Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Anti-Woman



We have come a along way from the image of the 1950s housewife. The woman that did all things domestic. She beared the children, washed the clothes, cooked the pot roast, baked the cookies and vaccuumed in her high heel shoes without every smudging her lipstick. Okay, so I realize this is a dilluded media produced image of what it really meant to be a woman in the 1950s but the domestic part is correct for the most part.

Enter the next generation of woman and the feminist movement to punch this domestic role in the face and kick it while its down. I suppose living by the philosophy that if we can't beat 'em join 'em woman started to dress like men, talk like men, work like men, have casual sexual affairs like men, and focus less on the estrogen induced roles they used to perceive as right.

Now this paves the way for my generation who is faced with the backlash of all of this. We perceive success as career success, education, a kick ass social life, and lots of money that we earned on our own. So all the hard work that was put into the feminist movement left us with this ideal that to appreciate what those feminist fought for we need to be the "Anti-woman." Screw kids, screw our quest for a man to settle down with and obtain the picket fence dream with, screw dependency. Now I am not entirely sure that we all consciously realize we are doing this, and some of us don't do it at all, but this is the new deeply embedded social standard for woman. The 1950s picture of Betty Crocker perfection is being replaced with woman that work too hard, look down on woman that chose to be housewives, and are all about success and self-accomplishment. I am not sure what would be harder being "woman" or being "anti-woman." Either way its alot of work. We just can't win ladies.

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