Real Women use Tools
Why is it that we think men and tools are synonymous? Okay, there is the obvious answer that men are tools. No, I didn’t mean that. That men have tools? Too obvious. Is it because we never see pictures of women using tools?
This photo, which I posted on flickr a few days ago, has had a good response (at least by my pitiful flickr standards). My husband marked it as a “favorite.” I haven’t asked him, but I’m sure he thought it was pretty sexy. A very fashionable friend who lives her life half in London and half in Copenhagen comments that she had the dream of “the hardhat aesthetic” for women when she was in art school.
Anyway, this got me to thinking about women and tools. Is it true that women don’t use “manly” tools? I do. My husband doesn’t. Just last weekend I installed our new thermostat, an activity that I took great pleasure in. I am also the one who assembles anything that we purchase that needs assembly, and I am the one who repairs household appliances that are broken. Isn’t that what all women do?
On a different but related topic, my eight-year-old son recently came home from playing with a neighbor girl. He was super excited about having just baked a tiny cake in her Easy-Bake oven. He loved it, so I asked him if he wanted his own Easy-Bake oven. His face filled with an embarrassed disbelieving look, “No! Are you kidding? It’s pink!”
“Hum,” I said, “I wonder if it comes in a different color?”
“It doesn’t. I already know,” he said.
“I wonder why,” I mused, “since lots of boys like to cook, guys like your dad.”
“Yeah, it’s not fair.”
Somewhere between the tools and the Easy-Bake oven there is a story to tell. We haven’t come as long a way as we would have liked to baby.