Monday, January 17, 2011

Why I can't stop reading Mormon housewife blogs

Why I can't stop reading Mormon housewife blogs

I highly recommend you read this link as it is the inspiration for this blog. Maybe that is only partially true. I have thought about starting a blog for a long time, perhaps for some of the same reasons this article sites: I have kept a journal since I was 12, I'd like a creative outlet, etc. I never knew where to start, to be honest, or what to say. This article provided a focus, a jumping off point. While celebrating Betty White's birthday,  watching a Golden Girls marathon and dyeing our hair, one of my best friends set me on this path (and started her own, I might note).

The link, above, basically says that young, educated professional feminists with no children find themselves drawn to reading the blogs of young Morman housewives who cook and sew and can things, happily. I am caught between these two worlds and it can be perplexing. By day, I work in a field stemming from the feminist movement and advocate for the equality and rights of those who are victimized. On Sunday, I go to church for three hours with my mother. My husband doesn't attend my church and I have no kids to tote with me, an anomaly for my age in Morman culture. I have a nose ring (deemed naughty) but I love my food storage and yearn to bake my own bread. In short, I'm the square peg.

I called the blog "Aspiring to the Middle" because it sums up my goal of balancing my two complicated philosophies. It also speaks to the balance of finding a middle ground between working, being a good wife, trying to be spiritual, and to do all the other things we need to do to find balance, health and happiness in our lives: exercise, clean, socialize, learn to grow up. Finally, the middle ground is kind of where I aim to land. I'm not the fastest runner (far from it!) or the best singer or anything of the sort. Despite my lack of specialization of skill, I do a lot of diverse things to varying degrees of success and think that makes life interesting.

So while I try to cook and feel like a phony, making a meal that only I will eat, I can now type about it and air it to the world.....


Addendum: Don't read the comments if you are trying to keep your blood pressure within a healthy range. I should know this as I bump into this problem all over the place in local newspapers and such but I guess I just don't learn! Surely everyone is as entitled to their opinions as I am in my own response to this article but I'm not sure why we can't just make meaning of things for ourselves and keep the aggression to a minimum.

1 comment:

  1. I like it! I think that this summarizes you quite nicely and I'm looking forward to seeing what you write about next. Also, let me know when you get life figured out- I need some clues to figuring out my own.

    ReplyDelete