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You all remember the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover"? Yeah, me too. I will admit to frequently being drawn into checking out books by their covers, however, partly because I am shallow, but also partly because I am very interested in cover art and design as a facet of book marketing, and I like to see whether or not various cover-art-selectors are doing it right.
Anyway, there are certain motifs that get overused in very specific ways. Almost every paranormal romance around right now has a cover that is blatantly modeled off the sexy black-red-and-white original covers for the Twilight books. Every period piece with a female protagonist EVER has a close-up shot of a thin woman in some ridiculously gorgeous dress, her face hidden. And every tired-ass mainstream media magazine article about how FEMINISM HAS STRESSED WOMEN OUT AND RUINED EVERYTHING FOR EVAR is accompanied by basically the same photo. Anna Fels, in Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives, describes these articles as "visually represent[ing] the incongruity of their dual roles by photographing them in formal work attire--a suit, crisp blouse, pumps, stockings, jewelry, a briefcase--awkwardly clutching a drooling, sprawling toddler" (p. 190).
Now, check out this cover art for Necessary Dreams:
Thankfully, this book is not about how feminism has ruined us ladies' true desire to laze around all day smiling at our babies in soft focus while sentimental music plays, in between bouts of vacuuming the living room in our pearls and high heels and making dinner for our husbands. This book is a serious, scholarly look into the role of ambition in people's lives, and particularly in women's lives, and the various forces that cause us to change, reshape, downsize, or simply lose motivation for our ambitions. It examines the sorts of social and institutional support structures that are necessary for ambition to flourish, and the ways in which these supports are provided and withheld. It examines the role of recognition--not merely praise or flattery or attention, but real recognition for work achieved through actual mastery of something--in our mental and physical health, what sorts of recognition people seek, and what sorts of recognition people give. Towards the end of the book there is a lot of information on studies of marriage and childrearing, and the ways in which various countries have or have not responded to the basic reality that if you make childrearing the most sucktastic job ever, and then give the women a way out of it, but don't provide any other sort of support structure or incentive for anyone else to step in and help raise the kids, then we'll pretty much just stop having them. The news is not all bad, of course--a lot of progress has been made in a fairly short period of time, and while the research shows that men are much much much much much MUCH slower to start picking up "women's work" than women have been to pick up "men's" (ie, paid) work--due to a number of factors that Fels would explain primarily in terms of childcare and housekeeping as being "low-recognition" and "low-control" and "socially isolating" and other psychiatric words, and I would explain primarily in terms of them being "shitty"--younger men are starting to do more of it. (They try to do half the housework! They are now up to perceiving themselves as doing "half" the housework when they do a whole 36% of it!)
In short... progress isn't pretty. But it is progress, and we can keep progressing if we don't all sit around on our asses being self-congratulatory about how we have totally made ALL THE PROGRESS and pretending we are Rugged Individuals who shouldn't need any social support whatsoever.
I do have to say I was most engaged by the discussions of the functioning of ambition in this book, partly because I'm already familiar with a lot of the marriage/childrearing/housekeeping stats and partly because I am personally planning on being one of those Tragically Unmarried and Childless professional white ladies and the only way anyone's going to talk me out of it is if I can find a nice, supportive househusband who wants to be the primary caregiver for the kids. (Kids will be adopted or grown by a surrogate if science hasn't let me find a way to fob off making the kids onto hypothetical househusband, too.) But I was much less familiar with the psychological literature on ambition, recognition, and mastery as aspects of identity, and it really resonated with me. At several points during the book I was tempted to drop it and run off and write for a bit, but I didn't, because the book was so interesting.
The book also raised some interesting questions for me about myself and my own psychological development. For example, my mother was a stay-at-home mom for most of my childhood, which was starting to become relatively uncommon in the nineties. And yet, it never occurred to me that being a stay-at-home mom was a viable plan for the future. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" always meant "what kind of job do you want to have?", which implied paid work, even if it's living-in-a-box starving-artist barely-paid work like being a painter or a writer or a musician. A husband or children weren't plans, they were people, and you can't plan for other people; you plan for stuff, like jobs and houses and the cities you want to live in and the vacations you want to take. So my attempts to Make Plans for the future never have any other people in them. In my imaginary spinsterly author apartment, I do not even have cats, because I don't want to be arsed to take care of them. (I might have a snake; they eat like once a week.) I don't know if this is because I am hugely introverted or hugely distrustful or what. At any rate, I think some of the problems raised in this book might be fixed faster if more people were as maladjusted as I am, and were just like "NO MARRIAGE OR BABIES AT ALL WHATSOEVER UNTIL THESE NUMBERS GET BETTER," but apparently there are some women who like their husbands and children.
Anyway, I highly recommend reading this book to clean out your brain next time you accidentally find yourself reading one of those terrible articles that are like "Feminism! It is totally, 100% completed and over and done. Everything is feminism. Here are some ladies being stressed out over something, so they MUST BE STRESSED OVER FEMINISM. Now, this thing they are stressed over MAY look like more of the same old patriarchal bullshit, since there is a 90% chance they are stressed over some form of still being stuck with the same old fifties housewife sexbot duties that their husbands won't help out with because it is women's work and has cooties. BUT THAT IS ACTUALLY FEMINISM. BECAUSE FEMINISM IS EVERYTHING BAD IN THE WORLD." If you have any contact with mainstream media at all, this may be depressingly soon.
Anyway, there are certain motifs that get overused in very specific ways. Almost every paranormal romance around right now has a cover that is blatantly modeled off the sexy black-red-and-white original covers for the Twilight books. Every period piece with a female protagonist EVER has a close-up shot of a thin woman in some ridiculously gorgeous dress, her face hidden. And every tired-ass mainstream media magazine article about how FEMINISM HAS STRESSED WOMEN OUT AND RUINED EVERYTHING FOR EVAR is accompanied by basically the same photo. Anna Fels, in Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives, describes these articles as "visually represent[ing] the incongruity of their dual roles by photographing them in formal work attire--a suit, crisp blouse, pumps, stockings, jewelry, a briefcase--awkwardly clutching a drooling, sprawling toddler" (p. 190).
Now, check out this cover art for Necessary Dreams:
Thankfully, this book is not about how feminism has ruined us ladies' true desire to laze around all day smiling at our babies in soft focus while sentimental music plays, in between bouts of vacuuming the living room in our pearls and high heels and making dinner for our husbands. This book is a serious, scholarly look into the role of ambition in people's lives, and particularly in women's lives, and the various forces that cause us to change, reshape, downsize, or simply lose motivation for our ambitions. It examines the sorts of social and institutional support structures that are necessary for ambition to flourish, and the ways in which these supports are provided and withheld. It examines the role of recognition--not merely praise or flattery or attention, but real recognition for work achieved through actual mastery of something--in our mental and physical health, what sorts of recognition people seek, and what sorts of recognition people give. Towards the end of the book there is a lot of information on studies of marriage and childrearing, and the ways in which various countries have or have not responded to the basic reality that if you make childrearing the most sucktastic job ever, and then give the women a way out of it, but don't provide any other sort of support structure or incentive for anyone else to step in and help raise the kids, then we'll pretty much just stop having them. The news is not all bad, of course--a lot of progress has been made in a fairly short period of time, and while the research shows that men are much much much much much MUCH slower to start picking up "women's work" than women have been to pick up "men's" (ie, paid) work--due to a number of factors that Fels would explain primarily in terms of childcare and housekeeping as being "low-recognition" and "low-control" and "socially isolating" and other psychiatric words, and I would explain primarily in terms of them being "shitty"--younger men are starting to do more of it. (They try to do half the housework! They are now up to perceiving themselves as doing "half" the housework when they do a whole 36% of it!)
In short... progress isn't pretty. But it is progress, and we can keep progressing if we don't all sit around on our asses being self-congratulatory about how we have totally made ALL THE PROGRESS and pretending we are Rugged Individuals who shouldn't need any social support whatsoever.
I do have to say I was most engaged by the discussions of the functioning of ambition in this book, partly because I'm already familiar with a lot of the marriage/childrearing/housekeeping stats and partly because I am personally planning on being one of those Tragically Unmarried and Childless professional white ladies and the only way anyone's going to talk me out of it is if I can find a nice, supportive househusband who wants to be the primary caregiver for the kids. (Kids will be adopted or grown by a surrogate if science hasn't let me find a way to fob off making the kids onto hypothetical househusband, too.) But I was much less familiar with the psychological literature on ambition, recognition, and mastery as aspects of identity, and it really resonated with me. At several points during the book I was tempted to drop it and run off and write for a bit, but I didn't, because the book was so interesting.
The book also raised some interesting questions for me about myself and my own psychological development. For example, my mother was a stay-at-home mom for most of my childhood, which was starting to become relatively uncommon in the nineties. And yet, it never occurred to me that being a stay-at-home mom was a viable plan for the future. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" always meant "what kind of job do you want to have?", which implied paid work, even if it's living-in-a-box starving-artist barely-paid work like being a painter or a writer or a musician. A husband or children weren't plans, they were people, and you can't plan for other people; you plan for stuff, like jobs and houses and the cities you want to live in and the vacations you want to take. So my attempts to Make Plans for the future never have any other people in them. In my imaginary spinsterly author apartment, I do not even have cats, because I don't want to be arsed to take care of them. (I might have a snake; they eat like once a week.) I don't know if this is because I am hugely introverted or hugely distrustful or what. At any rate, I think some of the problems raised in this book might be fixed faster if more people were as maladjusted as I am, and were just like "NO MARRIAGE OR BABIES AT ALL WHATSOEVER UNTIL THESE NUMBERS GET BETTER," but apparently there are some women who like their husbands and children.
Anyway, I highly recommend reading this book to clean out your brain next time you accidentally find yourself reading one of those terrible articles that are like "Feminism! It is totally, 100% completed and over and done. Everything is feminism. Here are some ladies being stressed out over something, so they MUST BE STRESSED OVER FEMINISM. Now, this thing they are stressed over MAY look like more of the same old patriarchal bullshit, since there is a 90% chance they are stressed over some form of still being stuck with the same old fifties housewife sexbot duties that their husbands won't help out with because it is women's work and has cooties. BUT THAT IS ACTUALLY FEMINISM. BECAUSE FEMINISM IS EVERYTHING BAD IN THE WORLD." If you have any contact with mainstream media at all, this may be depressingly soon.
