Comments | innerbrat: Hello, I'm the Brat, and I'm a feminist who cooks. And knits.

innerbrat

Hello, I'm the Brat, and I'm a feminist who cooks. And knits.

Feb 23, 2009 16:14

Viv Groskop asks if good feminists bake cupcakes? Linked to by moviegrrl, I was so shocked by the title, that my first reaction was to say oh sod off, I can bake if I want to, and went to read the article all worked up to hate it, and ready to pass all sorts of judgements on Groskop ( Read more... )

housekeeping, feminism, knitting

Comments 17

ceitfianna February 23 2009, 16:09:22 UTC

Very well put as always. I just woke up so I'm not at my clearest but I agree with everything you said and you said it better than I would.

wieselkind February 23 2009, 16:19:37 UTC

Rejecting the 'feminine' arts (such and knitting, baking embroidery etc) is surely in someway belittling feminine achievement?

Just because the GREAT MENZ tend not to knit or bake cookies doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile acitivity.

Personally I knit a bit, embroider lots, sew clothes, like baking sweet things, but not because I am a woman, but because I just enjoy them, plus alot of 'masculine' hobbies are more expensive. I'd love to play around with electrics or model planes or something but those are not cheap.

innerbrat February 23 2009, 16:27:08 UTC

I agree with you.

There's a difference between knitting for fun and fetishising a whole aesthete used to oppress women, which is the point I thought I made.

anonymous February 23 2009, 16:43:07 UTC

It was Marple.

davegodfrey February 23 2009, 16:50:32 UTC

This isn't really what the article is about, but I think that being able to cook and sew, and generally be good around the house are useful skills that everyone, regardless of gender should have.

When I was at secondary school we had an arrangement with the Girl's Grammar up the road- they came down to us to use the wood/metalwork rooms, and we went up to them to learn sewing and cooking. At the end of my first year they built their own facilities and the arrangement was cancelled- which was disappointing to me because I was actually quite good at cooking, but crap at woodwork. I don't think I managed to build anything decent after that.

matgb February 24 2009, 00:04:08 UTC

IAWTC

Which is why SB retaught me how to bake cupcakes this evening, as it's about 20 years since I last had a go.

I learnt how to make cupcakes. If "list of things not to do next time" is learning. Told her there was too much mix in each case.

Still, tasty. So yeah, good feminists can make cupcakes. But sometimes the male feminists might be better at it (although, to be fair, they are bloody nice, just, well, explodey).

gramarye1971 February 23 2009, 17:00:56 UTC

Good food for thought here. I think I might feel a little better about this embrace of the domestic arts if there seemed to be a bit more awareness of the reasoning behind the tradition. In our grandmothers' day, you didn't knit socks because you wanted to make cute trendy socks with nice yarns and chat with friends -- you knitted socks because if you didn't, then you wouldn't have socks to put on your feet. You might have made the tradition of chatting with friends while you knitted because it was less boring than doing it on your own, but you still needed the socks and they wouldn't be made if you didn't knit them. Much the same with the other domestic arts: if you didn't know how to cook or mend, then you had raw food and clothes with holes in them ( ... )

mercuriazs February 23 2009, 22:35:06 UTC

Yes! I agree with this. Whether it was through unflattering reporting/quote-gathering or not, a lot of the young women in that article seemed to me to be embracing the feminism of Selective Recall, which is ... I just feel like it's a bit of a stretch to call something subversive just because you like doing it for yourself, but it used to be something that you were pressured/expected to do for your family. That's great, but it's not exactly subversive, to me.

It seems sort of more like ... well. In order to undermine the principles of '50s housewifeism, or whatever we're calling it, you'd have to get around (or subvert) the notion of women baking cakes because it's their natural state of being, or because they're not good at anything else, and not just pay attention to that whole nurturer/mother/provider thing. Just the act of baking a cake, no matter who it's for, doesn't actually seem to achieve that-- you'd need something else. Something like, uh. Power tools? I don't know ( ... )