Thanks to my husband and some of my friends, I can now be seen quite a lot on Facebook. It has been a great way to find old friends and relatives, keep in touch with my new friends, and I think that I am positively addicted tot he casual game Bejeweled Blitz.
One aspect if Facebook that seems to be popular are the quizzes, especially the “What kind of something are you?” quizzes. People are finding out everything from what kind of friend they are to what kind of horror movie character they are most like. I think I even have seen, “What kind of flower” and “What kind of dragon” are you. Since I have aspired to be neither (although my favorite Yankee Candle is “Roses of Cliffwalk” and I try to avoid dragon breath), I’m not quite sure of the wide appeal. I suppose they are a pretty fun way of getting to know someone.
So, I got it in my head this morning to do an Internet search to see if there were any sort of “What type of Wife Are You” quizzes. Instead of finding something fun, I admit that I was a bit disturbed.
There seem to be a lot of articles out there that describe the different types of wife. And while I haven’t seen any of these geared at American, Canadian, European or Australian audiences, there are quite a few “experts” seemingly offering advice to Asian (Indian included) and African men about choosing a certain type of wife. Of course these articles are all in English, else I wouldn’t be able to read them, so on that note to whom are they really directed? And perhaps the American, Canadian, European or Australian articles are just further down in the search list.
What is disturbing to me is the easy classification of woman into these types and how to examine them, much as if a man were choosing a good horse to ride. The humanity is taken out of the potential wife and she is almost treated as a piece of property. There is no sense of creating a mutual or spiritual union in marriage. The ideal type that many of these articles advise finding: the servant wife, because “all men have a need to be able to dominate their wives.” Ugh.
Now by no means do I think that Asian or African men treat their wives as livestock. I have never witnessed anything like that at all, nor do I think that any person should be categorized by ethnic background or race. Also, my own American history is pretty peppered with women being treated as property. But, the fact that there were so many of these articles to be found, even now, that seem to be directed at men is pretty disturbing. It shakes me up a bit from my quiet complacent role as wife at home.
What do you think? Am I overreacting?
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, creating a home in the Home Blog, caring for little ones in the Baby Blog and now relationships in the Marriage Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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