This week, Suffragette—a period drama about the women’s suffrage movement in England in the early 20th century—opens in American theaters. The movie is sure to be a big hit, with its cast of A-list actors including Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan, who just last year played another feminist icon, Bathsheba Everdene, in the latest adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd.
Suffragette is already getting rave reviews. The Guardian called it a “forthright, heartfelt, red-blooded drama…”
The movie comes at a good time. We could all use a reminder of the challenges and true suffering experienced by the early feminists, especially after watching today’s prominent feminist leaders—too often an unhappy and distracted pack of women who have officially run out of things to complain about. Need proof? Look no further than the suggestion that the design of the American kitchen is sexist.
In an article for Quartz, author Rachel Z. Arndt is outraged about what she considers sexism in kitchen design, writing: “Today’s kitchens may have more machines, but they remain abuzz with structured and artificial femininity, from aprons to pink Kitchen Aids.”
First of all, aprons are a practicality, not a weapon of the male patriarchy. Perhaps Ms. Arndt doesn’t cook because if she did, she’d know that real cooking (no, opening your trendy Blue Apron box, boiling the contents, and Instragramming the results, does not count as cooking!) gets a little messy. (Although if you go to a nearby restaurant for a takeout meal you might also have to battle a new patriarchal scourge: “sandwich sexism” ).
As a matter of habit, I always wear an old, tattered, white apron in the kitchen. It serves as a towel, a potholder and protects me from the splatters that always seem to happen. While Ms. Arndt might think I use aprons because I like to play the perfect Donna Reed role for my oppressive husband, the real reason I like aprons is that I hate laundry.
Second, as for that pink Kitchen Aid mixer? Well, yes, they do exist. I agree that’s troubling, but only from a home décor standpoint. Kitchen Aid provides consumers a plethora of color choices. Does the fact that they provide steel gray, black, blue, and brown indicate a preference for men and their color wheel choices? Of course not. Kitchen Aid is simply providing people with choices. Ms. Arndt is confusing bad taste with sexism.
But Ms. Arndt goes beyond attacking the sexism of specific kitchen accessories. She says the entirety of the kitchen’s set up—from the counter height to the cabinet design—is just another way to keep us down and at the very least gravely inconvenienced.
Her main gripe seems to be the standardization of kitchen design—a trend that occurred in the 1930s at the same time women’s clothing was undergoing a transformation from custom-made clothing to standard sizing. To millions of women, this signaled progress as manufactures could begin producing products—including kitchen cabinets, counters, and appliances—at reduced price. But Ms. Arndt romanticizes the past and laments this progress, saying, “Until the 1930s, kitchen-surface heights, like clothing, varied as people did, with kitchens and clothes matching the women in them, rather than the other way around.”
Yet, Ms. Arndt fails to understand that the vast majority of kitchens built prior to standardization weren’t all that desirable. In these so-called customized kitchens, space was tight and often wasted, storage was nonexistent, and large counter spaces for prepping meals was a thing not yet imagined.
And Ms. Arndt might also consider another thing that’s common in older homes—small closets. The reason? People simply didn’t have much because the type of clothing that was made specifically for you and your body type was more expensive to produce, meaning people could afford only a small wardrobe. Ergo, small closets.
Many feminists wonder why so many American women reject the term “feminism” and claim not to be feminists. Perhaps the superfluous nature of the issues tackled by today’s modern feminists—like sexist kitchens—is the reason women have rejected it.