voices
The Culture of Home Ec
OREGON'S LGBTO NEWSMAGAZINE
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Portland is a city o f domesticity. Recently, I
met one of my favorite new people— an elegant
dyke by the name of Julie— at a well-catered
barbeque hosted by some Southeast creative
types. “This city is all about Home Econom
ics,” she observed with the fresh eyes of a re
cent transplant. “It’s all about food, interior
design, crafts. Say ‘Portland’ and immediately
you think of farmers markets and home
brewed beer, potlucks, cute little condos, put
ting a fucking bird on it.” I was so stunned by
her insight that I knocked over my drink with
out noticing. “At the very least,” she continued,
smiling and reaching for a napkin, “Portland
would get an ‘A’ in it.”
Unlike my fair city, I’d get a C+ in domesticity.
Example: Years ago, I succumbed to the tempta
tions of Adam4Adam and invited a guy over to
my house with the intention of, well, getting to
know each other. He walked into my apartment
and looked anxiously around at the bare walls, as
if some sort of camera crew were going to jump
out from behind the piles of books next to my
couch, To Catch A Predator-style.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, assuming he
was understandably nervous about being in a
stranger’s house to “hang out.”
“Um, no,” he stated, a sneer forming on his
face. “The lighting in here is just terrible. I can’t
deal with overhead bulbs of this wattage. Do
you have a lamp or something you can bring
IV
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SEPTEMBER 16. 2011
39
provide more flattering light upon the furniture
I had acquired from the sides of various roads.
However, no matter how cute my kitchen, the
BY NICK MATTOS
cupboards are still bare far more often than I’d
Here in Portland, 2011, the cultural milieu is like them to be these days. Checking the mail
different, yet for many the anxiety remains at is still an exercise in anxiety, the key in my hand
1950s levels. In lieu of the bomb, we are con shaking in the lock as I wonder whether the
cerned by terrorism, war, environmental col mailbox holds payment for a freelance job or a *
lapse, economic recession and a frightening notice from my student loan creditor. I can
political climate. We are forced to stay at home, make a meal, artfully arrange it on my G ood
not because o f social gender roles, but because will plates, take a picture on my phone and post
we’re unemployed or underemployed and sim it directly to Facebook so my friends can click
ply have no place to go. We arrange and rear “like”—but they’re online “liking” things on
range our spaces, assemble ingredients from the Facebook because they’re underemployed.
farmers market into artisanal meals, carefully
I have to agree with Julie: We are a city all
pair vintage T-shirts with worn-in skinny jeans about Home Ec, and there’s nothing intrinsi
because we need to feel like at the very mini cally wrong with this. However, just as the ‘50s
mum we give off the appearance that every exploded into the ‘60s, the fear that the culture
thing is under control and we’re doing fine. We o f house and garden seeks to assuage doesn’t
garden and can and homebrew and knit be disappear— it simmers until it boils over to
cause they’re all hip things to do, yes— but be scorch everything. We can’t know at this point
neath this hipness is genuine fear that, when what Portland will be like after that scorching.
shit gets real, when we get sick and don’t have At the very minimum, though, the tension will
health insurance, when the unemployment be out in the open, not hidden beneath a veneer
benefits get cut off, we will need to eat these o f hip domesticity— so we can share it honestly,
pickles and drink this beer and wear these and sigh together, until the sighing gives forth
scarves because they could be the only things to smiling. M
we have left.
I’m certainly a participant in Home Ec cul N i c k M a t t o s may ju st he excusing his tendency
ture. Years ago, after the Adam4Adam guy left, to keep a messy apartment. Send helpful house
I sheepishly arranged lamps in my house to hold hints to nickmattos@justout.com.
remember to breathe
No matter how cute my kitchen, the
cupboards are still bare far more often
than I’d like them to be these days.
into this room? Also,” he said, his hands com
ing to rest on his hips, “you have a good start in
here— I like the pieces you’ve assembled— but
your interior design definitely needs some
work.” (Needless to say, no “hanging out” o f any
kind was done that evening.)
It was only much later I realized that it was
acute anxiety that moved that overly critical
trick to analyze my décor, and fuels much of
the culture of Home Ec. I think o f the Atomic
Age of the 1950s, when the pressure toward a
life of domesticity was a natural outcome of
many different tensions coming together at
once— the rise of the automobile, a post-war
economy, the changing role o f women in soci
ety and nascent Cold War concerns, to touch
only a few. Of course, like a soup pot, angst can
only be tightly covered for so long before it
boils over— in this case, the unease exploding
into the upheaval of the 1960s, setting cultural
bonfires that scorched everything Americans
knew about society.
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