Prisoners of housework
IT'S officially kaput. Finit. No more will it suck. The trusty yellow vacuum cleaner that has tidied tile floors, cleansed carpeting and inhaled frighteningly sized cobwebs in my abode has gone to that big appliance heaven in the sky.
And I mourn, but not because of any particular "attachment" (pun intended) to the noisy electrical beast.
I am truly unhappy with myself, as my first reaction to its demise -- or as we might say in Hawaii, state of pau-ness -- was panic.
Life without a vacuum cleaner! Where to procure another? Until then, how to cope?
Then I remembered one particular chapter in Germaine Greer's newest book, "The Whole Woman" (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999), which explained how females have been conditioned to embrace the role of housekeeper to fill their time, turn them into big-spending consumers, and divert their attention from other activities outside the home.
Tell it like it is, Ms. Greer:
"These days housework doesn't just use people; it requires a gang of machines: vacuum cleaners, washing machines, dishwashers, driers, food processors, microwave ovens, refrigerators and freezers, immense quantities of water, power and detergent to feed into them and an army of technicians who treat them when they malfunction and charge more than doctors do for a home visit."
"As more and more home appliances have appeared in more and more homes, they have brought anything but increased leisure for the houseworker (who probably also has to earn the money to pay for them)."
"A mythical battle has to be waged by the houseworker against germs, depicted as intelligent beings of deviant appearance lurking under the rim of the toilet ready to infect helpless kiddies if the houseworker should be so remiss as to allow a single one to survive."
"Washing used to be done on a single day of the week, usually Monday. When washing machines became cheap enough to be owned by the majority, washing came gradually to be done on any day of the week, and then on every day of the week. Laundry is nowadays done several times a day."
"The 23 percent of men who will consent to cook when they have a woman in the house do so on special occasions with great song and dance, leaving the clearing-up to be done by her...The few men who do a hand's turn around the house expect gratitude and recognition, so sure are they that, although it is their dirt, it is not their job."
"The men who leave ziggurats of dirty dishes festering in the sink are actually involved in a power play which they have no intention of losing. All they need to do is to exploit inertia and wait it out. Sooner or later the woman will give in, because the squalor is not held against the menfolk but against her."
"The best reason for employing someone else to do your housework is that she/he will work rationally, getting as much done in the time as possible, not duplicating effort in foolish repetition of meaningless chores. Nothing is ever perfectly clean or germ-free; clean enough is good enough."
AH, hah! That explains why a woman's work is never done -- it's because cooking, clearing and cleaning is seen as woman's work! It's an exhausting, maddening cycle.
That does it. I mourn no more for my dead vacuum cleaner. Maybe I won't even get a replacement. Who cares if the castle isn't absolutely spotless?
Now hear this: The queen has abdicated. Long live the queen.
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
dchang@starbulletin.com, or by fax at 523-7863.
