Bunting and fripperies, Cath Kidston etc

[StephaniePowers]

Someone I know has recently opened a gift shop type business. I was asking her how business is going and she's doing well, but she seems quite unhappy with her self-image now.

I worked to persuade her that a business is a business, people know she's not just arranging scented candles for her living, but basically after the excitement of organising it all and getting started up, she's feeling that it's all a bit trite. Someone in her circle had made an offhand comment, and because this person is a fundraiser for a huge well-known charity, she'd got the idea that she was being looked down upon.

I mean there is no doubt that some jobs matter very much. If you don't do one of those jobs, if your job is to bring small amounts of pleasure to a basically wealthy populace, is that something to be looked down upon? I'm asking this in the feminism section because of the focus in recent years on all those Kirstie Allsopp Cath Kidston type programmes and books: this is where my friend fits in and does well. Is that so bad?

[FreyaSnow]

There was a thread on here recently about some masculinity website, and when I flicked through the website and it had some list of important things to do as a man, one of them was being self employed and running your own business. So how running your own shop is now being made out to be some trivial woman's thing I do not know.

As for what she's selling, it sounds like creative stuff made by and for women. I fail to see how this is different from art, other than it is stuff that has developed out of crafts that are traditional to women, and so we are all presumably meant to sneer at it.