get free or die tryin'.

zuky:

slowheart:

I saw the latest issue of Time sitting on top of a friend’s coffee table earlier tonight. The cover alone made my brain explode. The implication of the featured article seems to me that measuring the amount of time doing chores is proof that women need to “let it go”— that is, the old-timey view that women do a lot more parenting than men do, and by extension, men and women are not treated equal. “Let it go” being a message specifically to tell mothers that they are thinking incorrectly. This is supported by all the catchy summaries the magazine provides of the article: “Big news, ladies! Turns out your husbands haven’t been slackers all along.”

I skimmed through the article, and I admit I wasn’t sober when I did it, and I can’t read it online damn it. But let me just get a couple of initial reactions off my chest. The author, Ruth Davis Konigsberg, completely skirts the issue of gender inequality in the corporate world. While she does address the constant messages our society is inundated with that mothers are the ones who do the hands-on parenting and fathers are the breadwinners, she does so in a way that makes women seem like they’re crazy for feeling all this pressure when in fact, men clean around the house too! And the wording of the polls— again, I wish I could get my paws on the article now, but there was one that was phrased particularly poorly, qualifying the women in the poll as mothers and the men as “fathers with wives.”

Anyway, without the primary source (and severe lack of sleep) my arguments are weak. And there are a couple of other things I wanted to say but I can’t remember them at the moment. But if my sorry rambles didn’t convince you enough that this article is complete bullshit, then hopefully the article’s images will suffice. The first one is the actual cover for the story, and the second is provided alongside the article. In fact, there are three photos of the second couple inside the magazine. Why not put them on the cover as well?

Ah. It’s all about the race to generate more sales.

Ridiculous bullshit from Time. Women do three-quarters of the world’s work, but Time wants women to stop complaining about it.

Looking at the cover: the man stands tall and upright in office clothes, holding the baby and wielding the baby’s food as a weapon; while the woman squats low in a puddle of soapy water, which connotes her lack of a sure-footed stance, dressed more for bingo club or Mad Men set than office or modern life. On the woman’s side of the dividing wall, a bucket of suds; on the man’s, a baby chair; suggesting, this man is doing what it takes to care for the besieged baby while the woman is undertaking some slippery ambush from her lowly position as maid rather than provider.

Second photo is no better: office man vacuuming and bending over to laboriously pick up after the kids, while the woman luxuriates in sultry undergarments on the floor. At least the baby is in the woman’s arms now, but she’s glaring at the man and cradling the baby away from vacuuming man, almost as if wrongly accusing him of being a danger. A second toddler-age child has her mouth open as if demanding something. Meanwhile, the baby is looking over the woman’s shoulder and actually facing a pit bull rather than necktie man. 

I think I’ll skip the article.