Can Mummies Light Fireworks?

With Bonfire Weekend approaching, this is the hot topic amongst the kids. My partner-in-wine, Caroline, has been assured that they can’t by her daughter, Maddie.

“We’ll have to wait until Daddy gets back!” she wailed, on being told Caroline was going to have a go at a £15 assortment of Roman candles and rockets. I laughed at how lackadaisical and weak Caroline had been at quashing all notions of the patriarchy in her daughter – until I asked my kids, and found out they believed exactly the same thing, too.

“You can’t mummy – it might kill you!” Eavie cried; obviously convinced that I might be unbalanced by my breasts, fall over in a pair of glittery stilettos, land on a banger and burn to death. Further inquiries found that the “mummies can’t light fireworks” belief permeated nearly every child – and, indeed, every man.

“I can pop over for half-an-hour, if you like,” one of Caroline’s male friends offered, on hearing she was planning on going it alone vis-à-vis the blue touchpaper. God knows how single mothers cope. Presumably they are confined to organised council dos, by law.

Personally, I don’t want to light a firework, anyway. I never have, and I suspect I never will. Even sparklers make me nervous – I suspect being born in the era of those Public Safety adverts, with the kid in the parka having his face burned off, implanted a fairly immoveable fear. Even though I’m 33, and have done things like have four stitches in my foot, and met the Pet Shop Boys, jamming a rocket into an empty milk-bottle and aiming it at next-door’s roof is still one of the few things I still want my dad to come over and do for me, instead. (The other two are 1) cheerfully bang a dint out of a car’s bodywork with a huge hammer, and 2) shout "Dey do do, do dey?" whenever Ringo Starr appears on the TV.)

Comments

[LM]

Old-School. I like that, Jarrad. I think I'll start using that next time I'm berated for not bothering to learn how to download podcasts & asking my husband to do it for me.

[LM]

Well, yes, being user-centric is /should be essential in design, but of course it's not. This book really takes some examples of badly designed things and well-designed things.

As for pink ipod covers vs. where are the buttons? Well, the buttons piece /how it works should be where more of the design is than the look, but that's not always the way. In my experience (software not hardware) some companies focus a lot on design and usability and others really don't. Another piece of design is also not rocking the boat too often - people get used to something, and you don't want to be constantly coming up with something new & funky just for the sake of it because customers have to learn/unlearn habits. (Think about how many online shopping sites look like the Amazon tab structure, or how the Times & the Guardian online editions are so similar in structure - now I've outed myself.)

But generally - in software product design - you see more men than women, although the gender balance is probably more equitable than in some product design fields (cars, for instance, are obviously designed by/for tall men).

[Lucy (without kids. Yet)]

Jarrad, you are so right. As ever.

[Whimsey]

Jarrad - agree totally about the C setting (is it a Zanussi,by the way? C for 'mixed colours mixed materials bog standard medium temp' sort of setting??). Seem to remember I used F as well, on my old Zanussi.

My pet moan is that you can't get a machine with five simple functions - wash, rinse, spin, temperature, load-size, with settings that can be combined anyway the user wants.

So, you can choose 'hot wash, short rinse, fast spin, medium temperature, half load' or medium wash, medium rinse, medium spin, low temp, full load' etc etc.,

A nice mix and match. Sort of like coordinates really... :) (I'll wear that blouse with this skirt and those shoes and that handbag...)

[Whimsey]

LM - but isn't the central problem the question 'which user are you designing for?' It's all very well making ipods in pink, etc, but you'd have to fundamentally rethink the instructions, because they just don't seem logical to me. Personally, Ihate 'soft switches' on anything. I want a real switch I can push on or off. Lots of real switches. BUt, yes, I know, real switches cost far more, because theya re hardware, than soft switches, which are software.

I wonder how many women there are on the design teams of things like ipods and DVD players and PCs?

[Jarrad]

I prefer to think of it as Old-School rather than Luddite, LM.

I use the phone for calls and, admittedly, the occasional text message. I have a camera that I use for photos.

I'd rather have a feature-free phone that was stylish than one with a million features.

As for that book, surely being user-centric is a key element of design? Form and functionality and all that.

[LM]

Jarrad, you're such a Luddite, aren't you?

Actually, I have to confess that I never thought I'd want a "bells & whistles" phone, but I do rather like my new phone. I've even worked out how to take photos, which was great when I ended up doing trick or treat on Halloween with no camera, and the podcasts/MP3 player were good on a recent flight.

Whimsey - I think you might be interested in a book called "The Design of Everyday Things" - it's all about user-centered design (and how it doesn't happen as often as it should). Almost made me wish I'd become a designer, but I'm not detail-oriented enough to do it seriously, though dabbling around the edges of web design is OK.

[Jarrad]

I thought it was a given that no matter how many programmes and temperatures on a washing machine one just turns the dial to the same setting each time (C on mine) and let it go.

As for a DVD player, you only need to be able to turn it on, open the tray and press select - VCRs were harder than that.

Just because manufacturers think that they have to dazzle us with bells and whistles and add hundreds of features doesn't mean we have to use them.

I have a phone which has a digital camera, video camera, mp3 player, radio, Internet access, games, some sort of "video mixing" thing, blutooth etc.

You know the only thing I use it for? Rather quaint, but I use it to contact people for conversation. The rest of it is just tinsel.

[Whimsey]

Maybe women are just too busy getting on with stuff to have the time to get machines to do anything other than the basics. It's like a car is simply a machine for getting them from A to B (and a few scratches on the way is irrelevant...!)

[Lucy (without kids. Yet)]

Men like their machines to do all their multi-tasking and nine-colours-of-wonderful for them. I promise, if you watch a man and a woman in the photocopy room at work (or the Pits of Hell, as it is generally known), the man will be fiddling away happily to make the machine copy, collate and staple and clearing the jam every thirty seconds. The woman will copy, hand-collate and staple, and be done in about the same time.

And the man will inevitably be telling the woman how to do it his way.

(Now I've done with my sweeping sexist generalisations for the day folks)

[Whimsey]

I think what LM's point brings out is significant - I don't know about any other woman here, but for myself, what exasperates me so much about technology, whether it's the controls on a washing machine, or a DVD or PC etc, but they are designed by idiots! They are simply NOT designed in a 'sensible' way. Now, whehter that's a gender divide, I don't know - ie, what would be a 'sensible' way to a woman wouldn't be to a man, I'm not sure. BUt I think it could be. One salient feature of male 'toys' seems to be a huge desire to make them as complex as possible. Whereas women tend to simplify instrucitons, mainly because life is too short to have to learn what damn wash programme to choose (etc).

Men seem to take an insane delight in making things complicated, especially computers. My s-in-law could never discover hw to make emails and Internet work, because both her husband and her son would insist on showing her every last 'posssibility' and 'feature' that the software could do. She did NOT want to know all this rubbish - she just wnated to know which buttons to press in which order, and find a site or send a mail.

Men LIKE to have things more complicated - I can only suppose it makes them feel clever??? And mops up their excess time????

[LM]

KM is right! Frankly, mothers could learn how the DVD player works if we could be bothered, but all those technology bells and whistles are really aimed at men anyway, so why not let them have their fun and feel superior for knowing something we don't? After all, we know they're not, as evinced by their inability to cut nails or wash hair without getting soap in the eyes.

[margot maynard]

"Some people exist in very sexist set ups and some people don't. It's a better example for children if mummies are competent in most areas."

Supermother, as usual you are missing the point. What many of us seem to be saying is that we *don't* live in households where tasks divide along normal sexist lines, and yet our children have internalised sexist cultural norms to such an extent that these opinions override even those things which they personally find to be untrue (e.g. my example of the driver's seat in the car).

[Debbie]

I don;t think it is sexist. At the end of the day, men and women are different and have different strengths and weaknesses. Lighting fireworks definitely rocks the socks of most men and leave most women stone cold - there are of course exceptions to every rule, of which supermother is one!

[supermother]

Some people exist in very sexist set ups and some people don't. It's a better example for children if mummies are competent in most areas.

[Lee]

What? You never lit fireworks as a kid? How does a kid, male or female, escape that rite of passage? We played with the darned things, for Cripe's sake. Britain must be waay different culturally than the states...

[KM]

Mums cut fingernails. Dads do fireworks.
Mums are the ones who understand the house recycling system.
Dads are the ones who understand the DVD player.
Mums know how to wash hair without putting shampoo in the eyes.
Dads know how to look pathetic when reminding you that if you make them bath the children they will certianly get soap in the poor little darlings's eyes....

[Sho]

Ah, Jen, that would be because you were in a city. Are you sure it was a firework?

It is possible that at the not-too-distant JHQ there was some kind of fireworks display - but outside of British Military installations, and one wedding with a very special permit, I've never seen fireworks in my 30 years over here outside of 31st December.

Now I'm trying to remember if I've seen any at rock festivals over here but the mind's a blank. Strange, that.
;-)

[Jarrad]

Whimsey, substitute "cars" for "handbags" or "Jimmy Choo's" and think about it again.

Some men use their cars as status symbols and as a way to show how much money they earn, some as penis extensions, obviously they have some kind of problem with their own, er, allocation. Can I say "penis" on here? Oh well, I have now. Apologies.

I can't drive. Ahem.

[Jen]

Sho, that's odd, I was nearly killed by a stray firework on November 5th in Berlin last year...

[Lucy (without kids. Yet)]

Oh, and Whimsey, I care about my car, you know. I name it and refer to it as 'she' and generally empty my head of all but the fluffiest of pink and sparkly thoughts as I reverse slowly into the very centre of the bollard behind me. Isn't that what all girls do?

[Lucy (without kids. Yet)]

I have to say, I am repeatedly bemused by the way my mum - who has a very unreconstructed 70s feminist approach to cosmetics, girly clothes, etc., and refused to buy me anything 'fashiony' ever - goes utterly useless when confronted with anything to do with cars. She won't even ring up the garage to book an MOT or change a tyre herself - I don't think she's ever so much as refilled the wiper fluid.

I have absolutely no idea why this is beyond the capabilities of someone with perfectly decent DIY skills and a doctorate. It's been irritating me ever since I had my own car - at least now I know I'm not alone.

(PS - Is it shameful to add I did do a spot of pondering, as I watched someone else's fireworks, whether I would be able to light them myself or whether I would rely on my pyromanic partner? I hadn't even seen this article, promise: more proof that Caitlin truly reads our minds.)

[Whimsey]

MM, thank you! I just find it so weird that men get SO worked up about cars. I suppose it's all this phallic symbology or something or other, like a scratch on the car is an attack on their manhood? But they care, they really really care - and it's not just that a scratch depreciates the car's value, or anything practical like that. It's far, far more emotional.

Is there anything that women get so worked up and possessive about, I wonder, that we can't bear to have it damaged?

[MM]

Whimsey, I had tears rolling down my cheeks in laughter reading your first post - it was so, so funny and familiar.

[Sho]

Could that be, Cordelia, that you live in more of a city while I'm in a village?

Here, everyone runs outside at midnight for half an hour of sekt-drinking and firework watching (and lighting) and the once a year chance for me to get more than a grunt in reply from my neighbours.

There are isolated rockets and things prior to midnight - but generally people are still busy putting the chickens to bed and so on.