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November 05, 2005
If there were a 50s-style bake-off going on somewhere I'd probably have an entry...
I should rename this blog Blue Domestic Goddess Sage. I'm currently wearing a dish towel on my head (can't find an elastic), pumpkin bread is baking in the oven, and I am finishing a (somewhat eclectic) baby blanket. I'm also a cranky mess, so Domestic Goddess isn't really appropriate, but there's definitely some sort of 50s homemaking madness going on. Work is stressful and I somehow haven't managed to fit graduate school into my schedule, so I seem to have given myself over to cooking and knitting and working-on-the-apartment. Maureen Dowd says this is the trend of 20-somethings. I disagree with some of her points, but the subtle backtracking of feminism has troubled me. I wonder if I've somehow been influenced by the trend as I've seen it cropping up elsewhere. There has been a half-ironic return of gentlemanly seniority and 50s fashions in pop culture. Dowd's article mentions the vintage-styles aprons for sale at Anthropologie. I've actually been thinking about sewing a retro one with some vintage pink fabric and old lace. The slow food trend and Martha Stewart are encouraging tedious, detail-oriented domestic tasks that require hours of free time and no career other than homemaking. To some extent, playing hostess is appealing to me and I want to be a good cook, but I don't want to have anything to do with a trend that suggests in the general popular consciousness that women are better suited to managing households than managing companies. There's a delicate balance to be maintained here, and I hope the generation to which Dowd refers comes to their senses in this respect. Since D and I share household task pretty much 50-50 (with D picking up more than his fair share when I have bouts of addiction with blogs and blogging) and have similar jobs, we're not exactly working toward the 50s model, but Dowd seemed to suggest an opposite trend. I wonder what the long-term implications are ... a more casual feminism that is palatable to a larger crowd? Perpetuation of the same old stereotypes that keep women from succeeding in the workplace? Younger women seem to be both more liberated (they feel entitled to respect and equality) and less so at the same time (they're less likely to stand up to mild sexism). How exactly are the 50s clothing and cooking trends related to this, if they are at all?
Posted by csageday at November 5, 2005 03:24 PM