Writer: Sammie Garrity
To be a woman in society, you are supposed to marry a man, have kids, and form the idyllic nuclear family. You are supposed to take on household roles and be a good mother. You are supposed to live up to constricting expectations. These expectations are illuminated in Lorber’s “The Social Construction of Gender.” Lorber’s theory of how we live in a world that raises people to fit a gender is particularly relevant in this artifact. This article contains a series of tweets that share stories from women about seemingly humorous encounters with their husbands. In these tweets, the husbands are characterized as creative and funny for finding ways to avoid their “chores” given to them by their seemingly domineering and maternal wives. These tweets perpetuate the heteronormative stereotypes that paint women in a way that makes them out to be nagging annoyances and supports Lorber’s theory of how women are typically held in subordinate positions to men.
A significant number of these tweets all revolve around husbands either unwillingness or inability to perform household chores. Things like loading the dishwasher or doing laundry are all tasks that they put upon their wives to handle. This is not a new occurrence for women to deal with or be expected to deal with. For hundreds of years, gender roles have been segregated between men and women. We raise our children “to walk, talk, and gesture the way… boys and girls should” (Lorber 57). Parenting is even gendered. Mothers and fathers are expected to perform certain jobs to keep the gender ecosystem functioning smoothly. This is particularly prevalent in these tweets. Wives constantly have to “nag” their husbands to load the dishwasher or keep track of their keys, while the husbands just complain about how overbearing and controlling their wives are. These behaviors are not inevitable or unavoidable. In fact, Lorber believes that “gender boundaries are breakable, and we ordinarily take for granted that people have to learn how to be women and men” (Lorber 57). Society doesn’t have to revolve this way, and it does not have to conform to habits. There is a possibility of breaking that habit and restructuring gender roles—or even destructing them entirely.
The tagline for the article, “27 Marriage Tweets” insinuates that the roles of wife and husband are to be expected. It sends the message to women that if you are going to get married, you should expect to have to basically parent your husband. It sends the message that as a woman, you must assume the role of caretaker, the role of manager, and the role of mother. According to Lorber, “For human beings there is no essential femaleness or maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expectations” (Lorber 59). This means that even if women don’t necessarily want to be that nagging voice on her husband’s shoulder, society has raised her to be that voice. Society has raised her to be the one who lives in the shadows and supports her husband, despite his mistreatment of her. The tweets exemplify that women are nothing more to society and the media than a punchline to support the male experience.