I am NOT an Urban Homesteader

There is always somebody out there bitching about urban homesteaders. Usually it’s a woman bitching about other women that choose to grow vegetables and preserve their harvest. Sometimes it’s some dude bitching about urban homesteaders being elitist and out of touch because they don’t want to eat the corn-and-soy-laden-pseudo-food.

Why don’t those stupid locavores just shut up and eat the damn Big Mac already? We all know they want to but their guilt has overtaken them like a monster in a horrible B-movie.

This week is no different than any other week. Some self-congratulatory woman has decided that homesteading is a worthless activity that doesn’t break out of the status quo and shouldn’t be bothered with. After all,

… the damage to a generation of women who are tending (and butchering) rabbits and chickens, and raising vegetable gardens (often along with children) has already been done. These activities are obviously more creative ways to spend time than watching soap operas, but urban homesteading and “the home arts” should not be confused with real art-making, which involves challenging the status quo, not feeding it.

Please.

She goes on to discuss how all too often women judge each other but isn’t that what she’s doing herself? She’s judging women by focusing on food and wrongly assumes that it is all they do in their lives. She sums her article up pretty nicely in the last paragraph.

My point is this: if women are spending all of their time planting gardens, tending chickens, and canning (i.e. living our lives in the most laborious ways possible), how are we ever to catch up as writers, visual artists, composers, and directors?

Some of us like the process. We love the pride we feel in growing our own food, preparing and preserving it and serving it to our loved ones. But that isn’t all that we do. When people ask me to describe myself I’m funny, smart, and loyal to a fault. I’m a stepmother and a wife. I work full time as a design consultant and project manager.  I like to party with my friends and I can make a mean mojito. And I have an urban farm and like to cook what I grow and raise. But that isn’t all of who I am or all of what I do. I don’t know anyone that is just an urban homesteader. I have friends that are activists and professionally trained chefs. Friends that are in marketing, and friends that are researchers. I even have friends that are writers and business owners. We all have something in common but we also have many things that aren’t in common, and that’s what makes us fabulous people. We’re multidimensional and I’m proud to say that I’m not an urban homesteader. I’m so much more.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email