Letters to the Editor
Sandra M
Published Letters: 578 Editor's Choice: 139
-
Maybe if more women were willing to live in messier houses, the distribution would look more equal
[Read the article: The second shift still sucks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I"ve observed in my own household as well as my friend's that women who insist on the housework meeting high standards of cleanliness are more likely to get stuck doing that work.
My husband did no housework or cooking. I did it all, despite being the bigger breadwinner and working the longer hours. One day at a friend's house I watched her slam dishes around and mutter because her husband did not put things away in the 'right' spot. So she took them all out and put them back away in the 'right spot' and the next time I checked he was no longer doing dishes and putting them away, figuring if he was going to get criticized anyway he might as well not do them as do them. Smart call.
I took that lesson in hand in my own home. I just stopped picking up after my husband. I stopped doing the vaccuuming and dusting. Eventually the place got messy enough that he noticed and complained - it had gotten to the point we didn't want to invite friends over. My answer was not to bitch and moan and do allt he cleaning up. Instead, I asked:: "what should we do?" Interestingly, he made no effort to foist all the work on to me. He grumbled that we should spend a few hours Saturday cleaning up, and that's what we did. And afterwards things never got quite so messy again. They were never quite so neat as when I was doing 100% of the work, but I figure standards of neatness are as arbitrary as tolerance for messiness. It was a good tradeoff.
-
Those magazines have nothing to offer confident women
[Read the article: Ashlee gets a nose job; Marie Claire gets a makeover]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They editorial content is dictated by advertisers, who are selling the very opposite of confidence. A smart, professional woman sees looks as one of the weapons in her arsenal to deal effectively with the world - not the only weapon and not the most important weapon. And those magazines are focued on looks to the exclusion of all else. Oprah's magazine is perhaps the one exception.
-
Another cognitive behavioral exercise, but maybe more relevant
[Read the article: I'm a woman in love with a married woman]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Make a point, every single time you think of her, to picture her surrounded by her husband and children. Picture the husband and children really really sad because they think they're going to lose her.
Now, every single time you SEE her, conjure that picture. Don't think twice about it - just do it.
And when you aren't seeing her, when she comes to mind - something she said, a gift she gave you, a song you both liked, a food you shared, whatever, picture the mournful and accuisng faces of her family.
She is not invulnerable - sure she went back to her safety net, but if her husband leanred of her affair who is to know what he'd do. Perhaps he'd throw her out unceremoniously on her ear. This is not a situation in which only you might be hurt. They could be hurt too. I'm sure you don't want that burden on your already crushed heart.
So picture them. You won't want to - you'll want to romanticize your time with her, protect the image of the two of you cocooned in your affair, in love, with the tantalizing possibility that she might choose you always in the offing.
But she didn't choose you. She chose them. And it's probably best, because instead of one resilient person being hurt, it could have been a family torn apart.
Picture those faces, hurt, sad, confused, angry. See them EVERY SINGLE TIME you see, or picture your ex-lover. Retrain your brain to associate her not with pleasure and hope for an indefinable, unlikely, shimmering-at-the-edges future that pretends the fam doesn't exist, and associate her instead with her commitments, her choices, and the very real faces of people who predate you and whose pain would likely register much higher than yours on the agony Richter scale.
-
Why on earth do little girls need *highlights* ??
[Read the article: Girls will be 30-year-old women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All this does is plant the notion, at an early age, that how she is born isn't good enough and should be 'improved' in order to look more beautiful (i.e. something she's not, for example more blonde, more sun-kissed, less gray) for the benefit of the approval of others.
It IS harmful to inculcate young girls and tweens in the culture of vanity at an early age. They assimilate the idea their faces, bodies and hair are merely canvases for products that 'improve' their desirability. The focus on fixing 'flaws' will be bred in them so early it is bound to be a de facto priority for the rest of their lives. They'll be the first high maintenance generation that doesn't even know it's high maintenance because they've been performing beauty rituals since kindergarten. Encouraging the spa-ification of children will simply inculcate them that extreme self-absorption is both good and necessary.
If men were encouraging their young sons to lift weights (never too young for a six pack!), wear cologne and gold necklaces the nation would go ballistic - we'd jail parents before allowing them to ruin their sons by sexualizing them and forcing them far too early onto the road of a vain, anxious, self-absorbed adulthood.