5 Key Ways that Husbands Can Support Their Wives in Graduate School (A Parody)

The following satire was “inspired” (and matched word-for-word in some places for effect) by 5 Keys to Supporting Your Law Enforcement Husband, an advice piece recently published by a fairly popular website for police. 

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It’s been one of those weeks. Your wife has been working on three group projects, waking up early in the morning to cram in a chapter of text reading before work, and coming home hours after dark only to sit in a room with headphones on to write yet another paper.

Meanwhile, you’re stuck with all the day-to-day tasks all on your plate.

You might be tempted to complain about the fact that you’ve had to wash dishes, cook dinner, and scrub the toilet for two months now without an ounce of assistance from your significant other. But men, if you really want to be able to support your wife during this significant yet stressful time in her career, complaining isn’t going to help.

So here are 5 key ways that you can support your special lady:

1. Always have a meal ready.

When your wife comes home from work or class, she’s hungry and tired. She’s been dealing with the world all day, and the last thing she needs is to have to wonder where her dinner is. It’s a simple gesture to have dinner waiting for her when she gets in at night, but it makes a HUGE difference in her day. It lets her know that you’ve been thinking about her.

In the morning, set your alarm clock for just a half hour earlier so that you can brew a fresh pot of coffee and give her a good start to her day before she heads out. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and when your wife is in graduate school, she’s going to need a lot of brain food to keep her at her optimal.

2. Connect Every Day

Your wife is busy. She’s going to be missing out on a lot of life trying to keep up with her studies. But you can help her feel connected by little gestures that keep her in the loop. Meet her on her class breaks with a little snack and an “I love you.” Send her text messages throughout her day letting her know that you’re thinking about her. Get involved and stay up to date on the things that her school is doing. Maybe even bake some cookies for her class. Try not to get upset that she isn’t there and help her feel a part of your life.

3. Stay Available

Graduate school is notoriously hectic. There will be entire weeks and weekends where it seems like your wife doesn’t emerge from her books except for food and water. But when she does have some free time, you want to make sure that you are there to spend it with her. Find out what her class schedule is, when her projects are due, and when her days off will be. Write your own schedule around hers. Plan in when she will need to eat meals by herself, whether at home or on the run, and make arrangements for her to have healthy options. Make a note of when you can have meals together and guard those days or evenings from other encroaching activities. Don’t make plans with your buddies during the times that your wife will be home. Turn off that football game when she has the odd free hour. Protect your time together, whether it happens once a week or once a month.

4. Resist the Urge to Complain

I get it. Sometimes you’re tempted to resent the fact that she’s sitting in classes and reading books while you wrestle with an uncooperative washer or haul six bags of groceries in from the car, but resist the urge to complain. When she comes home from class, steer clear of any topics of conversation beyond asking about her day for at least an hour. You want home to be a haven for her, not a place where she has to face yet more stress. Walking into a house where her husband is complaining about how she gets to sit around with her group members and put together a powerpoint will only make her want to take up an extra class on scrapbooking and call it a required credit for her degree!

5. Love her!

Well, you think, I married her. Why wouldn’t I love her?

But I’m not talking about that feel-good kind of love. I’m talking about faithfulness. Going that extra mile. Love her when she’s up until four a.m. working on her thesis. Speak proudly about her to your friends, telling them about her commendations from teachers and the articles she has published. One day, she might hear about how proud you are of her, and it will boost her confidence all the more to know that you get so much from her accomplishments.

In doing all of these things, husbands can support their wives in graduate school. As the semesters drag on and the projects pile up, grad school students can know that they are loved and appreciated at home.

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Think this is ridiculous?

Great, so do I!

No one in their right mind would think this is good advice to give to a man, but it’s just a sample of the kind of “advice” women are given on how to relate to their husbands. Isn’t it about time that “support your husband by having no life” articles are recognized for the pathetic bullshit that they are? Let’s leave the 1950’s housewife in the 1950’s, please and thank you. And I’m expected to believe that sexism is dead…

It feels good to be back! 🙂

 

In Defense of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

“New Girl” just released its third season on Netflix, and in between burying myself amidst my textbooks, I’ve been binging on the wonderfulness that is Zooey Deschanel…which has unfortunately also reminded me of a recently developed pet peeve.

Manic pixie dream girls.

Criticism of MPDG has been growing since the term’s birth in an article by Nathan Rabin. But it’s not the trope that bothers me. It’s the criticism. Every time a female character barely steps into the territory of being quirky or vivacious I feel like the critics come swarming like piranhas to a wounded cow in the Amazon. From Barbara Streisand in “What’s Up, Doc?” to Zooey Deschanel in…well everything she’s in, people hate the manic pixie dream girl, complaining that she doesn’t exist and that she’s a shallow character.

The criticism of MPDG has progressed from complaining about an under-developed character to hating the entirety of the character…something which I would blame on the term itself. Rather than highlighting the tendency for female characters to be written solely for the support or fulfillment of the male protagonist (dream girl), it highlights the personality (manic pixie).

But people really do have those personalities! I have one of those personalities. I am unabashedly quirky, bordering on downright weird. My love of life leans very much on the side of childlike wonder, particularly in the fall and winter. You don’t have to spend much time around me at all to figure out that I live in a magical little world of my own.

Although I admire what Rabin was trying to do when he invented the term, I find that those who use it most often are participating not in a feminist critique of lazy character-building but in a veiled form of misogyny. Like the “body-positive” movement that has a tendency to demean and ridicule thin women, criticism of MPDG has become an excuse to rag on any characteristic that someone finds annoying.

I want to see more female characters who have lives of their own that don’t revolve around a man. I would love to see an independent woman with her own desires and dreams in a movie, one who doesn’t need to fall in love in order to be fulfilled in the story line.

But I also love seeing manic pixie dream girls on television and in movies. It’s a nice validation of who I am. As much as I love my unique experience of life (and try to share it with anyone who doesn’t run away screaming), it gets lonely trying to live a magical life in a non-magical world. When I see a manic pixie dream girl, she restores my love of life!

I don’t think the two desires are mutually exclusive because the point of the MPDG trope was never to criticize a person, it was to criticize the way a person was used. As a feminist manic pixie, I demand my right to be represented in the stories of my culture in a way that recognizes my personality as a whole person who is real and complex in addition to being quirky and lively.

As Rabin says in his article in which he apologizes for creating MPDG, “Let’s all try to write better, more nuanced and multidimensional female characters: women with rich inner lives and complicated emotions and total autonomy, who might strum ukuleles or dance in the rain even when there are no men around to marvel at their free-spiritedness.”

Zooey Deschanel in New Girl “I’m not gonna change who I am. So you’re just gonna have to deal with it and respect it.”

As a Feminist, I Believe in Men

It would be appallingly easy to hate men. I honestly can’t blame women who do. With the amount of sexism, objectification, and misogyny women face on a daily basis, it would be easy to think that all men are like that.

And when a guy comes onto my Facebook wall declaring that he needs women to be sex objects and is only concerned about seeing boobs—and then generalizes that and says that all men are like that, it’s tempting to believe him.

But even though real life experience and statistics both show that sexism and misogyny are thriving to one extent or another, I’m not buying the whole “it’s just the way we are” tripe.

I have faith that men are better than that!

You see, as a feminist, it’s not just that I believe that women are just as capable as men. It’s not just that I believe that women should be given equal opportunities, that they should have the rights to their bodies, or that they should be able to live like human beings.

I also don’t think women have to take over the world in order to achieve that, which means . . .

I believe that men are capable of being humane. I believe that men are able to recognize inequality and fight with women to change the system. I believe that men aren’t driven by their penises and that they are capable of emotional processing and empathy. I believe many of them want to be set free from the hypermasculine expectations. I believe they don’t inherently want to rape and that, if we give them the resources and education they need to learn respect and understand consent, the majority of them wouldn’t rape. I believe that men can get offended by objectification too and that they can want to see women in active, equal roles. I believe that men can appreciate beauty without dehumanizing someone . . . or that they can keep it in their pants when it’s not really appropriate to take it out.

“What guys do you know?” I was asked when I expressed my belief that men aren’t all chauvinists.

And the lucky thing is that I know a lot of guys who fit that model of a man. I know they can exist because they do exist.

I’ve heard a lot of feminists say that men don’t deserve to be thanked for being feminists. And perhaps in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be necessary to praise people for refusing to partake in oppression, but in this world, where rape threats and hateful comments are directed at women for little other reason than being visible online, I think it is appropriate to give a shout out to the male feminists and allies of the world—not because we should find it so extraordinary to find someone who isn’t an ass, but because it takes a lot of courage to stand up to the status quo and say, “I’m not having it.”

We as feminists should know that.

So . . . my dear male feminists and male allies,

Thank you for giving me something to hold onto and hope for while we struggle to change the world together. I know it’s not easy for you, just as it’s not easy for me. I know you face your own brand of backlash, and I am sorry that standing for equality is such a shitty experience for both of us right now.

Thank you for standing up to your friends, not buying that product because there’s a sexualized woman in the ad, getting angry when you see the news, and even apologizing when you yourself find latent sexism slipping out from time to time. Thank you for being beautiful, equality-loving human beings who are willing to try to recognize and change the patriarchal culture that other men are content to just assume is the way things should be.

As a feminist, I admire you. I believe in the future that you represent—where respect and equality are things that all of humanity can strive for and achieve.

****Note: Due to an unusual schedule this week, I will not be interacting as much online. I love your comments. Feel free to leave them, but forgive me if you don’t get a detailed or personal response to yours right away.****