Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The Housewife Competitive Instinct

It's not the 1950s anymore, when women were expected to stay home once they got married and keep a spotless house, cook delicious meals, entertain any company that came in and eventually, raise the children. However, there are days when it seems that a wormhole has opened up and swallowed me right back into that decade.

I posted after Thanksgiving about my frustration over the ingrained gender roles in my husband's family. That still frustrates me, though it took until recently to realize exactly why that still reverberates in my head.

I was never raised to think that my only stock lay in the cleanliness of my house, the perfection of my cooking and my skills as a hostess. But as the time has passed, it feels like I'm being shoved into that spot, a square peg in a round hole.

My husband has (hopefully!) a good life. Our house is clean, I try to cook dinner as many nights as I can without collapsing from exhaustion, and I love to entertain friends and family to dinner.

But I am not the Perfect Wife in the culture I have married into. I argue, I refuse to cook meat, and I don't want to reproduce at this point in my life. I prefer to sit quietly and observe my surroundings before jumping into a conversation if I'm not perfectly comfortable with the situation. I don't trust easily, I only hug and kiss people I love (and never, ever on the lips unless it's Mr. V), and I don't go along with things for the sake of peace.

No, I am not a good wife in the stereotypical sense. But sometimes, being an individual nags on me too.

Every day, women are bombarded with suggestions for how they should live their lives. The TV blares ads for every possible cleaning product, always showing a woman doing the cleaning. Advertisements for food products invariably show a woman doing the cooking, dressed beautifully with nary a hair out of place. And let us not forget the unrelenting chorus of "You're too fat! Your husband will leave you for a better woman! Try this diet plan because you're just not good enough right now!"

It affects me. The women in those commercials have what looks like the perfect life. No one yells, no one struggles, and certainly no one ever leaves the dishes in the sink for a few hours because she'd rather read another chapter in her book.

My (probably imagined) deficiencies at being a housewife are never more pronounced than when The Housewife Competitive Instinct rears its ugly head.

I am one of two young V wives. My brother-in-law was married four weeks after us. My sister-in-law is a peacemaker, while I am a fiery-tempered grouch at times. She embraces the culture she has married into, while I rail against it when something about it frustrates me. She can start a conversation with anyone about anything, while I prefer to be approached for discussion. In short, we are very, very different people. This has caused some friction in the past, as she has been around the family for an extra couple years, while I was a new entity (and still am, at times.)

The situation brings out said competitive instinct. I want the family to think I am wonderful and that I'm a good wife to Mr. V. I want them to accept me without expecting me to be a clone of my sister-in-law. And so, I bake.

Every.single.time.

My sister-in-law has said before that she is not a baker, so I take on that role. If someone is having a get-together, I want to bake something. I need to prove to the family (I feel like I should be capitalizing that) that I am good at something. I may not eat meat, I may not want to pop out a kid right now, and I may not have any desire to ever take in my in-laws to live with us except in the case of a dire emergency, but I AM GOOD AT SOMETHING!

These thoughts will be continued in another post.

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