Low suds and safe on lycra
I have been a lazy bum today, and I feel pretty good about it. It was
nice to just be at home in comfy clothes and watch some television.
I learned some great tips on HGTV, and cried a little when the puppy
got rescued on Animal Cops. Curled up in my comforter on the couch,
I flipped channels, dozed off, and flipped some more channels. There
has got to be a couch-potato award with my name on it somewhere.
While I delighted in the mindless loss of life energy, I made note of a
few things. All of the commercials for cleaning products
and appliances have women in them. Yep. There is not one
man in any toilet bowl, window, hardwood floor, or dirty skillet cleaner
commercial. The images are women in make-up and good clothes using
some special cleaner that makes them smile while scrubbing, or dance
while dusting. Bullshit. Cleaning does not happen like that in my house.
Cleaning day for me usually goes like this:
sweatpants and Tennessee t-shirt with bleach and paint on it
grumbling, bitching, moaning, scrunched up face
coffee with too much sugar- to get me goin’
yelling at the dogs to get off the floor I just mopped
mumbling under my breath about having to do all the cleaning by myself
and upon finishing–a reaction to the toxic fumes in cleaners that causes
me to be irritable and sometimes cry.
I think the Swiffer company should come to my house and shoot a reality
commercial. Just about the time they tried to dust my face with one of those
huge powder puffs, I would shoot them in the eye with a nice stream from
the Wet Jet.
Two things bother me about the male-less cleaning product commercials.
The first is the implication that women enjoy cleaning, and the second is
that it perpetuates this notion that cleaning is women’s work. While I
acknowledge that some people do enjoy cleaning, I venture to say that most
women would rather not do it. Or at the very least, not alone. From my
conversations with women in my life, they do it because it just “falls” on them,
even when they have a husband or children to help them out. Unfortunately,
due to some gentle, subconscious societal training, women often adopt the
attitude that it is just easier to do it themselves. Secondly, cleaning is not
just women’s work. If you look at it logically, men are more suited to most
cleaning tasks. What woman has not exhausted arm muscles trying to scrub
a nasty shower? A man has more upper body strength than a woman, therefore
he would be more efficient with a scrub brush. Same goes for vacuuming
and sweeping–it is hard to move furniture around while in the process. It
takes me forever because I have to move the chair, sweep, move the chair back
and so on. A man with aforementioned arm muscles could easily move the ugly
chair and sweep underneath it in one fell swoop. Swoop. That’s a nice word.
If I hadn’t lost so many brain cells today in front of the boob tube, (I think I
understand that reference better now) I would start a letter writing campaign
to all these companies. As it is, I am going to have to muster enough brain power
to calculate exactly how much detergent I need for a full cycle of clothes that are
semi-colorfast, lightly soiled, and 50% cotton which makes them susceptible to
shrinkage. Go me.
