Would it be OK to have a (light hearted) thread about

[HalloweenNameChange]

the embarrassing unfeminsty thoughts we sometimes catch ourselves having?

I keep scanning the covers of rubbish glossies newspapers to see if Kate Middleton is pregnant yet and I will be very excited when she is.. Double I know she is not a breeding horse.. I just can't help myself.

[FairPhyllis]

I don't think JA is unfeminist either, although a very odd and mostly unfeminist Austen industry has spawned itself off the back of pretending that her books are romance novels.

[greenhill]

I've always thought that JA novels are about the "marriage contract" i.e. what both parties are bringing to the marriage, they are very little to do with "romance" in any conventional sense. They are about how the characters adapt to changing circumstances and how the "match" will fit their personalities. It is only recent tv series / films that have added the notion of romantic love to satisfy a modern audiences tastes. Desire, when given into, in a JA novel is always a bad thing.

A marriage purely for love / sexual attraction / against convention i.e. based on romantic connotatations is always shown as not being as good as the one in which a "deal" has been struck between the participants. "Poverty" and a mass of children is normally the end result see the Bennett family with no male heir but a troublesome brood of girls; and the Price family, where the children are sponsored by better off family members, as their parents have married for love and can't afford to bring up their children, for proof. The mother has married down, so broken with conventional expectations. The notion of being poor but happy is given short shrift in this book.

A hard headed business decision, such as the best friend marrying the odious Mr Elton (when she has been short of marriage offers and is getting desperate to secure a poverty free future) is made knowing the cost to herself in terms of his company and deliberately choosing the less well appointed room in his current household as hers, because it will not overlook his so much. She has done well for herself, but knows that when Lizzie Bennet's father dies she will have to make some hard business decisions if dealing with the widow and remaining unmarried girls as she will own their house and all its associated property, due to the terms of the will and lack of male heir from the Bennet's.

Jane Austen is kind to her heroines when she gives them an attractive AND rich husband. Most of the time it is the financial security that counted.

[rosabud]

I agree with the aove post about JA. However, she is not advocating that marraige should be a contract/business proposal - she is merely highlighting the fact that that is how it is in her society but she is not sympathetic to that view. The Prices, who marry for love, have her sympathy, and Charlotte Lucas, who is married securely but not happily, also has her sympathy to some extent as she acknowledges the the choice was not hers but influenced by the requirements for finacial security by society etc. The Bennet marraige does not have her sympathy because Mr Bennet chose to marry Mrs Bennet who was not his equal intellectually so the mistake was his.

[greenhill]

Exactly, JA was highlighting the social conventions and expectations of a typical marriage from that era, yet could be kindly and allowed her favoured characters to have happiness as well as security.

The marriages that are purely for status are shown to be flawed, yet socially understandable; JA is often kindly to her spinster characters, showing them to be loved and respected by the community e.g. Miss Bates in Emma.

[msrisotto]

Oh I started a similar thread yonks ago here

[greenhill]

Getting back to the lighthearted aspect of this thread...

I now read the celebrity gossip, such as stuff about Kate Middleton's clothes and haircut; whether various celebrities look better / worse than they did last week when last photographed; that 54 yo Denise Welch of Loose Women fame was spotted attending a fertility clinic with her much younger partner etc.

I don't know whether it is a guilty pleasure (particularly when info supplied by DM website) or if I ought to be ashamed of myself for caring about trivial tittle tattle when I should be doing something more productive with my time...

[PretzelTime]

It's weird what we are taught to see as things for men and things for women, isn't it! Beer is something I associate with my grandma because she loved it, haha! But when I see grown men eat icecream and chocolate etc, I find it childish. I don't react when women eat it. Chocolate is marketed to women after all.

[TrillsCarolsOutOfTune]

I avoid all car stuff, including driving. My crapness at driving is not due to being a woman, it's due to being uncoordinated and wimpy and not having practised much, but I know that I get away with it more easily than a man would.

[grimbletart]

I used to love my pint of real ale - not so much now as my elderly bladder makes me get up in the night if I have a couple of pints.

But when I hear a woman saying drinking a pint is unfeminine I can't help thinking "wimp". Sorry FairPhyllis, that seems to mark me down as a double duty feminist who thinks you are letting the side down

Mind you, you do know that lager was introduced by pubs decades ago as a beer for the ladies, don't you? So you should approve. It's one of the reasons I detest lager - can't stand any drink that was introduced as a 'ladies' drink'.

Mind you my double standard is electricity. My failure to understand it is so unfeminist that I don't understand why it doesn't leak out of the telephone and how on earth they get it to squash along all those thin wires I'll never know.....

[TeiTetua]

Grimbletart, this is for you:
downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2010/01/thurber-tonight-my-life-and-hard-times_06.html

[FairPhyllis]

Well thanks a bunch for calling me a wimp Grimble. I thought the whole point of this thread was silly unfeministy confessions - but I guess that's me told.

I agree with Somerset that the interesting thing about all of these stories that they show just how deeply internalised the social conditioning is, even for women who identify as feminists.

[Greythorne]

Grimbletart
You do seem to have missed the point of the thread

[grimbletart]

Ooh dear....I seem to have unwittingly rattled a cage or two..

I will, in a most unfeminist way try to mollify.

FairPhyllis - my point at thinking you wimpy for your thoughts on a pint is because to think another woman wimpy is an unfeminist thing to do! I was criticising myself for having an unfeminist thought. It was a confession.

Greythorne - sorry - I was clearly being too subtle.

Teltua - Ta. Being ignorant about electricity is unfeminist too - we're supposed to be able to handle this sort of stuff.

[MaggieMaggieMaggieMcGill]

So as a women who used to drink pints of snakebite and black in a pub with a tattoo, I should consider myself throughly judged by the little unfeminist voices in the back of heads.
I guess equally I get a bit sneery about men drinking wine particularly in public places such as pubs.
At home it probably is just a sign of someone who is cultured or an alchy

[greenhill]

My DF was a big beer drinker in his youth, when it wasn't so strong.

Now he has a pint in a pub or a can at home and has one swig, says its delicious, holds it up to the light, looks at it in the glass, admires it again, then has one more swig, adds lemonade to it, one more sip, says its the best thing he has ever drunk, then leaves it completely ignored and throws it away, every single time.

I wish he would admit he doesn't really like alcohol. But in his eyes, men drink pints. He isn't phased about me drinking pints, after all he's had 20+ years to get used to it, but I get upset about him wasting good beer...

[HalloweenNameChange]

Great minds msrisotto!

[TeiTetua]

A real feminist shoulders her way up to the bar and comes back with the next round.

[HalloweenNameChange]

#cough cough# always lets dh get the next round.. still I helped pay for it I get sick of waiting for drinks while men and women less dressed than me, who got there after me get served first...

[HappyJustToBe]

I have two thoughts that I hate myself for...

The first is that I feel like I'd have to stay with DH if things ever got bad because I've messed up my body having his DD. He has to accept it me like this but nobody else ever would. I know this is ridiculous because I have more to offer than just my belly but...

Second is whenever I end up watching Take Me Out I get sad that I probably wouldn't get picked - DH finds that hilarious.

I wouldn't admit that in real life. Rather cathartic.

[LRDtheFeministDude]

If I shouldered my way up to anything in a crowded bar, tee, you could lick the next round off my sopping wet hair!

happy - oh, no! Bollocks to that, I bet there'd be loads of men liking your body.

Mind you, I say that and one of my really unfeministy things it that, even though my DH is a great big bloke, I still feel as if, when I gain a few pounds, I am somehow unattractive to him. I know he says he doesn't give a fuck, but I still feel it. Stupid, huh?

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Oh Happy, I feel like that too

[SomersetONeil]

The KM watchers will be delighted with the recent announcement.

[paperclips]

I didn't think I was bothered about Will and Kate, but I am really happy for them. but that's because I'm a new mum so I'm still a bit obsessed with new babies.

I hope she recovers from the morning sickness and the unfeminist and nasty thought: I hope she gets chocolate cravings and puts on 4 stone.

[MaggieMaggieMaggieMcGill]

Just like I did, Paperclips. I think in Catherines case though, tis probably unlikely.

[AbigailAdams]

I am happy for them too paperclips. Even though she is never going to escape them now. I doubt she'll put 4 stone on with hyperemesis though

And Happy, sympathies. I know what you mean.