Noah Brand dispels the myth that being a slob is a gendered trait.
Q: What happens when a man puts a fresh roll of toilet paper onto the holder?
A: Nobody knows; it’s never happened.
Or, if you don’t like that joke, there are about a fucking billion exactly like it. Turn on your TV to check if you want: three seconds should do it. It’s taken as cultural gospel that men are, by nature, sloppy, unhygienic, and generally filthy. Women, by contrast, are neat and clean and constantly exasperated by the unending tide of filth that is the male gender. Indeed, a standard way of calling a man’s masculinity into question is to show that he is neat and well-groomed (i.e. thousands of throwaway gay jokes, or every episode of Frasier).
This is part of a larger cultural narrative, one that I’ll call the “civilizing” narrative, wherein men are grunting, violent, ill-smelling brutes, and women must overcome these disgusting attributes and train the men to ape the manners of civilization. (Usually via their role as sexual gatekeeper, dontcha know.) The men often experience this as emasculation, but come to enjoy being “domesticated” because it lets them have the suburban nuclear-family existence we’re all supposed to want. This is a pretty popular model; you see film theorists analyze Westerns through that lens, conservative pundits like to write columns about why this “fact” means that traditional marriage is necessary, and of course it’s the go-to model for sitcom writers too hung over to do any work that day.
Thing is, I’m pretty sure it’s just made up.
Certainly on the slob thing, its predictive value is crap. To call back to the original joke, I always feel compelled to put toilet paper onto the holder properly, and a good thing too, because none of the women whose bathrooms I use ever do it. I’ve seen both men and women with bedrooms whose floors weren’t visible, except for a narrow path between the bed and the door. I’ve seen both men and women carefully cleaning the glass on the front of the microwave. I’ve seen both men and women be wildly inconsistent in their neatness, keeping the inside of their car pristine and the inside of their house looking like a grenade went off in a hobo jungle. I’ve seen both men and women put yesterday’s clothes on because fuck it. Just because there’s a million of this meme doesn’t mean there aren’t a million more of this one.
Nobody’s saying that there are no cases where women straighten up after slobby dudes. I’m sure there are many such cases. I’m also sure I spent years following one girlfriend around, putting the lids back on things she opened, because otherwise nothing in the house would have had a lid. I’m saying that from what I’ve seen, human experience fails to match up very consistently to the cultural narrative.
Shorter version: If you’re correctly calling a flipped coin 50% of the time, don’t expect me to be impressed with your predictive abilities, or to laugh at jokes about how you always call the flip correctly, amirite?
So here we are, awash in a cultural narrative that is, unequivocally, insulting to men. There’s no hidden up side to being referred to as smelly and disgusting; the oh-but-I-love-him-anyway excuse in commercials is usually “He doesn’t know how to do laundry, but he can fix the car!” or some such shit. Is there a way to combat this that doesn’t just trigger reflexive sneering about “metrosexuals” or whatever equivalent gender-policing term is being used this year?
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Originally published on NoSeriouslyWhatAboutTehMenz? on Aug. 24, 2011
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Photo: pizzagirl / flickr
Oh, oh, and the CD/cassette case thing!?!
Have you ever seen a woman put back the CD (or audio tape), after listening, into their correct case? Have you…?!?
Me neither! 😆
In my life, I’ve seen any kind of behaviour (from clean-o-phobic to smellfully dirty), and it’s definitely NOT gender-related.
I appreciate this amusing blog entry, AND all of the amusing comments. I don’t think there is a norm, whether caused by gender or anything else! Maybe upbringing, but even that can result in different habits. As all of us are speaking from personal experience: 1. I have 3 siblings, so I think we were all raised in the same house by the same parents! Granted, during the 11 year span of our ages there were different life dramas going on with my parents. Interestingly, my to older siblings and I are all very neat, and two of us are… Read more »
hmm 4 responses so far, let’s see:
1. My window into other peoples’ homes is amateur porn.
2. I can’t see dirt because it’s something women imagine.
3. Filth is okay because I can masturbate to anything.
4. I’ve never been in a public women’s room, but I surmise that women pee all over the place
Noah, I know men can be clean because I’m a clean man, but I’m afraid goodmenproject is the wrong place to prove that point because for some reason the shut-in geek crowd is big here!
Nice way to disparage other men, there. I bow to your superior cleanliness and for not being a shut-in geek like the rest of us. Though to be fair, I choose to live in my parents’ basement, I don’t have to.
An excellent contribution filled with a personal experience and observations about women and cleanliness.
I have to go, my mom just woke me up for breakfast. Hope I don’t miss Matlock on WGN!
I don’t have any firsthand knowledge about women’s restrooms, but I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about women’s public restrooms that seriously challenge the idea that women are by nature far more neat and clean. You would think that sitting on a seat or squatting very low as a matter of course would make sure everything goes in the bowl where it’s supposed to, but you would be completely wrong about that. My total outsider impression is that men’s and women’s public toilets are just about equally bad. I find it hard to believe all the mess in women’s restrooms… Read more »
I dated a girl who told me that women’s restrooms were in far worse shape than men’s. Her reasons were women had the same issues with pee everywhere because many don’t actually sit on the toilet seat they just hover. In addition to that, and all the usual “problems” that come along with a place where people defecate she also said there was period blood smeared on surfaces occasionally, as well as dealing with used pads and tampons just left on the floor on wherever instead of the garbage.
I like when girls are slobby.
That said, I can generally manage to fetishise pretty much anything, so so much for that -_-
Laura Kipniss wrote a book, The Female Thing, that explored how women have internalized cleanliness as being about them and their character. I’ve talked with a number of women who have said that they feel the cleanliness of their house is a reflection of their character, and that they felt this judgement coming most strongly from other women. I don’t know how pervasive this attitude is, but it certainly exists. In my house, my wife teases me about all of the laws, rules, and regulations concerning things such as the restocking of toilet paper or proper rotation of cleaning sponges.… Read more »
I think women were probably neater when they were all at home doing housework (of which cleaning was a major component). However it is definitely no longer the case. I’d say it’s probably equal now as far as neatness. In fact most of the men I know complain how disgusting and “dirty” their wives/live in girlfriends leave their spaces in the house.
Check out some amateur porn sometime and you’ll see plenty of bedrooms with clothes thrown all over the place and empty drink glass and fast food cups.