I’m not looking to start a gender war here — just found myself musing as I researched a short article this morning. If doing the laundry had been men’s work lo those many centuries past, would we have had washing machines before we had a printing press?

Consider this. Before washing machines, doing the laundry was a two-day task. Women started soaking the clothes to be washed the night before. In the morning, the clothes were dragged out of the water, beaten with sticks, scrubbed on washboards, stirred in pots of water simmering over a fire, wrung out by feeding them through a wringer or be twisting them with the help of another person — then put through at least two more rinses, each of which had to be dragged from the pump, the stream or the faucet. The whole process took the better part of the day — and that was before the ironing.

The end result was clean clothes, aching muscles, irritated hands and irritated lungs — a lot of the chemicals used in doing laundry were unpleasant — to say the least. With all that work, it’s amazing that the first mechanical washing machines — not electric, now, just mechanical — didn’t appear on the scene till the mid-1800s. There were other tools, to be sure — washboards, wash paddles, wash tubs with plugs so they didn’t have to be tipped, even a wringer — but the actual washing was done by brute female — and usually lower class female — muscle power.

Contrast that with the work of painstakingly copying out books by hand, a task generally undertaken by monks and scribes — generally middle class and upper class males. Can’t help wondering if they were the ones doing the laundry, would we have had washing machines sooner?

photo credit © Nesster

Michelle Obama has not decided what she’s wearing for the Inauguration yet.

That’s right. The Inauguration is less than 24 hours away, and she hasn’t decided what she’s going to wear. If you’re a woman, there’s a good chance that you’re jaw is hanging open right now. I mean we, as a culture, obsess about “what to wear”. I mean this is the inauguration that featured the “dress registry” so that women don’t show up at the balls wearing the same gown as another woman. I mean that early last week, the editor of Women’s Wear Daily was complaining that the magazine usually had sketches of the First Lady’s inaugural dress a couple of weeks before the Inauguration.

What does it mean that Michelle Obama is apparently planning to open her closet tomorrow morning and say, “What do you think, honey? Should I wear the blue one?”

Well, among other things, it probably means that she hasn’t had something tailored and stood around getting her dress fitted. I suspect it means that she is confident and strong enough to be comfortable in whatever she chooses to wear. That she doesn’t expect the world to judge her on the clothes that she wears. That her clothes take a back seat to her intelligence, her personality and her achievements. That she’s not treating the Inauguration as a red carpet event. And I think that’s all awesome.

I love the fact that Michelle Obama wears her clothes comfortably. And I hope that it presages an era when dressing normally and comfortably is seen as – well – fashionable.

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Like most of the other women I know who have achieved firsts, she shrugs off the designation. She is, however, one of only 21 female Army Generals, and one of only 5 who have attained a rank above Brigadier General. We’ve actually come a long way in a fairly short time. The Army only appointed its first female General in 1970, 48 years ago. Today, with women making up 14% of the Army, they are represented among the ranks of Generals at the rate of 6.5% – 21 of 321 U.S. Army Generals are women. That puts us at about halfway there in terms of fair representation in the upper ranks of the Army. Compare that to the representation of women among top executives in private industry and among our lawmakers.

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It’s like watching a slow-motion scene from a horror movie, knowing what’s coming, seeing the zippers in the costume and still… still… not being able to look away. It’s like watching a couple of eight-year-olds debate economics and foreign policy – except that it’s excusable and understandable when eight-year-olds quote their parents as the ultimate authority. When it’s adults debating about presidential candidates, it’s scary stuff. We have one person who consistently quotes ‘news’ from YouTube mashups of candidates’s speeches and interviews as ‘reliable’ and ‘credible’ sources. Others routinely cobble together posts that are nothing more than repeated gossip of the most vile kind.

The sad part of all this is that these posters are not confined to one side. While the largest number of those barely intelligible, rabid posts tend to be from conservatives blindly cut-and-pasting articles from the most conservative right scare publications they can find, there are plenty of Democrat supporters that are just as bad. The blind acceptance of anything they read on their favorite media-trash sites scares the ever-lovin’ shit out of me.

The total lack of critical thinking and examination of what they’re reading is frightening. This is something that we need to be teaching our kids in school. They need to understand how to recognize spin, how to discern facts from propaganda, how to see when they are being deliberately misled by sensationalism. We’re hurt on two fronts by this – on the one hand, the sensational right media can post all the unchecked speculative garbage that they want and the right-brained sheep swallow it whole and repeat it at the top of their lungs. On the other hand, the sensational left media posts all the sensational garbage they can find without substantiating any of it, where the left-brained sheep latch onto it and repost it on their blogs and the right screams that the liberal media is crucifying their candidates and the only news that they can trust is Fox News (can I just tell you that I’d die laughing at that if I weren’t so close to crying about it?)

The truth is we shouldn’t be so surprised about the popularity of the McCain/Palin ticket. Remember the scene in Sweet Home Alabama where Reese Witherspoon hauls off and slugs Candice Bergen, hollering “Don’t you ever talk to my mama that way!” and the entire wedding breaks out in applause?  It was the triumph of small-town values over big city polish. It was the guy standing up to say “My quarterback can beat up your honor student”. It’s the resentment of Joe Ordinary bubbling over in the face of one too many elitist snob telling him he’s too dumb to manage his own money.

That’s the sentiment that we’re seeing in action in this campaign. Sarah is the champion of hockey, mom and apple pie. The plucky little PTA mom single-handedly swept out corruption in her little town, then moved on to the big city to do the same thing – now she’s going to get all those smarty-pants college professors and community organizers who think they know better than us how we should be running our lives. Barack Obama is the quintessential “elite”, born in a state most of us only dream of visiting, a cosmopolitan world citizen, well-educated, editor of the Harvard Review, well-spoken and proposing that if the U.S. is a world leader, then it’s time we started leading responsibly instead of playing bully. When little Miss Sarah started tossing off snide jibes at Barack and the Democratic party, she spoke to the high school kid in all of us. She reached out and embraced the side of us that resents the boss and the slick-talking guy that got the promotion we deserved. The only thing better (in their minds) than watching Palin take sly digs at Obama would be seeing her haul off and punch Hilary.

Unfortunatley for us, Miss Sarah is not Reese Witherspoon and this is not a movie script. The folks writing HER lines are not slick Hollywood writers who’ll deliver us a happily ever after ending. They’re the same writers that have managed to destroy every bit of good will that the U.S. had with most of the rest of the world. They’ve made us a laughingstock with most of the civilized world who can’t believe what they’re seeing, and they’ve written policies that allowed financial giants to gut our economy with little to no oversight.

The real joke is on us. Sarah Palin is a small-town hustler with a taste for big-city power and greed. She’s not Daisy Duke, she’s Boss Hogg with a little extra shrewdness. She’s the epitome of the small-town politician who rose to power by ruthless exercise of power and native cunning. And while that may fly in a little town (and despite it’s physical size, the state of Alaska is a small town in many ways), on the international stage she’s a little guppy trying to swim with the sharks.

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In high school, she led her basketball team — as point guard and captain — to victory in the state championship.

Rumor has it that during one high school basketball game, Lisa Leslie scored 101 points in the first half of the game. The other team snuck out during half time through the locker room. We all know, of course, that Ms. Leslie has since gone on to lead Team USA to FOUR Olympic gold medals, over a 19 year career. She also was a maverick (that’s right, MAVERICK) in the WNBA, playing 10 seasons for LA. What you got to say to that, Palin?

Two years later, she was crowned Miss Wasilla and finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant.

Who can forget Ms. America September 1983-July 1984. The first Black Miss America was truly a maverick, sticking to the establishment and being stripped of her crown for refusing to fall in line (i mean nude photos…). This woman is no stranger to controversy, but her perseverance and dedication have seen her through. From the Miss America website:

An Atlantic City contestant representing New York, Vanessa won both the swimsuit and talent competition, going on to become the first African American Miss America and making an unforgettable mark in pageant history. Despite her resignation over questionable photos, she performed her duties as Miss America in an exemplary fashion. She moved into the world of entertainment with ease and grandeur. Vanessa’s talent as a singer, dancer and actress has catapulted her to stardom due to her perseverance and determination.

Today, Vanessa has four children and some describe her as the embodiment of American values. She nurtures at home, encouraging her children in their educational endeavors and social activities, and, of course, continues to pursue quite a remarkable career, being well recognized for recording hits such as “Save the Best for Last” and “Running Back to You.

Do you hear that? The EMBODIMENT of American Values. How can we reject that kind of leadership. She has her perseverance to thank for her stardom. How can we question perseverance? Isn’t that what we need? But wait I’ve “saved the best for last.”

Before serving as Governor, Sarah was the mayor of Wasilla for two-terms…again, defeating the incumbent! Some have tried to diminish this experience by pointing out that Wasilla only has a population of nearly 10,000 people. This is the size of many cities all across our country. The size where everyone knows everyone, and where as mayor you are held personally accountable for your decisions.

Personally accountable, eh? Is that why she was almost booted out of office over unethical firings? Good old fashioned American accountability. But I digress. Seriously, Mayor Denise Simmons oversees the city of Cambridge (fondly known as the People’s Republic of Cambridge), with a population of over 100,000 people- more than 10 times that of Wasilla. Here is a woman I would be proud to hold as an example to my own (fictional and hypothetical) daughter. A native Cantabridgian, a former School Committee member, and a mother of school ages children, Simmons is a role model for young women throughout Greater Boston, and a partner in making Cambridge the haven of progressive living that it is. She is also the first Black Lesbian Mayor in the country. Still think Sarah Palin is a maverick?

Pshaw.

My “knee jerk” reaction, from what I’ve learned so far, is that this
woman breaks the mold in almost every conceivable way. I like women the
way they are, and think they should continue to be the way they are,
but if you want an example of the feminist model of a woman not being
restricted by pre-conceived notions of what a woman should be, She’s
it. She shows that woman can not only be all they can be, but also
anything they want to be. On their own.

She compares favorably to Hillary in that she’s totally self made. Her
husband, a real man to be sure, had nothing to do with her rising to
governership. There may be some minor experience issues. She’s never
had to dodge sniper fire for instance. Although, she likely would
return fire. While simultaneously breast feeding.

What’s difficult about this is that a lot of it is true. Palin is definitely an independent, outspoken woman who won an election for governor in the rough-and-tumblest state in the country. She does not conform to the traditional feminine gender role in as many ways as she does. And here’s the thing: she is the beneficiary of societal attitude changes brought about by decades of strong, feminist women standing up to demand that they be treated with the same consideration as men. She is in the position she holds because generations of women before her dared to stand up and demand that they be judged on their brains and their abilities rather than on the fact that they have a womb. She is proof that not only can a woman achieve recognition in the arena of national politics – she can do it with young children in tow.

I’m not a Palin fan. I want to make that clear up front – but I am defensive of MY rights as a woman. On that basis, I am heartily offended by those who question her love for her children – especially the youngest – because they have never seen her holding the child. It has no bearing on her ability to do her job, and I’m heartily offended by the notion that the mother of a young child should not be doing anything other than mothering that child. And just as I will defend to the death my right to hold my 17 year old daughter’s hand and support her through the difficult decision to have an abortion, I uphold HER right to be proud of her daughter and support her through the difficult decision to carry her child and raise it.

And here’s where the difference comes in. MY belief system does not limit her daughter’s choices. I would not in a million years presume to tell any woman that she MUST have an abortion, no matter how unfortunate and horrible the circumstances, no matter how much better off I believe the mother or society would be if that pregnancy is terminated. Her belief system, on the other hand, would force my daughter to have child no matter what the circumstances.

We absolutely should be asking hard questions about Palin, but those questions should not be about whether she should be running on a presidential ticket when she has an infant son and a pregnant daughter. Instead, we should be asking: how can she advocate an energy policy that further enslaves us to the oil companies (oops, doh! One pays her husband’s salary!); how does she answer charges that she abused her power as governor for famiy reasons?; why does she feel it’s necessary to lie about her opponent to score points?; and really, can she do her own taxes? Because if she can, she should have figured out that her poor parents, who just bought a service station, aren’t very likely to see an increase in their taxes under the Democrats, and might even be better off.

They needed someone to counterbalance McCain’s perceived softness on reproductive issues – and Palin is that. The country can point all the fingers they want at the failure of the “abstinence only” sex education program and be right – but the flip side is that the Republicans can point right back and say, “And this is what responsible families do when that happens”. Bristol’s pregnancy and her decision to carry the baby to term is the definitive answer to ‘what if it were one of her daughters?’

I’d question how well McCain’s advisers had done their jobs if we’d learned instead that Bristol had had an abortion, or even that she had a prescription for birth control. But the fact that she’s pregnant and is going to marry and raise her baby? And that her family stands behind her, and is proud that she has made the choice that she did? The Democrats would have to fight a lot dirtier than they have (or want to) to turn that into a negative.