My grandmother was born in Nablus, West Bank, in 1934. She came from a family of 8, and she herself nurtured five children into this world. Her childhood home was filled with delicious food aromas, and the family always united around the kitchen and food time. Her mother never asked her for help and her job was never ending. It was like she almost worked 24 hours a day. No wonder that " 61 to 85 percent of women, a 1944 survey found, certainly did not want to go back to housework after the war". (63) Housework never ended, whereas a job outside the house was regulated by fixed hours. However, having a job outside the home, did not stop women from continuing to take care of their household. They ended up working in the office during the day and at home in the evening. "Housework totals forty billion hours of France's labour power. Women volunteer work in the United States amount to 18 billion dollars a year....the economics of industrialised countries would collapse if women didn't do the work they do for free....". (23)
Going back to my grandmother's childhood, it was spent doing simple things, like going to the cinema in secret, or singing and dancing with friends. She had a uniform at her all girl's school, ( blue skirt and white shirt), so not much time was given on what to wear. She never got into trouble although sometimes her own grandfather would tell her to wear a headscarf. She never did, and her clothes outside school was casual, but trousers were never worn, despite the fact that she toured the farms with her family. Often she used to help her seamstress aunt and create her own clothes. There was not much exposure around, so she and her friends did not have a foreign figure to look up to. My grandmother used to admire her Arabic teacher for her confidence and originality. Women's magazines in Arabic were almost non existent. "Women's magazines are the only products of popular culture that (unlike romances) change with women's reality and take women's concern seriously". (71) So current women concerns in the 1930's and 40's were not discussed. Also there was no television, just BBC radio channel, that stimulated their visual imagination and increased my grandmother's interest in Politics. To this day, she is an avid reader of newspapers and political magazines and have never seen her buy a Fashion magazine although she is up to date for fashion at her age.
Times have really changed. Emphasis has moved from the home to the outside world now. In the old days (according to my grandmother), all women looked pretty and natural. They didn't have to rush anywhere or aspire to look like anybody else. Instead, to bring out their beauty, they highlighted their best assets and always had a relaxed aura about them. Nowadays, women are stressed, overworked, pressured into things, and therefore their moral on tired days is down. "The closer women come to power, the more physical self-consciousness and sacrifice are asked of them. "Beauty" becomes the condition for a women to take the next step". (28) As a result of their exhaustion, women are continuously looking at products and ways to make them look less tired, younger, and eventually happier. They are constantly reminded by shop windows, magazine covers, even pharmaceutical products of the importance of taking care of your looks. Advertisements are geared toward making women feel that they are inadequate if they don't follow certain steps. "In providing a dream language of meritocracy(get the body you deserve", "a gorgeous figure doesn't come without effort", entrepreneurial spirit "make the most of your natural assets",)....keep women consuming their advertisers' products in pursuit of the total personal transformation in status that the consumer society offers men in the form of money." (29) It seems that one has to defy nature, and that if you are "worth it", as the L'Oreal add always suggest, then you should aim for the perfect body and the perfect hair and make up. These adds work on women's low self esteem, that surfaces after seeing such ads over and over again. Without these ads, women would probably still purchase certain products but not with such intensity.
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