The Power of Neologisms!
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
A Stepford Reboot
We've come a long way, baby. The ideal woman of the 50s was coiffed, pearled, and aproned—a bastion of motherhood and wifehood, completely fulfilled by the perfection she creates. Snacks on the table when the children walk home from school? Check. Kind words for a child with hurt feelings or scraped knees? Check. Nutritious breakfast to fuel a family headed out the door to experience the day? Check. Perfectly prepared homecooked meal in the oven just waiting for the arrival of a hard-working husband? Check.
In her role as the Beaver's mother now forever preserved by re-runs, Barbara Billingsley serves as the go-to cultural reference of an ideal 50s woman. But looking at her today, we can't help but notice what we did not see: an identity other than that given in service to her husband and sons. At the same time modern women laugh at the idea that a woman could actually want that role for herself, we are also still drawn by the ease with which she fulfills her family's needs. We know that it is only a television show. We know that it represents a very small slice of actual life experienced by women in the 1950s. Yet we have naturalized her experience and it overwrites whatever reality was actually experienced by women of the time. And the efficiency of the system she seems to command is enviable to any modern mother.
Today we enthusiastically celebrate the emancipation (so to speak) of wives and mothers who are now freed to manipulate their own paths and disrupt historical male roles of husband and father. There are ongoing obstacles, certainly, but women have made inroads in every area of male strongholds, including combat and sports. We can have it all, if only we stay organized, exercise, push hard enough, and work as hard as men do. Or can we? For all of the perceptions we have supposedly shed in our journey, the identity of "mother" is still loaded with a powerful set of concepts and emotions. The modern mother, far from progressing, has not changed her traditional identity role, but simply taken on the additional role traditionally assigned to fatherhood. And the modern mother is one who is somehow capable of perfectly blending these roles and if she fails to do so, she merely needs the right organization. Bluntly put: to fail to do so is to admit to failure as a mother.
In the past 40 years, mothers have joined the job force enmasse. This has spawned an entire industry dedicated to a client who is busy, savvy, capable, and bankrolled by her own efforts. Working Mother magazine is one such animal.
Yet for all the promise that the title offers, Working Mother actively works to create an unattainable standard. Recently, Working Mother began featuring celebrity mothers on their covers, whose lives are a far cry from that of the average working mother. "There is no typical day for me. That’s something I realized a while ago," says actress Amy Brenneman, featured in the October 2010 issue. "So we have a terrific nanny who comes in the morning because some days I leave before 5 a.m." And a nanny is a reality for some working mothers. But the article goes on to say that her contract states that her children have their own trailer on set, an idea clearly unrealistic for all but a small minority of women. And the "real" women they profile are highly paid and highly positioned, features of employment millions of mothers do not share. Furthermore, both mothers and children are fluffed and polished to perfection before having their photographs taken in an elaborately staged scene meant to look like their own homes. This further serves to replace the reality of working motherhood and replace it with a manufactured, idealized, Stepfordized image of reality.
It is the Stepford Wives rebooted for the modern age. Instead of mere perfection at home, Stepfordizing requires perfection at work as well.
In her role as the Beaver's mother now forever preserved by re-runs, Barbara Billingsley serves as the go-to cultural reference of an ideal 50s woman. But looking at her today, we can't help but notice what we did not see: an identity other than that given in service to her husband and sons. At the same time modern women laugh at the idea that a woman could actually want that role for herself, we are also still drawn by the ease with which she fulfills her family's needs. We know that it is only a television show. We know that it represents a very small slice of actual life experienced by women in the 1950s. Yet we have naturalized her experience and it overwrites whatever reality was actually experienced by women of the time. And the efficiency of the system she seems to command is enviable to any modern mother.
In the past 40 years, mothers have joined the job force enmasse. This has spawned an entire industry dedicated to a client who is busy, savvy, capable, and bankrolled by her own efforts. Working Mother magazine is one such animal.
Yet for all the promise that the title offers, Working Mother actively works to create an unattainable standard. Recently, Working Mother began featuring celebrity mothers on their covers, whose lives are a far cry from that of the average working mother. "There is no typical day for me. That’s something I realized a while ago," says actress Amy Brenneman, featured in the October 2010 issue. "So we have a terrific nanny who comes in the morning because some days I leave before 5 a.m." And a nanny is a reality for some working mothers. But the article goes on to say that her contract states that her children have their own trailer on set, an idea clearly unrealistic for all but a small minority of women. And the "real" women they profile are highly paid and highly positioned, features of employment millions of mothers do not share. Furthermore, both mothers and children are fluffed and polished to perfection before having their photographs taken in an elaborately staged scene meant to look like their own homes. This further serves to replace the reality of working motherhood and replace it with a manufactured, idealized, Stepfordized image of reality.
It is the Stepford Wives rebooted for the modern age. Instead of mere perfection at home, Stepfordizing requires perfection at work as well.
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