I am sure this lovely lady didn't mean it this way but, for those of us who have lived in poor places, the fetishising of handwashing comes off as obscene privilege.
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@Remittancegirl @Bumblefish I'm wondering if it is in a way a display of wealth. "Look at me, I can afford to throw an entire day at a task most people spend an hour or so on"
@http_error_418 Yes!!! You put your finger on something I was having trouble expressing. Also, I wonder how much she spends on the hand cream to stave off chapping? @Bumblefish
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I am sure this lovely lady didn't mean it this way but, for those of us who have lived in poor places, the fetishising of handwashing comes off as obscene privilege.
There are women - yes, they're always women - all over the world who either don't have electricity or can't afford a washing machine. And they routinely spend a day a week handwashing a family's laundry.
I must say, I find poverty cosplay deeply disturbing
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dax_h52KmRj/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
@Remittancegirl lol that is why I found the book Yesteryear to be enjoyable.
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@hko @Remittancegirl
The faucet also breaks the context -
I am sure this lovely lady didn't mean it this way but, for those of us who have lived in poor places, the fetishising of handwashing comes off as obscene privilege.
There are women - yes, they're always women - all over the world who either don't have electricity or can't afford a washing machine. And they routinely spend a day a week handwashing a family's laundry.
I must say, I find poverty cosplay deeply disturbing
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dax_h52KmRj/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
I remember my grandmother telling me how happy she was when she got a washing mashine...
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I remember my grandmother telling me how happy she was when she got a washing mashine...
@Mab_813 this, 1000 times. If there was any piece of tech in the last 200 years that genuinely improved women’s lives, it was the washing machine
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@Remittancegirl @realn2s @hko Also she should be mixing ashes from her fireplace with water to create alkali and use that instead of commercial detergent, which would then make her hands extremely dry and irritated!
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@Mab_813 this, 1000 times. If there was any piece of tech in the last 200 years that genuinely improved women’s lives, it was the washing machine
@Remittancegirl @Mab_813 Especially because early manual washing machines were also used to induce abortions, as I learned in the Viennese Museum of contraception and abortion.
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I am sure this lovely lady didn't mean it this way but, for those of us who have lived in poor places, the fetishising of handwashing comes off as obscene privilege.
There are women - yes, they're always women - all over the world who either don't have electricity or can't afford a washing machine. And they routinely spend a day a week handwashing a family's laundry.
I must say, I find poverty cosplay deeply disturbing
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dax_h52KmRj/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
@Remittancegirl the one, single upside of hand washing I've heard of is from communities where washing is done down by the river/lake: the women can socialize away from the men, cause everyone knows it takes a day, so dudes won't bother them to serve.
When washing machines come into those communities the "freed up time" is quickly absorbed by new chores and less socializing.
So those communities need some equality delivered with the washing machines. -
@Bumblefish I don't think she was attempting to glorify suffering. I don't think she's suffering at all. But she's romanticising a particular chore that has been the bane of women's existence from time immemorial.
And I'm sure she's found some meditative escape in it. But the decadent privilege implicit in it is... well, obscene to me.
@Remittancegirl @Bumblefish They are preparing people to accept actual poverty. It started for me with the whole 'tiny house' craze, where living in cramped spaces was presented as fashionable and eco and whatnot, and now there's this.
They really want to turn back the clock at least 150 years, and keep all the spoils of all our work entirely for themselves. -
@juliette I absolutely get the CottageCore thing myself.
But wouldn't it be more creative to reinvent that aesthetic in a way that didn't glamourise grinding poverty?
@Remittancegirl I keep trying to sort out the linkage here because some of it is definitely decadent rich folks cosplaying or even peacocking their leisure time, but there's also a certain amount of what feels like trepidation in the audiences responding - trying to find reassurance that if they lose access to modern convenience (whether it's some kind of collapse narrative, rapture, revolution, or a slip into poverty, to go around some common political quadrants' anxieties) that they'll still be able to meet their needs and be okay, that they won't lose their sense of dignity. For people who grew up clinging to the shrinking middle class iceberg, I see more of that latter. I think it sometimes is an audience appetite to see EXACTLY grinding poverty glamourised, so daily precarity (or whatever End Times narrative they're raised with) will feel less frightening.
I wash some things by hand (with a plunger) because my washing machine wasn't doing the job terribly well for anything on the delicate cycle, and I'm trying to eke out a bit more life from my clothes. It's awful work if you need to do it for anything like a full wardrobe instead of just trying to preserve bras or a sentimental shirt.
But I also felt a certain anxiety fizzle down after the first time, knowing that while I'd rather always have the option to rely on a machine I wasn't completely dependent on it to stay afloat and pass, socioeconomically, in "normal" society. In the sweltering climate here it helps a lot to have in-unit washer/dryers, as laundromats here are For the Poor and thus terrible and expensive, because homes here are stupidly large and thus have the space. Therefore more than once in my 20s I was crunching numbers trying to figure out how little laundry I could do before the more affordable apartment became the costly one. I fortunately only very briefly went without, so I got the plunger years later, but the scars from the literal hungry years are still there in my head, and while I avoid most content like that like plague I can feel that anxiety-reassurance loop reactivate when people discuss it.
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I am sure this lovely lady didn't mean it this way but, for those of us who have lived in poor places, the fetishising of handwashing comes off as obscene privilege.
There are women - yes, they're always women - all over the world who either don't have electricity or can't afford a washing machine. And they routinely spend a day a week handwashing a family's laundry.
I must say, I find poverty cosplay deeply disturbing
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dax_h52KmRj/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
@Remittancegirl Most people would try this once and say "screw that!" And go back to using a washing machine. Hell, even a top loader is a PITA.
Both my grannies would have told her not to be so silly. Washing machines are not some conspiracy we've been brainwashed into thinking we should have ::cough:: dishwashers ::cough:: Washing machines are a tool of liberation for women.
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@Bumblefish I don't think she was attempting to glorify suffering. I don't think she's suffering at all. But she's romanticising a particular chore that has been the bane of women's existence from time immemorial.
And I'm sure she's found some meditative escape in it. But the decadent privilege implicit in it is... well, obscene to me.
@Remittancegirl @Bumblefish You hit the nail on the head. She can enjoy it, as you say, as a "meditative practice", for example. But if she finds one day that her hands are red raw and painful she can go "I'll give it a miss today" and feck her clothes into a washing machine. She can afford to do that and keep such things "fun" for herself. Many can't.
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