If the new crop of television shows is anything to go by, then it seems the allure of the single girl with her sparkly high heels and desperate man-chasing tribulations, is no longer holding our attention. Instead, one-night stands and Cosmopolitans seem to have been replaced with something TV execs think is a little more interesting and relevant: wives.
There's The Real Housewives of New York (and the embarrassing spin-offs of Atlanta, Los Angeles, New Jersey and Orange County); Arranged Marriage (a new reality show centring on women desperate to get hitched as soon as possible), and the latest Channel Ten hit show The Good Wife - a story about a wife who, despite her ex-politician husband's philandering ways, sticks by him at all costs (including the release of a video of him sucking the toes of a 20-year-old call girl).
All this (especially the success of The Good Wife), combined with the latest spate of mistresses, explosive affairs and high divorce rate, has many asking the following question: what exactly are the characteristics of a "good wife"? And ... is it the wife's fault if her husband has an affair?
If the TV show is anything to go by, then being a "good wife" means forgetting all about your own career (no matter how well you did at uni or how many billable hours you clocked up in your prestigious law career) to devote all your time and energy to your husband.
While to many career gals this might sound like something out of a 1950s horror film, over the weekend I decided to clock up some wife-related research. After all, having spent so much time around singles, I feared I might have been out of the loop when it comes to marriage. (Plus I was curious to see if there was perhaps a more modern definition of a good wife floating around.) Hence I attended a dinner party that I knew would be filled with coupled-up sorts, and was a little shocked at what I discovered.
One wife spoke about how, despite her hectic office job, she made sure she was home every night by 6pm to cook her hubby dinner. Every night.
Another said her man didn't even know where the laundry room was, not that she was complaining since she "preferred doing it myself" anyway.
And a third, a newly pregnant newlywed, raved about how excited she was to have morning sickness because "it means my husband has actually had to learn how to switch on the washing machine".
Yikes. A little confused as to what exactly had happened to all my alpha female go-getting girlfriends (it seemed like only yesterday they were working their way up the career ladder knocking out the blokes in the process), I left the party mightily confused.
The whole situation reminded me of something that feminist author Fay Weldon recently said:
"At work, gender should not come into it. Women are right to refuse to make the coffee, but when you get home I'm afraid you have to make the coffee. It's such a waste of time trying to tell your husband to pick up the socks or clean the loo. It's much easier just to do it yourself."
Is that what has happened? Were my girlfriends simply finding it easier to do everything themselves? Were they afraid that if they asked their men for a little assistance, they might get shut down and placed into the "bad wife" category?
Doing some soul (and online) searching, I found a story written by Shane Watson of the Times Online, who says Weldon's musings are complete bollocks.
"Good wives are what women had to be before we fought for the right to be good at something else," she writes. "[Today], a woman wants to be good at her job, a good mother, a good friend, a good daughter, good for her age, good in bed, but a good wife? Do me a favour."
Hooray! Finally, we're moving forward, right? Well, not exactly. Because if we were to follow Watson's argument, would the men be as pleased? Would they adore us more, or less? Would they be happier, or frustrated? Would we be better off teaching them how the dryer turns on, or should we just turn the damn knob ourselves so that we avoid nagging (and him shrinking our favourite pair of underwear)?
I pulled out an old book from my shelf titled The Surrendered Wife by Laura Doyle. It had outraged me back when it was released in 2001 (especially since the author is a self-proclaimed "feminist and former shrew"), as it dared to define a good wife as a "surrendered wife". In other words, according to the author you need to surrender all control over your man and stop telling him what to do, or how to do it, if you ever want a chance at a happy marriage and a happy hubby. Yep, Doyle advocates that you need to "give up unnecessary control and responsibility" and to "resist the temptation to criticize, belittle or dismiss [your] husband".
Argh. Still struggling for the answer, (Doyle, Weldon nor Watson had me convinced), I called up one of my long-term happily married girlfriends who appears not only to have the best marriage I've ever laid eyes on, but her man seems totally trained and transformed from when I knew him as a "player" before they tied the knot.
She explained that it's all about "man training".
"It's making him feel like he WANTS to do the dishes, the laundry and all that stuff. Men want to be needed. Doing everything yourself is not going to encourage him to do anything, or even like you more. It's about giving him little tasks and congratulating and rewarding him with each."
I decided not to pry into what type of "rewards" she was referring to but instead hung up the phone more confused then when I started. I know that whatever opinion I, or any of the experts, proffer up here, is not going to be liked all that much. So the only thing left to do is to hand the topic over to my most trusted advisors ... you ...
No comments:
Post a Comment