There are very few logistical obstacles (even during the lockdown), to building an outdoor wood deck – so long as it is not attached to the house and it complies with local building codes. But as a female of a certain age, I had never built one. I hadn’t even helped to build one. And so, grappling with my incompetencies, I relied on YouTube.
Nothing teaches like doing – my first tapcons in concrete using the power drill resulted in concrete dust back filling the holes slightly. Yes, the screw was going in like butter until it wasn’t. The drill seized, pinning my hand between it and the wood frame. Did that twice, actually. And I rushed, a little – my 16 inches on centre are between 12 and 18, depending.
If you are a person of light weight and using 3.5 inch joist screws, you’ll have to brace your body as you push on the gun to avoid stripping the heads – which is a problem if the wood is wet and pressure treat is always wet because it is stored outside. The bracing requires effort and fell swoop confidence. Drive through the wood like you mean it. As such, I recommend working in short stints rather than ‘must get it done’ marathons.
But I enjoyed it. Because of the extended lock down, no man could interfere or tell me I was doing it wrong… although two tried. Through the hedge, one neighbour man felt “bad” that I was building it without his help. Another, over the fence, said that to stop the screws from squealing, I should dip them in soap. Imagine.
Well, I continued to swear and squeal for six weeks during which time my mind wandered – far. While resisting the path of negativity bias, my thoughts circled round the troubled foundations of my inutility. The fact that I was just now learning to use a drill with competence was either an epic fail or a fabulous success. That is, until now, I have, without meaning to, and not without resistance, largely complied with the rules and expectations of the binary gender system.
I grew up during the 1960s and 70s, in a privileged white, anglo, middle class Ontario home – blinders up, head down. Here, the normative, socially constructed female role was instilled in me in part, less through work than through gifts. Gifts to teach certain minor skills or, more precisely behaviours that would support a future as a wife and homemaker.
The gifts -- they would arrive under the tree or at birthdays... the coterie of Barbies with their impossible parts, the tea sets and dresses, nail painting and hair how-to’s, basket-making, jewelry boxes and bedazzled clip ons. And yet, among these many inculcations, one stands out. It was a toy for girls that seductively reinforced all the right things: the Easy Bake Oven.
Introduced by US toy maker Kenner Products in 1963 this working simulacrum powerfully illustrated capitalism at the service of middle-class culture – and vice versa. When Kenner was acquired by General Mills in 1968, the maker of Betty Crocker mixes, the normative gender message was profitably amended: the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, which is made easier and faster with prepared foods.
Ironically, Betty Crocker herself was a gender construct. The name, likeness and even the signature of this kitchen maven, evolved from a 1921 US advertising campaign. Like a business oriented June Cleaver, the efficient looking, middle aged, white Betty forever wears a white blouse or pearls and a red jacket. She is an unpaid professional in the science of home economy who exerts her motherly control over the heart of the home, the kitchen.
In a parallel script, the Easy Bake advertisements cast a white, preteen girl as the mother in training who makes food so irresistible that both brother and father are caught stuffing their faces with it. Billed as the “greatest girl’s toy since dolls!”[1] the oven sold for the equivalent of $115. USD to over 500,000 buyers in 1963. 10 years later, by 1973, advertisements claimed that “5 million little girls had baked their first cake in an Easy Bake Oven.”
As one of those millions of girls in 1970, I too simulated baking from miniature cake mixes, each box stamped with the image of Betty. Adding a little water to the powder in the little red bowl, the lumpy mixture yielded with effort only to a metal spoon. When smooth, the batter filled a 3 inch diameter aluminum pan that slid along metal rails inside the device. The oven itself was a fashionable turquoise and big. It was a serious gift.
From set up to finished puck shaped cake, the process took about two hours. Squinting through a little plastic window, I watched the cake rise between two blinding hot 100 watt light bulbs. After 15 minutes, I pushed the pan through with a long turquoise fork – a perilous stage as the bulbs were still scalding. Once retrieved and cooled, I iced the cake and offered it on the little red plate to Dad who promptly ate it. Mission complete.
The power of the toy lay in its gender coded theatre – the ‘girl’ learns how it feels to be the mother, conditioned by the responses of the men. The subplot, the playful theft of the treats featured in the ads spoke to a creepy flirtation. But then, baking was never the aim and stirring is not a skill.
Within a year, I had retired the oven but the coded lessons persisted. In public school, following the example of Betty, homemaking was presented as a pseudo profession, to my mind. I wanted real skills with real tools, the kind the boys learned how to use in industrial arts – a class I asked to take but was denied. Unwillingly, instead, I was taught to organize table cutlery, make a rue, and sew – a poodle skirt, animal stuffies, an apron. Only later did I recognize the racist and classist undertones of the denial: white, future middle class ladies don’t use construction tools.
Females dissatisfied with homemaking threaten the free labour bargain they were expected to make. Males sell their time and the growing family takes on debt. Restless housewives spell unhappy workers which challenge the profitability of box stores, grocery chains, lenders/banks and insurance companies. Compliance is key.
And yet, a kind of trickle down second wave feminism did reach my school. King famously beat Riggs in their televised tennis match. The historic Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion (inspiring future Canadian legislation). Ms. Magazine was in its heyday and Margaret Trudeau broke curfew at Studio 54. … all of which significantly impacted my other home-management class, Family Life Education (FLE), also known as sex ed.
FLE was optional and so only a handful of us in Grade 7 were corralled away for this special instruction. While it all had some kind of impact, one lesson stands out miles beyond the rest.
One day in our suburban, white, Mississauga classroom, against a backdrop of heavy drapes, closed tight against a bright day, we were shown a black and white film of a woman giving birth.
I trust my memory, but readers may not. And so, I point to a 2015 PhD thesis titled More Than Plumbing: The History of Sexual Education in Ontario, 1960-1979.[2] Author Michelle Hutchinson Grondin sets the stage:
Ontario educators were concerned that the ‘sexual revolution’ would encourage youths to engage in sexually promiscuous behaviour, become unwed mothers, and contract STIs. .. educators felt compelled to teach traditional sexual values, and the importance of the nuclear family through sexual education.[3]
Sex ed in 1973 was informed in part by a Cold War mentality. How intent were backwater Ontario school boards on holding the binary status quo and the nuclear family? They perceived a real threat to national security in same sex attraction. It was stigmatized and deemed a danger to both the nuclear family and to national security – gays and lesbians were open to blackmail, apparently.[4]
As preposterous as it sounds, the task of “sexual gatekeeping”, protecting the nation, the family and the economy in this narrative, fell to hetero-normative inculcated girls. 13 year old girls would be armed with knowledge of family life and home management provided by public school teachers through a la carte creative lesson plans to save the nation.[5]
The example of a screaming woman in childbirth was an indelible lesson.
Two girls fled the room crying. Another vomited at her seat. I watched wide-eyed, my thoughts yet to form words as the crowning head of a child pushed its way through a widening hole between the woman’s legs. There was matted hair, blood and fluid, wracking limbs, torment… The woman was on display, humiliated, splayed, anonymous and alone.
Challenges to the patriarchal agenda came from the women’s and gay rights movements during the 1960s and 1970s.[6]
With the recognition and growing acceptance of other gender identities – trans, gender neutral, genderqueer, two spirit – where skills and behaviours are equally diverse, the binary construct has become less profitable. You know there’s been a capitalist pivot when the TD Bank float at Toronto Pride is alive with dancing buff men in gold thongs.
These disparate memories of an intense period of gender socialization surfaced from a maelstrom of musing on the cusp of 60 while building a deck. … I’ll admit to a new found use for the crow bar and I’ve learned that an 8 x 2 x 10 is really 7.5 x 1.75 x about 10. The next deck will be better.
But this one, with all its mistakes, is complete and now cheerfully cluttered with flower pots and chairs. When the lockdown ends, I’ll invite the helpful men and their wives over for coffee to admire or critique my skills.
Copyright 2024 Heather Fraser
[1] https://clickamericana.com/topics/food-drink/easy-bake-ovens-the-vintage-kitchen-toys-that-let-kids-bake-their-own-mini-cakes
[2] https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3457/
[3] Michelle Hutchinson Grondin, More than Plumbing: The History of Sexual Education in Ontario, 1960-1970 (2015) p. I
[4] Christabelle Sethna, “The Cold War and the Sexual Chill: Freezing Girls Out of Sex Education,” Canadian Women’s Studies 17, no.4 (1998), 59.
[5] Hutchinson Grondin, p. 238.
[6] Ibid, p. 6.
Nothing teaches like doing – my first tapcons in concrete using the power drill resulted in concrete dust back filling the holes slightly. Yes, the screw was going in like butter until it wasn’t. The drill seized, pinning my hand between it and the wood frame. Did that twice, actually. And I rushed, a little – my 16 inches on centre are between 12 and 18, depending.
If you are a person of light weight and using 3.5 inch joist screws, you’ll have to brace your body as you push on the gun to avoid stripping the heads – which is a problem if the wood is wet and pressure treat is always wet because it is stored outside. The bracing requires effort and fell swoop confidence. Drive through the wood like you mean it. As such, I recommend working in short stints rather than ‘must get it done’ marathons.
But I enjoyed it. Because of the extended lock down, no man could interfere or tell me I was doing it wrong… although two tried. Through the hedge, one neighbour man felt “bad” that I was building it without his help. Another, over the fence, said that to stop the screws from squealing, I should dip them in soap. Imagine.
Well, I continued to swear and squeal for six weeks during which time my mind wandered – far. While resisting the path of negativity bias, my thoughts circled round the troubled foundations of my inutility. The fact that I was just now learning to use a drill with competence was either an epic fail or a fabulous success. That is, until now, I have, without meaning to, and not without resistance, largely complied with the rules and expectations of the binary gender system.
I grew up during the 1960s and 70s, in a privileged white, anglo, middle class Ontario home – blinders up, head down. Here, the normative, socially constructed female role was instilled in me in part, less through work than through gifts. Gifts to teach certain minor skills or, more precisely behaviours that would support a future as a wife and homemaker.
The gifts -- they would arrive under the tree or at birthdays... the coterie of Barbies with their impossible parts, the tea sets and dresses, nail painting and hair how-to’s, basket-making, jewelry boxes and bedazzled clip ons. And yet, among these many inculcations, one stands out. It was a toy for girls that seductively reinforced all the right things: the Easy Bake Oven.
Introduced by US toy maker Kenner Products in 1963 this working simulacrum powerfully illustrated capitalism at the service of middle-class culture – and vice versa. When Kenner was acquired by General Mills in 1968, the maker of Betty Crocker mixes, the normative gender message was profitably amended: the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, which is made easier and faster with prepared foods.
Ironically, Betty Crocker herself was a gender construct. The name, likeness and even the signature of this kitchen maven, evolved from a 1921 US advertising campaign. Like a business oriented June Cleaver, the efficient looking, middle aged, white Betty forever wears a white blouse or pearls and a red jacket. She is an unpaid professional in the science of home economy who exerts her motherly control over the heart of the home, the kitchen.
In a parallel script, the Easy Bake advertisements cast a white, preteen girl as the mother in training who makes food so irresistible that both brother and father are caught stuffing their faces with it. Billed as the “greatest girl’s toy since dolls!”[1] the oven sold for the equivalent of $115. USD to over 500,000 buyers in 1963. 10 years later, by 1973, advertisements claimed that “5 million little girls had baked their first cake in an Easy Bake Oven.”
As one of those millions of girls in 1970, I too simulated baking from miniature cake mixes, each box stamped with the image of Betty. Adding a little water to the powder in the little red bowl, the lumpy mixture yielded with effort only to a metal spoon. When smooth, the batter filled a 3 inch diameter aluminum pan that slid along metal rails inside the device. The oven itself was a fashionable turquoise and big. It was a serious gift.
From set up to finished puck shaped cake, the process took about two hours. Squinting through a little plastic window, I watched the cake rise between two blinding hot 100 watt light bulbs. After 15 minutes, I pushed the pan through with a long turquoise fork – a perilous stage as the bulbs were still scalding. Once retrieved and cooled, I iced the cake and offered it on the little red plate to Dad who promptly ate it. Mission complete.
The power of the toy lay in its gender coded theatre – the ‘girl’ learns how it feels to be the mother, conditioned by the responses of the men. The subplot, the playful theft of the treats featured in the ads spoke to a creepy flirtation. But then, baking was never the aim and stirring is not a skill.
Within a year, I had retired the oven but the coded lessons persisted. In public school, following the example of Betty, homemaking was presented as a pseudo profession, to my mind. I wanted real skills with real tools, the kind the boys learned how to use in industrial arts – a class I asked to take but was denied. Unwillingly, instead, I was taught to organize table cutlery, make a rue, and sew – a poodle skirt, animal stuffies, an apron. Only later did I recognize the racist and classist undertones of the denial: white, future middle class ladies don’t use construction tools.
Females dissatisfied with homemaking threaten the free labour bargain they were expected to make. Males sell their time and the growing family takes on debt. Restless housewives spell unhappy workers which challenge the profitability of box stores, grocery chains, lenders/banks and insurance companies. Compliance is key.
And yet, a kind of trickle down second wave feminism did reach my school. King famously beat Riggs in their televised tennis match. The historic Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion (inspiring future Canadian legislation). Ms. Magazine was in its heyday and Margaret Trudeau broke curfew at Studio 54. … all of which significantly impacted my other home-management class, Family Life Education (FLE), also known as sex ed.
FLE was optional and so only a handful of us in Grade 7 were corralled away for this special instruction. While it all had some kind of impact, one lesson stands out miles beyond the rest.
One day in our suburban, white, Mississauga classroom, against a backdrop of heavy drapes, closed tight against a bright day, we were shown a black and white film of a woman giving birth.
I trust my memory, but readers may not. And so, I point to a 2015 PhD thesis titled More Than Plumbing: The History of Sexual Education in Ontario, 1960-1979.[2] Author Michelle Hutchinson Grondin sets the stage:
Ontario educators were concerned that the ‘sexual revolution’ would encourage youths to engage in sexually promiscuous behaviour, become unwed mothers, and contract STIs. .. educators felt compelled to teach traditional sexual values, and the importance of the nuclear family through sexual education.[3]
Sex ed in 1973 was informed in part by a Cold War mentality. How intent were backwater Ontario school boards on holding the binary status quo and the nuclear family? They perceived a real threat to national security in same sex attraction. It was stigmatized and deemed a danger to both the nuclear family and to national security – gays and lesbians were open to blackmail, apparently.[4]
As preposterous as it sounds, the task of “sexual gatekeeping”, protecting the nation, the family and the economy in this narrative, fell to hetero-normative inculcated girls. 13 year old girls would be armed with knowledge of family life and home management provided by public school teachers through a la carte creative lesson plans to save the nation.[5]
The example of a screaming woman in childbirth was an indelible lesson.
Two girls fled the room crying. Another vomited at her seat. I watched wide-eyed, my thoughts yet to form words as the crowning head of a child pushed its way through a widening hole between the woman’s legs. There was matted hair, blood and fluid, wracking limbs, torment… The woman was on display, humiliated, splayed, anonymous and alone.
Challenges to the patriarchal agenda came from the women’s and gay rights movements during the 1960s and 1970s.[6]
With the recognition and growing acceptance of other gender identities – trans, gender neutral, genderqueer, two spirit – where skills and behaviours are equally diverse, the binary construct has become less profitable. You know there’s been a capitalist pivot when the TD Bank float at Toronto Pride is alive with dancing buff men in gold thongs.
These disparate memories of an intense period of gender socialization surfaced from a maelstrom of musing on the cusp of 60 while building a deck. … I’ll admit to a new found use for the crow bar and I’ve learned that an 8 x 2 x 10 is really 7.5 x 1.75 x about 10. The next deck will be better.
But this one, with all its mistakes, is complete and now cheerfully cluttered with flower pots and chairs. When the lockdown ends, I’ll invite the helpful men and their wives over for coffee to admire or critique my skills.
Copyright 2024 Heather Fraser
[1] https://clickamericana.com/topics/food-drink/easy-bake-ovens-the-vintage-kitchen-toys-that-let-kids-bake-their-own-mini-cakes
[2] https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3457/
[3] Michelle Hutchinson Grondin, More than Plumbing: The History of Sexual Education in Ontario, 1960-1970 (2015) p. I
[4] Christabelle Sethna, “The Cold War and the Sexual Chill: Freezing Girls Out of Sex Education,” Canadian Women’s Studies 17, no.4 (1998), 59.
[5] Hutchinson Grondin, p. 238.
[6] Ibid, p. 6.
