{"id":10106,"date":"2015-01-16T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2015-01-16T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=10106"},"modified":"2015-01-16T09:53:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T14:53:10","slug":"wouldnt-a-wife-be-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/01\/16\/wouldnt-a-wife-be-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Wouldn’t A Wife Be Great!?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Heather L. sent us a link to a business called The Occasional Wife.<\/a>\u00a0It’s slogan: “The Modern Solution To Your Busy Life.”\u00a0The store sells products that help you organize your home and office, and provides\u00a0all kinds of helpful services to support your personal goals.<\/p>\n

\"capturea1\"\"captured\"<\/p>\n

There are two things worth noting here:<\/p>\n

First, the business relies on and reproduces the very idea of “wife.”\u00a0<\/strong> As the website makes clear, wives are people who (a) make your life more pleasurable by taking care of details and daily life-maintenance (such as running errands), (b) organize special events in your life (such as holidays), and (c) deal with work-intensive home-related burdens (such as moving), all while perfectly coiffed and in high heels.<\/p>\n

But, the business only makes sense in a world where “real” wives are obsolete.<\/strong>\u00a0 Prior to industrialization, most men and women worked together on home farms.\u00a0 With industrialization, all but the wealthiest of families relied on (at least) two breadwinners. In the 1950s, the era to which this business implicitly harkens, Americans were bombarded with ideological propaganda praising stay-at-home wives and mothers (in part to pressure women out of jobs that “belonged” to men after the war).\u00a0 Since then, women have increasingly participated in wage labor.\u00a0 Today, the two parent, single-earner family is only a minority of families.<\/p>\n

So, in our “modern” world, even when there is a wife in the picture, there’s rarely a “wife.”\u00a0 But, as the founder explains, it’d sure be nice to have one:\"captureb\"<\/p>\n

See, she was his<\/em> wife, but not a<\/em>\u00a0wife.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, this is nothing new.\u00a0 Tasks performed by wives have been increasingly commodified (that is, turned into services for which people pay): for example, house cleaning, cooking, and child care.\u00a0 This business just makes the transition in reality explicit by referencing the ideology.\u00a0 The fact that the use of the term “wife” works in this way (i.e., brings to mind the 1950s stereotype) in the face of a reality that looks very different, just goes to show how powerful ideology can be.<\/p>\n

Originally posted in 2009; the business has grown from one location to four.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. Heather L. sent us a link to a business called The Occasional Wife.\u00a0It’s slogan: “The Modern Solution To Your Busy Life.”\u00a0The store sells products that help you organize your home and office, and provides\u00a0all kinds of helpful services to support your personal goals. There are two things worth noting here: First, the business […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":65665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2102,2088,2100,253,272,293,76],"class_list":["post-10106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-gender-work","tag-history","tag-marriagefamily","tag-social-construction","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/01\/1a1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10106"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65666,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10106\/revisions\/65666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}