Eve Penman: An Empowered Housewife in Rural America

Q: What should I be when I grow up, Mommy? A: In control of your home, dear. A woman who has a husband/family at home and is out of her home for multiple hours at a time making money does not have control of her home  – she has denial. If a woman doesn’t know how to clean her home, or know where things are at in her home, or can’t find what she is looking for when she needs it, those are all signs that she has no control and she is lost in her own home; which means that she is only empowered outside the home and that is not real empowerment – that is false advertising! Even if a woman is out of her home all day and can afford to pay others to manage her house, she still doesn’t have control – the people doing the work have control more than she does, only she’s in denial and doesn’t know it! I used to be one of those women; I was raised to think that working outside the home was where women are supposed to be, because that’s what I saw around me in real life and in pop...

Q: How do you act like a housewife when you don't know how to be a housewife? A: You do what all great actresses do -- study the role! While actresses are paid to act like ideal housewives, the reality is they aren't housewives. However, the irony to me is that I have seen better examples of how to act like a good housewife in movies and television shows than I have in real life; because women I've known are working women who pull double duty as part-time housewives rather than being 100% dedicated to making their homes and families better as a homemaker. And if a working woman isn't a dedicated housewife, how can she teach anyone else how to be a full-time housewife? She can't, unless it's her job to act like a housewife on screen! Movies and television shows are forms of programming, and as a midlife housewife I enjoy watching quality programming that promotes being a happy, obliging housewife.  Modern movies and scripted television programs, that fea...

Captioning Service 1 is the DISH default; switching it to 0 (zero) works with TCM captions. I don't want my MTV any more, but I do want my captions, especially on TCM where old movies are full of fuzzy sounds, funny accents, and mumbling voices -- and thanks be to the stenographers who make it possible! However, the past few months TCM's captions have not been as consistent and it made me question if they stopped captions altogether since all the other channels still had captions. The good news is TCM didn't do away with captions, but the Captioning Service setting did change without any word given to DISH customers or TCM viewers, at least not to this one. Scroll to the end to read the solution for DISH customers, or keep reading for my rhetorical digression: Gee, if only there was a way to inform paying customers of changes like this? For all the useless information TCM hosts spew, they could at least give some useful information since their captions are th...