Still shocked that one of those nasty “fashion” TV-round-ups criticized Jessica Lange for showing her old-lady arms at the Emmys. Never mind that she won! (They didn’t even fucking MENTION that!) But they did mention her (likely) plastic surgery, while sneering that her arms still look bad. Jesus Christ, she’s 64, has two Oscars… is there NO ESCAPE for ANYONE?

No matter how well-achieved a woman is, no matter that she has had her faced stretched to the limit already, dammit, just look at those ARMS!

Infuriating.

The thing is that feminism is always the culprit! It’s truly miraculous.

1) The more rights you have, the easier it is to ask for even more. As in, there is less of a chance you will be laughed off the stage or, you know, verbally or physically attacked.

2) Feminism is about women, not men. So I don’t really care how the ‘revolution’ has affected men except in relation to how said men now affect women. Whether or not they’ve progressed more than women does not concern me in the least. If, however, we’re discussing how men’s rights relative to women’s actually impact women’s lives… then I could give you more than a non-answer. In short, wrong question, Maureen.

Besides, is there any reason why feminism shouldn’t benefit men in addition to women? Seems like we were (and are) all imprisoned by rigid gender roles, and patriarchy hurts men too.

Anyway, this entire point is moot, because correlation does NOT equal causation and there’s lots of reasons for women to become slightly less happy that have nothing to do with feminism.

She’s also leaving out single women/mothers. While I might be saddled with the housework simply because I refuse to allow a man into my home, I am quite happy just because of the fact that I can make the choice to not allow a man into my home and to have the luxury of living a life independent of a man.

Yes, I get pissed off about the state of world. But that fact has nothing to do with feminism. That fact has to do with society’s constant refusal to treat women of any class or race as fully human. Feminism has absolutely nothing to do with why I’m so often full of anger and frustration. Patriarchal society, which is exactly what feminists are trying to fight, is what makes me livid.

My mother and a couple of my “uncles” are masters of those rules. My parents might of showed up a total of 2 times to “parent/teacher” events, my third grade teacher use to ask me if I even had a mother, she wanted to talk to her about something, mum kept blowing her off.
It is the “Why” that is important, mother knew if she *allowed* herself to be caught up in school drama, she would be even more over extended than she was, and end up miserable.

When I got older, like 12, I was in charge of house cleaning, if it got too much for me, the ‘rents would hire a cleaning service that I’d supervise. I took over mother’s garden too, as she is ummm close to retirement age.

Both my parents are professionals, they make good money, why should mum and dad work 50+ hours , often on odd schedules, AND keep up the house, when they could “offload” it.

Entertaining, Americans are rather silly; they entertain in their homes, we entertain out most of the time, when we did have open houses, they were catered and the cleaning service showed up the next day.

Granted it is a professional+ class existence, but that is who Dowd is talking about in her article.

Contrast this to my SO’s mother, who is middle class and has a 40 hour J-O-B, 3 grown children she frets about incessantly , a traditional husband who doesn’t do squat around the house, etc. She cooks, cleans, did the school thing, active in her church, bleh bleh bleh. Of course, she is a miserable human being; she is a mistress of what does not matter.

Women need to drop the second shift, and stop getting involved in community affairs. If those things are truly important,the guys/powers-that-be will pick up the slack, making them weaker and women stronger. Or we will be watching what’s left of pathetic 1950esq society burn to the ground, I’ll bring marshmallows =(^ . ^ )=

As for the home disparity…In 1970, how many men volunteered to be SAHD? How many men knew how to wash their own clothes or operate a vacuum cleaner? How many men did the grocery shopping? I wouldn’t presume to argue that anything is fair. Clearly, we’re in a cultural transition phase, but there are quite a few of us who have egalitarian relationships with men in and out of marriage. How many do you think there were in 1970?