Took me of all people long enough to do this one, huh?

The RantyPants Award: What gets under your skin? I mean really under there? And pisses you off like there's no tomorrow? Write about that.

I�ve been trying to write this entry for what, months now?

"My mother said it was simple to keep a man; you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom ... I said I'd hire the other two and take care of the bedroom bit." �Jerry Hall

"The truth is not only that the pull of tradition is strong, but that it pulls more on women. The burden of changing traditional assumptions and relationships from the wedding bells on still rests with wives. The name is just the first thing they "give" or "keep." -Ellen Goodman

I was having a conversation with my mom (before we started the family feud- like I said, I�ve been trying to write this for awhile) about couples living together, and she brought up the latest predictable study saying that couples who live together before marriage get divorced more, blah blah we'veallheardthisbeforeathousandtimescakes. I said I really haven't the faintest why this happens, at all, since in all practicality when you're living together as a couple, you pretty much are married. Mom mentioned some people she'd known who lived together for years and then broke up a year after marriage and said "Well, maybe why they broke up is that after the marriage, they had different expectations. That she had wifely duties now and things like that."

She actually said "wifely duties." My mouth was hanging open.

"That once you got married, there became tasks that the woman would do, instead of just doing whatever like they did when they were just living together," she continued.

I about GAGGED.

"Mother, if you think that I... I know Auntie Dolores thinks that once I get married I'll finally settle down and become domestic, but if you're expecting that to happen, you've got another think coming. Because it's not going to happen. Heck, Dave doesn't even mind that I'm not domestic, beyond making the occasional room comment. He thinks it's cute."

She took that news rather well, though for all I know she may have been thinking "Yeah, well, she'll change her tune once the ring is on her finger." And ironically, what she thought most likely isn't true.

At times like this, I always have a flashback to seeing Flower Drum Song and one hot mama character singing "I Enjoy Being A Girl." And I keep wondering "Why?!"

In my costume class on Saturday, the conversation turned disturbing. We�d been going on about how despite our sewing abilities, we really weren�t all that domestic of people. The teacher (K) said that people tell her she�ll be a "good wife" because she loves cooking and sewing. She�s all "Hell no, I will NOT." The other girl (R) said she likewise wouldn�t be a good wife because "All my cooking comes from boxes." Y�all can guess what I said about it. You�ve heard it before a billion times or so by now.

Looking back on what we said, I find it disturbing that they (NOT just me, mind you, girls who are a year or so younger than me) thought the same way I did: to be a "good wife", you have to cook and clean and breed and all that stuff. None of us define "good wife" as someone who�s nice and emotionally supportive to her husband or anything like that. It did not even remotely occur to us at the time to find that odd.

R. and I have significant others and freely admit that we�re also going to be "bad wives" to them. Now, if the only qualification to be with a fellow was that we were domestic, the two of us would be single. But we�re not. So presumably we�re liked for something other than our domesticity or lack thereof, right?

So why doesn�t this matter when we think about wifehood? Why do we automatically assume that because we�re not 1950�s housewives, we�re going to be awful wives to our husbands? Doesn�t being nice and sweet and caring (or hell, being good in bed) matter at all?

I�m not sure.

And isn�t it sad that I�m not sure?

My ex used to tell me that being a good partner was really all about being loving and supportive to the guy, it wasn't about how well you cleaned his house. I never, ever believed him. Not for a second. I figured he was either deliberately lying to me or deluding himself. The cultural messages had gone too deep inside me for that. And since he did date my Domestic Goddess friend after me, it didn't exactly add to his credibility in that issue.

"We weren�t reminiscing, although we have a mountain of mutual history between us, but discussing marriage and parenthood, and how the titles of "wife" and "mother" seem to take on lives of their own, outside our own awareness or even consent, until we�re consumed with them and struggling to remember our own ambitions, needs and identity.

Delma Heyn, psychotherapist, not only noticed this phenomenon, she wrote a book about it. Titled "Marriage Shock: The transformation from Woman into American Wife", Heyn attempts to document what she sees as a detrimental psychological and emotional shift that women undergo post-honeymoon. In a nutshell, previously independent and vivacious women slowly modify their behavior, appearance and values to what they perceive as those of a Proper Wife. This gradual suppression of individuality occurs subtly and generally unbeknownst to either spouse, until both are wondering what happened to the feisty sexy women they both fell in love with.

Heyn seeks the source of this misnomer, what delineates a Good Wife, and comes up with only semi-satisfactory responses. She acknowledges the June Cleaver and Donna Reed images, but concludes that this stereotype is hardly applicable in contemporary marriages. After all, women today have grown up with Roseanne, Grace Under Fire, and Sisters, right? We know we are not relegated to the roles of housekeeper, cook, nanny, escort and concubine. So where are these messages coming from?" -Cristy Wright Frey

Jerry Hall pretty much is my model for how I�d like to handle that sort of thing. Of course, I�m not marrying a cheating rock star who can finance that- and we all know she didn�t manage to keep her man anyway. Barring that, I�d at least prefer that everything not come down to Me and Only Me doing it, you know? This doesn�t sound too likely to be a problem doing right now, since we�re fairly similar in cleanliness and when we�re likely to get around to it. Though let�s face it, if he wants me to cook, there will be a problem. The other day he and Hill were laughing at me for something I do when cooking- hey, the cookbook told me to do that! What are you talking about?... at which point, he realized it would not be as easy as he thinks it would be.

But as you hear everywhere, Things Change when you get married.

"Research consistently shows that the vast majority of men and women are committed to equality in marriage.It also shows that most are astonishingly ineffectual at achieving it.

The shock of encountering the ghosts of gender roles past is particularly acute for couples who were sure it would never happen to them." -Susan Maushart

You can bet your ass that I�m scared of being taken over by the Domestic Monster after you-know-what and in short, proving everyone right that all women have to be like that. I can�t realistically imagine this happening to me, but when you read enough articles the way I do, you start to wonder. Living together does make me nervous in that sense because that comes with the territory. It�s one of those things I avoided with the ex, and felt comfortable knowing that he had his own domain to take care of, and I had mine to deal with. I am worried somewhat about what�s going to eventually happen with Dave, given the room thing and the cooking lessons thing. He�s not into genderizing chores now, but if the labels get applied to us, what�ll happen then when 2000 years of cultural conditioning starts to kick in?

"Domesticity is in fact the antithesis of love. Love, by its very definition, is the expansion of self to include another. Domesticity, on the other hand, demands we shrink our selves to meet its requirements. It slowly but surely kills love in a relationship by transforming desire into duty. In love, we give freely and without expectation. But domesticity requires us to give in and give up to meet the requirements of our assigned marital roles.

We are expected not just to perform our marital duties but to do it with pleasure. Love has become a requirement for a "good" spouse." Lakshmi Chaudhry

All the time, I�m hearing women talk about how "wifely" they�re being because they just baked or did something else domestic, and how good they feel that they did this. I�m not talking about say, Christian fundamentalist women here, these are modern, cool, tough chicks who have minds of their own. And yet, it�s still "wifely" to do something in the kitchen. Would it be "wifely" of their husband if he decided he wanted to make a pie? Is it "husbandly" when somebody of either gender mows the lawn? It's one thing if you like to do that stuff (and even I, Ms. Non-Domesticity, was a prominent member of the group formerly known as Future Homemakers of America in high school, albeit more for the fashion design than for anything else), but when a woman does something "wifely" specifically because she's in a coupled relationship and that's what you're expected to do as a woman in that relationship, or if she does enjoy doing the "wifely" thing on her own, but feels better about herself as a woman and wife when you do it, then, well... honestly, it disturbs me no end that thinking like this continues. You're not any better than that? You think you have no worth beyond what you did around the house? It makes me want to cry.

"As a woman, I was raised to expect that I'd do housework eventually. I've read books for ideas on how to keep track of what needs doing, I've tried various techniques and systems, and I've generally put some thought into how best to keep up with the work. Bert didn't have the same expectation, and it's not at the front of his mind nearly as often." -Alana Wingfoot

I never thought this sort of shit was going to apply to me, of all people. All this expected domesticity, all this "when are you going to have babies?" crap, and ME? *snort* Yeah, RIGHT. I NEVER thought I�d get engaged, mind you. I expected to get bitched out for the rest of my life for not being married, but I figured if I wasn�t engaged, at least people wouldn�t be thinking that a Miraculous Personality Transformation was about to occur at any second, along with the biological clock and baby hormones. And y�all wonder why I haven�t been jumping up and down at the idea of breaking the news to my family besides the other problems...

Despite my wanting a significant other all these years, it never occurred to me that this is the kind of thing that came along with getting one. I used to laugh at my mother when she told me that I should be doing my ex�s laundry (note: ex never asked me to do that, nor was he doing mine. Not that he would have known how to do any with colors, mind you), and I was all "We�re not married, we�re not living together, I�m not the maid- why on earth should I do his laundry?" The last time I was at Dave�s house, guess what I ended up doing. If she only knew, Mom would be delighted. "The MPT must be starting! Break out the champagne!"

Don�t get me wrong, I�m not sorry I got engaged or anything. He�s too good to not snap up. But along with the "Yay! I�ve got a lovely fellow who adores me!" stuff going on, now I feel like I�ve got the weight of two thousand years of Wifely Expectations dropping onto my head, whether I want them or not, whether I plan to obey them or not. Many people will think that because I do (a), I simply must do (b) through (x), even if I�d really prefer to stick to (c), (y), and (d), you know? And it annoys me that women aren�t far enough along in (for lack of a better word) emancipation from stereotypical roles by the time this hit me so I wouldn�t end up having to deal with it for the rest of my life. That I�m going to end up in arguments all the time and have people thinking I�m a shitty wife because of who I am. Nice. It makes me want to smack people.

"There has always been a question rumbling through the ranks of feminism that people ask, but no one has the answer to. Why is it that changes made to women's roles never seem to stick?" -Janis Cortese

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