What do you think about the "Womanly Arts"?

Motek

Tue, Jul 22 2008, 9:10 am

carrot wrote:

OK. Let me clarify. It was not the offering of the courses per se that I resented, but the attitude with which they were offered, which was that
a) since you are girls, you don't need academics, this is your real education, how we wish we could knock everything else off the curriculum and focus just on this.

carrot, you said you aren't on the forum much, but in case you are -

In a frum, married woman's life, what does she really need? Knowledge of academics or knowing how to run a home?

carrot wrote:

I just think it's wrong to expect someone to do something, or rather to enjoy a particular field of endeavor, due to an external circumstance. in this case, being a woman. don't misunderstand me! I don't think being a woman is just and external thing! but I do think that I am a person first and a woman second.

I find it amazing that you separate the two. I don't think it's possible to isolate being a person from being male or female, though you seem to think it is.

Fox

Tue, Jul 22 2008, 10:05 am

Although I'm jumping into this discussion late, the issues Motek brought up are near and dear to my heart. I firmly believe that the problem with "womanly arts" is a rhetorical problem -- in other words, the skills we're describing as "womanly" have suffered from public denegration and negative connotations since the 1950s.

Betty Friedan's book, "The Feminine Mystique", was really the declaration of war on "womanly arts". Her thesis wasn't simply that people have different skills and interests, but rather that homemaking was simply too boring and the skills involved too menial to occupy a generation of college-educated women. She further buttressed her argument by suggesting that women felt unfulfilled by homemaking and that their wonderful potential was lost to the world of paid employment.

If you've grown up in the U.S., unless you've lived in a truly secluded Chassidish enclave, you have bought into Ms. Friedan's thesis whether you know it or not. Our Bais Yaakov schools focus on intellectual pursuits because those carry more status. Cooking, sewing, homemaking . . . well, after all, anyone can pick up those skills. If our schools offer them at all, it's usually as "electives". The really smart girls? They're pushed to teitsch and explain the Ramban. The weaker students? Well, they can take sewing or something.

When someone says that she would be bored by the activities involved in homemaking, what she really means is that she has been taught to be bored by those activities. Do CPAs kvetch publically about how boring accounting can be? Do physicians gripe about the tedium of reading medical journals? How often do you hear a high-powered attorney say, "I like practicing law, but I'd be bored to tears unless I could spend a few hours every day cooking, sewing, and cleaning."

The author Gore Vidal was once quoted that "people in theatre need constant reminders that there is no work so debasing as that which is not worth doing in the first place." This is the corner into which Ms. Friedan and those who followed her have painted us. Although she tried to back off her earlier position in a subsequent book, "The Second Stage," the damage had been done. Western society had declared that homemaking tasks and skills were inferior to other types of tasks and skills. What we are left with is a contradiction: trying to do well that which everyone -- including most of our schools -- has declared is worthless.

The post-feminist view of homemaking has been aided and abetted by the return to more normal economic climates following the unprecedented post-war boom. Since most women are required to contribute to the family income in some way, their professional skills rather than their homemaking skills increasingly define them.

The only bright spot is the slight backlash that Martha Stewart, et. al., have provided. Their thesis -- in contrast to Ms. Friedan's -- is that homemaking is worth doing, no matter who is doing it. And yet notice how many people make fun of Ms. Stewart and her imitators. Is everyone similarly amused by a perfectionistic surgeon or an unusually dedicated teacher? No, in fact, we probably admire them. We save our pejorative view of excessive effort for the "worthless" work of homemaking.

Batyah

Sun, Jul 27 2008, 7:10 am

I am jumping in really late and have not read all the posts-

I and my husband are back to the land back to the basics type people.

We take pride in learning homesteading skills. I am self taught in spinning , weaving, dyeing with natural dyes, knitting, crotcheting and sewing.

I also know how to garden, bake bread from scratch, make my own cheese and yogourt, and our next goal is to make our own root beer ( because we know that we will not be able to find good root beer in EY).

The bottom line is this...yes it is cheaper to buy STUFF than to make it....but the appreciation of process is lost on so many people these days. I spent a month teaching myself and subsequently knitting my first pair of socks. I spent many hours working on those socks but it connected me to Hashem on a greater level. My mind was relaxed and I was able to spill out my thoughts in hitbodedeut while knitting.

Additionally, when I teach workshops on the Av Melachot of making garments - the children's eyes just light up!! They become excited that _HEy Look what I did!!! glow emerges from within.

As Jews we are constantly working on ourselves and our avodat Hashem. If Hashem made us "perfect" there would be no point...we would complain bitterly because we would not have purpose. I think that happened while we were in the midbar- MAnna everyday, no illness, no need to go to the bathroom, clothes never wearing out etc....we were living a perfect existence and yet we were not happy we complained....

So having purpose in our lives brings us happiness. The fact that I know I can create beautiful garments gives me a sense of purpose. I am thrilled that I can spin wool from raw fleece- because that brings me one step closer to helping furnish the Beis HaMIkdash.

I am now working on developing gartels that are made %100 by shomer Shabbat JEws - from the fleece and silk down to the weaving. All hand made and all made by Shomer MItzvot women.

Why should a heilige Rebbe wear something made by some Thai out of polyester when something that took dedication and hardwork by an erlicher Yid out of fleece and silk?