On Being a “Stay-at-Home” Anything

There was an article published on Brokelyn this week called “How to Survive as a SAHG (Stay-at-Home Girlfriend),” which drew the ire of many a woman. If you read the article, you’ll know why, but in case you didn’t, here’s the summary:

Girl and boy live together, girl gets laid off. Instead of laying around the house all day and watching television, girl decides to wake up early, cook breakfast, clean the house, cook dinner, spend time with girlfriends day-drinking, makes herself sexually available at all times for her guy. Loves it, but knows it’s a small pit-stop on the way to the rest of her career.

Phew. The article itself is, I’m assuming, supposed to be just a little bit of a satire. It’s a little “my man” this, “my man” that for me. That said, it’s an honest article about something that a lot of people — women and men — are facing right now: what to do when you’re unemployed? It was met with less-than pleasant reviews.

It can be hard being unemployed. I did it for three months, and basically followed the same pattern as the SAHG writer. I became Julia Child, Betty Draper, and Martha Stewart over night. I washed my house from top to bottom, cooked everything in the house, and took up a new hobby: eating the cupcakes I couldn’t stop baking. I got experimental with food, made my own cleaners, painted furniture I found on the side of the road. I began to feel accomplished when I cooked a nice meal. I liked the feeling of having a clean home.

But, like the SAHG writer, I know that this momentary experience of housewifedom isn’t for me, it’s a fun pit-stop on the road to (whatever the hell it is) I end up doing. That being said, I don’t find it backwards or anti-feminist to enjoy housewifedom, the way that some of the feminist bloggers and commenters were expressing.

I see a new domestic movement happening in this country that I find really exciting. Suddenly, these women who have been told all their lives that they have to want a career, or they’re not on the feminist bandwagon, are finding satisfaction in the very things their mothers and grandmothers wanted freedom from. A step backwards? No. We went out and got jobs and realized, “heh, this isn’t the end-all-be-all, and I want to feel connected to my work.” The myth that a woman isn’t a feminist unless she tethers herself to a company is no more empowering than the myth that a woman can’t be a feminist if she tethers herself to the home. A tether is a tether, and working for something that isn’t your own can be dis-empowering, period. I experienced it.

So, to the idea that a return to the home is somehow a step backward, I say, no. To conform to the idea that a woman who stays home cannot be a feminist is, inherently, anti-feminist. Wasn’t feminism supposed to be about choice? So why are we hating on those who choose to stay home? Or have children?

There are people in Washington (and Texas, and Georgia, and South Dakota, for that matter) who want to take away women’s rights. Instead of sitting around judging each others’ life decisions for proper “feminism,” why don’t we play nice and protect those rights that our mothers and grandmothers fought for?

I’m attending the Walk for Choice this Saturday in Downtown Austin, check to see if your city is hosting a walk.