I’m watching a Russian TV show. A very young woman says, “Nobody wants to be a housewife these days and men hate them, too. It was fashionable to be a housewife in the fifties, but not any more.”
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know why this is hilarious. You will also be able to figure out what cultural phenomenon is behind this statement.
It is as if the Russian TV maker has forgotten what Russia was like in the 1950s. Only the party elite would have been married to housewives, every body eIse’s wife would have been a working wife.
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You are absolutely right! Even Stalin was so mortified that his wife was a Housewife (in the 20s, not 50s, of course) that he got her to become a student. There were no housewives in the 1950s. All women worked. Including the party elite. It would be a terrible shame to have a non-working wife if you were a party apparatchik in that decade.
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What is the cultural phenomenon? In your opinion is it completely inverse of today’s Russian reality? In Israel educated men want educated, independent women, not housewives. I would guess most men in Russia are the same. Sure, on TV and in reality some men may be loud about desiring a housewife, but I am sure they’re a vocal minority, not a majority. In Israel the only time I heard of anybody wanting a housewife was a man, whose mother was one. Otherwise, I have a feeling educated, successful men on a “dating market” judge women for their career success a lot.
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Actually, men in those Russian TV shows are very vocal in that they don’t want a housewife but only a woman who works, who amounts to something, who has a life. This is a very positive tendency. Also, most young men are very opposed to traditional gender roles at home. Most insist that they want to participate in housework, cooking, etc. Very life-affirming. 🙂
The cultural phenomenon I meant was young people substituting the American past for their own. I guess they watch more old American movies and shows than the Soviet ones.
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//young people substituting the American past for their own
I thought they described American 50-ies, but it seemed *so* unbelievable.
Do they really watch old American movies or are 50-ies pictured thus in latest Hollywood movies? Seems the latter.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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