#ThrowbackMovie: Stepford Wives and the tyranny of housework

The more things change, the more they remain the same; goes the saying. And it struck as particularly true on watching the 1975 film version of the Stepford Wives. The film, which was re-created with a twist, with Nicole Kidman in the lead in 2004, was still probably equally relevant. And as I watched the original here in 2017, there were still strains of great familiarity.

The story revolves around a New York city based family, which relocates to the idyllic town of Stepford, which promises to be safe, clean and beautiful. It is all that, and more. As the female lead quickly discovers, that the women’s interests revolve only around cooking, cleaning, looking perfect and behaving with cookie cutter femininity. All efforts to initiate a feminist group, to get Stepford going, quickly dissolves into yet another conversation around housework. As she goes about discovering what is really going on in the town, the lead confronts her ultimate horror.

Needless to say, Stepford Wives is wildly satirical. But its extreme exaggeration drives home the point of continued ideas of a woman’s role – especially at home – quite well. An ideal partner for a man, is not someone who is his equal but as was the idea back in the day, has her share of very distinct responsibilities while he has his. So he works hard all through the day, and is the lord and master of his little home. She on the other hand, is the lovely homemaker, who obsesses over every last speck of dust, cooks like a dream and looks as ready as a dewy eyed princess for her man when he returns.

Of course all of this sounds rather ridiculous now, when women are working as hard as men are outside the house and to have women take on both roles is not just exceptionally unfair, it is representative of how deeply ingrained all the dark aspects of patriarchy still are in our social systems. The fact that women in today’s world are expected to be super-human is not far from the truth, though. If it were not the case, washing powders like Ariel would not have to start ‘Share the Load’ campaigns to get men to do laundry more often, Havells Appliances’ wouldn’t have a girl tell her prospective mother in law that she is not a kitchen appliance to be married to and more.

But the challenge of still deep differences in the role of men and women are not just restricted to India. A recent advertisement of dating app Bumble on a London bus read: “Be the CEO your parents always wanted you to marry. (Then find someone you actually like.)”. If kickass careers were still not predominantly for men, and women’s roles as being happy in securing these men, I doubt such advertisements would still appear.   

While Stepford Wives focuses on extreme female conditioning to contort women into becoming, much like the town of Stepford, into some perfect versions of themselves in so far as they are handmaidens to the men in their lives; the fact is that men are conditioned themselves as well. Conditioned into believing what they should want, expect and be rather than having true freedom of choice. And therein lies the real irony of the story and of life: If all the men are thinking the same thing, who is truly mind controlled?