You're Not the Boss of Me

So the other day I was taking some Facebook quizzes (I should live in Paris), and I came across one called "What Kind of Wife Are You?" Despite the fact that I am not a wife, I do think that I would be pretty kick-ass at it, and not in a scary desperate-to-get-married-and-make-babies kind of way, but in a stuck up, condescending, over-it-all kind of way. Like I could be a wife if I wanted to be, but I'm not, but I'm still good at it.

And of course, my suspicions were confirmed. According to some Facebook app, I'm totally a good wife.

But this isn't just another blog about how great I am. There are plenty of those already. This one is about my favorite favorite question on the quiz.

It said something like your husband comes home and tells you to quit your job. Your response is.

Now, before I tell you what I said, I have to qualify my response by saying that most of the answer choices were a little absurd and some kind of mean. One was that you'd tell your husband that there was no way you could afford to quit your job on his "puny" paycheck. But my response was "laugh in his face," mostly because the idea that Wes or anyone would say that to me is facially absurd. I'm not saying I'd never quit my job because my nonexistent husband asked me too for a really important reason. But if he told me to, well, either he'd be kidding, or we'd soon be going through a real divorce.

Convenient Gender Roles

Yesterday my partner, SP, spent the better half of the day installing our new medicine cabinet. I spent that same time lounging on the couch, alternately reading, sleeping, and half-heartedly asking SP if he needed any help.

Now, am I capable of hanging a medicine cabinet? I'm going to say probably yes. I love building things, and I'm really good at following directions. But did I want to hang the medicine cabinet? Hell no. So I let my man go about his man's work. He called me when he needed me to hold something and my fingernails to peel the double-sided tape.

As I dozed, I thought about the fact that I was letting my laziness get the better of my ideology. So I think I deserved the slap in the face wake up call that the Washington Post published yesterday. One in a series about the global food crisis (which I'll be blogging about on my other blog which shall not be named--that's still not an official policy, I just like calling it that), the article talks about how, as food becomes less and less affordable, women give up their share so their husbands and children can eat. The woman in the article gets up before dawn to sweep the streets and makes $10 a month to do so. Then she and a co-wife, who also sweeps streets, use their earnings to feed their husband, another wife who has gone blind, and their many children.

It's a pretty stark reminder of how lucky we in the United States are (though don't think there aren't people experiencing abject poverty here), and it's a pretty good example of how, when you improve the lives of women, you improve the lives of everyone.

Now, considering the fact that SP makes up anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of my readership, I think I owe him an apology for my laziness yesterday and a thank you for the fact that, overall, we have a pretty fair, equitable relationship. I just made dinner, but he's emptying the dishwasher as I type.