Double Standards

DH has really got me thinking lately and it hasn’t been all good thinking. A lot of it has been crazy-person-don’t-share-these-thoughts-with-anyone thinking. Most of it has been that way actually. I don’t know if he MEANS to send me into those tailspins or if he does it out of sheer ignorance. I’m hoping that it’s the latter.


Let me preface this post by saying this. I’m a pretty laid back chick. It takes a lot to get me riled up and once I am, it takes a long time for me to stop being riled up. I try my damndest not to let myself get there. It’s not my idea of fun and I fight dirty. However, for the most part, I just go with the flow. Change plans at the last minute? Ok, Sure. Plan my entire summer without asking my opinion? Ok, I’m annoyed but I don’t want to make waves. I don’t enjoy arguing about little things and I don’t get worked up over things out of my control if I can AT ALL! help it.


That being said, DH made a comment to me yesterday. He said I looked like a housewife. HOLD THE PHONE! Not a housewife IE: Desperate or New Jersey. But a housewife as in: A woman who stays at home and cleans and looks totally frumpy. *Facepalm* Yep. Basically without, or while? Hoping for without, meaning to my husband called me a frumpy hag who doesn’t take care of herself. I took a quick inventory of myself. Tank top, shorts, bare feet and legs, toenails painted, hair washed and brushed and drying so it would curl for tomorrows work day. My nails weren’t done but are pretty long and look more than decent without polish. I had just gotten home from working 8 hours with a 50 minute commute each way. I had made dinner, cleared up dinner and cleaned the kitchen. I changed out of my business attire into some comfortable around the house clothes. And he called me a housewife.


Maybe I shouldn’t be so offended. In other circumstances I probably wouldn’t have been. But this particular day, I got offended. Especially since I had done all of those things already and was ready to FINALLY!!! enjoy the hour and a half a night that I actually get to sit down and relax. Especially since he was sitting on the couch shirtless and in athletic shorts, which is his normal around the house outfit. I realize that he probably didn’t mean it the way that I took it. It was probably an innocuous comment that came out of his mouth without regard to how it would make me feel. He’s a man. This happens. Whatever, but it got me thinking.


Women are the nurturers, the caretakers, the shoppers, the maids, and the secretaries. To top that all off we’re expected to raise the children and still have a job outside of the house and bring home income to help support our families. Apparently, we’re expected to look damn good while juggling all these responsibilities. Make sure we look nice at all times. Take care of us while also attempting to make sure everything and everyone else is taken care of. It’s not surprising that sometimes the things that fall through the cracks involve our well-being and ourselves.


I’ve never been much of a girly girl to begin with. I don’t wear makeup on a regular basis because I enjoy my sleep much more than spending an hour getting ready in the morning to stare at a computer all day. No one sees me and if they do, it’s for mere minutes and they couldn’t care less if I’m fully made up or if I’m dressed like a clown, just as long as there problem gets resolved. When I do try to look nice and get ready for a night out, DH complains that I’m getting dressed up for the people we’re hanging out with and I never get dressed up for him. Truth be told, when I do get dressed up it has less to do with the guys we are hanging out with and more to do with their wives. I’ve never been good with females and feel very inadequate when hanging out with people when I’m not at least wearing mascara. The thing that kills me is, I have ALWAYS been like this. I’m a jeans and t-shirt kinda call. With good shoes (bit of a shoe addict here! I do enjoy dressing up JUST to wear my latest coveted purchase!). DH and I have been together for almost 5 years. Next month we will have been married a year. Nothing about my way of dressing has changed. I lost 20lbs. I feel pretty damn good about how I’m looking. Would I like to lose more? Yes. I would LOVE to. But again, there is the time issue. Working out would mean I don’t make dinner. And when I don’t make dinner, people get VERY crabby VERY quickly.


DH often will point to a girl that is nicely dressed and say, “why don’t you dress cute like her?” or “That’s a cute outfit, is it something you would wear?” Yes dear. I would love to wear something like that but I’m not 5’2 and less than a hundred pounds and my ass wouldn’t fit in that piece of material she calls a dress. I’m 5’10 and a LOT of woman. I can’t dress like the little bimbo’s at the bar. Nor do I have any desire to if we’re being honest. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to look like those girls but it’s just not me. In other cases, I would LOVE to wear what he points out but our budget just doesn’t allow it. We don’t have the extra cash flow to shop at those places. Our bills come first and foremost and I spend all my extra funds paying extra bills.


My money for cute clothes is spent on doctors bills for the ear infection that had me in their offices twice last month. The few extra funds I have go to make a small payment on the new flat screen TV we financed. I just can’t afford to look like those girls. I don’t have time to go to the salon and get my nails done or color my hair every 4-6 weeks. I don’t know what it means to see a stylist more than once. I’m too busy paying bills, feeding our animals, doing a million loads of laundry, washing beard trimmings down the sink and putting the scale back where it goes rather than tripping over it.


So maybe I look like a housewife. Maybe I look frumpy and not attractive. I don’t ask him to dress up. I don’t ask him to trade in his trademark polo’s and athletic shorts for a different kind of outfit. I don’t holler when his hair gets long enough he can wear a headband in it. I just let it be. Because I love him. No matter how he looks. And I know he loves me too. The double standard just kills me. I can’t be wonder woman and I don’t have the desire. He’ll just have to accept me. Unpainted fingernails and all.