My mom has had a subscription to Good Housekeeping magazine as long as I can remember. And since I was a total misfit child, I've been reading it nearly that long. So basically from the 4th grade onward I was reading articles with titles like, "My Problem Enjoying Sex with My Husband and How I Solved It," "Keeping Your Bathroom Clean Enough to Eat Off the Floor," or "100 Ways to Cook Chicken." I know that my mom knew I was reading the magazine but she never stopped me and so throughout my childhood and adolescence, it provided an education (of sorts). Once I moved out, I would read the back issues when I came home to visit the folks. By then, I was mostly bemused by the magazine.
Of course, thanks to years of reading Good Housekeeping, I would have been perfectly trained to be a successful suburban mom. I could have been the happy wife of some lucky man whose wife knew how to cook chicken, enjoy sex, and scrub the bathroom with equal ferocity and skill devoted to all tasks.
Alas, I took those feminist philosophy classes in college, engaged in a bit of self-exploration and realized that heterosexual wifehood was not exactly for me. So here I am a single mom and gay girl with an unusual skill set......and since I'm here in California visiting mom and dad, I have been exploring the back issues of Good Housekeeping.
Now it makes me laugh, because the magazine is so far out of the circumference of my life these days. But some of the recipes for the grill look good and I did get some handy tips for cleaning my wood floors, so I guess my time hasn't been entirely wasted.
Perhaps one day I will start writing a Good Housekeeping for Lesbians.......with article titles like "Keeping Your Flannel Shirts Like New" and "How to End Your Addiction to Dyke Drama." It ought to attract a huge following.
2 comments:
THAT explains why you're such a fountain of household know-how!
I LOVE the idea of a little lesbian niche version of Good Housekeeping. Like all magazines, there would be about 15 story ideas that got the retread treatment every year... "How NOT to Come Out to Your Aging Parents," "Dress for Success Without Feeling Like You're Trying to Pass," "De-Dyking Your Home in Less Than an Hour," "Moving In After the First Date: Pros and Cons," "Who Mows the Lawn: Two Femmes and How They Make It Work," "Lesbian Bed Death: Myth or Reality," "Tofu vs. Prime Rib: When Diets Collide," "I Fell In Love With My Postal Carrier" (True Life Romance Stories), and, of course, "What to Say When Junior Wants to Meet the Donor"
And that's just off the top of my head!
you keep giving me more reasons to realize how much i miss you already.
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