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Abdulrahman 4

Abdulrahman Albatili

English 111: College Writing I

Dr. Mardy Philippian

02/12/2017

Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier

I was arguing with my girlfriend about man and woman role in the household since we want to live together. Therefore, When I was browsing the internet one article caught my eye. In Jessica Grose article “Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier,” published in 2013 in the New Republic, author Jessica Grose explores men`s contribution to the family. In the article, she clearly states although some men show little flexibility through their involvement in cooking and taking care of the children, cleaning has been left for women to fulfill. To make sure readers understand and agree with her, Grace utilizes different persuasion strategies such as pathos logos and ethos to create a universal agreement with the target audience of her work.

The article features revelations that although men have embraced some household chores, the tasks of cleaning are left solely to the women in the family. Grose presents this fact using her marriage as an example. She explains how her husband conducts minor roles as feeding the baby, changing light bulbs, assembling furniture but significantly avoids cleaning duties. Grose states that he lacks basic knowledge of how the washer and the dryer in their house function since he rarely washes the dishes and never scrubs the toilet and avoids other cleaning duties. Jessica goes ahead to compare her marriage and division chores to other unions and tries to identify some contributing factors of the existing situation. She makes attempts to make her audience understand some of the reasons why cleaning is perceived as solely a woman’s job in the household. She cites factors such as women being credited with all the cleaning praise, the portrayal of the media on the same issue and the nature of the cleaning tasks. Towards the end of the article, Grose makes suggestions to the possible solution for the situation such as inventing cleaning gadgets that would make it easier for men to embrace cleaning.

Grose is a married woman; this fact alone justifies the arguments that she makes since it is a narration of the first-hand experience in her marriage. The position boosts her credibility as the source of information to her targeted audience who gets the situation from the author’s mouth. In addition to this, the author builds her arguments based on other people’s works to present herself as a credible source of the facts. Such works include references from the 2008 study from the University of New Hampshire, Matthew Krehbiel, who is the brand manager at P&G North America Fabric Care to prove the fact that care products mostly feature women and are purposefully designed to appeal to the women (Grose 9). The incorporation of such sources makes the reader pay attention to the content.

In combination with the ethos, appeal is the logos strategy that leads the audience of this article to believe in the information provided. The author achieves this through the trend of citing facts and statistics in her article.

‘According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 55 percent of American mothers employed full time do some housework on an average day, while only 18 percent of employed fathers do (Grose 2). According to a 2008 study from the University of New Hampshire, only about 2 percent of commercials featuring men showed them doing domestic tasks’ (Grose 9).

Such are statistics quoted in the article that continually persuade the audience of the article. Furthermore, the author appeals to the reason of her audience by stating that her husband barely knows how the dryer and the washer works and has not scrubbed the toilet in five years. It drives the audience to reason that the tasks are completed by the woman.

Throughout the article, Grose embraces the use of scenarios that invoke sympathy from her readers as a way of persuading them. The ethos strategy is also evident in the choice of words that are meant to inspire anger and judgment from the target audience. She presents a situation of her being pregnant and doing household chores, yet her husband does not care because the society exempts him from judgment. These are some of the persuasion techniques the author uses in her article to present her argument effectively.

The expectation from the author’s thesis was to show the inequality in household labor distribution between men and women and possibly offer some solutions or call for action. Although the article was effective in persuading its target audience of the existing problem its conclusion failed to achieve some call to action for the current problem. The article did not redress the problem but ended in humor that still reinforced that it is upon women to conduct cleaning duties at home since it is not fun for the men.

“One last suggestion comes from Magary, who so emphatically declared that cleaning sucks” (Grose 16).

The statement suggests that men will not engage in cleaning duties because “it sucks” and is not fun for them. It weakens the thesis statement of the article and the initial purpose which was to find solutions and get men to engage more in cleaning duties and help out at home. The article should have ended with a call for action to make the existing problem important and find a proper solution for the same.

Work cited:

Grose, Jessica. “Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier.” New Republic. The New Republic, 19 Mar. 2013. Web. 2 Feb. 2017.