Chloé and Choice

So I was doing my usual weekend surfing… celeb gossip, fashion faux pas, etc, when I came across an interesting news item. Phoebe Philo has quit her position as Chloé’s creative designer to spend more time with her baby girl! Well, more power to you!

Making that sort of a decision and subsequent announcement in today’s day and age takes courage. Admittedly though, the attitudes in the west are changing again. They’re not so anti-stay-at-home-mom and are starting to question their mothers’ lifestyles now. People are opening up to the idea of staying home for the kids (and weirdly enough other notions such as letting your baby sleep with you in the same bed). It’s actually us in the east that are rabidly ape-ing the west of the 70s.

I was surprised the other day when I heard a few friends talking about women who don’t work with a certain amount of eye-rolling and cynicism. Their flimsy arguments ranged from the expense of an education that is ‘wasted’ by staying at home, to women having more ‘power’ in a relationship if they work. Money is undeniably power, but it is not the only kind of power. And it is not the most effective sort, depending on relationship dynamics.

For a man and a woman, money may be the currency for his power, but women have a much stronger currency that they don’t have to use in the same quantity, its potency much greater. No I’m not using that old fashioned notion of a woman using her ‘charms’ to get what she wants, I am merely pointing out that women don’t need to throw cash at everything, and the balance of a relationship is not necessarily established if the two partners are earning an equal amount. There are several other factors that contribute to the power structure of a relationship.

As for the idea of a woman being ‘wasted’ by staying at home, women who think that way would do well by analyzing that particular sentiment. By saying that, they are implicitly stating that staying at home with a child or traditionally ‘womanly’ tasks are inferior and a ‘waste’ of time. With our views about ourselves being this skewed, who needs men to run us down? The first step here would be to cure our own worldview and perhaps reassess the value we put on tasks.

Let's not confuse the purpose of the women’s movement, which is to give women choice, a word that implies choosing between two options. One is going out to work, and the other option is staying at home. If it’s a choice, then why do we only think of one option as a real and respectable one? Don’t we have more to gain by leaving both avenues open to us? When will we remember that the women’s movement is not an attempt to become like men? It is to take pride in our womanhood and to fight for our own and other women’s right to make the choices they want to about their lives.

Kudos to you, Phoebe.