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Modern Families

Domestic labor isn't kindness: Wife shares the 7 things she doesn't do for her husband.

He's a grown man, after all.

via SheIsAPaigeTurner/TikTok (used with permission) and Sarah Chai/Pexels

Paige Connell on the 7 things she doesn't do for her husband.

Paige Connell is a working mom of four and a popular social media personality who discusses moms' mental load and advocates for equality in relationships. Recently, she struck a nerve on TikTok with a video where she admitted she doesn’t do her husband’s laundry and said it “brings out big feelings in people.”

Paige says she isn’t being petty. It’s “just how it functions” in her home.

She took things a step further in a follow-up video, listing all of the things that she doesn’t do for her husband. "You all know I don't do his laundry," she said in the video. "He can do that himself."

"He cooks dinner every night. I do breakfast and lunch for us and our kids," she continued. "I don't pack him a lunch. If he's hungry, he'll figure out what he's gonna eat for lunch the same way that I do." She added that she doesn’t make his doctor’s appointments, pack his clothes for vacation, or buy him new underwear when it gets holes.

"Is it my job? Absolutely not," she said. "All of those are things that he's a grown man and he can do himself."

@sheisapaigeturner

Replying to @rafael it’s important to show your partner, love and kindness. And I believe in small acts of kindness for a partners. However, expecting your partner to do your laundry and all of the cooking and all of the cleaning, is not the same qe small acts of kindness. All of those things are domestic labor and then when add it up, create a lot of work. #domesticlabor #actsofkindness #actsofservice #marriagegoals #fairplay #millennialmom #mentalload #laundry

However, she doesn’t want to confuse her refusal to take care of her husband’s domestic responsibilities with a lack of kindness. "That's domestic labor. Those are chores; those are not acts of kindness," she says.

She adds that she does plenty of kind things for him outside of the home such as buying him vinyl records or picking up a new non-alcoholic beer that she thinks he would like.

Her main point: "Small acts of kindness that are mostly domestic labor just add up to work at the end of the day."

Paige's post has resonated with many, garnering over 2.5 million views and a wave of support from the commenters. “Preach. Parentifying your spouse is such a turn-off,” wrote Nicki, echoing Paige's sentiments.”'Exactly, a lot of men think that having a wife is like having a personal assistant. If that’s the case, pay me by the hour,” added iloveme_011.

Some women say that they still do their husbands' domestic chores as a sign of love. "I do all these things because acts of service are my love language, but after a while of no reciprocation, you start to become resentful," Soph wrote in the comments. “Times have changed for sure. I take pride in doing all of those things for my husband. In fact, I’ll do it for my grown children, too!" Brenda Castro added.

Upworthy contacted Paige to find out what her husband thinks about the arrangement. “We are in alignment on sharing the load equitably. We believe in striving for a partnership where we are both supported and neither one of us takes on more than the other when it comes to our home and kids. We work hard to share the load as equally as possible!” she told Upworthy.

She also shared why some women equate domestic labor with kindness. “I believe many women have been taught that doing labor for someone else shows your love to them. It is ingrained in us in so many ways in our society that we are raised to believe that is how you show love when in reality there are many ways to show love and doing domestic labor does not have to be one of them,” she told Upworthy.

Paige’s video proves that we all have different ways of expressing our love for our significant others and that for women, it can be a lot more than taking on more of the domestic load. As Paige notes in the video, what starts as kindness can quickly devolve into a job and then resentment.


This article originally appeared on 5.15.24

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relationships
Pop Culture

8 comics that perfectly capture society's ridiculous expectations for women

"We are just humans, multifaceted and fascinating, divided by judgement, discrimination, and double standards."

@lainey.molnar/Instagram

"We are just humans, multifaceted and fascinating."

It’s one thing to talk about the unfair and unrealistic societal expectations that are still put on women. But it’s another thing to see exactly what those double standards look like in real life.

And, that, in essence, is often what artist Lainey Molnar’s work is all about.

On her popular Instagram account, Molnar has tackled all kinds of topics around womanhood and feminism—everything from the unsettling differences between men and women’s safety items that appear on a Google search to generational toxic relationships with food—using strikingly candid comic illustrations, many of which have depict cartoon versions of herself.

While Molnar told Upworthy that her work generally aims to make “complex topics simple and thought provoking,” she often wishes to delve more into nuance, like the intersection of class, race and religion in women’s issues. And that is what inspired some of her latest images.

“I wanted to create a series with all female characters about predominantly female experiences that show the double standards stemming from these issues. Because we can’t empower women without supporting social justice all the way, everything connects,” she shared.

One image shows a white woman, affluently dressed, being praised as a “single mother of three.” While a Black woman is noted for having “three baby daddies.” Another of a similar theme shows a young white girl getting commended for learning another language, while an Indian girl of the same age is chastised for “not speaking English properly.”

There’s also a white woman who is told it’s “cool” that she’s embracing her natural curls, while a Black woman sporting an afro is called “unkempt and unprofessional.”

Touching on wealth status, Molnar depicted one girl being complimented for her “vintage” outfit while another is patronized for getting hand-me-downs.

Lastly, a woman wearing a hijab is told that she’s “oppressed” and “can’t think for herself” while another woman is called “classy” for her modesty.

Take a look at all eight in the carousel below:

In her post’s caption, Molnar wrote “We are just humans, multifaceted and fascinating, divided by judgment, discrimination, and double standards. The world needs to do better.” Many of her comics tend to have a thoughtful musing attached to them.

When it comes to having meaningful conversations about important issues, it can be hard to strike a balance between oversimplification and getting buried in nuance. But art can be a valuable tool in not only helping people understand a message on an emotional and visceral level, but also be able to carry an image with them. One that helps them have better conversations moving forward.

To check out more of her work, check out Molnar’s Instagram here.

From Your Site Articles
equality
Identity

They liked her because she ‘talked white.’ I bet they didn’t expect this.

"When did talking right equate to me talking white?"

Image from YouTube video.

This is Ernestine Johnson.

Sometimes what people may consider to be a compliment is actually horribly offensive.

This is one of those times.

An incredible woman has the perfect response for someone who says, "You speak so well ... for a black girl."

race, respect, privilege

assets.rebelmouse.io

black, inequality, offensive language

How would he react?

assets.rebelmouse.io

discrimination, bigotry, culture bias

What?

assets.rebelmouse.io

black in America, Arsenio Hall, artist

Ernestine claims to be an average black girl.

assets.rebelmouse.io

But that's not all. Ernestine Johnson is just getting warmed up. She has plenty more to say about what speaking, looking, and acting like an average black girl really means.

And nope, this isn't another lesson in political correctness; it's more about common sense.

She clearly explains it all 42 seconds in the video below:

Oh, and my favorite quote that I'm taking and framing?

This one.

"See, the average black girl that I know, the average black girl that I know were Egyptian queens like Hatshepsut and Nitocris who were ruling dynasties and whole armies of men, excuse me while I set fire to this poem on my pen because I am tired. Tired of the stereotypes black girls have fallen into because of American mentality. Oh, but not half as tired as Ella Baker, Diane Nash, Septima Poinsette-Clark. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, Miss Fannie Lou Hamer, Daisy Bates, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, and Dorothy Height are far more tired than I am." — Ernestine Johnson


This article originally appeared on 01.28.15

From Your Site Articles
Science

The surprising reason medicine tends to work better for men than women.

Yet another reason why we need more equality.

Canva

Even the medical field has bias.

Men.

We have it pretty good. Especially when it comes to our health.

Not only do we get to write the health care legislation, but increasingly, we're getting all the good medical treatment.

We can thank lab animals for this — and the researchers who study them.

For a long time, researchers believed that male animals were better for trials of new medicine.

It was widely assumed that hormone cycles in females would screw up the results.

As a result, currently, over 75% of all lab animals are male.

animal research, studies, gender bias, disease

Lab mouse in a surgically gloved hand.

Image by Rama/Wikimedia Commons/CeCILL.

The problem is, when you test primarily on male animals, you're making medicine that's more likely to be effective for, well, men.

According to a report in New Scientist, researcher Natasha Karp and a team from the U.K.'s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute studied tens of thousands of mice of both sexes. They found that when you switch off genes in male mice, the mice express different traits then when you switch off the same genes in female mice.

If genes express themselves differently depending on the sex of the animal, the researchers found, so do some genetic diseases.

drugs, health, politics, community

Gene therapy: rad as hell.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

The team concluded that "drugs optimized for male animals may be less effective in females, or even cause harm." Of the 10 drugs that were pulled from the market between 1997 and 2001, they explained, eight were riskier for women.

Male animal-bias also means drugs that work better for women might not even make it into testing to begin with.

As with the debate over what constitutes an "essential" health care benefit (according to some hi-larious U.S. senators, mammograms shouldn't), when it comes to "who constitutes a full human," it appears men are the considered default setting, while women are an afterthought.

equal rights, equal representation, experiments, medical advancements

A bearded man looking off into the distance all manly.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

It's a pretty sweet gig for us men.

The thing is, women are half of us. We like them.

As fully formed human beings with lives, free will, hopes, dreams, and so on, it'd be nice if medicine worked better on them when they got diseases.

There's been some progress toward making medical experiments more equitable, at least where human subjects are concerned.

Clinical trials (on humans) used to involve pretty much no women. Now most are 30-40% female, though that still means women are underrepresented.

Thanks to efforts of researchers like Karp and her team, we now know we need to extend that progress to the animal kingdom as well.

"Unless there’s a really good reason not to, we should be using both sexes in biomedical research," Karp told New Scientist.

Male animals, she argued, have traits just as particular as female hormone cycles that make them similarly varied from an ideal "norm."

Ultimately, more comprehensive research benefits us all — men and women.

Better studies lead to more effective medicine, which leads to less sickness and sadness all around.

That's the hope anyway.

The animals of both genders who turn out to help us out with this project deserve a hearty "thank you."

If we start with equal treatment, we might finally get some equal treatment.

This article originally appeared on 06.29.17

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equality
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