March18
I recently came across a new label, born out of the attempt to define a “new” group of people, particularly but not exclusively women, who are embracing home, green living, social justice, and responsible consumption.
They’re being called femivores, and they’re creating ripples of change not only in families and neighborhoods, but also in schools and workplaces.
At first glance, it would be easy to accuse these individuals of not appreciating the great strides made (supposedly) under the banner of feminism and equal rights for women.
Except that most of them do not fit into the categories our culture likes to cram homemakers into – the elite upper-class who stay home because their husband can afford it and who fritter their time away on shopping and spa treatments, and the religious Bible-thumpers who subjugate women to a silent and subservient role of servitude and passivity.
The problem with those definitions of homemaker is that they’re a result from the underlying mentality that clouds our views of economics and of domesticity. What I mean by that is, we tend to view our entire lives with a consumeristic mentality.
Homemaking is seen, by and large, through this lens. There is the ever present push for purchasing goods and services; groceries, clothing, transportation, appliances, medical, etc. Then shuttling children to and from activities and classes we paid for; school, music, sports, etc. Even our downtime is usually through purchasing something; movies, restaurant meals, entertainment devices, etc.
Betty Friedan brought this to light in her startling book, The Feminine Mystique. She wrote about the dissatisfaction housewives felt as their lives; built around getting married, prettying up a home, and having babies; felt meaningless. She was right, in one sense. The mindless acts of shopping and taxiing children can cause a women to wallow in unfulfilled potential, as they cease to contribute to anything beyond giving credence to the consumeristic mentality on which their lives were based.
And so, women in large part left the home and joined the workforce. And yet, as we have seen, they too have not escaped the pervading consumeristic mindset. Just as housewives sought to find purpose and identity through purchasing, now businesswomen needed to rely on even more purchased goods and services to maintain their lifestyle. Labor and time saving appliances are even more in demand, as is more professional clothing, another vehicle, more take-out meals, gym memberships to offset the desk job, and nicer vacations because, heck, after all that working she deserves it.
So where are we now?
Women constantly battle between two paths, which they believe hold opposite benefits; The workforce, where they can achieve financial independence and success. Or as housewife, where they can fill their need to nurture and create a haven of sorts.
But are these virtues so different and opposite? Must a women give up one for the other? And that’s where the femivore comes in, as she says a firm and cheerful “No!”
The femivore is neither a housewife nor working mom, at least not in the usual stifling definitions. It’s not really about a rejection of those things, as it is in the embrace of something different. Instead of being controlled by a consumeristic mindset, they seek to live in such a way that relies less and less on purchasing and consuming, and more and more on family, community, environmental health and social justice.
In our city of Flint and nationwide, there is a lot of talk about building communities, eating local, nutrition, caring for the earth, health, reusing and recycling, going green, and on and on and on. Everyone knows why we need to be concerned about these things, but not many know how we’re going to do it.
You can talk all you want about how our current economic system encourages poor nutrition through the flood of processed foods, fast foods and soil damage, harms the planet, splinters families by separating them most of the day, supports the mistreatment of animals in factory farms, contributes to the health crisis with drug advertisements and unaffordable medical care, blah blah blah blah blah. You can create community gardens, allow farmer’s markets to accept food stamps, preach about the problem of childhood obesity, try to attract whole food groceries into urban neighborhoods, blah blah blah.
But who is going to take those assets and turn them into practice? How will that carrot actually get into the stomach of a child?
The fact is, our culture has forgotten the basic skills that even make it possible to live an economically productive life, let alone a ecological sustainable one. The majority of people are still going to choose a purchased meal over a home-cooked one, because of the lack of time, skill, and cost. Of course, femivores understand that knowing how to produce food and prepare it actually saves time and money, savings which are compounded over time when factors such as health are considered.
While many may still turn up their nose at the idea of having chickens, growing gardens and baking their own bread, it is truly the progressive and forward-thinking individuals who recognize that not only are these things rewarding, they are vital to our families, communities, and yes, the planet.
