Those Family Stickers on Cars August 20, 2013
Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought, STFU.Tags: blended family, familystickers, nuclear family, sexism, singles blog
6 comments
They are really disturbing, and if you live in North America, you know them. You see them all over. You may even have some yourself! Those stick-figure-esque stickers showing the white outlines of people in the simplest breakdown possible: Man, woman, boy, girl. People put them on the back windows of their cars to show who is in their family. Oh, you also get dogs and cats and the occasional little baby. Some of the people carry things that represent their fun hobbies: Lacrosse stick! Guitar! Staple Gun! (Well, maybe not that last one.) You may be thinking, SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM, GRUMPY ONELY?
The man is always bigger than the woman who is bigger than the children. That last part makes sense. But the first part has the potential for trouble. And trouble there is! 99.9 percent of the sticker families are ordered left to right–as is our written language in this part of the world–and so people (I hope without thinking) in an attempt at aesthetics smack on those stickers on biggest to smallest. So the father is always, always on the left, and hence, first. And the woman second.
Ignoring for the moment that these sticker collections are almost always nuclear-focused, let’s look at that father on the left. First. Taller. ALWAYS. I don’t think I have ever seen them ordered Mother, Father, Children. Ever. And I have seen a looooot of them. These stickers give me the chills because of their father-as-head-of-household mentality. Maybe not on purpose, and maybe that wasn’t the intention of the company who makes them, but customers are still slave to the big-to-small aesthetic and hence stick father-then-mother, perpetuating a dynamic that I thought was supposed to be dying out in the 1960s!
But don’t worry! A few lone independent thinkers are fighting back!
Somewhere in Colorado between Denver and Boulder, I saw a black car in front of me with the family stickers. They were on the bumper instead of the window. And they had been, shall we say, rearranged. As this is a family blog (Hey, singles blogs can be family blogs too! Right?), I won’t go in to details, just to say that one scene had a girl (you could tell by the feathered hair and triangle skirt) throwing a baby’s head to her brother (you could tell by the boxy shorts).
If familystickers.com isn’t careful, more people might start manipulating their product into even more controversial displays, such as. . . Two Men and a girl with the girl on the left! (I’ve never seen this one; I’ve never even seen two men), or One Woman and Seven Cats (this would be mine) (hey, I’m counting my feral colony, ok!?).
Copious Readers, do any of you have FamilyStickers on your car? In what configuration?
—Christina
Photo Credit: Theo Junior
Single People: Your Loved Ones Matter Less October 30, 2011
Posted by Onely in As If!.Tags: benefits discimination, discrimination against singles, long term care, marital privilege, nuclear family, Prudential, singlism
7 comments
The disaster scenarios described below are provided merely to make a point about the over-privileging of marriage. They do not in any way represent a thumbing-of-the-nose at fate and were written while knocking fervently on wood–well, on laminate at least.
Copious Readers, who should have long term care (LTC) insurance? Who qualifies?
Last Saturday night I considered these question. As I curled on the couch with a cup of tea and some LTC brochures, I imagined any number of extreme mishaps that might render me unable to “perform, without Substantial Assistance, at least two Activites of Daily Living. . . Bathing, Continence, Dressing, Eating, Toileting, and Transferring”. (You’ll be shocked to hear that in high school I was not voted Most Likely to Party Like a Rock Star.)
My company is offering a special deal on LTC coverage through Prudential–no medical history required. I’m only twenty-six (seeing as the thirties are the new twenties), but I’m old enough to know that sh&t happens. For example, last winter I braked for a sudden backup on I-66(6), and although I had allowed enough stopping distance for just such instances, the cretin in the S.U.V. behind me had not. As I watched his headlights bear down on my rearview I thought, “It seems some sh&t is about to happen right now.” Fortunately he swerved onto the shoulder and stopped right beside me, instead of on top of me. Crisis averted, but I still need long-term care coverage because all his small-appendaged, speed-compensating friends remain out there, waiting for me.
Or maybe, I thought as I sipped my De-Stress tea, they are up in Michigan, waiting for my parents. Fortunately, the LTC literature said I could get my mom and dad the same LTC policy too. Reading further, I thought I’d better sign my sister up for the same policy as well, in case she goes jogging and encounters a particularly peckish cougar. Now on a roll, I decided I should also get the policy for my intrepid international-travelling co-blogger Lisa. At any moment she might fall off one of those Roman pillars on which she is so fond of perching.
Except, oh, just one moment here, let me squint closer at the fine print–turns out I can’t get Lisa a plan, because she’s not my parent, or grandparent, or sibling, or child.
As I said in a previous post about bereavement leave, these (arbitrary) requirements privilege the nuclear family and devalue other types of families and relationships. Prudential and other providers (for Prudential is not the only offender) should allow an employee to select a certain number of people to be covered. That way, I could choose to allow Lisa to piggyback off my plan instead of my grandparents, who are already in the longest-term care facility of them all.
It gets worse. Although my married colleagues are also pigeonholed in the nuclear-family paradigm, they have twice as many options as I and my single colleagues do, because marrieds can choose to enroll the following people: (more…)
(Old-Timey) Pop Culture: Stephen King’s The Shining April 9, 2009
Posted by Onely in book review, film review, Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys, Reviews, We like. . ..Tags: isolation, nuclear family, single writer, stanley hotel, stephen king, the shining
7 comments
My sister and I recently ghost-toured The Stanley Hotel. The building inspired Stephen King‘s The Shining, his classic novel about a classic nuclear family–father, mother, and psychic son–who move to an isolated hotel in the mountains of Colorado to care for it during the snowed-in winter. After our tour, Caroline and I watched the The Shining miniseries, for the thrill of seeing good-looking actor types walk around the same places we commoners had just tread.
While watching, I got to thinking about whether the story is King’s commentary (conscious or not) on the Western world’s view of couplehood (and, by extension, the nuclear family) as the core unit of society, around which our lives should preferably be built. I’m interested to know what our Copious Readership thinks the plot “means”. Here’s what happens when our three fresh-faced heroes (Jack, Wendy, and little Danny) arrive at the hotel in October: (more…)
Onely.Org 