Good morning, y’all. It’s a chilly Tuesday here in Deutschland, and I’ve been having a hard time deciding about today’s topic. Enter Lori Alexander, aka The Transformed Wife. She’s always good for a mental jog, followed by the need for a mental enema.
I noticed a couple of her posts were featured in Duggar Family News and decided to mosey over to Lori’s Facebook page to see what she’s up to these days. The first thing I see is a recipe for banana bread, in which she claims she’s substituted certain ingredients for “healthy” items. She writes about how she’s changed the flour and uses coconut sugar instead of regular sugar. But then she adds chocolate chips… which would presumably have SUGAR in them, unless she’s using some kind of dietetic chips, which I don’t really care to research. Banana bread isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Not when Lori posts stuff like this…
This looks like a depiction from a television show from the 50s or 60s, where the wife wore pearls and heels to clean house, the man had a 9 to 5 job, and they slept in twin beds. I don’t think this was ever a realistic representation of life in America. This is a Hollywood representation of American life, and it made a lot of people unhappy… because they saw an ideal on television that wasn’t achievable for them.
Lori Alexander, for those who don’t know, is a woman who has written books and blog posts about how women need to get back into the kitchen… stay home and raise babies, listen to their husbands, and read the Bible. She claims this was what women are “meant” to do with their lives, and any woman who rejects that idea is some kind of skanky harlot who lives a “sordid” lifestyle. She doesn’t seem to understand that while a lot of women want to work because they have functioning brains they’d like to use on something besides housework and child raising, quite a lot of them HAVE to work, because that’s the only way they can afford to live.
I realize that my personal situation is an exception. I don’t work outside of the house myself. I don’t have children, either. If I did have children, I’d probably go nuts trying to be a housewife. In fact, I don’t enjoy being a housewife that much, which is why I write. It’s a way to use the brain God gave me… or genetics gave me, whichever is the case. I can promise you that I don’t have a personality that would take kindly to having a husband who tells me what to do and discounts my opinions. And yet, I know there are many women who are in that situation, and either really miserable, or divorced.
Seems like Lori doesn’t care about women who are miserable, unfulfilled, unsuited to motherhood, or living in an abusive relationship with a man who thinks he has the right to do whatever he wants with no consequences whatsoever. And she posts images like the one above with the claim that this is what “feminism has killed” in our society. I say it probably didn’t exist in most families, and those who tried to make it exist sometimes made themselves sick.
Both of my grandmothers worked outside of the home. My mom’s mother worked in a dress shop. My dad’s mother raised nine children, the last of whom died when she was fourteen. She and my grandfather owned a store that they both ran. My mom worked in retail shops, played organ for churches, and when she was in her early 40s, opened her own business. Granted, she and my dad ran their business out of our house, but they were both working. I can promise you that I never ran out to greet my dad in the way it’s presented in that picture above, even when he did have a job outside of our house.
I see a lot of people commenting on Lori’s thread, saying we need to “bring this back”. I’d love to know how they propose to do that, when so many employers in the United States try to get away with paying people as little as possible with no benefits. I’d love to know what Lori thinks should be done in families where one of the members has a disability or a chronic illness, and there’s not enough money to pay the bills. I notice that her photo is literally depicting a whitebread family. Both children have blond hair, while their parents have dark hair. So what? Did Dad remarry? Are the kids adopted? The kids in the above picture don’t look much like their parents. 😀
It amazes me that in 2023, there are still people like Lori Alexander promoting this unrealistic bullshit… She never mentions that many problems that can arise in expecting every family to be like the one in that picture while ignoring the many reasons why it can’t work for everyone. I can’t even count the number of sad stories I’ve read on the Recovery from Mormonism message board by people who tried to live their lives that way, because that was what was expected of them by religious organizations.
I remember one post in particular, written by an exhausted, depressed, defeated mother who wrote about how much hard work it was to keep up with everything that was expected of her. I wish I could still find that specific post today, because it really illustrates the reality of how soulsucking it can be to be stuck in such a reality, where all you do all day is manage the mundane drudgery of running the “perfect” household… which doesn’t exist, anyway. I wonder how many women have worked themselves into an early grave trying to achieve the fantasy in the picture above, from The Transformed Wife’s Facebook page. Lori herself didn’t even achieve that.
I don’t think Lori has a good grasp on reality… but sadly, she does have a following. Lots of people follow her and take her seriously, even as so many snark on her. I obviously have nothing against women or men who want to be full-time homemakers. But it really needs to be a choice. I am a homemaker because it works for our situation. I’m not an obsessive homemaker, nor am I expected to do everything in the house. I also don’t have a passel of children to raise. But I realize not every woman would be happy doing what I do. I know many strong, intelligent, interesting women who don’t want to be mothers, and are very happy working in fulfilling careers or pursuing higher education. I know women who would literally be terrible mothers and, thankfully, have avoided marriage and child raising in favor of working outside of their homes.
I don’t think the idea of women having careers is a “radical feminist” notion, either. In today’s world, women need to be able to take care of themselves. They have to be prepared to live on their own, if need be. Not every woman is blessed with a good relationship or children who will grow up to take care of them. Telling women they need to go back into the house and stay home is taking them backwards and putting them at risk.
But mainly, I just think that the picture above is just perpetuating a myth of something that didn’t really exist in the way it’s being portrayed… Sure, there was a time when women stayed at home while men worked, but it certainly wasn’t bliss for most of them. I’m glad that, as a woman in 2023, I still have choices. I hope we never go back to the way it was before those “nasty feminists” got involved. 😉
Now… I have to close this post. I have a bunch of rugs in the washer that need to be moved to the dryer. A woman’s work is never done. /sarcasm
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