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"Life as a recent graduate can be hurtful to the ego."
It is almost two months since I moved in with my boyfriend in California. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m still unemployed. I am a recent college graduate from Turkey whose permit to stay in the country started two months ago. My family wanted me in New York with my brother, rather than in California with my boyfriend – and the only good excuse I could come up with that might make them feel a little better about the situation was that there would surely be a fantastic job waiting for me in Cali. If the draconian implications of my unemployment do not hit you in the face immediately, just hear me out. After a fruitless summer of very little work and an even smaller budget, I flew to Palo Alto, California, and decided that it was time to look for jobs. Maks and I had talked about me moving for the past year, and it was implicitly known to both of us that he would have to support me during the time I was unemployed. I had always imagined, however, that I would simply be served a job on a silver platter right after graduation, and was a little confused at my sudden state of uselessness. To my astonishment, no employers seemed to want me. Life as a recent graduate can be hurtful to the ego. For the first time in seventeen years, no one is praising me for my intelligence, creativity or my ability to “think outside the box.” In fact, I hear a subtle mix of dread and boredom in the voices of potential employers who I’ve pestered endlessly on the phone. So to make myself feel a little important, I seized power and launched a fascist regime over the household. Our modest home is a graduate dorm on the Stanford campus. My status in the household would likely pass under the title of “unregistered guest” (but do not report to the authorities because we do plan on moving out as soon as I am employed!) To return to fascism: Maks very quickly found himself being scolded for the state of the house, and often reminded that I would not tolerate living in a house that resembled a barn; he took to the habit of washing the dishes right after dinner, because the mess bothered me; he started folding (most) of his clothes after taking them off. A refugee in his own home, Maks nevertheless did not question the system of justice, but instead channeled his energies into making me a little more content. He is a wise one. "we fell into the harmonious routine of Maks going to work and I – well, waiting for him to come back"
That was the first phase of living together. The second phase began when I realized that the jobs I was so sure would get back to me were in fact choosing to ignore me. So I told myself that since Maks was at work the whole day (he is a PhD student in Mathematics), I might as well do the cooking, cleaning, washing and shopping after frantically sending off resumes each morning. My decision was prompted by a mixture of embarrassment at my previous conduct, and gratitude for Maks’ support. After all, he was approaching the whole matter with a saint-like kindness, finding it only natural that he should pay for all our needs, help me in my job search, and change his messy ways. Maks and I are also both from cultural and family backgrounds where talking about money is considered incredibly rude. Therefore, it was easier for us to fall into a traditional married routine where it was more or less a given that he would earn the bread while I provided a warm home, so to speak. Such a routine is not unfamiliar to me: My mother—a full time doctor—has always done all the housework, moved all around the world with my father, and brought up two children in the process (not to mention two more children our age, when my cousins on my father’s side moved in with us 8 years ago). Maks’ upbringing in Latvia was a little different: although his mother took on most of the housework and did not work outside of the home, his father would do his own chores, such as ironing his own clothes, cooking for himself from time to time (after the two children moved out) and doing the dishes after dinner. Moreover, Maks is always eager to do my share of the work (although we have never really talked about how things are divided), and often tells me that I should not clean up, or cook, or go shopping because he can do all of it once he gets home. I try not to accept his kindness, and to do most of the work myself, not because it seems only fair to me that we work equal amounts, but because I am in some ways trying to prove to myself that I am being of use. Phase two lasted well over a week, and we fell into the harmonious routine of Maks going to work and I – well, waiting for him to come back. Though I find it hard to admit to myself that I acted in many ways like a Turkish immigrant in England (married off to a successful Turkish banker but without the English skills necessary to leave her home), I was very much dependant on Maks for entertainment and daily sustenance. And when he wasn’t home, I set myself to rigorous housework. "I was terrified."
We enter phase three on a quiet Sunday evening where Maks is in the living room finishing off a project for work, and I am happily baking cookies for a midnight snack. After putting the cookies in the oven and turning off the lights in the kitchen save for the warm overhead light of the oven, I dried off the last dishes, put them away, and wetted a sponge to run over the kitchen counters a final time. And there I saw her: After all four children were fed, talked to, soothed about the starting of a new week and sent off to finish their homework, I saw my mother, cleaning the kitchen counter, her last worry of the day, before putting on a movie and falling asleep in front of the television. And I was terrified. It wasn’t the usual horror of seeing our parents in our actions. I look up to my mother in many ways and am mostly happy to find myself acting like her. Moreover, though I have always been aware of the gender segregation in our house, I have never felt contempt for why she put up with it. Yet I have also always considered housework petty, and scoffed at the idea of doing nothing outside the home. So my shock was more that of seeing myself so concentrated on the orderly kitchen, and without any other work of my own. Thanks to a liberal arts education and my own focus on gender studies, the feminist agenda has permeated my mind so thoroughly that it is impossible for me to view housework as an un-gendered activity. Rationally speaking, there is nothing wrong with me doing the housework since Maks is working hard outside of the house. However, the simple task of putting dirty clothes in the laundry is so strongly associated with submissive womanhood to my mind that I feel irrationally uncomfortable. Maks, meanwhile, complicates things by appearing so comfortable with doing more than his “share” of the housework, and feeling not in the least bit ashamed while sweeping the floors or cooking us dinner. So while my boyfriend is the feminist ideal, I feel burdened with many of the images I have in my mind of women doing housework and have subsequently turned what should have been “equality” into an inferiority complex about being a so-called independent woman. "there is something unfair about all my work in the past two months: I can’t put any of it on a resume"
The basis of this insecurity (as well as Maks’s security) could very well be economic dependence: A Room of One’s Own, just so I may wash dishes in peace. Yet I must admit that the shock of seeing myself wipe the kitchen counters with the same, smooth, curvy move of hand as my mother, was not just the shock of all of this I’ve rambled on about. It was not only my own gendered domesticity, but also the domesticity of the situation that bothered me. Those of you in my generation, (I just turned 22) must be attune to how long-term, monogamous relationships have become a little un-cool. I for one have certainly been the target of sarcastic comments about how Maks and I are “just like a married couple.” There is something stressful, claustrophobic and un-trendy about being seriously together. I felt on that Sunday evening all of the trite and cliché -- but nonetheless frightening -- feelings of a wasted youth, a sexuality perhaps not fully explored…of a helpless Middle-Eastern girl married off at an early age. I am completely schizophrenic about all this, mind you. Phase three is still in the works. I go back and forth between obsessively doing housework and being too “proud” to even touch a cooking pan. Somewhere in between my bouts of craziness we have started to settle down to an actual routine, one that doesn’t involve me waiting at home for Maks to come back every night. Thank god I started getting calls for interviews. Finally I can vacuum the floors just for the sake of cleaning the carpet, no angst or agenda attached! But even with all my paranoid thinking aside, there is something unfair about all my work in the past two months: I can’t put any of it on a resume. - Aysegul Savas Photograph by Aysegul Savas |
