (and funny) and women (or just me, maybe) have body issues and a strange yearning to regress to childhood. But I think my niece's question highlighted something that, for me, is far more serious: the issue of responsibility. My brother-in-law is highly unlikely ever to overnight at his mom; not only because he doesn't share my sister's fear of serial killers, but because the chances of her taking a pleasure trip without her family are rather slim. Yes, there's no doubt that she could, and many women do - but my point is that, if you're a man, there is nearly always a woman to pick up your pieces (both literally and figuratively).
For me, the reason why this is so hard to deal with is because - and forgive me, feminists - I don't think those bra burners did me any favours. My husband works incredibly hard - but so do I, often sitting at my laptop at 9pm when I have spent the entire day in meetings, interviews, writing articles and, since I am pregnant, making eyebrows and elbows, too. The difference is that when he gets home, there will be a meal waiting for him. That's because I am there to make it. He gets away with chores that slide because his focus is on work - so if he doesn't feed the dogs, it doesn't matter because I'm there to make sure they don't starve. If I forget, there's no safety blanket.
Yes, this is a whine about household politics and who gets to do what. And as my husband says to me, my views are often conflicting - on the one hand, I see women as precious nurturers who make the world go around; on the other, I expect him to treat me as an equal, not Betty Draper. How different women see this debate is incredibly interesting to me: I was in a meeting with a high powered executive (female) the other day, and we were discussing the issue of work life balance. I was saying that I find it difficult to be expected to run a house perfectly AND work full time, and she looked at me, gobsmacked. "I wouldn't want my husband to run my house," she said simply. "He would never be able to make the bed as well as I can. And I wouldn't want to buy my children cupcakes for Baker's Day when it will take me twenty minutes to bake them with her." This from a woman who doesn't just run a house, she runs a company, and a very successful one at that.
The matter has been plaguing me since I was commissioned to write an article on this subject. My editor (a woman so powerful and blisteringly intelligent she makes the Devil Wears Prada look like Bo Peep) told me, extremely matter-of-factly, that women can never devote themselves to their career without sacrificing their home life. Nor can they become full time moms without letting some part of their potential rot away, like a skin tag that turns black and eventually falls off. She didn't moan about it, she didn't even lament it. It's just the way things are. "You never hear a man complaining about how he's battling to fit everything in during a day," she pointed out.
I, on the other hand, am horrified. Look, I would hate to work until 3am as my husband sometimes does. But on the other hand, I can't really get past the fact that - just because he has a penis and I don't - his life, and the choices he has to make, will probably always be that much easier for him.
But I digress. What struck me most about the visit is the fact that said niece innocently asked my sister," Mommy, when are we going to all go on holiday together without daddy so that he can stay at Granny Leslie [his mother]?"
This exchange brings to mind the differences between men and women, of which there are several. Some of them are funny. I am reminded of the time my husband and I moved into our house, amid tremendous excitement. I ran - literally - from room to room, marvelling at the gorgeousness of the first property I owned and reacquainting myself with the features that I had forgotten all about during the months of securing a home loan, packing up my old house, etc. I was brought up shortly in the en suite bathroom. There, skulking in the back of the shower, like a dessicated cockroach corpse no one had thought to dispose of - and engendering similar terror - was a full. length. mirror. I was horrified. First of all, I ain't no 'Our bodies, our selves' kind of girl. I have absolutely no desire to see myself naked. Yes, call me sexually repressed (I'm sure you're right) but honestly - why would I want to be able to keep track - day by day - of the burgeoning colonies of cellulite clustering around my ass? As I stood there, trying to self soothe (I would make sure that my back is always to the mirror! I would use steaming water so that it fogged up in seconds!), my husband walked in, took one look and said "AWESOME. Shower mirror. Imagine the kinky sex we can have now."
Example number two (and I am beginning to fast think that perhaps said husband has only one thing on the brain): The other day, I took myself to a coffee shop called Warm and Glad. I love this name. It reminds me of those nights when you are little and tucked up in crisp sheets and your hair smells of shampoo and you have a cup of Milo next to your bed. Husband has a slightly different take: "Warm and Glad?" he says. "It sounds like a brothel." (Think long and hard, the similarities should soon become apparent.)
So, looking at these instances, one might be tempted to think that men are fun (and funny) and women (or just me, maybe) have body issues and a strange yearning to regress to childhood. But I think my niece's question highlighted something that, for me, is far more serious: the issue of responsibility. My brother-in-law is highly unlikely ever to overnight at his mom; not only because he doesn't share my sister's fear of serial killers, but because the chances of her taking a pleasure trip without her family are rather slim. Yes, there's no doubt that she could, and many women do - but my point is that, if you're a man, there is nearly always a woman to pick up your pieces (both literally and figuratively).
For me, the reason why this is so hard to deal with is because - and forgive me, feminists - I don't think those bra burners did me any favours. My husband works incredibly hard - but so do I, often sitting at my laptop at 9pm when I have spent the entire day in meetings, interviews, writing articles and, since I am pregnant, making eyebrows and elbows, too. The difference is that when he gets home, there will be a meal waiting for him. That's because I am there to make it. He gets away with chores that slide because his focus is on work - so if he doesn't feed the dogs, it doesn't matter because I'm there to make sure they don't starve. If I forget, there's no safety blanket.
Yes, this is a whine about household politics and who gets to do what. And as my husband says to me, my views are often conflicting - on the one hand, I see women as precious nurturers who make the world go around; on the other, I expect him to treat me as an equal, not Betty Draper. How different women see this debate is incredibly interesting to me: I was in a meeting with a high powered executive (female) the other day, and we were discussing the issue of work life balance. I was saying that I find it difficult to be expected to run a house perfectly AND work full time, and she looked at me, gobsmacked. "I wouldn't want my husband to run my house," she said simply. "He would never be able to make the bed as well as I can. And I wouldn't want to buy my children cupcakes for Baker's Day when it will take me twenty minutes to bake them with her." This from a woman who doesn't just run a house, she runs a company, and a very successful one at that.
The matter has been plaguing me since I was commissioned to write an article on this subject. My editor (a woman so powerful and blisteringly intelligent she makes the Devil Wears Prada look like Bo Peep) told me, extremely matter-of-factly, that women can never devote themselves to their career without sacrificing their home life. Nor can they become full time moms without letting some part of their potential rot away, like a skin tag that turns black and eventually falls off. She didn't moan about it, she didn't even lament it. It's just the way things are. "You never hear a man complaining about how he's battling to fit everything in during a day," she pointed out.
I, on the other hand, am horrified. Look, I would hate to work until 3am as my husband sometimes does. But on the other hand, I can't really get past the fact that - just because he has a penis and I don't - his life, and the choices he has to make, will probably always be that much easier for him.
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