Women Whose Lives are Food, Men Whose Lives are Money
Mid-morning Monday she is staring
peaceful as the rain in that shallow backyard
she wears flannel bedroom slippers
she is sipping coffee
she is thinking—
—gazing at the weedy bumpy yard
at the faces beginning to take shape
in the wavy mud
in the linoleum
where floorboards assert themselves
Women whose lives are food
breaking eggs with care
scraping garbage from the plates
unpacking groceries hand over hand
Wednesday evening: he takes the cans out front
tough plastic with detachable lids
Thursday morning: the garbage truck whining at 7
Friday the shopping mall open till 9
bags of groceries unpacked
hand over certain hand
Men whose lives are money
time-and-a-half Saturdays
the lunchbag folded with care and brought back home
unfolded Monday morning
Women whose lives are food
because they are not punch-carded
because they are unclocked
sighing glad to be alone
staring into the yard, mid-morning
mid-week
by mid-afternoon everything is forgotten
There are long evenings
panel discussions on abortions, fashions, meaningful work
there are love scenes where people mouth passions
sprightly, handsome, silly, manic
in close-ups revealed ageless
the women whose lives are food
the men whose lives are money
fidget as these strangers embrace and weep and mis-
understand and forgive and die and weep and embrace
and the viewers stare and fidget and sigh and
begin yawning around 10:30
never made it past midnight, even on Saturdays,
watching their braven selves perform
Where are the promised revelations?
Why have they been shown so many times?
Long-limbed children a thousand miles to the west
hitch-hiking in spring, burnt bronze in summer
thumbs nagging
eyes pleading
Give us a ride, huh? Give us a ride?
and when they return nothing is changed
the linoleum looks older
the Hawaiian Chicken is new
the girls wash their hair more often
the boys skip over the puddles
in the GM parking lot
no one eyes them with envy
their mothers stoop
the oven doors settle with a thump
the dishes are rinsed and stacked and
by mid-morning the house is quiet
it is raining out back
or not raining
the relief of emptiness rains
simple, terrible, routine
at peace
The poem “Women Whose Lives Are Food, Men Whose Lives Are Money” by Joyce Carol Oates describes how women are confined to the home (“breaking eggs with care/scraping garbage from the plates/unpacking groceries hand over hand”) while men are expected to be the breadwinners (“men whose lives are money, / time-and-a-half Saturdays, / the lunch bag folded with care and brought back home, / unfolded Monday morning”). It also touches on how women are indifferent to issues that directly impact them because they feel removed from the rest of the world around them (Oates writes “There are long evenings, / panel discussions on abortions, fashions, meaningful work, / …and the viewers stare and fidget and sigh and, / begin yawning around 10:30”).
This relates to the theme of culture lags from Hochschild’s book, The Commercialization of Intimate Life. Culture lags within the economy describe how childrearing and housework are still considered “women’s work” in greater society despite how more women are receiving an education and entering the workforce in greater numbers (Hochschild, 2003, p. 106). Thus, for women, the economy itself is the changing environment. On the other hand, for men, women are the changing environment because men’s expectations for them do not align with women’s goals and desires. The culture lag in wider society translates to the gender lag at home.
To The Indifferent Women
You who are happy in a thousand homes,
Or overworked therein, to a dumb peace;
Whose souls are wholly centered in the life
Of that small group you personally love;
Who told you that you need not know or care
About the sin and sorrow of the world?
Do you believe the sorrow of the world
Does not concern you in your little homes? —
That you are licensed to avoid the care
And toil for human progress, human peace,
And the enlargement of our power of love
Until it covers every field of life?
The one first duty of all human life
Is to promote the progress of the world
In righteousness, in wisdom, truth and love;
And you ignore it, hidden in your homes,
Content to keep them in uncertain peace,
Content to leave all else without your care.
Yet you are mothers! And a mother’s care
Is the first step toward friendly human life.
Life where all nations in untroubled peace
Unite to raise the standard of the world
And make the happiness we seek in homes
Spread everywhere in strong and fruitful love.
You are content to keep that mighty love
In its first steps forever; the crude care
Of animals for mate and young and homes,
Instead of pouring it abroad in life,
Its mighty current feeding all the world
Till every human child can grow in peace.
You cannot keep your small domestic peace
Your little pool of undeveloped love,
While the neglected, starved, unmothered world
Struggles and fights for lack of mother’s care,
And its tempestuous, bitter, broken life
Beats in upon you in your selfish homes.
We all may have our homes in joy and peace
When woman’s life, in its rich power of love
Is joined with man’s to care for all the world.
“To the Indifferent Women” is a poem by Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman that calls out women for not being more concerned about the world around them and for being too focused on issues just in their homes (“Who told you that you need not know or care, / About the sin and sorrow of the world?”). She believes that a mother’s or woman’s love, if extended out to the rest of the world, can be extraordinarily healing (“We all may have our homes in joy and peace, / When a woman’s life, in its rich power of love, / Is joined with man’s to care for all the world”).
This ties into the concept of gender culture in Hochschild’s book The Commercialization of Intimate Life. Gender culture encompasses the beliefs about manhood and womanhood and of the emotional anchors attached to these beliefs (Hochschild, 2003, p. 106). Traditional views believe that women should stay at home while men go out into the world, make money, and fix problems. However, Gilman challenges this in her poem, claiming that women daring to go out into the world to challenge traditional beliefs will make the world a better and more loving place overall.
A Letter to My Body
I left for so long
I got confused
I thought someone else lived here.
No. Not someone.
Anyone.
Anyone who laid claim.
Planted a flag.
Put down roots.
I didn’t know I was an option.
And then I did.
It was beautiful.
I organized timeshares!
I can be here!
You can be here!
He can be here!
She can be here!
They can be here!
THEY can be here!
Just let me know.
There. Is. Plenty. Of. Wiggle. Room.
And I’m very accommodating.
But I’m shy.
I’m going to go.
Tell me when you’re done.
I’ll sweep and mop.
Patch holes and cracks.
GET THIS GIRL READY FOR MARKET
I was gone for so long.
I got confused.
I thought other people should be allowed to stay here.
I thought this was a vacation rental.
I didn’t realize this was a home.
This no hostel.
There is no vacancy.
Only one occupant.
All year round.
No sublease.
Hello, I’m sorry,
I’m home.
An excerpt of Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry includes Miss Sugar Mamasota’s poem “A Letter to my Body” in which she eloquently describes the distance driven between herself and her body that sex working has caused. All of the individuals whose poems are previewed in the book are self-identified sex workers from various parts of the industry from Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia whom write about underlying themes in sex work such as the exploration of intimacy, transactional sex, identity, healing, and resilience. In this particular poem, Miss Sugar Mamasota explains how she feels separated from herself and her physical body because of the workfield she partakes in. She says, “I didn’t know I was an option” and “I didn’t realize this was a home” when referring to her body. These lines in the poem show the divide between Miss Sugar Mamasota’s mental and physical entities and how her line of work has formed uncertainties about herself resulting in unknowingness.
This exemplifies ideas of estrangement as described by Catherine Lutz in “Emotion, Thought, Estrangement”. Here, Miss Sugar Mamasota writes about being estranged–displaying or evincing a feeling of alienation–from her cognitive connection to her body and ability to see herself as hers and her home. Instead, she fell into a long-lasting belief that clients and others she involved herself with had ownership and control over her body rather than herself. Managing her emotions so heavily to align best with the expectations and reality of being a sex worker caused her to drift from herself and left this lost, estranged feeling.
In addition to estrangement, Kimberly Kay Hoang states how “female sex workers who are able to commodify their expressive emotions and engage in a form of relational work with their male clients are able to sell themselves to clients at a higher price while the lowest paid women engage in direct-sex-for money exchanges with clients where they often suppress their feelings of disgust” (Hoang 270). This idea is interrelated with feelings of estrangement because Miss Sugar Mamasota mentions how fluid, adaptable, and separated she becomes from herself in order to please clients. Doing this exemplifies the ways in which she manages her emotions to suppress internal feelings and continue engaging in sex work that ultimately aids in her loss of emotional connection to her body due to it’s commodification.
In the poem, Miss Sugar Mamasota also touches on possessing a false self, specifically an altruistic false self. An altruistic false self is created by extensive emotional labor, such as that performed by sex workers, which makes them more susceptible to being used because they always consent to the needs of others, become other-oriented, and think about other people and relationships they’re involved in which leads to intensive investment in others thus diminishing their own sense of self. As a sex worker, Miss Sugar Mamasota performs constant emotional labor that forces her to put the needs and desires of others, her clients, at the forefront of her mind instead of her own because of the customer service roots in the field. Pleasing her clients drives her income and flow of new as well as returning clients thus encouraging her to lose touch of her personal feelings about what she is doing with her body.
We Are The Girls Who Die Unnoticed
I was once in a newspaper
with a long Roberto Cavalli dress and lollipops
on the bed of the man who would rape me
when I told him I do not love you anymore.
I had fake hair and a dress I would only wear
to show my back and ass and tears.
In the newspaper I am quoted saying being a whore
is less harsh on my feet than being a waitress.
I keep my high heels on when the men knock at the door
kiss them on their mouth or cheek
wait for bills
and then take them off
so they are always shiny and new.
And it is true
being a whore is less harsh for me
than picking strawberries in a field
I made 20 dollars a day picking strawberries
then came home covered in dirt
smelling sweat and sweet.
Being a whore is less harsh for me than waking up at 4
to write in big bold letters bacon
The cook made bacon and scrambled eggs and peanut butter toast
for men coming in Les Princesses d’Hochelaga
to watch sports and porn and drink coffee.
They’d ask for bacon and a picture of my tits
before they struggled to build castles and skyscrapers.
I was once in a newspaper.
I wore mermaid eyeshadow.
I’m not dead yet.
I do Lego with my kids and cry and say sorry
too many times or not.
I’m not dead yet.
A man raped me because I was not his doll.
He had scars over his arms and he used to tell me it hurt
when we were watching documentaries or war movies.
I don’t remember if I was hurt when he shoved his cock in my ass.
When I was picking strawberries I was scared of spiders.
I’m not scared of a lot of things.
Firemen are called when I make cookies and it’s fine.
I don’t do cookies anymore.
I don’t cherish his scars and his wine.
I’m scared to die unnoticed.
Like any girl who is healing.
Melodie Nelson writes “We are the girls who die unnoticed”, a poem included in Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, in which she describes in detail the mannerisms of being a sex workers, its comparison to other body labor career fields, and reflecting on her past as a sex worker. The poem begins by discussing the negative connotations including degrading terms received from engaging in sex work as well as things she does as part of her job such as wearing her high heels when meeting clients. Nelson later compares sex work to other demanding professions by listing some downsides of working as a harvester or in a restaurant and having to wake up at 4:00 AM or be sexualized without profiting from it. She says “being a whore is less harsh on my feet than being a waitress” where she explicitly states her preference for sex work than other labor inducive occupations. Then Melodie goes into talking about how even though she’s involved in sex work, she’s “not dead yet” after experiencing harmful sexual events such as rape. She talks about her fear, reality of being a sex worker, and how she’s still present even though her life has changed.
In this poem, Melodie Nelson describes some of the emotional and body labor that is present in sex work. Being a sex worker requires various forms of emotional labor that Kimberly Kay Hoang describes as repressive, expressive, and relational as part of the commodification of their emotional and body labor. She mentions the physical expectations of beauty, wearing high heels that are often painful, tight revealing and shaping clothing, and makeup to assure she maintains a desirable appearance for clients. Putting on a specific appearance aligns with Hoang’s ideas of expressive labor because women like Nelson are expressing themselves in a certain way to be successful at their job. In addition to this, she mentions some aspects of the emotional labor performed by sex workers such as repressing their feelings towards their clients, separating themselves from their bodies doing to acts, and ignore sexual misconduct they’ve experienced and fears created by them in order to continue their work. This corresponds to Hoang’s definition of repressive emotional labor because Melodie is hiding these unfavorable feelings related to sex work and sexual acts. Lastly, relational labor is performed by sex workers like Melodie Nelson by maintaining a relationship with their clients. This can occur by faking personal connections with them so that the client returns or performing certain acts that please that client in order to preserve this relationship.