Sociology (Er, More like Propaganda) of Anthropologie

Have you been into Anthropologie lately? I went in there the other day after I picked up my student visa for Chile. Why couldn't I resist the cute 40s/50s cocktail dresses in the windows and all the charmingly feminine displays about making the perfect home--not for The Man, but for fun and pleasure!

I didn't buy anything...Not that I could afford anything or I didn't want anything...But what I saw there both titillated and worried me all day.

Four years into the Bush Administration, with war looming for the rest of our lives, attacks on abortion rights, the reactionary remake of the Stepford Wives, the possibility of gay marriage and its subsequent loss (yay! except for Massachusetts!) the defeat of unemployment insurance in California (thank you, Governator), the loss of civil liberties (um, where was the opposition in Congress with the Patriot Act?)...

But they don't just have to pass laws: they use other fronts, primarily ideological.

So it's hip again to be domestic: Knitting, cooking, eco house-cleaning, child-rearing, gardening.

Not that women (and of course men, too, but this is definitely a femininizing project) shouldn't enjoy such activities (and I'm the first to admit, I do!), but isn't it a bit creepy that DIY used to be rebellion, and now, as with all co-opted subculture phenomena, it's just another way to accommodate conservative policies?

Can't find satisfaction in your life because you're working too much? The real meaning in life comes from being the perfect hostess/gardener/cook, etc.!

See, this is different from mainstream culture co-opting punk, for instance. Punk really was about rebellion, about FUCK THE MAN. It was a repudiation of Reaganomics (hooray for the death of the devil), not an adaptation of it. Granted, any co-opting of a movement is an attempt to sterilize it (hence, Reagan signing to make MLK Day a national holiday), to make it suitable for mass consumption, to remove the sting of the foul language and bad attitude.

So isn't it a little weird that mainstream culture, at least in the instance of Anthropologie, is taking a different approach? It seems that fashion designers see a rightward political trend and are matching it with a regressive fashion trend. See, I would think that now would be the time to draw the line in the sand. There are those that genuinely (and opportunistically) mourn the death of Reagan and respect the actions of the Bush Administration. Now, what's the opposite of that? The future of the earth, of course, depends on a radically different approach to humanity and politics--not a backwards glance to the 1950s! Why isn't culture reflecting that? (I guess if it is, it's too underground.)

Luckily, one store does not get to define hipness, but I believe this serves as a bit of a cultural marker, a troublespot.

Instead of helping young (and wannabe young) women attain the impossible feminine ideal, why don't we make it 'hip' to fight for a world that does not ghettoize women/couples to domestic hell-made-to-look-like-heaven? What if we could do as we please (yes! knitting/cooking/gardening, et al are fun for some!) but actually have lives that do not drive us to retreat to spiritual domesticity for some kind of meaningful existence?

Choosing to either boycott or accept 'their' beauty standards and ideas of what fun is might make us feel better, but why let them take away from us that which we created (i.e. the things that WE made hip--not necessarily intentionally--b/c we actually enjoy them!)? Just because they intend that we take all our energy and transform it into helping oil the capitalist machine (NO! My love is mine: it's not for 'your' wedding industry!), doesn't mean that we shouldn't celebrate it. We have to make life enjoyable somehow, right?

So let's keep politics out of how we run our houses--either to serve or resist 'patriarchy'--and take our energy to the streets, instead. Demand the impossible. Socialize childcare, medicine, housing.

For a better--and prettier--world for all.