I am a person who follows the directions. I read the book that comes with the hairdryer, the mower, toys, etc. I love the ridiculous warnings: Don't use the hairdryer in the shower, Never use while sleeping. I mostly just want to how to use whatever it is properly. I got an iPhone on Saturday. Never before have I felt so strongly that this thing in my hand is soooo not my generation. It came with a manual. A very small "getting started" kind of manual. It assumes that you will go online and learn it all there, if, of course, you are such an imbecile that you would not already know how to use it.
When I was pregnant with my first, the test stick wasn't even dry before I had subscriptions to every "Mom" magazine. I also bought the baby user manuals. Many, many books. I read them all. I even put post-it notes in them for the sections my husband should read. He didn't, but that's another post. You know these books. You also know the magazines. The screaming headlines: "How to know if your baby is autistic!" "Get your baby to sleep in three easy steps!" The headlines that you can read between the lines are: "What you are doing wrong!" "Your baby is the only one who cries all night", and "Feel guilty because you're doing it wrong!"
When I was pregnant with my first, the test stick wasn't even dry before I had subscriptions to every "Mom" magazine. I also bought the baby user manuals. Many, many books. I read them all. I even put post-it notes in them for the sections my husband should read. He didn't, but that's another post. You know these books. You also know the magazines. The screaming headlines: "How to know if your baby is autistic!" "Get your baby to sleep in three easy steps!" The headlines that you can read between the lines are: "What you are doing wrong!" "Your baby is the only one who cries all night", and "Feel guilty because you're doing it wrong!"
Today, I got a commercial in the mail for "Cookie" magazine. It claims that it is the only magazine that brings together both of your worlds: the "mom" part and the "woman" part. Do we really need to keep these separate? Are they separate, and I just don't know it? How does being a mom make you forget you're a woman? Isn't being a "woman" just a euphamism for "sexual"? Being a father doesn't make a man less sexually appealling. It makes him more appealing in my own eyes. Maybe it's because the dads rarely have (someone else's) boogers on their boobs and dried spit-up down their backs. Maybe it's my genetic programming. I guess that I get it. I just don't feel the need to separate out my life into the various roles that I play. And I really don't need a heap of printed commercials telling me that I'm doing it wrong. No matter what that it might be.
No comments:
Post a Comment