Feminists Can’t Be Bothered With Pinterest, Mmkay?

pinterest

Wasn’t one of the major takeaways of the feminist movement that women did not have to sit home in a pressed house dress, waiting to greet their husbands with a clean house and a perfectly stirred martini? Feminism freed us from those chores — why are we embracing all of those archaic household perfections again, and bragging about them on Pinerest? Fuck Pinterest. Pinterest is a tool of the Patriarchy — and it’s imprisoning women all over the land.

Okay. I may be exaggerating a little, but bear with me.

I finally read a Pinterest article that I can get behind and I want to hug Ruth Whippman for writing it; it’s titled, Is Pinterest Making A Misery Out Of Motherhood? She talks about the usual complaints we utter regarding Pinterest — primarily that it’s just a highlight reel and doesn’t represent real life. But she also brings up an interesting question: are we backpedalling a little as women, putting so much emphasis on domestic perfection?

This isn’t just suffocating on the individual level. As we increasingly fetishize the domestic arts, we are sleepwalking back to the 1950s, when society’s expectations of household accomplishment came at the clear expense of women’s emancipation.

One of the reasons I am not an avid Pinterest user is that I just don’t have time. This follows behind the most obvious reason: I am not good at crafts, baking, doing my nails, or using a glue gun. The thing is – no one has time. We live in a world where everyone is working too hard and trying desperately to stay afloat. But we still have time to pretend that we have our shit together. How? Why?

Why are we buying into this insanity? At a time when almost all of us are overwhelmed and rushed, when the combination of our punishing working hours and our childcare expectations sometimes feel liable to crush us and the debate rages on about the impossibility of “having it all,” why are we ludicrously inflating the norms of what “it all” should be? Why are we rushing to embrace a level of domestic expectation that would have sent our mothers running in horror?

My answer to those questions is, “I have no idea.” Maybe we just like looking at pretty things? Maybe these accomplishments actually don’t take as long as they look like they do and they give the Pinterest user a sense of calm and satisfaction? When I feel like my whole life is overwhelming and out-of-control, I always obsessively clean my house. Maybe the Pinterest obsession falls along those same lines.

I don’t know who decided that everything needed to be pretty and clean and shiny and perfect; I guess I’ll just blame Martha Stewart for now. But seriously, if your house doesn’t look perfect and your dinner is totally average – it’s okay. We fought for the right to not have to keep our mouths shut and feign perfection. Let’s embrace it by realizing that Pinterest is kind of the enemy.

Then we can get back to pinning our dream boards.

(photo: G IC/ Shutterstock)

Similar Posts