Monday, January 31, 2011

Irritating House Wife

Since the rest of the post will be some irritated angry rants, I would like to start with a small incidence which happened in my friend's team. My friend's team was having a casual conversation when they went for an team outing. Their manager asked everyone about what their expectation about their future wife and one guy told, 'I would like to marry a house wife' and everyone burst out laughing when the manager replied 'It will be illegal to marry a house wife'.

Now, actually coming to the post, I don't know how many of you thought 'it is not house wife, you idiot, it is home maker'. I was watching some stupid music channels where people call and blabber for sometime before we can watch a song. For the sake of asking the anchor asked 'what do you do?' and the lady replied 'I am a house wife'. Then the BFAH said sarcastically, 'So, you are not doing anything? You will simply be in your home?'. That lady got confused and he explained, 'you have to say "home maker" and not "house wife"'.

I was really pissed at that comment. I don't know when was this phrase 'home maker' invented. I think it was very recently started to be in normal usage. I think it was made normal because 'home maker' projects more esteemed sense than 'house wife' and people thought calling 'home maker' is better than calling 'house wife'? I don't really know. It does not matter how people call, whether 'house wife' or 'home maker', but what matters is, how they are treated. The term home maker actually means someone who is doing house keeping. A maid/servant could be called as a home maker, I think.

This applies mainly to the new phrase which is coined very often for handicapped people. First they were called 'handicapped', then they were called 'physically challenged' and then they were called 'differently abled' and I think in some places they are called 'special people'. I think they invented these new phrase so that such people are not hurt when they read handicapped/physically challenged etc. But IMO, it does not matter how it is written or how many new phrases government and other organization invents to make them feel better. What matters is the people's attitude towards them.

People should treat their 'house wife' or 'home maker' with respect, but not just in calling with fancy phrases. People should learn and treat handicapped people with as much respect as it would not hurt them. Giving too much respect/attention will only hurt them. People should be educated in that sense, instead of simply coining fancy phrases once in a few years and spend millions of dollars to simply change the phrases everywhere in the world.