The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin

What’s the going price for a stay-in-the-kitchen wife with big boobs and no demands?

Joanna, a photographer, moves with her husband and two children to the perfect little suburb of Stepford, where she discovers to her dismay that almost all the married women in town have no interests but housekeeping and pleasing their husbands. When she does find a few women like herself, messy and alive, they start investigating why women arrive in Stepford with careers and interests and personalities and politics, then they lose all that, along with a few pounds that seem to migrate to their breasts, replaced with an extreme fascination with household cleaning products...

A taut, understated, horrifying little horror novel about what too many men really want in a woman. I am impressed that a man wrote this, and in the 70s no less, because it is so dead-on about gaslighting, condescension, men who want women to be nothing but an object of desire and a source of free labor, and the endless household labor that sucks up women's time and attention, preventing them from freeing themselves until it's too late.

I went into this knowing the premise, but it's well worth reading anyway. It's stripped-down, dead-on, and genuinely unsettling; a 1970s period piece that's not as dated as one might expect, and is most unsettling for the many ways in which it isn't dated at all.



The Stepford Wives

(no subject)

I have reached the stage of moving in which I regret owning anything.

I am also low-key panicking over the final stage of moving, in which people need to come into my apartment and move stuff around. I will have all the windows open and fans going and will insist that they wear masks and will stay outside myself as much as possible BUT STILL.

The other day my garage spring broke so I couldn't get into my garage. It took my landlord two days to dispatch his father-in-law, who OFC kept trying to get into my personal space and breathe on me. I had to literally wave my hands in his face to get him to move back.

The reason I'm moving is largely that it is nearly impossible to get people to wear masks and/or stand back and/or cover their noses when they do wear masks. This is true even when I have lengthy phone conversations in advance where I get them to promise that they will wear a real mask, not a bandanna, and cover their nose, and not take off the mask as soon as they arrive. Then they arrive and proceed to do exactly what they promised not to do. I have a feeling that this is also going to be an issue with the movers.