I was making chile rellenos today when I was struck by a horrifying suspicion. More and more lately, I’ve been staying at home rather than spending the entire day at coffee shops, working on my laptop, writing or researching my current projects (I love coffee, you know, but it adds up). So I’ve started making breakfast, then fixing something for lunch, and then thinking what to make for dinner for my cute little boyfriend and myself. Then, of course, I need to clean the cooking area, which expands to the living room, outward… you get the idea. So I'm starting to feel I may be turning into somewhat of a possible interpretation of what one would call a… well… housewife. Horrors! I’m not married, I’m not even what you would call the nurturing-type, so I have no idea how or when this ridiculous suspicion popped into my head; but now that I think about it, it seems pretty likely and terrifying. Of course, domesticity is not a pastime limited to housewives… but this is what it leads to for sweet girls like me, people, and it’s the rightful fear of any young independent woman!
Being between projects that pay (that is always the trick of freelancing), I have less to contribute to things like rent payments, and therefore more time in the day that can seem unproductive, strictly monetarily speaking. That leads to guilt that persuades me to consider my subsidy to the “household” which leads me to cook, clean and fluff. Here’s what’s most foreboding: It’s satisfying. I have closure at the end of the day because I create things with my hands—my secret pleasure—and I have impending goals to make my own bread, paint chairs and pick out end tables.
A few women in Great Britain are calling the apparent new generation of work-at-home housewives the “Generation Nigella.” The tag is being bestowed upon the woman who now replaces the feminist work-horse of the nineties for the modern gal who wants everything; wants a fabulous career but also wants to be at home taking care of babies, being domestic, or even making a career of being domestic, like Martha Stewart. Critics argue this to be neither achievable nor practical and a sign of a generation of women who don’t know what they want. We, in our ambitious post-feminist age, have confused ourselves with too much to do.
In any case, my mom is a great cook and finished grad school after I left for college, so today I’m daring to make tamales and other foods I've never made before as a tribute to her kick-ass, do what you want, I’ll-be-bringing-in-good-dough-next-week sort of way. That's the plan for today, anyhow.
1 comment:
Good Job! :)
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