May 4, 2009

How to be a good wife and mother (and piss off a feminist!) OR Things I learned from Betty Crocker, circa 1969

I'm not much of a cook. I can't sew. I can bake a little thanks to my mother, she of the famous pies and cakes (well, famous in our circle of family and friends anyway!). I'm a freaking amazing house cleaner, owing partly to my upbringing where we were forced every Saturday to clean the house, and partly to the fact that I've done some house cleaning as an adult to bring in some extra income. I am a helluva house cleaner, let me tell you.

It's kinda my fault that I don't cook and can't sew. I should really just take the time and learn how to do these things. I'm a conservative, afterall, and I believe in doing things for myself, individual responsibility, etc. etc. So, I've decided to start reading my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook from the 60s (copyright is 1969, though I expect some of the stuff was written earlier). I won't be the victim, despite the feminist penchant for always claiming victim status. Of course, I hate those fucking feminists, so anything I can do to be different from them is cool beans. (Go visit The Other McCain for more annoy-a-feminist stuff. It's fun!)

But I tell you what, I blame those feminists for getting rid of/besmirching-to-the-point-of-irrelevance the home economics class. I had a Home Ec class in middle school that was okay, we learned how to do basic cooking things and simple stitching and even how to sew on a machine. But when I got to high school I never heard word one about home economics classes. Never had a counselor offer it as a class I could take. Never knew anyone who took any Home Ec classes. To this day, I don't even know if my high school offered Home Ec classes, though I suspect they did since something had to be going on on the second floor of Harrison High School amidst all the cigarette smoke and knife fights. In fact, I know that there were shop classes going on, where all the delinquent boys would spend their afternoons dreaming of the day when they'd take their GEDs and open up a body shop somewhere on Grand River Ave and start making some money, finally, get this "school" shit over with.

So there must have been a chick equivalent, a class or two for the gals who weren't going to college and who still needed X-number of credits to graduate. I went to college; I have a Masters Degree (God help me). And I'm jealous of those girls. Their counselors probably put them into Home Ec because they figured they couldn't hack it in pre-Calc or whatever and needed to put them somewhere, so why not mindless ol' "cooking class" or "sewing class" or whatever it was termed in the course handbook.

But that's what those fucking feminists did. They turned Home Ec class into the "reject" class where girls would go who couldn't or didn't want to go to some PC University. It got stigmatized as the class for "losers" and dumbasses, for fuck-ups and baby mamas. Meanwhile, I was learning that all-important life skill: differentiating trig functions!

Thanks again, feminazis!

If only Home Ec had been a for-real class, I could've maybe learned all the cool things in the Betty Crocker cookbook, instead of being a twentysomething chick whose culinary skills extend to boiling a pot of water, dropping some pasta into it, and covering the finished noodles with canned sauce.

Now the feminists out there will be annoyed with the following quotes. Some will roll their eyes or laugh or condescend with hipster irony about how quaintly patriarchal those olden days used to be, and hahaha let's laugh gently at the goofiness of those retro days! But understand, feminist twats, that when I'm quoting these passages, I'm quoting them because I LOVE them. Because they present a charming, wholesome, ordered world in which a woman was expected to be a good housewife and mother and that *GASP!* she could actually find pleasure and fulfillment and worth by being good at being a homemaker. I wish we lived in such times now.

Here's what the Betty Crocker Cookbook has to say about cooking, homemaking, wifely duties, etc. and boy do I love it! I'm hoping to become a better cook in the Betty Crocker style, first, because I want to be a better cook and secondly, just to piss off that cow, Betty Friedan. I can't wait to bake the perfect pie for my man!

Betty on milk: "Drinks you never outgrow! A Suzy-special for somebody small. A build-you-up for a tired man. A happy-after-school for a boy and his gang. You can say a lot with a milk drink -- a lot of good nutrition, a lot of goodwill. Do say it often -- with great drinks like these."

Seriously, how awesome is that?! For Betty, it's all about making the people you love happy. It's a recurring theme throughout the cookbook: make this food and you'll be making your loved ones feel better. The whole thing is an act of love. I don't know about those stinky feminists, but I'd rather spend my days making people I love feel better than working in some office somewhere.

Betty on muffins: "Hot muffins to warm the inner man -- a wonderful addition to any breakfast, brunch or coffee break.... You can mix muffins from scratch in two or three minutes -- what a fun first-baking for a five-year-old, if Mother puts the pan in the oven."

Feminists prolly scoff, but I'd love to warm the inner man of my man! Crazy notion, eh? Baking muffins to please your husband! And yet, it actually sounds nice. It sounds like the kind of thing that makes life worthwhile.

Betty on breakfast specials: "Mary's sleeping over! Jim's bringing a girl home from college! You've asked friends to come for brunch after church. Or you just woke up this morning so full of goodwill that you wanted to make the day special."

Well, there's several things wrong with this passage according to the feminists. First, since "feminist" is just code-word for any-and-all liberal social change causes, Jim needs to bring home a nice boy from college if he wants to get cred with his liberal pantywaist parents. And that after-church brunch better include the new "priest," Rev. Nancy McWhiteliver and her "wife" (or better yet, make it a Unitarian service and there's no need for any icky "priest" at all!), and maybe they can all do a labyrinth walk after the caramel sticky buns.

Funny how something that seems so wholesome and NORMAL probably sets the radical feminists off their heads.

Betty on baking bread: "So you're going to bake bread! High time you tried! And you don't have to save a whole day for it. You can do it in a morning -- or in an afternoon -- or even in an evening -- and catch up on ironing or your mending or watch TV in the bargain. It isn't half as hard as you thought it might be."

Sounds great! Except in today's feminist world, we wymyn are supposed to be working at our ever-so-fulfilling jobs and all that ironing and mending and TV watching was oppressive and patriarchal, dontcha know! Hmmmm, which sounds more oppressive: Working at a 9 to 5 job that's all hectic and stressful, or making bread in the morning and watching TV while you iron and wait for it to finish baking in the oven? So once again, thanks feminists for telling us our homemaking lives were hell and what we really wanted to do was get out of the kitchen and into the boardroom.

Betty on eggs: "The man you marry will know the way he likes his eggs. And chances are he'll be fussy about them. So it behooves a good wife to know how to make an egg behave in six basic ways."

Can you imagine a cookbook containing those lines today? And yet, I think our society is all the poorer for it. If only women these days did spend more time learning how to make eggs in six basic ways: they'd keep their husbands happy and we'd have a more civilized society in general. I'm serious: A world where men know how they like their eggs and where women are ready and willing to make 'em that way is far more civilized than the world we have today, where the only egg choice seems to be between egg mcmuffin or egg croissant, with the separate duties of men and women never entering into the equation.

Betty on main dishes for a large crowd: "Big crowd coming? Be a kitchen general and plan ahead... Plan right down to that last all-important look in your mirror."

Uh oh, doesn't Betty know that trying to look gorgeous and feminine to impress people is sexist and oppressive (well, except when the feminists say it isn't)? What does she mean, "last all-important look in your mirror"??? Why should that be "all-important," hmmmm???(say the feminists)

Ha! Stupid feminists always keep trying to deny reality, but Betty knows the real world better than any over-educated feminista: For us girls, appearances matter. It's a fact of life for women and it does no good to pretend it's not true (as the rad fems have been doing for decades). People will be more impressed with your big dinner party if you dress beautifully and look hot. It's that simple.

Betty on pie: "What's the American man's favorite dessert? Most people would agree -- it's pie. And heading the list is apple pie. Followed closely by cherry pie and peach pie and lemon meringue and a lot of others. If you care about pleasing a man -- bake a pie."

Well, there you go ladies. The best advice you'll ever get. The feminists probably laugh at this line and snicker about how old-fashioned and hilariously sexist it sounds, but the truth of the matter is that It. Is. True. My mom bakes the best pies I've ever had and she is the envy of every woman in my family. Why? Because all the guys in my family go crazy for my mom's pie. As Betty says: "Pity the man who has never come home to a pumpkin or custard pie." Preach it, sister!

I hope the feminists are happy. Their stupid ideology has taken away the happiness, the wholesomeness, the joy, and the love that saturates this old Betty Crocker cookbook and replaced it with bitterness, and "inclusive" language (i.e.: bland and boring), and cold utility, and a hurried, frantic life where women have no time and no inclination towards keeping a good home for the people they love.

In an effort towards Retro Living, I say, bring back that old Betty Crocker cookbook!

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