The use of irons helped to create a society and culture centered on appearance and hardworking women. The use of irons allowed for clothes to become wrinkle free and have nice, fancy folds –called pleats- in them. Iron sin one form or another have been around for thousands of years but were never really easy to use until the modern electric iron was created. Before the electric iron, it took hours to iron everything. Things had to be heat up with fires or steam, extra cloth had to be used to keep the items being ironed clean, the iron had to be heated and reheated.
Originally the pleasure of freshly ironed clothes was reserved for the wealthy –those who could pay for it- because the irons were heavy and hard to use. That meant that the wealthy people could afford to pay some poor person to iron their clothes for them. That is just one more chore that rich children never learned to do. In the animated short film My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts, it is said that the king and his wife, both wealthy people from birth, never learned how to iron. They were hopeless without the narrator’s grandma.
Then, through innovations and improvements to the technology, the clothing iron became more accessible to individual households. The iron was now easier to use; it was lighter and could even hold the heat source so it no longer had to be reheated and an extra cloth was no longer necessary. Ironing was more common and everyone could do it, but ironing alone used so much of the day -as if laundry wasn’t bad enough before. So then whose job should the ironing be? Obviously, whoever already did the laundry should also have to spend more time getting rid of the wrinkles from the clothes, sheets, and towels. That meant that the wealthy people still didn’t iron their own clothes and the poorer people still had to iron everyone’s clothes, not just their own. The passing off of mundane tasks started with domestic slaves who worked in their master’s house doing the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc., but, when slaves were no longer legal, the job fell to underpaid maids.
The lives of these maids can be clearly seen in the movie The Help. At the time in which the movie takes place slaves were no longer allowed but there was still segregation and “separate but equal” laws in place. The movie also takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s –a time when the top people of the south were still very anti-black and white supremacist. The Help shows the perspectives of the maids as well as the wealthy employers.
The slaves were all black or of another minority and were also all very poor. Working as a maid was their only way to feed their families. In the movie one of the maids even says she knew she was going to be a maid because her mother was a maid and her grandmother was a domestic slave; cleaning is in this family’s blood and it’s all they know. Many, if not all, had to drop out of high school to help make money for their families. That is another reason that these women could only have a job as a maid. They were uneducated and poor.
At work the maids were treated very poorly and were constantly doing housework. They cooked, cleaned, did laundry, polished silvery, set up for events, and cleaned up after events. These women never stopped working. They even raised their employer’s children for them.
The employers in The Help are all wealthy, upper class white couples. These couples look as nice as they can because they are in a culture and society that values wealth and appearance and the better your appearance the wealthier you look. These are the reasons that the men in these upper class couples are never around during the day. They go to work and attend the parties but they are not the typical “family man”. This is very clearly seen in the movie because they are rarely seen in the movie. The women in these couples are always around, talking to each other and planning parties or events. They do not take the time to raise their own children or do any housework and to these women and couples it is normal and okay to have no time for that stuff. The menial labor involved in the everyday housework is not seen as befitting of the wealthy women –and especially men- and they often never learn how to do any of the work themselves, not even cooking.
The Help shows a lot of cultural and societal context during the late 1950s and early 1960s. This movie shows the views of different social and economic classes as well as different racial groups regarding cleaning, laundry, and other housework and household tasks.
As the fight for equality continued and rights were won equality became a part of everything in life. Everything, including housework, became a part of everyone’s’ lives. This change led to everyone doing housework and everyone doing laundry. Of course the change was not complete so the majority of people that do the family’s laundry are the women but there are many households that even the men help with the task. A lot of people now don’t actually know how to iron things. I know I personally was never taught but none of the guys I know would ever go near an iron either. Many of us do not learn more than the basics needed to do laundry and with today’s technology that means hitting a few buttons and waiting.
There has clearly been a large shift in whose job it is to do these chores. This is due both to advancements in the actual technology as well as advancements in equality. The chore of ironing clothes has aided in the creation and perpetuation of gender roles and stereotypes for a long time but is now aiding in the abolishment of these gender roles.
All about Clothing Irons 