13 May 2013
As a result we would have many dinner parties, of which I am not a fan. The rise of cookery shows has turned many of us into food snobs, and they are now just another arena in which to play one-upmanship with your neighbours. I’m more interested in who’s on the chairs than what’s on the plates and would have been happy with a bowl of chips and a good natter. Alas, the dinner party prevailed. But what really annoyed me was not the snobbery, but the odd rules about the work involved. I would do almost everything: shopping, laying the table, starter, side dishes, desert, clearing up. He would roast meat. But because his bit was the “centrepiece” the fancy schmancy bit that everyone liked the most, all present would conclude that he had done the cooking and thus deserved all the praise. Never mind the hours of slogging behind the scenes and the tedious clearing up, for which I got no thanks at all.
I used to think there were man jobs and woman jobs, and that’s the way life was. You know the kind of thing: woman tidies up, man puts out bins. Woman does washing, man mows lawn. It’s just the way of the world. But recently my eyes have been opened, and it turns out it’s not that simple. Look carefully at man jobs and woman jobs. A pattern emerges.
Man job is not man job. It is show off job. It is “play with gadgets, big impact, demand much praise and gratitude” job. Henceforth known as the Glory Job. He can be bothered to do it because it attracts much in the way of praise. Women, on the other hand, do the tedious, must be done, practical and entirely unglamorous jobs that no one either notices or praises.
Before you poo-poo this theory, think about it. Show off recipe that takes all day to cook and trashes the kitchen? Man job. Tedious food shopping to make recipe and clearing up afterwards? Woman job. Making a cosy fire? Man job. Hoovering sitting room after ash went everywhere? Woman job. Exciting drive to new holiday destination? Man job. Tedious taxi service for kids? Woman job. Men hog all the jobs that are fun or involve gadgets, setting fire to stuff, building stuff or whacking stuff with hammers. Women dust and hoover and wipe and scrub and sweep. Not even a tiny bit fun.
Think of it this way. You have most definitely said this at some point: “Oh darling, those shelves look fabulous, thank you so much for putting them up. What a difference they make to the room”. You have most definitely not heard this at any point: “Oh darling, that dusting looks fabulous thank you so much for doing it. What a difference it makes to the room.”
It beggars belief that I have gone past the age of 40 being duped for so long. But no longer. If my husband wants clean socks, I’m gonna need to hear just how much he needs them. You want me to wipe down the kitchen surfaces? Start crafting a sonnet to my J Cloth skills.
