Saturday, May 30, 2009

pic of the day - stereotype

In South Africa, a typical barbecue scene is: men at the fire, women indoors. It seems the UK stereotype is not so very different. In this case, it was men at the fire, women under the gazebo stage right. Is this a fairly global scenario?

4 comments:

Janet Clarey said...

It is (but not always at my house). I imagine the men don't like the stereotype either.

The upsycho said...

@Janet When I was young, single and (dare I say it?) fairly attractive, I always found barbecues (other than with the family) a huge trial. If I went to the fire to cook my own meat, it caused uproar among the women and awkwardness among the men. If I asked one of the men to cook my meat, it was considered tantamount to fluttering my eyelashes at someone else's man.

Team barbecues at work were the worst of all, because I tended to be the only woman on the team. So I either stood at the fire with my male colleagues and got gossiped about by the wives, or I sat inside with the wives with whom I shared no common ground.

V Yonkers said...

There are some stereotypes that really are to a woman's advantage. Barbaquing is one of them--I hate getting smoke in my eyes, sweating over a hot fire, COOKING!! I also like to perpetuate the stereotype of men are the only ones who know how to cut the grass correctly (although I know this doesn't work with many women as they get stuck cutting the lawn). Now if we could just perpetuate the stereotype that cooking, washing bathrooms, and doing laundry is really "men's work", life would be sweet!

The upsycho said...

@virginia It's an odd thing that a barbecue is seen as the time that women get to put their feet up because the men take over the cooking. While they take care of turning the meat over the flames a few times, it falls to us to prepare the salads, bake the potatoes, set the table, organise the dessert, keep the beers coming, sort the kids out, wash the dishes, etc. etc.

"So did you enjoy your day off, honey?"