Research has now concluded that the reason why modern women have gained weight steadily in the last 45 years is because they don’t push enough vacuums around the house anymore. Oh, good grief.
ABC News reports that a team of University of South Carolina researchers at the Arnold School of Public Health found that when the activity logs of stay-at-home women from 1965 were compared to women in 2010, they spent 25.7 hours a week “pushing tanklike vacuums, dusting, mopping, cooking and washing”, to the paltry 13.3 hours a week modern women spent on household chores — AND they are also 22 pounds heavier than their 1965 counterparts.
Ergo modern women are lazy homeslobs who live in wanton outhouses full of discarded Krispy Kreme donut boxes and half crushed boxes of Midol, right? RIGHT?!
“We looked at 91 different activities – going to the gym, walking the dog – and the only thing that influenced their energy expenditure was the work in the home,” said Edward Archer, a University of South Carolina research fellow and the study’s lead author. “That’s why the study focused on that.”
Urgh. Whatever. We find it hard to believe that this is the only factor that has influenced the results since the mid 1960’s. It certainly couldn’t be what women ate/prepared in the 1960’s vs. what’s available today wherein more money and autonomy has possibly led to more food options and choices. Or that many more modern women have given up smoking, a mainstay in the 1960’s, which served as an appetite suppressant. Or because women’s days are perhaps more hectic now, with much more eating late and rising early so there isn’t as much regenerative rest per night which can lead to weight gain. No, none of these things could possibly be a factor — it just has to be about housework — and the fact that if women did more of it they’d be slimmer and trimmer. That is what the study is saying, yes?
Not according to the researchers.
“The take-home message is not that women should be doing more housework but rather that women and individuals in general should find ways of integrating physical activity into their day,” Archer said. “How you spend your day determines health, how you spend your day determines the health of the next generation.”
Uh-huh.
It’s also interesting to note when discussing physical activity, diet, and sedentary lifestyles that the sponsor of the Arnold School of Public Health study is Coca-Cola. HA! WHAT! One of the leading causes of obesity — sugary soft drinks — (and the biggest company around in this category) sponsored a study that says that their product isn’t related to an uptick in obesity — it’s the lack of pushing a huge vacuum like our foremothers did 45 years ago that’s done it apparently.
Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for food policy and obesity at Yale University says, “It would be like taking money from the tobacco industry to find other causes of lung cancer. It really makes no sense at all.”
Other experts say the obesity epidemic was caused by a long list of factors that included not just physical activity but diet, genetics and economic status. Could that also include that it’s no longer solely women doing household chores in the home?
The Atlantic reports today that as a positive, men’s participation in housework in U.S. families has nearly doubled in the past 40 years, and their amount of time spent on childcare has tripled. Well, we can see how that could move women away from shouldering the burden of household chores in the last four decades.
In addition, according to a 2007 Pew Research Poll sharing household chores was in the top three highest-ranking issues associated with a successful marriage. And close examination of how husbands and wives collaborate on or fail to coordinate their household activities allows for more contemplation on other phenomena within marriages such as gender roles, issues of power, respect, intimacy, and how we broker an equitable or fair partnership.
It’s also certainly possible that these scenarios and the negotiations therein could cause strife and tension and ostensibly affect the emotional state of the household as a whole giving rise to the propensity for obesity in both parties.
So the takeaway here is that it seems batty to just rely on one study (the one driven by Coca-Cola) to indicate the reason for why obesity has increased, especially when there are various other factors that impact women’s daily lives, not to be excluded, the help and/or lack thereof, of their partners.
Becoming a more modern society also means that roles in the household have evolved, domesticity can take on a variety of shapes, and housework for modern women and many men does not wholly consist of, nor does it always begin and end with, pushing a vacuum. So how about we not suggest ever so subtly that household chores are women’s work, or that obesity for women can be derived from an antiquated measurement that doesn’t allow for more than one variable?
Image: Wikimedia
