Last month, I wrote about how chivalry encourages men to take responsibility for maintaining feminine virtue. Of course, once men assume ownership over the actions of women, women are encouraged to police themselves in order to avoid embarrassing the men in their lives. Endless cycle, no?

Let's take a look at how this collaborative gender policing works when the roles are reversed. Who is to blame when a man doesn't act masculine enough when fulfilling his traditional role in a heterosexual relationship? According to traditional gender role expert Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the woman is always at fault (also, she's a mouthy, feminist prude).

Andrea writes in to Dr. Laura for some advice about her husband. Apparently, Andrea is a bit concerned about his tendency toward sissiness on one particular issue:

"My friends and I, who are stay-at-home moms, would love to have you address how we can help our husband be strong fathers. We're doing our best to be great wives (we've read your books)"—good—"who support and respect our husbands. Yet, we think feminist concepts still influence us because we tend to entirely take over the discipline of our kids. Our husbands seem to be more gentle and compassionate than we are! We can't use that old line 'wait 'til your father comes home!' We didn't marry wimps. These are men who bravely and patiently put up with our occasional crabbiness. They provide for their families, listen and care. Are we doing something wrong?"

As far as traditional gender roles are concerned, Andrea and her friends are fulfilling their responsibilities as women. They've rejected careers in order to stay home to care for their children and husbands. They've read Dr. Laura's books on how better to cater to their husbands' desires. They work to appear gentle and compassionate and allow their husbands to assume the domineering, disciplinary role in the household.

But their husbands aren't holding up their end of the bargain. They're acting like women when they need to be acting like men. That's the deal. These women are doing everything right. . . or are they? Schlessinger responds:

On a prior YouTube, I was asked about a three year old who says "shut up," and I was telling the person who asked me the question that probably they're saying "shut up" and that way the kid is learning to say "shut up". So here I am, being a total hypocrite: Shut up! When your husband starts disciplining the kids, even if you don't like it, don't agree with it, think it should be done a different way—leave it alone.

You are emasculating your husbands by judging and critiquing what they do and taking over, just because what they do is different. I am here to tell you, kids don't do well in a house without an alpha male. And if you emasculate your husband so that he's afraid to express himself because he's going to get garbage from you and no sex, he's going to seem like a wimp. He's not going to be an alpha male and that's going to hurt your kids. And frankly, a guy who's not an alpha male is not very horny, even for a feminist. So, what I want you to do is, "Honey, they did 'such and such'. Could you take care of it?" And afterwards go, [takes a deep, sensuous breath] "I love when you handle things that way".

Interesting. So while chivalry encourages men and women to police female behavior to shoehorn women into traditional roles, the policing of men in these backwards heterosexual relationships functions much differently. For good housewives like Andrea, a man's failure to embody the "alpha male" role still reflects her own personal failure as a woman. But the solution, unlike with chivalry, isn't to encourage her man to be more masculine. The solution is to pretend that he's more masculine than he is, and to put out more.

According to the Dr. Laura model, a woman is required to fulfill her role—no excuses. But if a man is uninterested in fulfilling the traditional male role—hey, maybe he's just not into yelling at and/or hitting children!—no problem. We don't want to inconvenience a man—but we also can't just let his effeminate behavior slide.

So we place the full responsibility for the husband's more feminine qualities on his wife. She needs to (a) pretend that her husband is "alpha," even when he doesn't really want to be; and (b) privately focus on fulfilling her own role better, regardless of what her husband does. In Dr. Laura's world, that means offering herself up for sex more, remembering to always let out "deep, sensuous breaths," and intensifying her feminine performance in order to make her husband appear more masculine in contrast.

And if her man doesn't want as much sex as she's aggressively offering him? That's the woman's fault, too. Perhaps she should try offering even more sex! Nevermind that aggressively pursuing sex is traditionally considered a pretty masculine thing to do—if this shit actually made any sense, it would make it a lot harder to indiscriminately blame women for everything.

The "Good Wife's Guide"—a list of behaviors and attitudes that a model housewife ought to parrot—though attributed to a 1955 issue of Housekeeping Monthly, is probably a fake (thanks to Can I Get A Man With That for bringing it to my attention). Snopes offers a lengthy (and interesting) rumination on the likelihood that the list is legit; the rumor-busting site eventually concludes that the list is probably not genuine, but that it is "nonetheless a relatively accurate reflection of the mainstream vision of a woman's appointed role in post-war America."

Origins aside, the list reminded me of a debate that's been raised on this blog about the modern performance of femininity: Does our culture value femininity that obviously requires work, or that which appears effortless?

The "Good Wife's Guide" is a series of tips on how to greet your husband when he returns from work. They include:

* "Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer, or vacuum."

* "Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking."

* "Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice."

* "Your goal: To make sure your home a place of peace, order and tranquility where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit."

In these (exaggerated, likely invented, but based on truth) olde-tyme directives, we find that a woman's work includes covering up all signs that this woman has worked at all. A woman's voice is just naturally this soothing, without coaching; the carpet is just naturally this clean, without vacuuming; her face is just this well-rested, without actually ever ceasing work. Here, femininity should appear effortless. However, performances that truly lack effort are frowned upon. In this list, even an activity as lazy as resting is re-framed as work that must be logged for a specific period of time in order to please your husband.

In a recent post, I argued that our culture values women who work hard at being "good" women:

I think part of the reason it’s so difficult to translate feminist awareness into our lives is the particular cultural belief that being a “good” person—and a good woman—does require a lot of work. Girls today don’t just earn social validation by being skinny—they establish their spot in the pecking order by unearthing how much work they spend trying to get there, obsessively discussing how fat they are, and publicly flogging themselves when they fail to live up to perfection—even if they are still very, very skinny.

But in the comments, Emily H. argued that the woman who are more highly valued are those who appear not to have to put such work into their appearances:

I agree with this but I think there’s an opposite tendency in the way women are viewed/validated—the idea of “effortless beauty,” that it’s more admirable for a woman to be skinny & perfect without doing any work to get that way (or without appearing to). Many men think it’s lame for women to diet, and that it’s vain and shallow to put effort into your appearance—but of course they don’t want a fat, ugly girl. I would venture to guess that “working” to be attractive is more valued in all-female social spaces (where it’s part of normal conversation to validate others by talking about things you need to “fix” about yourself), but effortless perfection is often more valued in other contexts.

TJ adds:

. . . with regard to how men think of this “effortless beauty,” it really is a situation of perception = reality. They believe, when they see a woman who has on minimal or no make up, looks fit and isn’t eating salads all day long as someone whose beauty is effortless. To me, that just means that they didn’t see the five hours spent at the hair salon, or the half hour it took to put on make up that makes her look so “effortlessly beautiful.” Or, in my case, the stress that took my 25 pounds away.

It seems to me that a good deal of a "woman's work" actually lies in satisfying these contradictions over what a "woman's work" should look like. She must make men see an effortlessly beautiful woman, without revealing any of the work that went into the effortlessness. But she must also tip her hand to other women, to let them know that she's not upsetting the order of things. In this sphere, no amount of work is good enough; women must all work very hard to reach the ideal, but also perpetually situate themselves as failures ("I'm so ugly!") in order to validate other women.

The "good" woman who works hard and then covers her tracks satisfies men, and she satisfies other women. But she really satisfies the cultures and industries that value women as objects—we buy the products, undergo the treatments, and then convince men (and ourselves) that the end result is what women look like without any work. And if that's what women are supposed to look like naturally, well, damn, we really need that product. Effortless beauty takes a lot of work, not the least of which is the mental space devoted to making ourselves respectable to all sets of eyes.

... and she's boring, vapid, and obsessed with eating ice cream out of the carton. If that sounds like your wife, Esquire has this gift guide of Christmas presents that will be just perfect for her!

A breakdown:

Ice Cream and Ice Cream Accessories (2). including the "Prepara Ice Cream Pint Sleeve," a neoprene sleeve whick "slips over her favorite pint of ice cream so she can finish it off without frostbitten fingertips or, even worse, melted fudge chips in her Chunky Monkey."

Handbags (2).

Lingerie (1). Esquire's pick, the "Victoria's Secret Jacquard Merrywidow," is chosen for its "practicality."

Beauty Products (3) Including the "Anastasia All About Brows Eyebrow Set" and "Clarisonic Skincare Brush." Because nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a $195 machine that removes dead skin.

Sex and the City DVD Collection (1). The Esquire gift guide for your "lover" (note: eww), at least, swaps Candace Bushnell for Marguerite Duras.

Books (1). This pick, Beryl Markham's West with the Night, is a Hemingway-approved autobiography that details the female pilot's life. Great! But Esquire pairs it with this condescending gift note: "A must-read for the 21st-century woman who thinks Carrie Bradshaw is what being a strong female is all about." Because this gift guide proves that women are simply caricatures of themselves who need the prodding of their husband to inject any sort of substance into their views about women. Read it while watching Sex and the City and grooming your eyebrows!

Photo from prepara.com.