How to Drive a Woman to Drink

Well, there are two things upon which I should like to wax pointless today:

1. Why on earth women are still being pressured into being Mrs Domestic Goddess while at the same time being pushed into having a glittering career.

2. How completely bloody irritating this new 'Recession Chic' thing is.

These things may not seem obviously related at first glance but, oh, believe me, they are and I think that number 2 is going to make number 1 even sodding worse. Allow me to explain...

I'm most certainly not the first to comment on how women are meant to 'have it all' these days and yet most of us are pretty much incapable of keeping  two personae ticking along in harmony. Has anyone asked, 'Why the hell should we?!'? I find it perplexing and enraging that it is still perfectly acceptable, maybe even expected, that men can live and breathe their career and not bother with domestic achievements whatsoever. However, being a career-focused woman makes you a sexless freak but being a housewife makes you a servile throwback. Obviously, we must do both in order to pass the Modern Womanhood test. And it is entirely unthinkable not to be brilliant and proficient at both. Eh? Am I missing something here? Ok, so there's been this slight fashion for Mr I-Know-What-a-Dishcloth-Is-And-Even-Use-It-Sometimes but I remain shocked at the number of couples I know of where both work full-time and yet the woman still does the majority of household tasks...and is often secretly proud of this fact despite her complaints. There's this whole 'Aren't I so capable and amazing and isn't my husband/partner so lucky to have me?' competition going on that no one seems to want to admit to participating in. I think it's bollocks. As my husband said to me only last night, 'Feminism was about giving women choices, not making them feel guilty about not doing everything'. I absolutely do not want women to be banished to their kitchen of origin but I also don't want women to feel that they have to sacrifice their home and family life in order to appear successful.

Right, now on to number 2. The epitome, or nadir depending on your perspective, of the Recession Chic Movement is the Channel 4 programme, Kirsty's Homemade Home. I do not wish to get personal about Ms Allsopp, as I'm sure she's a lovely person, despite being a Tory, and so I shall be directing my ire at what her efforts represent: further guilt to be piled upon womankind for not knitting her own bedsheets along with growing her own organic vegetables, performing pornography-worthy tricks on her husband on a nightly basis, having sealed a deal that will finally see an end to world poverty, and putting the final touches to little Maisie's sequined ballgown for the school's mega-million pound production of Cinderella. I feel exhausted just thinking about what some women put themselves through. I'm sure the ever affable Kirsty Allsopp would claim she is suggesting no such thing, merely demonstrating how one can achieve a pleasant home environment without resorting to the slavery of consumer culture. Except that's not what will happen in practice. Oh no, wave goodbye to the days when we could genuinely find a bargain through tracking down wonderful vintage pieces of clothing, furniture, any piece of random crap your heart could desire. It's just another excuse for chi chi boutiques to hike up the price of sub-standard goods by 5,000% and add a bit more one-upwomanship to proceedings: 'Oh, Jane, where did you get those fabulous swimming trunks for Martin?' 'Well, Claire, I crossed-stitched them myself from the pubic hair of an Albanian goat-herder...all organic, naturally'. Some one may have to stop me from committing Actual Bodily Harm at some point.

Having said all this, there is probably one thing that currently gets my Albanian goat-herder above anything else and that is this new-found patronising attitude toward men, as encapsulated by the sort of dire programmes I can't help myself from watching on BBC Three. I am talking, of course, of those cultural highlights known as Don't Tell the Bride and Mad About the House. For those moon-cave dwelling types amongst you (or perhaps simply those not prone to the severe lapses in taste to which I am subject), the premise of these programmes is that men are completely hopeless at doing anything that doesn't involve chucking bits of dead animals on a fire or knocking shit down with a massive hammer, so let's point and laugh at the poor darlings as they get it so horribly wrong. Incidentally, they usually manage to do a pretty good job without actually killing anyone or destroying large parts of the country, despite what the premise would have us believe. I hate this, it's the same mentality that has advertising execs showing us that the only men who do housework are a) a bit thick and helpless, so let's make it as simple for their neanderthal brains as possible b) are teeny tiny weakling men, who, frankly, are barely men at all or c) are men dressed as middle-aged women...and at this point I want to give up and throw myself off a bridge somewhere. This attitude simply perpetuates the idea that these poor little men need all the help that us multi-tasking, common sense-abounding, inherently nurturing and motherly women can give them. So, we're back to women flipping well doing everything once again. I don't have enough scream in me to cover this one.

At this point, I shall cease my diatribe of rubbish and admit that I do not have an adequate solution to any of this and will simply continue to watch the weirdness of gender politics unfold upon the world stage. Can we not just be nice to each other and treat everyone as equals, no matter what their background or circumstances? No? Well, balls to the lot of you, then.

Craptastic

Ok, so I think we've established that I'm not very good at keeping these things up on a regular basis. Or perhaps just that, when things are a bit tough, I don't really use this for its intended purpose: The Random Rantathon. People always tell you that you should 'Write it down!' when you are struggling and miserable and when life is getting you down, you can always go...down town. Errrr, to pen a literary masterpiece or hit the shops? What a choice. How about listening to really depressing music and staring into space every time you get a precious moment in which to indulge your melancholy? Because that's what I've come to realise recently: time for wallowing is pure luxury. The only problem that this seems to kick up is, while you're mindlessly carrying on, the God of Knackeredness has a tendency to leap up and bite you in the arse. One morning, you find you simply cannot raise your leaden frame and you realise you have hit that almighty wall of exhaustion. It doesn't help that your little one year old son has given you a stinker of a cold at the same time and you feel that your brain is actually slowly leaking from your nostrils. Pleasant. And why is that, on the days you feel a bit lively, the weather has conspired to keep you in all day with said child who is insistent upon doing everything possible to fatally maim himself? Ah well, the cold is abating, the weather seems genial again, and Melancholia has buggered off somewhere else for the day. Bring on the washing up! I can conquer mountains of house-related activities today! Until a certain little piglet awakes, screeching his gungy face off and we have the inevitable pitched battle to get us out of the house in one (or maybe two) piece(s) so that he can try to kill himself outside of the home for a change.