What Is A Housewife?

If any word relating to women has been through the blender, housewife is at the top of the list. It has survived a vicious and brutal war where definitions were pitted against each other and finally came to a compromise to ensure the word would live on in perpetuity.

Let’s measure up our opponents.

Our defenders are those that look at “housewife” in terms of its more traditional definition. The meaning is obvious if you pick apart the word. It’s the wife’s job to “keep” house. That means she should do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry and still look fresh when her husband comes home from work.

What immediately comes to mind is The Truman Show and Pleasantville. These are both great movies that have implicit critiques of the appeal and role of the housewife, but they depict women in these traditional roles. They’re interested in routine, manners, cleanliness and pleasantries.

In both films, the housewife seems boring and vacuous. Does she really just stand there and wait for her husband? In Pleasantville, the wife does what we’ve all been waiting for. She breaks out of her housewife mould and embraces her adventurous and frisky side with the artist who brings colour to her life where everything was once dull.

In real life, this was a gradual process, but it did seem to be what ultimately happened. It became almost a dirty word to be called a housewife. People who were fast to judge would say, “She’s just a housewife.” It was a way to reduce a woman — to put her in a heart-shaped baking pan and keep her there.

But the dough slowly starting leaking over the sides of the pan. Women couldn’t use the dirty words. A housewife was sometimes called “homemaker.” You still have the word home (meaning a woman who works out of her home), but “maker” just makes it sound better — more divine. A wife may have stayed at home, but she was creating something too. The man was bringing home the bacon and she was using it to make something spectacular.

Obviously, more and more women have joined the workforce, making this term less applicable in modern day life. It seems that for a time the term vanished after the backlash of shame. Not to mention boring and empty were among the many adjectives attached to the term.

Failing to die after the war, when tradition and its nemesis met together in an explosion of meaning, the word became a more open concept. Suddenly it seemed more fluid and free-flowing like random particles of radioactive matter after a bomb detonates.

It started bursting everywhere. From the Housewives of Atlanta to New York to D.C. to New Jersey to Miami to Bolvangar…or, no, maybe that’s from the fantasy book I’m reading…but you get the point. Housewives are everywhere, including (gasp!) out of the house.

Obviously the women on these shows have money and, more than anything, they’re socialites. You take one look at their kitchen, filled with stainless steel appliances and marble counter-tops, and you realize they aren’t even cooking in there. Maybe their husband does, maybe their chef, maybe they make their kids earn their keep. Whatever it is, these are housewives with crazy lives. They play house rather than keep house.

Despite the drama everywhere that makes these shows so addictive (especially when you have a hangover and need something mindless to watch because your brain cells hurt), you do see these women taking on their own projects (even if they fail). They’re creating fashion lines, making their own albums and crashing parties at the White House. Needless to say, they’re not stuck in the house cooking and cleaning all day. Some of them aren’t even married anymore (although they could have a mysterious sugar daddy).

Before the Housewives of (insert your city), there was Desperate Housewives. Just the title of it made me think that it would tank on TV. But it didn’t. I watched the first season and, as far-fetched as it may have been, it was witty and entertaining. And the housewives weren’t desperate at all.

The combustion of meanings for “housewife” have left it in the realm of ironic. If it isn’t ironic that columnists are calling Kate Middleton a housewife I don’t know what is. Maybe we could call her a palacewife instead?

While it’s certainly ironic, women are also reclaiming the traditional meaning. I imagine there really are desperate housewives as well as retro housewives, untrained housewives, urban housewives, etc. The variety is so extensive that it’s kind of like ice cream flavours or jelly bellies now.

To be honest, I like the grab bag. There’s no shortage of choice for women in the housewife department.

Contact the author here: tinybart@morningquickie.com