Martha Stewart Reject

"My casserole turned out soooo bad last night!"

"I can't even sew on a button!"

"I completely shrunk all my shirts in the wash yesterday!"

Has anybody else noticed the trend amongst married women bloggers to make fun of their homemaking skills? I get that we all make mistakes sometimes (and a lot of time those mistakes are freaking funny), but the more and more I see this on blogs, the more and more it bothers me.

Don't get me wrong: I'm totally guilty of this. Nobody loves a good dose of self-deprecation as much as I do. But I've tried to tone it down because I dislike the subliminal messages that this "Martha Stewart Reject" attitude (heretofore referred to as MSR) potentially conveys.

I would classify these messages into three categories:

1) I'm too modern to be good at homemaking. What, is homemaking something that only our grandmothers were good at? Is being old fashioned out of style? Is it a sign of backwards narrow-mindedness to enjoy cooking, baking, cleaning, sewing, gardening, knitting, and DIY projects? Am I asking too many rhetorical questions?

2) A strong woman shouldn't be a homemaker. Homemakers are among the strongest women--so if you're trying to prove that you are one, the MSR attitude does little to help your cause.

3) I'm too smart to be a homemaker. Sure, any woman can learn to cook and clean--whether you're a Nobel Prize-winning chemist or a Somali woman who's never set food inside a school. But intelligence does not preclude you from homemaking, and it isn't a sign of wasted intelligence if that's what you choose to do.

I'm probably over-analyzing all this, but I think it's important to recognize the undercurrents that swirl beneath our words. Undercurrents, after all, are what have the power to move people.

If you're an excellent homemaker, say so! Be proud of it. The blogs I read of women who cook passionately, or sew beautifully, or decorate exquisitely are some of my absolute favorite blogs--and I'd like to see more of them.

I hope you realize that I'm not advocating for cookie-cutter mommy blogs of women whose kids/house/marriage seems perfect (heaven knows the blogosphere already has WAY too many of those). If that's what's coming across, then (to quote G.O.B.) I've made a huge mistake. And please know that I love reading about mishaps and misadventures in everyday life, so I don't mean to rail against those either. I just want to make sure that women, as they're living imperfectly, realize that those imperfections aren't what they should be proud of or what they should broadcast the loudest.

It's okay to be a kickass homemaker. That's all.