Couch and bon-bons

[dreamer_easy]

I first encountered the image of the pampered, lazy housewife, chatting mindlessly on the phone while she lies on the sofa eating candy, in soc.men. Big surprise there. Really, that must be the first time I noticed the image. I just came across it again, in Will Worthington's 1959 post-apocalyptic short story Plenitude:

"Sue waves from the door. She has worked like a squaw [sic] since dawn, and she smiles and waves. I can remember when women would exhaust themselves talking over the phone and eating bon-bons all day and then fear to smile when their beat husbands came home from their respective nothing-foundries lest they crack the layers of phony 'youthful glow' on their faces. Not like Sue. Here is Sue with smudges of charcoal on her face and fish-scales on her leather pants. Her scent is of woodsmoke and of sweat... There was a time when the odor of perspiration would have been more of a social disaster for a woman than the gummata of tertiary pox."

This contains valuable historical information. In 1959, all women were surburban middle class. There were no women gutting chickens, cleaning toilets, tending bar, or otherwise making themselves odorous with honest labour.

All right, let's be fair: the story is a satire of suburbia, so when he says "women" he means "middle class homemakers". So the actual , in 1959, housewives did no work. They did not clean, shop, sew, nor cook; they did not tend the young, elderly, or sick. They certainly didn't discuss any of these tasks with other housewives. (Sue carries on a "lively conversation" with a non-English speaking neighbour: "Someday I will listen to them, but I doubt that I will ever learn how they communicate... or what. Women.".) If one reads between the lines, these women were too lazy even to put out for their husbands. All told, this would have drained the US economy of billions of dollars' worth of effort. In fact, without sex or food, it's remarkable that society managed to survive until today.

Now there have always been layabout wives and husbands, but it seems that in those days at least some men really believed that stay-at-home wives did no work at all, and they despised and envied them - and at least some men still do. I wonder where the precise couch-phone-and-bon-bons image originated? (My guess is it was cartoonists' shorthand.)

Comments

[tysolna]

I see aspects of what you say about women who sit at home doing nothing much except chat on the phone and eat in the portrayal of Jackie Tyler.
In "Rose", Rose goes to work, and the instant she's out the door, Jackie grabs the phone. You practically don't see her without the phone. Yes, we see her doing homework (in "End of the World", with the neat camera angle through the washing machine). We also see her shop ("Rose", again). What I have been askig myself since the first episode is, what does Jackie do to make a living? Or is the only money she gets a pension off her husband's early death (though I don't know if that exists in the UK, since I'm from Germany), and whatever money Rose makes? I don't know if Jackie has a job, but it doesn't look like it (when Rose can't go to work since the Doctor blew up the department store, Jackie sits at home in her bathrobe, blow-drying (already dry) hair, which doesn't appear to be getting ready to work).
I am not saying that I don't like Jackie, she's a good character and undergoes a nice change and acceptance in the latter part of the first series, but her constant hanging on the phone chatting stay-at-home lifestyle annoys me.

Or I could have completely misread what you are trying to say with your post, in which case I will now shut up. :)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Jon tells me that Jackie has a job - she's a hairdresser who works from home. It's referred to in the DVD extras and the Annual. Which is great, but we have yet to actually see this on screen!