On television last night, I saw a commercial for a children's product called "Rose Petal Cottage." I normally don't pay too much attention to toy ads (owing to the fact I don't have children), but this one caught my attention. The product featured a playhouse clearly aimed at girls and it's rosy little mantra was, "Where her dreams have room to grow." The commercial promoted the many fun things a girl-child could do in the Rose Petal Cottage: Clean house, do the laundry, bake cookies and move the furniture. Oh. Fuck. No. Girls, this is not fun. This is the drudgery you'll be complaining about 30 years from now.
Here's the cheery rhetoric featured in the ads for this progressive product:
Give your little girl a place of her own, with this fabric-covered playhouse that gives little imaginations a place to roam free. Standing just over four feet tall, this cottage has double-sided fabric walls to help little homemakers feel right at home, complete with windows, a Dutch door and chimney. When it’s time to prepare pretend meals, the durable fiberboard stove has knobs that really turn and an oven door that opens! Playing “house” in the ROSE PETAL Cottage lets your little girl build her very own home – and her imagination! – right in your living room!
I admit I played house when I was little, but thanks to the progressive influences of my mother, my scenario also suggested that I ran The New York Times between baking cupcakes. As most women I am acquainted with know--we do run our businesses with the same verve and aplomb most men are capable of doing; yet we still manage the most frivolous bullshit at home. What's up with that? Were we such clear products of our generations that we feel obligated to be the consummate homemakers in our homes yet as sharp and sometimes more accomplished than our male counterparts in the workplace? I'm thinking a short end of a stick here.
The truth is--as women we have broken through bits and pieces of that proverbial glass ceiling and well, that's a long time coming and beyond swell. But at the end of the day when we confidently pass through our front door knowing we were the catalyst that ensured the closure of a million dollar deal, the successful restructure of a business plan or the day to day management of a multi-national business empire, it's still going to fall on our successful asses to take responsibility for the care and feeding of our home inhabitants' dinner. Am I the only one that thinks that sucks?
It's bad enough that this thinking has just started to adapt this shift; that commercials promoting archaic prototypes of what a woman should be is simply a step back? It's perfectly fine to cook and clean and move furniture--I do it myself with personal pleasure on the weekend. However is it the role that should confine the breadth of a young girl's aspirations? I await the day when Hasbro trots out "Orchid Filled Corner Office." I imagine the description will read this way:
Give your little CEO a place of her own, with this designer styled office with Ultrasuede Todd Oldham lounges and Mark Rothko prints. Armed with a buff personal assistant garbed in Calvin Klein, "My Little CEO" has her own conference room, private massage table and state of the art communication network. When it’s time to prepare pretend meals, My Little CEO has a standing table at Nobu. She travels via private jet to meetings in Hong Kong, London, Brussels and Buenos Aires. She keeps a boy toy in each city and uses them to her own end. Armed with a view of Tribeca and downtown, My Little CEO's corner office is in close proximity to designer showrooms, all whom provide her free samples of their upcoming season's line.
Now that's what I'm talking about.
7 comments:
You're a genius.
Oh, hell yeah! Somebody should totally market that!
I seem to have dug my own hole in the area of cooking. I told my husband that his cooking skills weren't all that and sort of took over. Not that he didn't want me to take over. I do believe that it was all part of his ultimate diabolical plan to get me to take over the household - he had had enough of this single father stuff.
Damn my superior cooking skills!
feminazi! Get back in the kitchen & cook.
I never dreamed of being a housewife when I was a kid. I wanted to live in the city and have some exciting job while I dated one guy after another. (And- NO- I didn't steal that from "Sex And The City"!)
But as fate would have it, I married a guy who's job requires frequent moves. Far away from family with two young boys, I found myself staying home, managing the house.
My son came home from school one day and told me they had been learning about the fifties when many women ASPIRED to be housewives-cleaning all day and having a meal ready when their husband came home. Some of the girls in class commented how awful and stifling that sounded. My son chimed in, "Sounds like my house!"
Ouch.
P.S. I taught my boys to do dishes and laundry. I even taught them to sew. I told them many times that women can do anything they want to do. And I reminded them OFTEN that their mom also wrote for the newspaper.
Actually, your idea sounds like a really cool toy set up! Seriously...you should pitch that to Hasbro cuz that is a kick ass idea!
"Sexy Male Secretary Sold Separately"
Technically I think your mother is spinning on your dining room china hutch.
Sistahs:
You are all correct. Cooking skills are always good (they have been known to lure a man into bed) and McVittie--I do love the "male secretary sold separately" idea. Caryl, I applaud you for teaching your boys necessary skills. And Jane, well Jane, you are correct. Mom is reposing in a cherry wood urn on the buffet. But she's spinning like a motherfucker.
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