Wifery 101

by Kimberly Palmer

Shirley soon began sending us assignments: Eliminate one unfeminine item from your wardrobe. Add feminine touches to your home. When you feel yourself getting angry, pout and stamp your foot like a young girl. Your husband will find it cute, she said. At first, I was appalled. Acting like a child in order to be attractive seemed insulting and condescending, not to mention dismissive of the reason behind the anger.

In my one-on-one phone call with Shirley that week (the talks were part of the class), I asked her what I should do when I felt overwhelmed by housework.

“Sometimes,” she began, in the reassuring tone of a grandmother, “if you can think of housework as a blessing, and how blessed you are that you even have a house to dust, it can help.” She also told me that my husband was very lucky to have me as his wife. After hanging up, I felt giddy. It was freeing to confess my fears about being a wife and to have an older, wiser woman reassure me.

I did, of course, have my differences with the FW way. When one woman wrote about her husband’s infidelity, the class told her to practice being more feminine, and to pray to win him back. The other women seemed to agree that it was up to them to make their marriages work, while they were willing to accept almost any fault in their husbands.

That approach seemed one-sided and sexist to me. Before encountering the class, I would have told any woman to leave a cheater immediately out of self-respect. I felt a bit like the black sheep of the group who wasn’t willing to follow the rules.