No, I'm not talking about some new kind of bacteria. I was trying to cleverly combine "uniform" and "mom". In other words, this is yet another blog taking on the question of what moms should wear at home.
Only I think I'm going to come to a different conclusion than most. First of all, let's be clear--I'm in favor of neat and clean and good-smelling. I'm even in favor of the "dress professionally" school of thought, mostly. I like to see mommies in crisp cotton camp shirts and pretty khaki capris, or something similar. (Although I think one lady I read who advocated wearing a suit jacket around the house was over the top.) I think you ought to dress in a way that lifts your self-esteem. If that means collared shirts, more power to you.
But what I wanted to examine was why it is the "uniform of mommies", i.e., yoga pants or jeans and a t-shirt, elicits such universal disdain. Before you reply, "isn't it obvious? because it's sloppy!" I want you to think for a moment.
See I used to work in a hospital, and I also worked in a physician's office. Doctors typically wear business clothes with a white coat. Actually in teaching hospitals you'll notice the white coat differs depending on whether the doctor in question is full-fledged or still...er, a fledgling. The coats are not designed to be flattering, they're a symbol and they were originally functional, to protect the doctor's clothes. (Now they put paper gowns over their white coats if they think they're going to get splattered.)
But when docs are in surgery, they wear scrubs, shoe covers, and a poofy hat. Scrubs are way sloppier than any sweats I've ever seen, but nobody calls a surgeon sloppy--although surgeons frequently traipse around the hospital still in their scrubs. They assume, quite correctly, that s/he is wearing the garments that are most practical for surgery, which is after all very messy.
I suggest that jeans and a t-shirt are in fact the clothes that are most practical for dealing, for 12 hours or more, with the solo care of small smeary children and their environment. Seeing a mom at the grocery store with three kids under age three, in jeans and a t-shirt, really should elicit no more scorn that seeing a surgeon on his dinner break in the hospital cafeteria still in scrubs.
But it does, and the fact that I made the surgeon in the paragraph above a guy without thinking about it might have something to do with it. See, in our society it's assumed that men dress pretty much practically and to show people what they do. Policemen have uniforms (and hats), doctors have coats, businessmen have suits. Women are supposed to be ornamental.
This isn't a feminist rant. I actually think there are some deep things tied up with the idea of women being ornamental, and I think on some level it's good for us to be ornamental. But surely we shouldn't be *only* ornamental. At some point--as a nurse on a medical floor, an EMT, or a mom raising kids--practicality and symbolism enter the equation.
I think that the Momiform elicits scorn in our society because it is, in fact, a very practical outfit and also it's a potent symbol, though not ornamental. We identify the woman who wears it as a housewife, and therefore we look down on her--not because of anything inherently stupid in a pair of clean jeans and an unwrinkled t-shirt, but because we don't, as a society, think housewives and stay-at-home moms are very smart.
Some people blame Betty Friedan, who famously said in The Feminine Mystique that housework was "peculiarly suited to the abilities of feeble-minded girls". But the scorn existed long before Friedan, who, I think, merely articulated what a lot of people already thought. Just watch movies from the 1950s, the so-called heyday of the stay-at-home housewife--the lady of the house is usually portrayed as super-competent and very pretty but not very bright, as evidenced by her inability to balance a checkbook, drive a car, or manage her children. It goes back at least to pre-WWI America, where the suffrage movement also occasionally advocated for things like communal kitchens, so that women would be free of the brain-mushifying drudgery of cooking. (That some people like cooking was, apparently, unimportant. Or maybe they were supposed to work in the communal kitchen, I don't know.) Before we scorned sweatpants we scorned the "wrapper", which as near as I can tell from reading old books was the Edwardian equivalent of a bathrobe.
Now, do I advocate going to the store in your jammies, with uncombed hair and unbrushed teeth? No. You should get dressed like a grownup. And you should probably, for the sake of feeling attractive, try to go for the yoga pants over sweatpants and the fitted, un-faded t-shirt over the wrinkly, faded one you got for free one day for buying a double pack of Doritos. This is a matter of making yourself aesthetically pleasing and supporting your self-esteem. I mean, of course take a shower. Be moderately ornamental. I support neat and clean.
But I don't think that in order to be taken seriously Mommy should have to imitate Assistant Vice President. Raising children is an important job and it comes with a uniform, something as practical and symbolic as a pair of scrubs. If we can respect a surgeon we see in his scrubs--we assume he's between cases, harried and worried about the good of humanity, don't we?--then surely we can respect a mom in yoga pants, hurriedly grabbing Pedialyte and infant tyelenol in the store.
There. That's my rant for today.
Cheers,
Breanna
Only I think I'm going to come to a different conclusion than most. First of all, let's be clear--I'm in favor of neat and clean and good-smelling. I'm even in favor of the "dress professionally" school of thought, mostly. I like to see mommies in crisp cotton camp shirts and pretty khaki capris, or something similar. (Although I think one lady I read who advocated wearing a suit jacket around the house was over the top.) I think you ought to dress in a way that lifts your self-esteem. If that means collared shirts, more power to you.
But what I wanted to examine was why it is the "uniform of mommies", i.e., yoga pants or jeans and a t-shirt, elicits such universal disdain. Before you reply, "isn't it obvious? because it's sloppy!" I want you to think for a moment.
See I used to work in a hospital, and I also worked in a physician's office. Doctors typically wear business clothes with a white coat. Actually in teaching hospitals you'll notice the white coat differs depending on whether the doctor in question is full-fledged or still...er, a fledgling. The coats are not designed to be flattering, they're a symbol and they were originally functional, to protect the doctor's clothes. (Now they put paper gowns over their white coats if they think they're going to get splattered.)
But when docs are in surgery, they wear scrubs, shoe covers, and a poofy hat. Scrubs are way sloppier than any sweats I've ever seen, but nobody calls a surgeon sloppy--although surgeons frequently traipse around the hospital still in their scrubs. They assume, quite correctly, that s/he is wearing the garments that are most practical for surgery, which is after all very messy.
I suggest that jeans and a t-shirt are in fact the clothes that are most practical for dealing, for 12 hours or more, with the solo care of small smeary children and their environment. Seeing a mom at the grocery store with three kids under age three, in jeans and a t-shirt, really should elicit no more scorn that seeing a surgeon on his dinner break in the hospital cafeteria still in scrubs.
But it does, and the fact that I made the surgeon in the paragraph above a guy without thinking about it might have something to do with it. See, in our society it's assumed that men dress pretty much practically and to show people what they do. Policemen have uniforms (and hats), doctors have coats, businessmen have suits. Women are supposed to be ornamental.
This isn't a feminist rant. I actually think there are some deep things tied up with the idea of women being ornamental, and I think on some level it's good for us to be ornamental. But surely we shouldn't be *only* ornamental. At some point--as a nurse on a medical floor, an EMT, or a mom raising kids--practicality and symbolism enter the equation.
I think that the Momiform elicits scorn in our society because it is, in fact, a very practical outfit and also it's a potent symbol, though not ornamental. We identify the woman who wears it as a housewife, and therefore we look down on her--not because of anything inherently stupid in a pair of clean jeans and an unwrinkled t-shirt, but because we don't, as a society, think housewives and stay-at-home moms are very smart.
Some people blame Betty Friedan, who famously said in The Feminine Mystique that housework was "peculiarly suited to the abilities of feeble-minded girls". But the scorn existed long before Friedan, who, I think, merely articulated what a lot of people already thought. Just watch movies from the 1950s, the so-called heyday of the stay-at-home housewife--the lady of the house is usually portrayed as super-competent and very pretty but not very bright, as evidenced by her inability to balance a checkbook, drive a car, or manage her children. It goes back at least to pre-WWI America, where the suffrage movement also occasionally advocated for things like communal kitchens, so that women would be free of the brain-mushifying drudgery of cooking. (That some people like cooking was, apparently, unimportant. Or maybe they were supposed to work in the communal kitchen, I don't know.) Before we scorned sweatpants we scorned the "wrapper", which as near as I can tell from reading old books was the Edwardian equivalent of a bathrobe.
Now, do I advocate going to the store in your jammies, with uncombed hair and unbrushed teeth? No. You should get dressed like a grownup. And you should probably, for the sake of feeling attractive, try to go for the yoga pants over sweatpants and the fitted, un-faded t-shirt over the wrinkly, faded one you got for free one day for buying a double pack of Doritos. This is a matter of making yourself aesthetically pleasing and supporting your self-esteem. I mean, of course take a shower. Be moderately ornamental. I support neat and clean.
But I don't think that in order to be taken seriously Mommy should have to imitate Assistant Vice President. Raising children is an important job and it comes with a uniform, something as practical and symbolic as a pair of scrubs. If we can respect a surgeon we see in his scrubs--we assume he's between cases, harried and worried about the good of humanity, don't we?--then surely we can respect a mom in yoga pants, hurriedly grabbing Pedialyte and infant tyelenol in the store.
There. That's my rant for today.
Cheers,
Breanna
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