#110: Woman Invites Guests Monthly to Justify Deep Cleaning Apartment to Escape Usual Squalor

SATIRE

Hi. I’m the woman. Just trying out a new headline format. Have to make this quick because I only have a few hours to scrub my bathroom raw before company arrives.

Cleaning for myself? Excuse me, but I’m a feminist. A 21st century woman. I don’t subscribe to the oppressive forces requiring women to do domestic labor.

I do however subscribe to the oppressive forces of people-pleasing, which are embedded in my bones and genetically coded into my cells. Bones probably also have cells so that’s double people-pleasing science in my being. People-pleasing is modern, chic oppression. Before we had no choice but to please our oppressors and other people those guys wanted us to be nice to. Now we’re doing it of our own volition! That’s what I call systemic guilt, shame, and progress!

And obviously I’ve had a lifetime subscription to The Opinions of My Mother who didn’t allow outsiders to enter our home unless it was sparkling. And if you did gain entrance for some ungodly reason like a lack of consulting the family calendar or a beg-for-sleepover ambush after a meticulously choreographed sketch routine by the cousins and neighborhood kids, she would apologize profusely for the lack of sparkle.

So while I won’t so much as touch a scrub brush for my own well-being, health, and safety, I will toil for hours on my hands and knees, rubber-gloved with bleach-fume-burned eyes to please a guest with sparkle.  That means that the only time my apartment is actually clean is when we have people coming over. So yeah, we have to host something ASAP when it starts to get particularly ripe in here.

Feminists, try this hack! Avoid all domestic responsibility to stick it to the patriarchy. Then when that gets intolerable and gross, force yourself into a social contract that requires domestic labor and decorum (also established by the patriarchy but like different!) so you have no choice but to clean up anyway!

I would like the record to show that I was one class away from a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies so this is actually a scholarly text. Thank you for reading. I have to go Pledge my coffee table.

ily bye,

Ariana