I've been reading Boundless, this webzine by Focus on the Family, and it's pretty fantastic. The editorial formula: Take a rote, sexist stereotype, dress it up with the personal voice and namedrop brand things and places (to connect to "you" and "your life") and punch it.
Now, I'm not such a humorless literalist that I don't think the differences between the sexes aren't ample ground for humor. Women's complete inability to grapple with even simple arithmetic, for example: hilarious! But when an organization publishes—with a straight face, apparently—a guide called, "Husbands and Wives: How a Husband Should Handle His Wife's Submission," well, that organization will be sleeping on the couch tonight. There's no good humor to back up this jokey column about how men are too goofy, too labrador retriever-y to shop for groceries and succeed and so women should do the shopping. Under any circumstances I'd avoid ending a piece like that with the line "women should do the shopping," but it's especially suspect coming from the folks who believe that "women should do the everything men tell them to."
The tired lines follow the predictable ones (the Hunter-Gatherer emerges!), but along comes this:
John is a kid in a candy store when he steps through Safeway's automatic doors. He pounces on the very items most female shoppers avoid: dried fish, mint chutney, coconut ginger rice and banana-strawberry kefir.Really? That's what guys eat when their women aren't nagging them? Coming from a place where people really buy into this stuff, Focus on the Family has always struck me as being awfully similar to Focusing on a Bag of Pork Rinds, at least as far as culinary ambitions go. Chutney, coconut ginger, kefir? That's not Family Focused—John's shopping at Whole Foods!
Listless men return from shopping trips energized by their ingenuity. Noodles are replaced by artichoke hearts, milk exchanged for broccolini, the sought-after turkey traded for a single hairy coconut.Grocery shopping on the DL. Posted by Kriston at December 8, 2005 11:46 AM
Chutney, coconut ginger, kefir
While my husband knows and loves chutney, I doubt he could find it in the grocery store. The other two items are not on his radar screen.
Posted by: Roxanne at December 8, 2005 1:38 PMRe: "... How a Husband Should Handle His Wife's Submission," should we assume she's sent him slides? :)
Posted by: David at December 8, 2005 1:49 PMBah! Crucial broken link fixed.
Posted by: 6878265 at December 8, 2005 1:56 PMThe tired lines follow the predictable ones (the Hunter-Gatherer emerges!)
It's also a complete misunderstanding of what "hunter-gatherer" refers to. In "hunter-gatherer" societies, one group (usually the men) plays the role of "hunter" of wild game and another group (usually the women) plays the role of "gatherer" of fruits and vegetables. There are plenty of amusing jokes about gender roles to be made here when it comes to shopping... ("As a woman, I know that the family needs fruits and vegetables and starch to complete our meal, but my husband comes into the Safeway like he's on a mission and brings hoome nothing but 5 pounds of chuck roast!") However, the author completely blows the joke, combining the "hunter/gatherer" into one person.
The author is also writing from an extremely narrow perspective. She got married at 19, and her husband likely never learned to live on his own. Likely the author herself did not, either, but gender roles being what they are, she would have been socially punished were she not able to handle the shopping after she was married. I would suspect that most people who've lived on their own for a while, male or female, understand how to do grocery shopping.
Posted by: Constantine at December 8, 2005 3:10 PMWas I responsible for directing you to Boundless? I'm particularly fond of the "Beyond Buddies" category.
Posted by: Adrienne at December 8, 2005 4:52 PMYes! I was going to write something about Cato, but got caught up in the sweet siren song of FotF.
Posted by: Kriston at December 8, 2005 5:07 PMCato schmato. I think we could all use a little bit more "Virgin Pride" in our lives.
Posted by: Adrienne at December 8, 2005 5:10 PMAdrienne, I checked out your virgin link, and it made for a surreal browse. Was particularly puzzled by this text in the sidebar:
"Hollywood — a group of people with the collective morals of guinea pigs — is certainly not on our side."
I mean, I work in H'wood (and I'm not on their side), but I've always thought of guinea pigs as fairly altruistic animals. Not by their choice, of course, but they certainly do suffer a lot for science and for mankind. Little martyrs, actually. So it's interesting that that's their (the proud virgins') idea of an insult.
Oh, I know plenty of men who would come back from the store with a hairy coconut when a turkey was expected. It's because these men have learned the First Rule of Household Chores: If you do a shitty enough job, you won't be asked to do it again.
Posted by: The J Train at December 9, 2005 7:58 AMI intentionally get weird stuff from the grocery store. Where else am I going to get it? I've found lots of stuff that now isn't so weird since I'm eating it every other day.
Posted by: perianwyr at December 9, 2005 9:14 AMI'd like to thank you for now wasting approximately 11 hours of my life reading every single Boundless article. It has quickly replaced Capitol File as my must-read.
Posted by: the g. at December 9, 2005 9:56 AMMy wife just had a baby, and so over the course of a few days our friends on the Boundless team brought us dinner. We received one meal from Olive Garden, and three from Whole Foods (and one home-cooked dinner). I personally love shopping at Whole Foods, and am especially drawn to their selection of cheeses and organic chocolate.
It seems there are some cliches about Christians (particularly FOTF Christians) that are just inaccurate. Perhaps there are other misconceptions about us? :-)
BTW, my wife and I did find the "What I Don't Understand about Men and Food" funny and accurate, and I can't blame it on getting married early (I married in my 30s)....
Posted by: Ted at December 9, 2005 10:36 AMThey have Whole Foods in Narnia?
Posted by: Kriston at December 9, 2005 12:03 PMGood of you to be good-humored, Ted. I don't mean to be a jerk about it—some of my best friends are Christians!—but it's hard for me to not see FOTF through a political lens. If it weren't for your emoticons, I'd assume you were a robot.
But my lack of charity aside, Boundless can't publish the sentence "We’re left high and dry" in an article called "Virgin Pride" and not expect some ribbing.
Posted by: Kriston at December 9, 2005 12:33 PMKriston -- you think *that's* bad? Take a look at the summary I naively gave to the first excerpt from Leon Kass' piece; it's half-way down the list on this page:
http://www.boundless.org/2005/archives.cfm?pagetype=date&docMonth=10&docYear=2005
Someone asked me if the double entendres were intentional. Nope, I was just careless in my choice of words.... :-)
Posted by: at December 9, 2005 1:47 PMDirty! Now we're talking.
(Does Jesus know you're on the Internets?)
Posted by: Kriston at December 9, 2005 2:19 PMSorry. Someone really needs to stand over my shoulder and tell me when to cut it out.
Posted by: Kriston at December 9, 2005 4:20 PMI think traditionally they're very small and they stand on your shoulder. Hopefully the other shoulder will support an opposing viewpoint.
Posted by: David at December 9, 2005 5:47 PM"Martha said to Mary 'Do the dishes with me.'
Jesus said to Martha, 'Honey, let your sister be.
She's the first to get the gist of what I been talkin' about.
I will see if I can get the boys to help you out.'
Chorus
Turn back, O Man, forswear thy foolish ways:
You got a match in your pocket going to set this whole world ablaze.
Turn back, O Man, let Woman take the wheel,
Because the great day of judgement ain't supposed to be your killin' field."
-Bob Franke, "Turn Back O Man" on
Posted by: at December 15, 2005 9:49 PMI don't understand what's wrong with pork rinds.
Posted by: Sean Gleeson at December 15, 2005 10:23 PM