My grandmother passed away three years ago, and I often remember how house proud she was. It was almost as if her character was defined by the amount of cooking, cleaning and sewing she did. She passed on such gems as “You’re a girl, you need to have a clean room” onto my mother and I grew up saying that this was wrong, that I was a feminist and me doing housework had nothing to do with my gender. (In all fairness Mum nagged my younger brother as much as she nagged me).

I grew up believing that modern women didn’t want to be housewives, that we wanted careers and to prove ourselves in the big wide world outside the house.  I believed that we didn’t want to land a rich husband so we could sit at home with our degrees as wallpaper, that we were far more than cleaning and sexing machines. I was wrong. I thought that ever since women’s lib kicked down the door during the 60s and 70s we realised our self-worth was far greater than wanting the house, the white picket fence and the nuclear family. I thought that perhaps we wanted so much more from the world outside our living room.

I met a girl a few weeks ago who aspired to be a housewife. She hated the idea of feminism and she told me that there was no way she could identify as a feminist. She wanted her partner to support her while she stayed at home and pursued a life of leisure. I tried telling her that feminism was still relevant, that we had a long way to go before we could consider ourselves “equal” to our male counterparts. She insisted that there was no such thing as sexual harassment or discrimination; it was just people being mean.

If anything I looked down on this girl, I believed she made these choices out of some warped fear. A lot of young women I met when I started university had this fear of feminism; it was almost like they were afraid of what guys would think of them. Okay, fair enough, perhaps you weren’t comfortable with the label feminist, but did you really need to aspire towards something that set back the women’s liberation movement fifty years?

Already we have young women subscribing to the ideals of the “Paris Hilton generation”, where acting dumb and looking pretty is viewed as a key to success. Rather than praising women for their academic and career achievements, we look towards their popularity and wealth. Who wants to aspire to the frumpy stereotype of a business woman when we have the far easier and more accessible “role models” of Paris Hilton and Jenna Jameson? They promote a softer alternative, one which oozes sensuality and femininity and is seen as one which won’t scare away men.

I can’t understand how women can idolize other women who promote such highly sexualized and submissive images. By saying it was okay to make a sex tape or to perform a variety of sex acts for money is not women empowering themselves, isn't this just allowing men to continue to objectify women? To me Jenna Jameson’s latest film promoted the same ideals that choosing to be a housewife promoted, it appeared to be a rejection of the first and second waves of feminism.

And perhaps for the more conservative woman, there is yet another alternative role model; Audrey Hepburn. Audrey Hepburn is still viewed as a timeless example of grace, poise, class and beauty. While some may admire her for her fashion sense, she has also been adopted as the patron saint of materialistic teenage girls. Audrey represents to these girls a woman who essentially is looked after and bought; a woman who is taken out to dinner and given expensive gifts. Never mind that Holly Golightly was a prostitute and that Audrey herself suffered from lifelong low self-esteem.

Perhaps it is this materialism which canonized Audrey that is driving young women towards aspirations of being a housewife. Rather than being defined by our education and careers, we could be defined by what suburb we lived in, what job our husband had and weather or not we had the luxury of not having to work.

And is it worth it? Is it worth it to forget and reject the ideas and opportunities provided to us by the struggles of the first and second wave feminists so we can live out our white picket fence fantasies? Is it worth putting ourselves into a position where we are completely dependent on someone else so we can brag to our friends and be able to tell ourselves that we have it all?

I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that one of the things that came out of the first and second waves of feminism was choice. We were finally given the choice to determine what we did with our lives and the choice to live independently without the supervision or financial support of our husbands, fathers and brothers. We were given some sort of autonomy over our bodies.

Choice is sometimes something that feminists can forget. We can forget that perhaps while these women may not lead the lives that earlier feminists would have approved of, they are exercising their ability to decide what they want to do with their lives. Is it right for me to begrudge someone for being happy simply because it doesn’t conform to my ideas of what a young woman should be doing with her life?
No, it isn’t.

Yet, I can’t help but think of my grandmother who spent her entire life cleaning, cooking and raising her kids. I wonder if she was given the same opportunities as me what she would have done with her life. I wonder if she would willingly have chosen to be a housewife? Something tells me deep inside she did yearn for something else and I can’t forget that. I won’t be a housewife, but that’s my choice. I wouldn’t expect someone to judge me for that choice, and I guess I cannot do the same.

Image by Krisandapril licensed by Creative Commons