Live every week like it's charc week
Val and I have been watching With Love, Meghan in bite-sized, kid-free increments. It’s a delight, like sparkling water with a slice of lemon that you picked from your own backyard. Here were my first reactions:
There is so much calligraphy. Like, so much.
Despite being peak millennial content, much like myself, it reminded me of one of my favorite kids’ books, Hurry, Hurry, Mary Dear. Mary is industrious as hell, working against the clock to have everything done before winter.
Meg uses what appears to be a linen potholder around a lot of berries and tomatoes and homemade preserves, which makes me a little nervous. I also very much want that potholder.
There is so much charcuterie. Like, so much.
Of course it made me think of my longtime favorite, Ms. Martha Stewart,1 who I have loved since Martha Stewart Living debuted when I was nine. Like Martha, Meghan seems to think that she’s doing polished-but-average stuff that anyone watching could also duplicate.
What! Meghan, no. No, no, no.
Martha has this corner of the market well established and growing its own trees to make the paper to print its own money. Martha always wanted to be exceptional, and she is, and she believes you can be, too. (If I ever go back to school for a Ph.D. it’ll be to study Martha.) Martha grew up in a working-class family and had to find out the secrets of rich people after she married one. Then she spent the rest of her life teaching non-rich people those secrets.
Meghan isn’t so much a teacher as everyone’s mom. Her camera crew, her guests—it’s not a bad thing, just a persona/attitude I don’t usually see on cooking shows. Even Ina Garten, my secret, unknowing Fairy Godmother, makes it all about the gab when her guests arrive. The food is ready, and she’s all. Done. In the kitchen. Ready to sit down and chit the chat. But Meghan is like, And then this, and then this, and you’re gonna want a that.
I know that she’s on a TV set, in full wardrobe and makeup, but it isn’t hard for me to believe that this is what she’s like in her own house, zipping from fridge to table to stove to sink, doing seven things and once and still holding a conversation.
She’s like the mouse from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, except instead of the mouse asking for all the things, Meghan anticipates and provides, like, “Okay, little mouse, you can have a cookie, but if I give you this cookie, you’re going to want a glass of milk. And then a whatever…and then a something else…”
It’s an incredible ability. Thoughtfulness to the nth degree. Is it annoying? Is it aspirational? Do you want to be the hostess, or the mouse? It depends on what kind of mouse you are. Do you like to have your needs anticipated? Or do you like to have a little freedom of expression?2
And then I was like—lightbulb—you know who loves to be hosted? Catered to? Have their every need anticipated and attended to before they even realize it themselves?
Royals. It’s no wonder she and her husband hit it off. They are fluent in each other’s love languages.
And ALSO—
You know who may feel inadequate or at least deeply uncomfortable when a fellow royal (albeit an American commoner3) starts doing all the menial work that staff are usually required to do invisibly and without telling you, “You can do this! It’s so easy!”?
Royals. The other ones. You know who I mean.
With Love, Meghan also taps into something else I’ve been wrestling with for the last, oh, five-ish years. The work of making a home, whatever that looks like, is work. It’s typically work done by women, and as a result, has been and continues to be undervalued. I happily, and gratefully, pay someone to clean my house once a month and yet I feel like any of my time spent doing dishes with a podcast that I enjoy, or vacuuming up several metric kilos of dog hair, is lost time. Even if I enjoyed it, if I felt good that the floors were clean or the podcast made me laugh so hard I snorted, that was not enough. I was frittering away time and energy I could put towards something worthwhile.
Is it because I’m not being paid for it? Is it because the work itself is drudgery, or below my intellectual capacities? Or is it just because I’m a woman, doing work that has historically been done by women, and I’ve ingested the idea that it’s beneath me?
Ugh, this actually makes me nauseous, but it’s probably all of these things.
Here is what I remind myself every day: what you are doing is not mindless. It is not dumb or frivolous or only for trad wives (barf) or people who would rather live without basic human rights. It is difficult and tiring and truly endless. However! It doesn’t have to be a punishment. I have not put my brain in a jar; I am still me. And the endlessness, sometimes, can be made more lovely, or more enjoyable, and should be, especially if that makes the person doing it happier, ffs. Being a parent is monotonous as hell. So put your yogurt in a cute lil vintage glass if it lifts your spirits to do so.
I think people chafe at the idea that Meghan is making it look too easy, or setting an unrealistic standard,4 but that’s not what I hear her saying. She’s saying, you can still be you, in whatever way that is, while also feeding a bunch of ingrates a delicious, nutritious meal.
It’s okay for me to find joy in baking cookies with my kid. It’s also okay for me to be so frickin’ annoyed at the amount of flour all over the floor, and the amount of dough he ate when he thought I wasn’t looking. Life is long and if it makes me happy to put my dish soap in a glass pump bottle, like Martha showed me when I was ten or eleven, then so help me, I will! I will not be embarrassed by how much I appreciate a seasonal kitchen towel! I will take more photos of my flowers this summer than my own child, probably, and that is okay, too!
All of that’s to say, it is a part of who I am in my cottagecore soul, and I suspect it is part of who Meghan is, too.
Deal with it, other royals.
What doesn’t make me think of Martha? Honestly.
This is purely rhetorical. There is no right answer. We at This is Being Alive are mostly concerned with the philosophy of everyday living, eudiamonia, all the different ways to be alive, etc. etc. But I can also admit that I did not expect to encounter so many existential questions while watching a lifestyle show filmed in a fake house in California.
Redundant.
Something that Martha has been accused of all her life, to which I say, Is she holding a gun to your head and telling you that you need to sift your compost before you spread it on your garden bed? Is she coming over to your house and snickering at the sticks and leaves and scraps of coffee filter mixed into the dirt? No? Then if you don’t want to do it, just…don’t fucking do it.