Domestic Defiance? Gen Y and Countercultural Sponge Cake
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Every time I think I might be the milquetoastiest person on the block, someone proves me wrong. Not that I’m slagging* these women for their interest in domestic pursuits (frankly, I wish I knew someone who’d knit me a nice scarf), but the story kinda reads like something straight out of The Onion, non? To wit:
“They are already planning home brew and wine-tasting events and will be having a bra fitting session.
The group will also have lessons on how to drive in icy conditions, hold clothes swapping parties and will be taking on an allotment.
Most un-WI-like of all, members can contact each other and discuss events through the sisterhood’s Facebook and Twitter sites.
The group has been meeting since the summer, but has its official launch later this month with a reassuringly traditional Victoria sponge baking contest.”
Am I completely heinous for laughing at the banality of bra fitting and wine tasting (remember to spit after every sip!) being billed (albeit by the less than august Daily Mail) as anything approaching rebellious? Or maybe the joke is on me and being genuinely into canning peaches and baking sponge cakes is actually subversively countercultural by Gen Y’s presumed ironic-at-all-costs standards? Put another way, would I still be laughing if this was a group of Park Slope hipsters learning to make plant-holders out of tabs from PBR cans? Or maybe the meta joke is on all of us for buying into the party line that Gen Y are enfants terribles whose every socio-political choice can be billed as a full-blown trend duly worth examining and theorizing over.
Sometimes, a cross-stitched pillow is just cross-stitched pillow, ya know?
* Although I am slagging the Daily Mail for their grating use of Miss. Of voting age? Ms. all the way.
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It’s easy to make fun of this, but where else can women get together to learn useful/arcane new skills (have you skidded on a narrow icy highway in the dark recently?) and simply enjoy one another’s company and companionship? Given that something like 90% of women wear the wrong bra size (neither attractive nor comfortable), this is also a terrific service, as very few stores even offer that personalized advice.
Just because it’s not cool or hip — or you deem it so — doesn’t mean it lacks value. Does every activity women do have to be rebellious to be worthwhile?
I think you might be missing my point. Namely, that every activity Gen Y participates in does not have to be branded as “rebellious, ” somehow crammed into the composite archetype of what Gen Yers are portrayed as representing or be treated as some sort of sociocultural generational artifact. The activities mentioned in this article are all very quotidian, unremarkable pursuits. Just because the women who are undertaking them are in their 20s doesn’t make it worth being singled out as a media novelty.
But we are talking about the Daily Mail, here.
In response to another comment. See in context »That’s what journalists do — make up boxes and put people into them. Twas ever thus.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Generation Meh. Generation Meh said: New T/S piece! Apparently, cake baking, bra fitting and wine tasting are the new youthful radical: http://tinyurl.com/yzhuq6e #eyeroll #omg [...]