Lives of Optional Desperation The Plight of Suburban Housewives By Roberto Rivera November 11, 2004

Given the evanescence of most mass culture, a sudden change in the fortunes of the companies that create and market the stuff shouldnt come as a surprise. Still, ABCs rise in the ratings is, in the words of everyones favorite breathy, machine-like voice, impressive, most impressive. Its reality show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, now attracts nearly as many viewers as CBSs Survivor. Lost, its atmospheric, slightly disorienting, drama about the unlikely survivors of a horrific plane crash, is building not so much an audience as a cult, with me as one of the adherents. But the undisputed jewel in ABCs tiara is Desperate Housewives. Last Sunday, it drew 25 million viewers which left it, in the words of Lisa de Morales of the Washington Post, breathing down the neck of CBSs CSI. Desperate Housewives is about the residents of Wisteria Lane, an idealized-to-the-point-of-irony suburban enclave. While all of Wisteria Lanes denizens can be called desperate, each of them is desperate in her own way. Theres Susan (Teri Hatcher), a single mom whose husband left her for another woman and then had the unmitigated gall to quote Woody Allen the heart wants what it wants as justification for his actions. Bree (Marcia Cross) is an almost pathological perfectionist with eyebrows that are, if such a thing is possible, even scarier than Nicole Kidmans. Lynette (Felicity Huffman) is a former career woman with four kids under the age of six, including twins who, instead of Ritalin, need Versed. Finally, theres Gabby (Eva Longoria), a former model who married a man that promised her everything [she] always wanted. When she realized that she wanted the wrong things, she punished the fiend for keeping his promise by having an affair with the teenaged gardener. A term that keeps coming up in discussions of Desperate Housewives is post-feminist. But does anyone really know what that means? I dont. The same term was applied to Ally McBeal, whose titular character was a single, neurotic, promiscuous, professional woman living in a big city. A term so broad that it encompasses both a thing and its near-opposite isnt very useful. A more promising approach, if we can avoid making it sound like a conspiracy, begins with noting that several of Desperate Housewives creators are gay men. In his essay about HBOs Sex in the City, Lee Siegel, the New Republics television critic, called that show, whose creators were also gay men, an ingenious affirmation of a certain type of gay-male sexuality. The sexuality and, by extension, the relationships that flowed from it, wasnt domesticated, committed and safe i.e., the kind that reassures heterosexuals. Instead, it was raw, rough, promiscuous, [and] anonymous. That young women saw themselves in Bradshaw and companys antics was the biggest hoax perpetrated on straight single women in the history of entertainment. Maybe, just maybe, something similar is going on in Desperate Housewives. Perhaps all of the desperation reflects the creators own misgivings about domesticity and the consequences of taking forsaking all others and until death do you part seriously. Notwithstanding all the rhetoric about loving and stable relationships, there isnt any substantial evidence of a strong desire on the part of most gay men to marry and start families. Even champions of same-sex marriage like Andrew Sullivan acknowledge that the gay (as distinct from lesbian) take on forsaking all others differs from what our wives would consider an acceptable interpretation of that phrase. Perhaps that take is reflected in the programs perspective on marriage. Desperate Housewives follows in a fifty-year-old tradition of depicting suburban life, especially the lives of suburban women, as a barren wasteland. Its a place where intelligent and capable

women like Lynette wither away into madness and inconsequentionality. (Okay, I made that last word up.) This sentiment helped spawn American feminism. Graduates of Seven Sisters schools, who were among the first American women to live in the suburbs following World War II, found themselves bored out of their minds. Their unhappiness and feelings of irrelevance became books like The Feminine Mystique. I understand why that happened. Not for reasons having to do with feminism or queer theory but, rather, a far better guide to Christian social thought, Marxism. What Ive seldom come across in all the discussions about the plight of the suburban housewife apart from the work of Allan Carlson is an acknowledge of how new the idea of the housewife is. The housewife, as we understand this term, is largely a post World War II phenomenon. While woman have, from time immemorial, worked at home, caring for children and relatives while performing domestic tasks, thats not the same thing as being a housewife. For that, you need Clarence Birdseye and Marjorie Merriweather Post. At the turn of the twentieth century, the average American woman spent between 6 and 8 hours a day doing domestic tasks. Most of that time was spent in the planning and preparation of meals. By the eve of World War II, thanks to Birdseyes invention and Posts marketing, which included making refrigeration available to both merchants and consumers, that figure had been cut by more than half. By the 1950s, when refrigeration and other electrical appliances became standard equipment in most American homes, the average was approximately 90 minutes a day. One result of this technology was the creature we call the American housewife. Anna Mason, wife of founding father George, ran the 18th century equivalent of a Fortune 500 company, Gunston Hall. Thousands of employees (albeit nearly all unpaid) to supervise and accounts receivable kept her busy. The homes of our less glamorous 19th century ancestors were also the sites of productive labor and places where the line between their efforts and the well-being of their families, especially their children, was bright. Today, when, thankfully, most mothers dont have to worry about their childrens physical survival, their contributions to the kids well-being are more intangible. This is especially true once the kids enter school. Now intangible, notwithstanding what many empiricists might tell you, isnt the same as nonexistent or unimportant. However, we live in a culture where an activitys worth is measured in almost exclusively economic terms. (A well-intentioned but ultimately ironic example of this is the attempt to get stay-at-home moms covered under Social Security. Having time spent childrearing count towards accruing retirement credits requires assigning an economic value to what is, after all, done out of love. The same is doubly true of the related effort to include the unpaid work of caregivers in the Gross Domestic Product.) Its no surprise that so many American women feel a sense of, well, alienation. To this alienation then add the physical isolation of the typical American suburb. (A friend of mine pointed out the driveways and sidewalks of Wisteria Lane are far more crowded than those of most real-world suburbs.) Unless the decision to stay at home is a consciously counter-cultural move, preferably one made within the context of a supportive community, even a cubicle will begin to look good. Speaking of looking, you can see the beginning of an alternative. A cloud as small as a mans hand is rising from the sea, exists in the modern homeschooling movement. Even people who dont have philosophical or cultural objections to the public schools are taking direct responsibility for the education of their children. Or, As Buffy Sommers put it, Homeschooling isnt just for scary religious people anymore. Homeschooling, for those who can pull it off, can change the way we think about our homes and restores the brightness of that line connecting our efforts and the well-being of our families. (The same is true, albeit to a lesser extent, of working out of the home which is probably why so many employers regard it with suspicion. After all, the last thing they want is for their people to be constantly reminded of what is, or at least should be, most important. It interferes with the quest for efficiency and productivity.) And its seeing that bright connection, not what you own or what your title is, that makes the difference between fulfillment and desperation.