One More Observation from Presentations Regarding Women's Roles

Matt showed one of my favorite clips during his presentation. It was the scene from the movie "Enchanted" where she is cleaning up the guy's apartment with the help of all the little animals. I love this scene because it is such an excellent parody of the Disney Cinderella who calls upon the mice and little birds to help her with her chores and help her get dressed. In this scene, she summons the little animals to help her and since she is in the big city now, rats and pigeons and cockroaches come to help her. They do a great job of helping her clean and it is just hilarious. But Matt brought out some points I never thought about before. He was mentioning how happy the girl appears while she is cleaning up someone else's mess, and specifically, how comfortable and undaunted she is at having to pull a nasty hairball out of the tub drain. I think this is a good point and so true of our society. Women are still expected to do these nasty chores of cleaning up after other people much more often than men are expected to do the same type of chores. We are not expected to be singing a happy tune and wearing a pretty dress, but for the most part, I think women are still the ones who take care of the nasty jobs around the house. I hope I am wrong and there are many more homes where the men clean the toilets and wash the dirty dishes. To show that things have changed for the better in this area, here's a clip from an old tv show that I'm pretty sure you would not see on a show today:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq_9wu-KjTk
The son is asking his father why his mom does all the cooking inside and his dad does the cooking outside on the grill. The father in this clip actually says, "They say a woman's place is in the home...as long as she's in the home she might as well be in the kitchen." Then he goes on to explain that "men are better at this rugged type of outdoor cooking--sort of a throw-back to caveman days..." Well, I agree with him there; he is acting like someone who came from the caveman days. I don't think women are defined by their role being in the home any longer. Matt had a good point though, that we shouldn't make it seem like nasty chores are "women's work" and she should be happy with it!