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https://thedomesticman.com/

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The Clock is Ticking for the Career Woman

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The Clock is Ticking for the Career Woman

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The idea of the biological clock was coined by Richard Cohen in his 1978 Washington Post column. In it, he claimed that all women working towards a career (mostly between the ages of 27 and 35) could hear their biological clock ticking away and that all, regardless of their relationship status, wanted to have babies. At the end of his piece, Cohen evinced a determinism that would play a major role in the myth of motherhood; he claimed that "there is now something in the air about women having won their fight for equality [referencing the second wave of feminism in the United States] and even something about how it was always harder to be a man, anyway. But there are some things we never had to worry about. Like the ticking of the biological clock." Even if waves of feminism would try to erode the double standards on sex, the metaphor of the biological clock would strike back claiming that even professional women would never be quite on par with their male colleagues and even if they were, it would be at a severe disadvantage of not fulfilling their "biological destiny" as dictated by the ticking noises of their clocks. The metaphor of the biological clock created in Cohen's writing would explode and countless articles, to this day, invoke the existence of the clock as evidence, as proof, that women in the public sphere cannot venture too far away from their traditional roles. Just as in Barthes' analysis of Elle's women of letters, women today, despite their various forms of education and career roles (areas of fulfillment), are still defined by their motherhood or by their failures in becoming mothers; simply, the private sphere is still for the woman.

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COMPOSITE WOMAN (actually, several women at different times) is coming to lunch. There she is entering the restaurant. She's the pretty one. Dark hair. Medium height. Nicely dressed. Now she is taking off her coat. Nice figure. She sits and begins with a status report. The job is just wonderful. She is feeling just wonderful. It is wonderful being her age, which is something between 27 and 35. And the fact of the matter, in case you should wonder, is that there is a new man in her life and he, like everything else, is truly wonderful. Then she looks down.

Is there something wrong? Composite Woman says nothing. I ask again. Again she says nothing. Finally I do the you-can-talk-to-me bit.

"Off the record?"

"Absolutely."

"I want to have a baby."

Sometimes, the Composite Woman is married and sometimes she is not. Sometimes, horribly, there is no man in the horizon.What there is always, though, is a feeling that the clock is ticking. A decision will have to be made. A decision that will stick forever. You hear it wherever you go. Women all over are singing their own version of September song.

I've gone around, a busy bee of a reporter, from woman to woman, the ones in the office and the ones I meet elsewhere. Isn't it interesting. I say, this business about the biological clock? How do you feel about it?

They say, a few of them, that it means nothing to them, that if the mood hits them to have a child, they will adopt. From them, you get the message: There are already too many children in the world. I thought that once, too. Then I thought there was room for one more - mine.

Anyway, most of them did not say that. Most of them said that they could hear the clock ticking. Some talked about it in a sort of theoretical sense, like the woman who said she wanted five children and didn't even have a boyfriend yet. She had to get something going, she said, and you could tell that she resented the fact that a deadline had been imposed on her. Some women talked about it the way farmers talk about the weather, with a sort of resignation. Unfair, yes, but out of their control - an important word. Up to now, they've been able to postpone it to go to college and have a career and do all the things that men traditionally have done and now they face this biological clock. One woman who has definitely decided not to have children put it in strong terms.

"It's unfair" she said. "It doesn't make me resent men: it's just unfair. Everything has changed since I was 20 years old. And I know enough now to be sure that I don't know how I will feel 15 years from now. Fifteen years from now, I might desperately want a baby."

I was being wonderfully dispassionate and reportorial and every inch a gentleman, but she caught an edge in my voice and opened up on me.

"You don't want to believe it," she said. "You resent it. You resent it. Every man I know resents it." And then she named the men, men I know, good men, noble men, men of vision, open-minded men who were not your basic male chauvanist pigs. They were, in short, men like me. She gave me one of those you-know-I-am-right looks and I did know she was right.

But more than that, I recognized that I had been something other than a dispassionate reporter when I was going around asking women about the biological clock. I was getting aid and comfort from their answers.

There was something about their situation that showed, more or less, that this is where liberation ends. This is where a woman is a woman - biologically, physiologically, uncontrovertably different. Don't get me wrong. We are not talking about recognizing a difference and being glad that some of us are on the "right" side of it - the side of Charlie Chaplin and Pablo Picasso and all the other senior citizen fathers, the side that heeds no clock.

But there is something else here: once you recognize the difference, you also have to recognize that the difference produces advantages and handicaps. Little about it is simply neutral. This is important because there is now something in the air about women having won their fight for equality and even something about how it was always harder to be a man, anyway. But there are some things we never had to worry about.

Like the ticking of the biological clock.

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The Clock Is Ticking For the Career Woman

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COMPOSITE WOMAN (actually, several women at different times) is coming to lunch. There she is entering the restaurant. She's the pretty one. Dark hair. Medium height. Nicely dressed. Now she is taking off her coat. Nice figure. She sits and begins with a status report. The job is just wonderful.

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Star Magazine's "Best and Worst Moms" cover series are a perfect example of how women are identified through the myth of motherhood. The "Star Report Card" seems to merely focus on criticising women's parenting capabilities while completely removing men from the picture. (Neither is there a different cover series that include the "Best and Worst Dads.") Moreover, when issuing a particular celebrity a grade, the magazine focuses on aspects like if the mom receives help from a nanny (reducing their grade if they do). Furthermore, the cover notes which woman has not seen their child in a month or who can juggle motherhood and stardom together. Childcare is still very much so presented as a women's job, a women's juggle. Even if the women presented on the cover are ones with prominent roles in the public sphere, with major careers, the magazine casts them in a light similar to the way Elle set the femme de lettres. Just like the women of letters, these magazine covers present women who have access to the public sphere still being defined through their traditional roles, through motherhood.

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In his essay "Ornamental Cookery" Barthes' claims that the frenzied baroque food creations in the pages of Elle perpetuate a myth of genteel cookery, of refined cuisine and presentation to the working class individual. Elle readership is served a fairyland represented of reality where the food shown is, in essence, not a meal but dreams layered between sauces, creams, and icings. The image above is the menu of Air France in the 1960s that serves as a very clear example of the kinds of food Barthes analyses in Elle. The menu promises its American passengers a pheasant paté in the shape of, well, a pheasant, a desert that involves extensive layering with icing in the form of rose bouquets, and a group of lobsters that have long fled their nature. Fundamentally, however, the menu presents its potential passengers with the the myth, the fantasy, of deluxe eating that comes with Air France while thirty five thousand feet in the air.

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As Barthes points out in his essay it is also crucial to note, however, that the process of ornamentation "proceeds in two contradictory ways;" while the food is at once abstracted beyond the realm of being "mere food" it is also brought back to the natural through various means. In this manner, a dish is not simply a dish but also a concept. The lobster thermidor dish above is an example of such a dish. The lobster is removed from its shell, cooked, mixed with various sauces and creams, and is stuffed back into its shell. In this case the shell grants authenticity to the meal, serving lobster with a side of the myth of the natural.

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Perhaps the more modern kind of ornamental cookery takes the form of tiny, tiny foods or the field of molecular gastronomy. These foods seem to embody the action of "fleeing from nature" since it becomes more and more difficult to identify what is actually on the dish (both because of its minute build and its synthetic nature). Layers of small foods are meticulously coated with pearly creams and intricate patterns of sauces. Mysterious spoonfuls of "carrot air" (picture 4) clear pumpkin pies, or "octopops" (picture 6) fill the menus of extravagant restaurants in order to construct glimpses into a magical reality inaccessible to most -for who to sell dreams to if not to those who cannot afford them?

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Function: The navigation bar on this particular food blog is placed on the left side of the website and can be accessed upon clicking the button on the top. The navigation bar offers many options for recipes which are categorized into groups like "Red Meat" and then into subgroups like "Beef," "Bison," and "Lamb." This type of organization makes it easier for the viewers to pick the kind of recipe they are looking for and hence makes the website more usable.

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Function: For this specific food blog the sidebar can be found on the right side of the page. The sidebar presents the audience with an alternative option to look for recipes (added to the navigation bar) with the inclusion of the search tab; this detail further contributes to the website's usability. Moreover, the sidebar also gives the visitors the option to join the blog's email newsletter through the tab with the imperative sentence "enter your email address." Viewers are further prompted to join the newsletter service with the sentence "Join 78,985 other followers" right below. Not only does this sentence add to evoke within the viewer a sense of belonging in a larger group of followers, but the number of followers adds credibility to the food blog itself. Indeed, the sidebar is home to other elements that help to build credibility and to appeal to a very particular audience; the right side of the website also displays the blog  creator's cookbooks and podcasts, elements that build an image of a reliable and qualified food blogger. In addition to the cookbooks, the sidebar also shows trust symbols in the form of award badges. These trust symbols not only add credibility to the author's cooking but also appeal to a very specific audience -individuals who follow the paleo diet. The awards mention that "thedomesticman" food blog is one of the "top 10 paleo blogs" or that the author produced the best new paleo cookbook of 2015. These awards not only appeal to a general audience who visit the blog but also to paleo diet followers since they add credibility to the author's paleo-style cooking/recipes.

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Function: The specific web pages for the groups of recipes presented in the navigation bar add to the website's overall usability. The web pages are built vertically and hence visitors are prompted to scroll down to find a recipe (see Picture 2 on the right). This, in turn, means that while visitors spend time in the blog trying to find a recipe, they also get to view elements such as the likes below each recipe from other bloggers (which further adds credibility). The use of the imperative is also important in the web pages, with the sentence "Read Full Article" changing color when hovered over, grabbing the visitor's attention and prompting them to open the recipe. However, the vertical build also allows the audience to see images of the various prepared recipes. The web pages in this food blog usually employ a birds eye camera angle in the photographs of the food (see Picture 1 on the right). Not only does this camera angle work to allow the audience to view the food completely, but it also allows them to get a glimpse of the surrounding. The elements presented in the surrounding, in turn, help to build a very particular mood within the audience; elements such as barbeques, grass, wooden tables,  tablecloths, and food served in copper and clay pans all build a mood of rusticness and homeyness and gives the website a traditional feel.

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Key Feature - Website Name and Description

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Key Feature - Website Name and Description

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Function: The mood evoked within the images is further anchored within the name of the website -"thedomesticman." The word domestic comes attached with ideas such as homeyness and traditional. The description given right below the website's name with the phrase "inspired by traditional & international cuisines" also proves the above concept of a rustic/traditional mood. Nevertheless, perhaps more importantly, the brief description of the website functions as a way to appeal to a greater audience. It is crucial to note that the description does not mention that the recipes are catered towards a paleo diet. Mentioning the paleo diet in the description might cause some visitors to not proceed through the website since paleo recipes might not appeal to them initially (especially if they do not know what the paleo diet is or do not follow it). However, by simply claiming that the website is centered around traditional and international cuisine, the description automatically appeals to a greater audience.

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Function: The body text within the web pages of the food blog all utilize a highly informal diction with phrases like "Hi everyone"  appearing throughout the introductions of recipes. The body text also includes the use of the personal pronouns "we" and "I" and heavily relies on contractions. All of these elements of informal diction build onto the mood of homeyness created within the food images in the blog.

The body text in the recipe web pages mentions specific diets the recipe is fit for, which functions to appeal to audiences who follow different diets like the Gluten-free, Primal, Paleo, Keto, etc (see Picture 3 on the right). The food preparation are given in the form of lists and this enumeration makes it easier for recipes to be understood and followed.

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Key Feature - Reader's Agency to Interact with Text

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Key Feature - Reader's Agency to Interact with Text

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Function: The general structure of the web pages of the recipe groups (presented in the navigation bar) offer readers a top-down sequential reading of the text. Nonetheless, this sequential reading is occasionally interrupted with hyperlinks to buy certain products, to view  podcasts, or to use coupons which give the readers agency to explore the blog as well as related websites.

Non-linear reading experiences also occur towards the end of specific recipe web pages where readers are given links to related recipes and hence allowed to jump over various recipe groups. In essence, these links enhance the website's usability by offering the readers recipes that might interest them further.

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A visit to any toy store today still points at the major rifts that exist between toys that are "meant" for girls and those that are "meant" for boys. A very clear sign of this gap is indeed the color scheme that seem to dominate toy stores, splitting them into two diverging  worlds: that of the pink, fluffy, and glittery versus that of the blue, action-packed, and creative. In his essay "Toys," Barthes examines the denotation and connotations of toys and how these two elements interact in order to condition children to assume certain gender roles. Barthes adds that these toys rely on nature as an alibi to reinforce gender-specific roles that are merely social constructs. Despite Mythologies being published in 1957, the conditioning effect of toys and their advertisements can be seen even today.

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Above is an advertisement for a kid's dress-up trunk that clearly captures the difference that exists between the ways in which toys are advertised to boys versus girls. It is important to begin by noting that the trunk for boys has no one color that predominates; the clothes contain a variety of colors that include red, yellow, black, and brown. However, the difference in the color scheme for the trunk for girls is striking; the only colors that can be seen are pinks/lilacs and white, with the occasional red tulle skirt.  These different color schemes can indeed be interpreted as symbols whose signified is anchored within the functionality of the costumes themselves. While the costumes for boys are about adventurous characters that take action, the costumes for girls are all characters that function based on looks (being a model, princess, movie star). The limited color scheme of the costumes for girls signifies the limited amount of roles that they can assume, of characters they can be. On the other hand, the costumes for boys tell a different story where they can assume the roles of many different characters with various roles whether it be a knight, a fireman, or a cowboy. Indeed, with the restricted amount of roles that the girls trunk offers, the idea of it being a "Mix & Match" toy becomes ironic. The dress-up trunk for girls does not truly offer any roles to mix and match. This irony is augmented by the fact that none of the girls' costumes, without a label telling the audience what they are, look like the characters they are meant to represent; the movie star wears a glittering tutu skirt but so does the princess, model, bride, and the belle of the ball. All of the characters look like one another, essentially limiting the amount of roles girls can take on.

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The Walmart and Toys“R”Us catalogue collages above tell a similar story to the dress-up trunk. Toys catered towards boys commonly aim to teach spatial awareness, mechanics, construction, and science. On the other hand, toy advertisements for girls are dominated with toys that teach domesticity, passivity, beauty, and ways to be nurturing. Essentially, these gender roles and social expectations that are embedded within toys undermine the creative and constructive value and purpose parents want toys to have.

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Perhaps, however, toys in stores now (or those in advertisements like the ones analysed above) reinforce deeply ingrained gender roles by virtue of implicit signs that show themselves after careful consideration. Yet, there is always the occasional toy that makes one wonder how it even passed the idea screening phase of product production: