The Feminist vs. The Housewife
As you all know, I just started this blog. I also set out an ambitious agenda of blog posts for myself. From the beginning, I’ve felt a little insecure about the name, Feminist Housewife. It excites me but it also makes me feel exposed. A few dear friends cautioned me that a lot of people might be turned off by the name, but Ive also got a decent amount of positive feedback about it so I figured I’d just see where it led.
I thought, though, that explaining what Feminist Housewife means to me would be a great blog post and good to get done early so that anyone visiting my website could get a primer on it. I’ve decided that I want to keep these posts short, nice, tight little 5 paragraph essays, like in high school. I figured that would be enough of a challenge, but not too much. I could bang that out quickly and then get on with my ambitious schedule of posts.
Well, as it turn out, it was not easy to write a 5 paragraph essay about something as complicated as feminism and its relationship to the housewife. There was no shortage of material, all of a sudden I looked down and saw that I had 2 full pages. And I hadn’t even gotten to everything I wanted to talk about. I took a few of those paragraphs and started a new document and that quickly grew to 3 pages. I was in over my head. And I was getting stressed.
Christmas is in less than 2 weeks. I’m a mom and I am very busy getting ready for the big day. A lot of that stuff is extra, activities that I do because I like doing them, baking cookies, and writing Christmas cards, and decorating. A lot of stuff isn’t really optional, like presents and cooking and cleaning and hosting. But I do love this season and think it’s an important time to be with loved ones and remember years gone by and celebrate. At least my housewife side does.
But my feminist side is frustrated. I want to dive deep into this writing, totally devote myself to it. And I really can’t because I have all this other stuff to do to create the spirit of the season for all my loved ones. Or I’ll just be stressed about both activities. So I have decided to give myself some grace and set aside the internal pressure to do this important intellectual work right now. I’m going to relax and enjoy the holidays. It’s been a busy year and I’ve really worked hard. And so this will have to be enough explanation of what I mean by feminist housewife for now.