A Question for the Women
Where exactly do other women learn about things such as decorative pillow shams, vs useable pillow cases?
Or the difference between dishes that are just pretty and are not placed in a dishwasher or microwaves vs practical dishes?
Where do women learn about clothes that match and how to judge other women for having socks that don’t match?
Is there a class my mother failed to take me to where we are supposed to learn how to tell if something is an antique or if it will clash with the drapes?
I am tired of feeling like a failure as a woman (and often being treated as such) because these things go right over my head. Is there a crash course I can take to catch up?
Some kind of tomboy recovery center where I can learn all about carpets and stain removal …
I read blogs like Mrs. B’s and feel like a big fat loser. Am I alone in this?
Am I the only woman who practcies domestic magick fixing the toilet or replacing the radiator hose in the car and not making perfect little curtains for the kitchen?
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I feel the same way sometimes. My mother wasn’t a tomboy, but she wasn’t overly domestic either…so a lot of it I wonder. Google saves my life!
(Oh, and the pretty dishes thing? If it starts sparking in the microwave, that’s how I know.
Flames are pretty!)
although i’m not a pillow sham kind of gal….i just have natural instincts when it comes to girly stuff…i guess it’s the artist in me!
Kudos on the toilet and radiator magic.
I think I will go do some “cleaning out the goat pen” magic. Taking care of the practical stuff is so satisfying! You’re not missing anything!
This did make me laugh. Whitefootprint’s right, your not missing out. As a child I had a nice balance of both…but mostly I enjoyed making mud pies and filling them with chickweed, I even ‘borrowed’ my dads shaving foam to give them a topping…there’s that balance again. I like the idea, as Ruskin said, of ‘never having anything in your house that is not both useful and beautiful…. what the hell is a sham anyway haha!
I completely understand this post. I often wonder how those same things are taught and how I missed them. On the outside, my mother looks like an altogether woman but she’s good at deception. She’s the one yelling and screaming at the football game on tv.. and my father is the one on the couch quietly reading next to her.
I feel less beautiful and less graceful in the simplest ways of being a woman because of it.
It works the other way around too, you know? I don’t know anything about cars other than how to drive them, I hold a screwdriver like I’ve never seen one before, and I know nothing about re-tuning the television to pick up the new channels.
But I decided that I have more interesting things to be thinking about like whether that tree will talk to me, how beautiful a lake looks today with the sunlight dancing on it, how many stones in a stone circle is too many?
Why would I want to know about football, mechanics or home improvement? Let all the other men do that!
Your piece made me laugh out loud – it is beautiful! I’m a 45 yr old british HW living on the English Welsh border, fucking living it, as you say. Although I’m positively ancient by your standards (of course you’re young at heart at 30, because you’re still young xx) I can totally relate to the tomboy dilemma – except that it isn’t a dilemma, its a gift.
Don’t beat yourself up over other peoples projections. There are enough like us for us to know that we’re not isolated, despite the view from the window.Gender expectations are jurrasic in the worst sense, where as being liminal in terms of stereotypical female 9or male)identities is ancient, timeless and desirable when seen as part of a wholistic community of peoples.
Just don’t read Mrs.B, whoever the hell she is!
Dvotchka xx
PS. 14 is one too much for a stone circle
Dvotchka,
I think you’re being fourteenist, there. Te stones are old enough to decide for themselves, I say.
Gwas.
*grin*
SO been there! I tried to learn, and found some helpful things. Those nesting hormones bit me hard, but helped with the learning, somehow. They taught me how to plan the nesting slowly through my then meagre budget. I am now a bit more “together” in my own sense of dressing/decor than before. Mostly tho’, I learned that all that fussy-poo froth is a distraction from how empty they are inside. Sad, really.
There’s a fun company that sells mismatched sox, yano!
I reckon so too, now you put it like that…