Tracy Hahn-Burkett has an essay in Babble today about her rarely clean house. Reading it, I felt as though I could have written it myself. I hate clearning. Last Sunday, after I spent an hour doing dishes (I think they multiply like rabbits if you let them sit overnight) and then cleaned the master bath and master bedroom, I marched up to my husband and asked him, “Are we going to dinner, or is it coming to us?” Mostly because there was no way I was going to make another mess that had to be cleaned up.

At the same time, I hate the idea of a messy house. Seeing mail and school papers and toys and books pile up on the kitchen island drives me batty. Especially when I have to shove them out of the way to serve breakfast.

One legitimate reason I want to keep the place clean is that I want to teach my boys how to do chores so they won’t think it’s “women’s work” when they’re grown and married. But I really think that, sometimes at least, part of my aversion to a messy house is that I’m only worried about what other people—and by which I mean other women—would think if they were to pop over unannounced. So, unlike Hahn-Burkett, if I know I’m going to have guests, I turn into a cleaning—or at least a straightening—crazy-woman. Am I alone in my madness, or is this something else we do to ourselves to help project that superwoman image: “I can work and raise the kids and keep my house spotless. What, you can’t?”

Tags: babble, bad parenting, housekeeping

Aside from all the swell Alaska trivia (salmonberries, moose eyeballs, baleen etchings), Sarah Palin’s new memoir has enlightened me about one important thing. For at least a decade, I have puzzled over this new type that showed up on the political scene in the mid-'90s—the Republican “mom” politician. Here was a creature who could work fiendishly, have many children, and still smugly call herself traditional and anti-feminist. Honestly, it makes no sense. It’s like when my kid says he didn’t eat the Oreos but the crumbs are right there on his face. In Palin’s book, Going Rogue, this worldview still makes no sense but it does appear to, thanks to these few tricks:

—Mention Title IX in a confusing way. Sarah Palin likes Title IX because it allowed her to play basketball, which is something elite Northeastern women apparently don’t do. She writes that she is “proud” of the legislation and a “product” of it. But then one paragraph later, she quotes an obscure book ranting against the National Organization for Women and other “so-called ‘women’s groups’” that got it passed. She does not attempt to reconcile these two views.

—Talk about “Neanderthals” and “good ole’ boys.” Palin uses these words often. This might seem very 1970s cooperative of her, as if she wants to say, see, Maureen Dowd, see Dayo, I am just like you! I can spot the oppressor! But that’s not what she means. She’s using the phrases more like Dolly Parton or Thelma and Louise might use them: These are patriotic, God-fearing Neanderthals, and they are our husbands and sons.

—Don’t EVER say ambitious. This rule comes from my favorite passage in the book. Palin is rocking Piper on one of those glider rockers and snuggling her, and thinking maybe she should be a stay-at-home mom after all. But then no, a little voice inside her is telling her she has to run for governor: “Was this ambition? I didn’t think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons. Purpose calls.” An ambitious woman running for governor. Yuck. But a purposeful woman? That’s godly. That’s hot.

—Praise God. You can get away with almost anything if you’re called to do it, and you have the appropriate Biblical passage at hand to back you up. In Palin’s case, the push to run for office came from Jeremiah 29:11-13: “'For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘Plans for peace and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope.' ” Anybody out there want to interpret that? I myself have heard Christians use that particular one to justify dozens of possibilities, from cafeteria worker to parole officer. Seems to me “mom” would fit just as well.

—Take your kids on the campaign trail. This is a key one. A feminist leaves her kids at home for a couple of days with relatives or a babysitter while she campaigns. An anti-feminist drags her kids on 12-hour car rides across Alaska so she can attend a meet-and-greet, because they all “love” campaigning with mom.

—Never admit you’re wrong. One of the key victories of feminism was giving women new choices. Palin has improved on the model by never making the wrong one. A weaker woman might admit that maybe she should have prepared a little more for the fatal Katie Couric interview, or paid more attention to Bristol, but Palin is beyond that. She is the new, improved model—confident, liberated, and chosen by God.

Tags: Going Rogie, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin and feminists

Defenders of high fashion's promotion of impossible bodies and anorexic attitudes usually hide behind the argument that high fashion is "aspirational." Because of this, it's all the more comical how high fashion greedily co-opts street fashion, particularly from freewheeling rock and hip-hop subcultures. And that's the underlying struggle in this story of how androgynous fashion is on the rise (again)—creative hipsters of every sort play around with putting men in women's clothing, and high fashion co-opts it by proclaiming that it's bold new direction in fashion.

The writer, Ruth La Ferla, erroneously claims that this trend is the first time since the '70s that fashion has taken such a decidedly gender-bending turn. She's either forgetting or deliberately blocking out the early '90s, when exactly the dynamic she describes happened the first time. Everyone remembers the Seattle scene exploding into the mainstream on a sea of flannel shirts, but it was so much more than that. The decidedly feminist bent of the scene resulted in a wave of gender play in street fashion. Men picked up painting their fingernails, and let's not forget how Kurt Cobain wore dresses in public, and skirts on men popped up on runways as a result. Better remembered is the playful way women's grunge fashion dealt with gender. Let's not forget the baby doll dress/combat boots combination.

It's not surprising to see these trends creep back. It's not just the gender-bending that I'm seeing in indie clubs, either. Flannel shirts are coming back in a big way, and so is wearing a thrift store cardigan over a tattered band shirt, though seeing that come back made me realize that I never actually gave that fashion up. It makes perfect sense; the trend-setting rock musicians who are leading the way were young and at the right age to absorb the awesomeness that was indie-punk fashion in the '90s. Of course they're going to bring it back and amp up the gender play.

It's depressing to see this pop up in the New York Times, and worse, to read that it's showing up on the runways. The return of playful androgyny to street fashion has been going on for years now; I think I first started seeing men wearing women's jeans and V-neck shirts in punk clubs four or five years ago. But once a trend has been chronicled in the New York Times, that usually indicates it's on its way out. Putting men in high heels on the runway takes it to a ridiculous level that will hurry the trend to its grave.

Too bad. For the past few years, I've really enjoyed seeing men in skinny jeans and tight shirts, or wearing other feminine-looking fashions. When you put these clothes on a man, you really see how much women's clothing is about accentuating sexual appeal, and if you like dudes like I do, then that means that the visual atmosphere at a rock show or some other too-hip event is significantly improved. When men start wearing baggy pants and shapeless shirts again, the women who like to look lose out. And I'll be left with no one but the New York Times to blame.

Tags: gender-bending

I'm too hardened against the oft-written-about abstinence message of the Twilight series to allow myself to easily bask in the generally enjoyable gushiness of the movies (gushiness here of course being emotional, not blood-based). New Moon was no exception. The latest installment of the Twilight saga offered plenty of gorgeous panoramas, heavy breathing, and romantic tension so thick and cushy it would feel like red velvet drapes if one could reach out and touch it. Early on in the movie, Edward realizes he has to leave Bella for her own safety, and Jacob, her soon-to-be-werewolf friend, is all too eager to take his place. A romantic triangle ensues, even with Edward gone, because he appears to Bella in visions whenever she puts herself in danger’s way (OMGZ! He obviously still loves her, guys!) In an effort not to spoil it, I won’t divulge more plot specifics, except to say that the abstinence message is as strong as ever. True to the book, Edward comes back and finally offers Bella a bite, but not until, you know, he puts a ring on it.

The abstinence message, of course, isn’t really the problem. (Though, personally, the thought of two teens tying the knot without checking out the other’s goods makes me besotted with anxiety.) It’s the nature of their sexual denial that’s problematic. Bella is repeatedly throwing herself at Edward, pleading with him to make her a vampire, and it’s only his admirable willpower that prevents him from feasting on her neck. To do so would hurt her. In the Twilight world, going all the way is an act of purely male pleasure and when it does happen it will be because Edward enters a fit of blood lust and attacks. There is no reciprocity in the sex act, and no possibility for female pleasure. No wonder Edward abstains out of love for Bella—to take her would be to destroy her. A particularly barf-worthy conception of sex, no?

Make no mistake: New Moon is wholly pornographic—emotionally so. Had the sound system been broken and a stand-by orchestra ready on command, the film would have screened like a two-hour-long De Beers diamond commercial. But even the high-pitched emotional tenor of the movie didn’t satisfy my inner romantic. The substance just isn’t there: Bella and Edward are so obsessed with the can’t-have-each-other trope; it’s all they can talk about. And all they do talk about. Ever. I’m afraid that once they bite the bullet, or the neck, so to speak, they’ll both be totally bored. (“How ‘bout those Knicks, Bella?”) Just as Alice, Edward's sister, has unprovoked visions of the future, I kept flashing to a scene of a barefoot and impregnated Bella, playing solitaire under a tree for the rest of eternity. Because really, once the immortal soul problem has been remedied, the movie has given us no evidence these two will have anything in common. And isn’t that how most high-school marriages end?

Tags: abstinence, new moon, twilight

I'm no Protestant, but where I grew up, the work ethic was firmly instilled, religion or not. If you could stand, you got out of bed. If you could walk, you walked yourself right into the bathroom, put your clothes on, and went to school. In my family, only actual, active vomiting really constituted an excuse, and even then, under certain circumstances (big test, a team commitment), you might just be handed a bucket.

It's clear that in the case of pandemic flu, those rules can't and don't apply (it's also fairly clear that maybe they weren't the best rules in the first place). But if you're lucky enough to have kids home with only mild cases of the flu (blogging parents are reporting fevers that come and go while kids stay full of energy and schools requiring that kids stay home for seven days), what's surprising isn't so much how difficult it is to deal with missed work and bored children. What's surprising is how wrong it feels to let a kid who's not feeling that bad just ... stay home. It feels too lenient. It feels indulgent. Won't they learn that when the going gets tough, the tough watch a Scooby Doo marathon?

Maybe they'll learn that sometimes, the most responsible thing to do is admit that the world can keep going without you for a while.

Tags: H1N1 swine flu