A couple of months ago, the internetlands were all abuzz about what Kirsten — I’m in Baby Mode — Dunst said during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar U.K. for their May Issue. Dunst stirred up some controversy by advocating traditional gender roles of the nurturing, housebound mother and a throwback to male ‘knights in shining armour’.
I was going to write a quick post about it because clickbait but I didn’t have my act together. My day job was busy and we had a few things going on around the house. But also we hadn’t shared our own news about being pregnant with twins yet. I knew that I couldn’t write my opinion about what a person who didn’t have kids said about raising kids while I was in this in-between state.
What Dunst said:
“I feel like the feminine has been a little undervalued,” she says. “We all have to get our own jobs and make our own money, but staying at home, nurturing, being the mother, cooking – it’s a valuable thing my mum created. And sometimes, you need your knight in shining armour. I’m sorry. You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That’s why relationships work…”source:
After a month or so of thinking it over, my opinion is pretty much the same: You don’t know what you will or won’t do until you are in those shoes. [Rumors keep circulating that Dunst is pregnant.] Kirsten Dunst is entitled to her opinion and that’s all this really is: an opinion of a young lady who has worked hard to make a successful career in acting but doesn’t quite have the world life experience to know what is involved in raising a child yet.
I highly doubt Ms Dunst is ever going to have to choose between working or staying at home to raise babies in the same way that millions of other women and even men have to make that decision. Yeah she might have to turn down a roll in a movie if she wants to be a SAHM, but she can certainly afford to. Or she can bring the kiddo and the nanny along and breastfeed between movie scene takes. The point is for Dunst it will really be more of a choice of what she wants versus choosing between the lesser of two tough options.
“You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That’s why relationships work…”
Now this is a little more tricky. I really dislike when people try to define to me what being a man (or a woman) means and if you don’t meet their criteria you obviously have failed.
Relationships work when you play to each others strengths and mask each others weaknesses. There are no Man Jobs or Woman Jobs, there are just things that need to get done and the best qualified person needs to knock them out. I’m awesome at doing laundry, my wife not so much. That doesn’t mean if she couldn’t do the laundry if necessary. [She would need our cat to show her where the laundry room is as it’s next to his kitty litter.]
Most of the time I don’t cook dinner. Not because it’s a woman’s job but because my wife is much better at meal planning for the week. She can look at the contents of our fridge and cupboards and deduce what needs to be cooked today, what can wait a day and what needs to be thrown out because it is past it’s expiration date.
Update: I usually cite Cracked.com as a resource on this blog. I’m excited to see a post where they essentially said the same thing I did (only much better, perhaps).
There are people who have proven they are not data-driven thinkers who willingly adapt their beliefs upon receiving new factual information. I don’t think Dunst is one of those people. I think she is working from the framework of her experiences to date. And I think once she gets into a long term committed relationship that involves offspring, she will re-think her stance on gender roles and who is responsible for what.
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