Home beauty standards
Home beauty standards
Feminism seems to put the spotlight on women as a standard and then talks about how much less work men do compared to that, when the standard should be how much work realistically needs to be put into it. Our modern ideas on "cleanliness" (and I hate calling it that because it has nothing to do with hygiene) really originate from the middle class household trying to imitate rich people who would employ servants to keep everything spotless. It was never a standard that was supposed to be managable or practical for normal people doing the work themselves. I've seen women complain about open kitchen trends because it shows the "mess" of food preparation. The mess of food preparation. In the kitchen. Are you fucking kidding me?
And I realised all of this really is just an extension of beauty standards, down to it being fed by unrealistic social media depictions and digital editing (most catalogue images are cgi) and complete with typical "I do it for myself" excuses. It's something that eats up enormous amounts of women's time, energy and self-worth but is difficult to communicate to women as a negative because their self-worth is so tied to it.
A lot of feminist rhetoric tends to emphasise men's failings in doing as much work as women while avoiding criticising women's standards (which is also how we get a lot of libfem "dressing like a stripper is empowering, actually" rhetoric). But we can both demand men stop offloading necessary unpaid labour onto women and women also need to severely lower their standards of what amount of work is actually necessary and what's just trying to recreate a home from Pinterest.
I refuse to debate two obvious facts: 1. the patriarchy exists 2. and that's a bad thing
YesYourNigel
Aug 27 2025, 5:18 AM #1There's a lot of talk of disparity between male and female household labour, but something that's often neglected in the discussion is the amount of this labour that is actually essential and necessary. Every woman I've lived with has had very neurotic perfectionist ideas on cleanliness and tidyiness that often made even basic tasks into chores, let alone anything messier. It's no wonder so many women have no time for hobbies when their time is spent in endless appearances-driven """cleaning""" and hobbies are just associated with creating more clutter and more mess.
Feminism seems to put the spotlight on women as a standard and then talks about how much less work men do compared to that, when the standard should be how much work realistically needs to be put into it. Our modern ideas on "cleanliness" (and I hate calling it that because it has nothing to do with hygiene) really originate from the middle class household trying to imitate rich people who would employ servants to keep everything spotless. It was never a standard that was supposed to be managable or practical for normal people doing the work themselves. I've seen women complain about open kitchen trends because it shows the "mess" of food preparation. The mess of food preparation. In the kitchen. Are you fucking kidding me?
And I realised all of this really is just an extension of beauty standards, down to it being fed by unrealistic social media depictions and digital editing (most catalogue images are cgi) and complete with typical "I do it for myself" excuses. It's something that eats up enormous amounts of women's time, energy and self-worth but is difficult to communicate to women as a negative because their self-worth is so tied to it.
A lot of feminist rhetoric tends to emphasise men's failings in doing as much work as women while avoiding criticising women's standards (which is also how we get a lot of libfem "dressing like a stripper is empowering, actually" rhetoric). But we can both demand men stop offloading necessary unpaid labour onto women and women also need to severely lower their standards of what amount of work is actually necessary and what's just trying to recreate a home from Pinterest.
I refuse to debate two obvious facts: 1. the patriarchy exists 2. and that's a bad thing
