“Thanks for helping out”

Saturdays. Holidays. Family Events. Mom is slaving away in the kitchen. The dishwasher and the sink are full and oven mitts and seasoning cover the floor. For most of us, our moms were in charge of the cooking for these holidays.

Even more so, they were in charge of the cooking night-to-night. Dinner is on the table at 5 because mom makes sure of it. Even with more and more women working full-time jobs, they are expected to work something called “the second shift”. They have their first shift of work, working their tails off, to come home and do the majority of the housework.

Research shows that typically even if a husband and wife work the same amount of hours, the wife takes on the majority of the house management.

How is that possible? It's not like our hormones or genetic makeup predispose us to be good at cleaning, so why do we find ourselves still taking on this extra work? In my opinion its related to the different chores growing up.

If it is emphasized to clean up after yourself, get your house ready for events, and help clean; you are more likely to carry that on later in life.

When a man helps around the house he’s “helping out” but when a woman does housework it's completely expected and more or less unappreciated. If we’re raising boys and girls equally, the chores and expectations should be exactly the same. I’ve heard multiple guys make excuses like “I just don’t know how or I’ll just make it worse”. How could you possibly make it worse? Simple effort yields an improvement.

“Do you have brothers?”

“You were so good- so aggressive! Do you have brothers?”. I was asked this after a basketball game where I pretty much dominated. A woman came up to me and asked me if I had brothers because I was good. My greatness could only possibly be the result of a man.

I do have a brother, but we never played sports together. I was great because I was great. I worked hard, practiced all the time and had natural skill. I was full on Troy Bolton getting my head in the game.

That question can seem complementary and harmless but it is implying that the only way I had attained a skill is my relation to a man.

“Man of the House”

Picture this: A dad is leaving to go on a business trip and whispers to his young son “look after your mother and your sisters, you’re the man of the house now”. You’re the man of the house now. You’re the boss. That makes sense; why would you make the other adult and co-parent the boss when you could give that power and responsibility to a six-year-old?

Maybe it’s a figure of speech and people don’t mean it literally, but the implications are so absurd I can’t help but laugh. It discredits the mother as a parent and as an adult because you are literally saying you trust and value your six-year-old son more than your wife, the other adult of the house.

“I have a daughter, that’s why ______ is important to me”

Seriously? What the hell.

Who is writing the press releases for these celebrities? While this can seem like an innocent and possibly compassionate sentence when you really listen to the words being said it only adds further insult to injury.

With all of the Harvey Weinstein assaults coming to light, a lot of celebrities including men have been releasing statements, and for some reason, this phrase seems to keep popping up. The issue with it is this: why does it take having a daughter or a relation to a woman to make a human rights issue important or valid?

Judd Apatow, a director in Hollywood, perfectly touched on the ridiculousness of this statement in a speech at the Variety Power of Women Luncheon by noting, “As if you need to be a father of daughters to know this is awful, right? You shouldn’t need daughters to get this”.

“Where are the Guys?”

This one really kills me. Women, how many times have you been in conversations or situations where there are multiple women and one man. The man is “outnumbered” and can’t seem to stop talking about it.

Growing up, I had a brother and two sisters and without fail people always commented on how hard it must have been for him and it drove me crazy. People pitied my brother as if he was going home to a pink house filled with frilly things and scented candles (as if that would be so terrible) instead of a completely normal house of normal people.

None of us were over the top girly in the traditional sense, but even if we had been why would that matter?

From personal experience, I can say that although online shopping and 13 going on 30 come up from time to time, most of my conversations are human conversations, not distinctly feminine conversations.

So get over this tale as old as time assumption that all women want to discuss are dreamy boys and shopping, it's 2017 and in case you haven’t noticed women are taking over.